Outside the Camp: Review - The Trinity Review (John Robbins)

While I find the doctrinal statement at Outside the Camp weak and undefined, I have to agree with the following scathing review of The Trinity Foundation.  Although the Trinity Review stands against the Federal Vision/Auburn Avenue heresy, that stand is compromised by inconsistency and contradiction.  Even the late Gordon H. Clark was not as consistent as he should have been in his stand against Arminianism and pietism.  I attribute this to the Evangelical movement and the strong pressure to belong to their brand of ecumenicalism, which basically says the Arminian and Calvinist dispute is an "inhouse dispute".  

But if so, why all the fuss in Presbyterian denominations over the Federal Vision error?  Federal Vision is basically Arminianism masquerading as Reformed theology.  The following quote from the article at Outside the Camp is to the point:

Again, so far so good. Obviously, liberalism and neo-liberalism are false gospels, right? Machen and Elliot correctly identify them as counterfeits that are diametrically opposed to true Christianity. Obviously, then, all liberals and neo-liberals are unregenerate, right?

Yet out of the midst of this veneer of orthodoxy come these astounding words from Machen's Christianity and Liberalism, quoted in agreement by Elliot:

"We are not dealing here with delicate personal questions; we are not presuming to say whether such and such an individual man is a Christian or not. God only can decide such questions; no man can say with assurance whether the attitude of certain individual 'liberals' toward Christ is saving faith or not. But one thing is perfectly plain - whether or [not] liberals are Christians, it is at any rate perfectly clear that liberalism is not Christianity."

And Elliot uses the same words at the end of his article to describe neo-liberals:

"But on the authority of Scripture, one thing is perfectly plain even now: whether or not some neo-liberals are Christians, neo-liberalism is not Christianity. And those who continue to reject Christianity will be lost."

Can you believe what you just read? After all that Machen said against liberalism, and after all that Elliot said against neo-liberalism, their entire thesis is vitiated in one fell swoop! Machen, Elliot, Robbins, and all who agree with them believe that it is possible that some who hold to a totally different religion, who differ from Christianity in fundamental doctrines, including believing a false gospel of salvation through good works, are SAVED!! Their entire case against ALL FALSE GOSPELS has been utterly obliterated!! All of their supposed boldness against anti-gospel heresies is nothing but a sham! The TR tiger has no teeth! TR is nothing but vanity and wind!

For a "ministry" that is supposedly so opposed to contradiction, contradiction runs throughout TR.  See:  Outside the Camp:  Review - The Trinity Review (John Robbins)

Yes, and I've discovered that Robert L. Reymond is himself a bag of contradictions since he seems to think that God loves the reprobates in some sense.  How that can be I have yet to discover.  (Audio Lecture:  The Immeasurable Love of God).  Reymond is constantly challenging the Westminster Confession on one point or another, usually in the wrong direction.  He falsely accuses the Athanasian Creed of Arianism because of the doctrine of eternal generation of the Son from the Father.  (John 1:18).  In the above sermon, Reymond says that the Westminster Larger Catechism should have mentioned the love of God.  (John 3:16)

This is one of the problems with The Trinity Foundation.  They, like Reymond, are inconsistent.  On the one hand, they sound the trumpet against the unconfessional views of the Federal Visionists and on the other challenge the Westminster Standards at random wherever they disagree and all without a solid exegesis of Scripture to convince church councils they are correct.

According to the above author, Robert L. Reymond believes that some people who have not heard the Gospel will be saved.  This clearly contradicts John 14:6; Acts 4:10-12; John 5:24-25; Romans 10:7-17 and Galatians 1:6-9.  Reymond promotes the doctrine of common grace as well:

Your friend, Robert Reymond (who advocates common grace, a heresy you claim to hate), wrote an article entitled "The 'Very Pernicious and Detestable' Doctrine of Inclusivism" in which he decries the heresy "that the Bible is not clear about the eternal state of the adherents of other religions. They are opting for what they call 'inclusivism,' the teaching that God's mercy is so wide that it can and does embrace many, if not all, non-Christian religionists on the globe ... Evangelical inclusivists deny that conscious faith in Jesus Christ is absolutely essential to salvation" (May-June '03). If you are consistent, you would have to use the same words to describe inclusivists as Machen used to describe liberals (especially since inclusivism and liberalism are basically the same thing): "We are not dealing here with delicate personal questions; we are not presuming to say whether such and such an individual man is a Christian or not. God only can decide such questions; no man can say with assurance whether the attitude of certain individual 'inclusivists' toward Christ is saving faith or not. But one thing is perfectly plain - whether or not inclusivists are Christians, it is at any rate perfectly clear that inclusivism is not Christianity." Also, in spite of your sometimes exclusivist rhetoric (including words like "pernicious" and "detestable"), YOU YOURSELF are a kind of inclusivist - you and your friends believe that, although heresies like neo-liberalism and Arminianism are false gospels, not all neo-liberals and Arminians are necessarily unregenerate. Your hypocrisy shines through for all to see.  (Ibid.).

It seems to me that finding consistency is becoming more difficult.  Apparently I was naive enough to believe that John Robbins stood consistently against the heresies of theonomy and reconstruction as well.  Now I'm find that may not be the case either.

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