Good for Mohler. He continues to impress me — the Southern Baptist Convention could certainly do worse in presidents.

I was just reading about his housecleaning at Southern Baptist Seminary — 96% of the faculty left after he took over, and were replaced by solid, Evangelical Christian scholars. Cool guy.

And yeah, Universalism = Bad thing.

the sinister “for us”

Is the “for us” really a sinister, seductive code-phrase for universalism or broad inclusivism?

Honestly, coming from Mohler. . . well. . . He’d wouldn’t exclude me from the Lord’s Table at a church where he pastored because I was immersed–but my communing children would be because they were baptized as infants. Considering he’s coming from a very narrow, exclusivist viewpoint, I’m not as alarmed by his concerns.

It is a concession, and language which fits a pattern. A thoughtful document would have clearly excluded the possibility, and leaving out that conciliatory and conceding “for us” would have done that. “Jesus is the only way for us” and “Jesus is the only way” are miles apart.

…But, of course, from my POV, “baptized as infants” doesn’t contain any content that “unbaptized” wouldn’t. (Sorry, but, that’s what the term “credobaptist” means) The right/wrong of who’s excluding who (a PCA church obviously must exclude credobaptist practice in order to be paedobaptist) is not a matter of “narrow” or “broad”–it’s a matter of what Scripture says. You can, as I do, seriously regret that the churches are messed up this badly on something this basic, but until we find a way out of this….

Having said that, I can’t speak to the many flavors of Southern Baptists (and I cited Mohler because, to my surprise, he wasn’t signing on–I consider him pretty run-of-the-mill moderate evangelicalism), but in my Fundamentalist, Independent Baptist background I can’t imagine that we would take steps to exclude anyone. We would teach that only members of a church baptized upon credible profession of faith should take communion in general. Taking communion, upon self-examination, would be a matter of conscience with regard to that affirmation.

Now, if we knew you were making an issue of it, we’d have a discussion about the discipline of the church, which is why I went to a PCA church for four years, loved it, but never considered membership; and you would likely do the same if a church like mine were your only option. Or maybe we’d all go make our own. ugh.

Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus!

I hate there not being a way out of this mess of the very real historicity of the church. And I hate worse to simply pretend it’s not important to get it right. Too much of our religion has already been “spilled” in this way.

(a PCA church obviously must exclude credobaptist practice in order to be paedobaptist)

I realize converts are baptized upon profession of faith in every paedobaptist tradition. My point is that a paedobaptist church cannot practice the teaching or discipline, nor ordain the leadership, of a credobaptist church. A paedobaptist church cannot insist on a regenerate church membership. They are mutually exclusive points of view.

You don’t get to make me own the “narrow” tag, friends.