Doctrinal Defaults

Back when he asked me to guest blog, John sent me some suggestions for topics at my request. These included discussing infant baptism, limited atonement, and ordaining women. You know stuff the Church has reached complete consensus over. He also suggested how to improve the training, development, and accountability of clergy.

Well to take the last one first, I'm not clergy. After honestly examining myself, I have no desire to be clergy. Also, I've only been a Presbyterian (PCA) and a Baptist in my short life. I've never been a Methodist and so I have no idea how you handle these issues already. So I'm going to do what I suggest you do when you realize that you are out of your depth. I am going to say that yes training, development, and accountability are very good things for clergy to have on a regular basis. And I am going to quickly change the subject.

As for the first three, I'm going to share a doctrinal realization I had during my ecumenical period in college. I don't really care about any of them. I have my preferences, but they are more like my doctrinal default settings than strongly held theological positions. I am comfortable with limited atonement, credo-baptism, and the non-ordination of women. These are the positions of my own local church (although I have attended churches that didn't hold to one or another of them). After research and prayerful consideration into these issues, they just aren't things I'm willing to break fellowship with another Christian over.

Now I'm not blowing these things off. I've given them prayerful consideration and study. I was going to explain the results of said study in more detail, but then John had to come back and spoil everything. I find that I am out time here but perhaps I'll tackle them over at my blog anyway. Let that be a lesson to all you procrastinators out there.

Anyway it has been fun blogging over here. Feel free to come visit my place and maybe John will cast some links in my direction when I get around to writing more on this subject.