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AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES the Complete Collection Ofblog & Mablog Posts on the Federal Vision

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AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES the Complete Collection Ofblog & Mablog Posts on the Federal Vision THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES The Complete Collection of Blog & Mablog Posts on the Federal Vision DOUGLAS WILSON THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES The Complete Collection of Blog & Mablog Posts on the Federal Vision DOUGLAS WILSON Blog & Mablog Press and Tire Center Moscow, Idaho www.dougwils.com Douglas Wilson, The Auburn Avenue Chronicles: The Complete Collecion ofBlog & Mablog Posts on the Federal Vision, ©2018 by Douglas Wilson. Cover design and interior layout: Valerie Anne Bost Cover image: “En Barnedaab (A Baptism),” Michael Ancher, 1888. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of the author, except as provided by USA copyright law. Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. Scripture quotations marked esv are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked nkjv are from the New King James Version®. Copyright ©1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked niv are from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. For Steve and Wendy Wilkins CONTENTS Introduction..................................1 April–June 2004...............................5 July–September 2004 ..........................29 October–December 2004.......................67 2005......................................101 January–June 2006...........................133 July 2006 ..................................147 August 2006................................173 September–December 2006 ....................191 January 2007 ...............................221 February 2007 ..............................255 March 2007 ................................293 April 2007 .................................343 May 2007..................................383 June 2007..................................411 July 2007 ..................................443 August 2007................................465 September–October 2007 .....................499 November 2007 .............................533 December 2007 .............................583 January–February 2008 .......................609 March–May 2008 ...........................637 June–October 2008 ..........................681 November–December 2008 ....................711 2009......................................739 2010......................................761 2011–2012.................................797 January–November 2013 ......................813 December 2013 .............................841 2016–2017.................................859 Appendix: Email Correspondence with Members of the Fort Lauderdale Group.........883 INTRODUCTION The controversy over what came to be called the Federal Vision was big enough, and extended enough, that by this time some young bucks who were just ten years old when the controversy broke are now in seminary and are thinking of doing a research paper on the controversy. I thought it might be a good idea to put my particular contributions to that controversy into a form that is easily accessible. That form comes in the shape of this e-book, available as a PDF, or Mobi, or EPUB. In addition—in case a seminary library wants to have a hard copy of it—an arrangement has been made with Canon Press to have print-on- demand copies run off, if you insist, and shipped to your door. But I do need to give fair warning—this puppy weighs in at over 300,000 words. If it is a puppy, it is kind of a Tibetan mastiff. If anyone wants to read the sum of the matter, I would recommend you just read the entry entitled “Federal Vision No Mas” (January 17, 2017). I will only say here what I said a number of times in the controversy. From the beginning of the controversy to the end of it, and down to the present, I have been a Westminsterian Puritan. The only place where I diverge from the standard Reformed take on these issues is in my agreement with child commu- nion—which I believe can be harmonized with that larger system, while re- main robustly Calvinistic and evangelical. If anyone believes that I have shifted my views during the course of this controversy, I would simply invite them to read through this straightforward chronological record of what I wrote. There are some housekeeping issues that I ought to address as well. This is a collection of the blog posts that I wrote in the course of that controversy, 1 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | INTRODUCTION and they are submitted in simple chronological order. They have been lightly edited, with that editing being limited to the cleaning up of obvious typos and various grammatical infelicities. Published as blog posts, there were numerous links to other posts, and these links may no longer be good. There were some places where we were able to correct the link. If the link is good, then if someone wants to use this in a footnote, then it would probably be best to consider the date of my post as the access date. In some cases, we were able to find current URLs for the same content, in which case there is a footnote supplied. The access date for these should be a vague September/October 2018 time frame. In other cases, the content appears to be lost in the ether, though perhaps somebody clever might be able to find it via theWayback Machine. It is also the case that there is a north/south problem because of the orig- inal blog format. On a blog, the earlier posts are located below the newer ones. In a book, it goes the other way. The reason I bring this up, is that I will occasionally refer to an earlier installment, and the “below” language is retained. If that happens, don’t be fooled—look above. As Blog & Mablog has switched platforms a time or two over the years, some things were unfortunately lost along the way. We’ve done our best to catch any quotes that may originally have been block quotations without quotation marks, but a few may have slipped past. We trust the context will be clear enough to indicate who said what. Photos were all stripped out at some juncture, though we did manage to dig up and replace one. And if you were hoping to go read the posts in situ and delve into the comments sec- tions, you will be disappointed, as comments before a certain date were not raptured along with the main content. The form of my citations has been closer to the jeans-and-T-shirt end of the formatting spectrum, and not so much the white-tie-and-tails end, but that comes from the nature of the medium. It must be confessed that this thing is kind of a slab of theological controversial writing, and so I do confess it. But at the same time, I believe there is a lot of edifying theology here— distinctions that the Reformed used to make still need to be made, as long as 2 the people of God need to be pastored. I trust that the experience of reading this will be edifying over all, even if it includes working through some of the blunders I later repudiate and repent of. Don’t try to get through it in one sitting. DOUGLAS WILSON Christ Church Reformation Day 2018 3 APRIL–JUNE 2004 NICODEMUS AND JUDAS APRIL 24, 2004 The current controversy over the objectivity of the covenant is caused, in part, by the penchant certain theologians have for ignoring the importance of plot lines in story. These plot lines obviously show up in the stories of Scripture, and consequently, a lot of confusion results from theologians treating plot problems as though they were math problems. But Nicodemus was a card-car- rying member of the Sanhedrin, the body which condemned Jesus. And Judas was a card-carrying member of the Twelve. Plot involves plot twists, of the kind one ought not to get while doing a math problem. “And then the 7 be- trayed his fellow odd numbers and became a 6!” JOHN ROBBINS IS A HOOT APRIL 27, 2004 The most recent Trinity Review put out by John Robbins is dedicated to ex- tinguishing the heresies of my good friend Peter Leithart. Congratulations to Peter are in order. It has been a long time coming, and he was beginning to worry. Of course for a Robbins to try to deal with a Leithart in this fashion is like trying to put out a bonfire by pelting it with wadded up Kleenex soaked in kerosene. As Robbins is one who prides himself on his strict adherence to logic (“all rise!”), I was particularly pleased with this one from the article in question: “There never was a time when the proposition ‘April 19, 2004, was a sunny 5 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APRIL–JUNE 2004 day in Unicoi, Tennessee’ was not true.” Of course to say this, he has to main- tain that this proposition was true on April 18, 2004. But the proposition, on April 18, is clearly claiming that April 19, 2004 is a past event. After all, it says, ‘April 19, 2004, was a sunny day . .’ What fresh irrationalism is this? Take it away. I am not amused and would be alone. For those who do not go to the link provided, here is a sample quote, which shows that putting John Robbins in charge of fighting heresy is like making Typhoid Mary the director of the Center for Disease Control. Robbins saith, “Truth, not historical events, has primacy. Christianity is not events, nor is it based on events.” Maybe he doesn’t think the resurrection counts as an event. And if Christ be not raised . For those who would like to see the entire article (and if you do, you are probably the kind of motorist who slows down to gawk at automobile acci- dents), here it be.1 AS CLEAR AS I CAN APRIL 29. 2004 Many bystanders have been trying to figure out what the whole “Auburn Avenue” controversy is all about.
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