δουλογος: Council of Orange

Although I found the study interesting in the academic sense Dan I am somewhat perplexed as to why you persented the case for Baptism the way you did.

Your study was based around the idea that becasue the doctrine of Perservance of the Saints has been the orthodox teaching of the church since the beginning it should be accepted? Is this not what you mean when you say; "I wanted to address the Pelagian and SemiPelagian heresies and demonstrate that the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints did not begin with Calvin, but was in fact the orthodox teaching in the church for the first 1500 years of its existence."

The problem with that line of argument is that it is a bad one, it's an "Argumentum ad Antiquitam." Simply becasue something is old does not mean that it is right, a fact that you have often pointed out to me when we've discussed wether or not the early church baptized infants, which they did ;). The reason I brought up the question of Baptismal regeneration during the study was becasue you kept repeating when refering to the council "This was the orthodox teaching of the church...". The arguemnt you were making for PofS would, to be consistant, need to be applied to the whole document. If PofS should be accepted becasue it is the older teaching then surely Baptismal Regeneration should be.

When I brought this up briefly after your responce was that the later church corrected the error of baptismal regeneration. That line in itself shows the inconsistancy of the argument you were making becasue it could either be argued that the later church didn't correct but corrupted, or if the doctrine of baptismal regeneration needed correcting then surely so does PofS.

Now I do believe there are legemit times to use an argument from history, but if you are then you need to be consistant and it is very hard to be using early church documents (no matter waht side you are on). Really I think going through some of Dort would have been more effective if you wanted to use a confession/creed becasue I think the arguemnts used in it are much more biblicaly based and more defendable then Orange.

I was overall suprised at the study since I have seen you both write and talk on the subject better in the past. Perhaps I'm being a Monday-morning-preacher but when you began in Romans 8:28-30 I thought you were going to approach the subject the way I usually find myself doing; those foreknown are the ones glorified there is none foreknown that are not glorified...ect but you read through it and then seemed to set it aside and jump all over the place.

I know you won't take this as harsh critism, you always ask for feedback and I finally have some to give, take it is loving critism. I'm sure it is one thing for me to write about or speak about this topic when talking with freinds and a whole other thing to go before a congergation that is hostile to the doctrine and make an argument for it.

But hey, although I knew what Orange said that was actually the first time I had read through any of it, thanks for the oppunity for that!

Bryan
SDG