It was, in the very least, heuristic; it may have been intentionally polemic, too, in order to arrest the attention and shift the balance a bit. It is, as you say, an important corrective.

Jordan appears to be painting with a very wide brush – which is a good approach at times – and I found myself wondering whom (if anyone) he considers to be among the remaining thinkers in Calvinism. I have not found the NICNT commentary on Romans by Douglas Moo, for example, to be “fluffy stuff that reads like someone’s daily devotional thoughts.” Does Jordan consider “Justification and Variegated Nomism” by Carson, et.al., to be “questionable scholarship that is compromised with critical thinking”? I just wonder where he draws the line.

Still, he does seem to be generally correct: “thinking Calvinist” used to be redundant; more and more it is an oxymoron.

But then I’m not a Calvinist according to some, so what would I know?

Did I miss something here?

Thanks for drawing the article to our attention.

For example, “While written from a considerably different place within the world of Reformed Christianity than I occupy…” “While I am sure that Jordan has different issues and authors in mind in some cases…” “While I doubt that I agree with Jordan on many things..”

Okay, we got the point. You do not agree with Jordan, but on this one essay..But basically such caveats were in almost every paragraph of your essay that was not quoting Jordan’s article.

I hear the same thing in other’s (not yours) article that praise N. T. Wright while at the time saying “while we don’t agree with everything Wright says…”

No kidding! Who agrees 100% with ANYONE else. What causes us to desire to distance ourselves in this way from other brothers in Christ?

Might not this attitude of distancing be the underlying cause of the “closing of the Calvinist mind”?

Am I correct that some Calvinists find Mr. Jordan’s piece mildly irritating?

More “paradigm” theology ala Thomas Kuhn. So if Jordan wants to smoke the pomo pipe, then fine. But nothing in this essay supports such a far-reaching statement. Isn’t that just a tad triumphalist?

Regarding federal vision and the “new perspective,” what I read him as saying is that those who disagree with those positions are being closed-minded. That’s a nice rhetorical trick.

Finally, comparing reformed publishers of today to those of the 70’s is stretching it a bit when you think about the huge changes in the publishing industry.

So I doubt too many Calvinists will be sweating bullets over what Jordan wrote.

The fact is that most Christians on earth today are *not* Reformed. And given our attitudes and our priorities, I see little hope that that will change…

He also takes issue with the Confession, and holds suspect those that do uphold it and actually require their pastors adhere to it. Apparently, they are the ones that are closed minded.

I think I’ll stick with my close minded Confession made by a whole bunch of dead guys rather than be more open minded to a few living guys with chips on their shoulder ’cause they don’t feel other presbys play nice with them.

He says most Calvinist writing is fluffy…which I don’t disagree with. Most of it today is introductory because of the rampant ignorance of evangelical truths. Strangely, he seems to view these items of fluff with disdain when in reality, it looks like he just really wants a “blankey” and wants the rest of us to shut up.

The author speaks from a rather narrow perspective, painting with a brush too big for his own hand.