Let me explain once again what we are doing here at Remonstrans; this may go further than anything to explain why I take the attitude I do.

As I have repeatedly said, the modern church has departed from the prudent (or at the very least, the considered) judgments of its past. I have compared our situation to watersheds of our history: the rejection of the Church of Rome, the Church of England and Modernism. I believe we are at such a point.

At a very basic level we see the church embracing forms of entertainment it has consistently proscribed. There is irrefutable decline in its worship no matter how you measure it. There is a moral decay that has already been conceded. What used to be viewed with a gimlet eye has now become so broadly accepted as to be beyond criticism. What was useful devotional fare has become market-driven self-help. Even in its strict theology, it is difficult to identify a place for truth. Books have been written about all of this.

All of these critiques come from outside Remonstrans; they are not unique to us. We did not concoct them; we discovered them. In fact, when I suspected something I said might be viewed as a personal view, I offered a source for our visitors to read and consider, whether it was Aristotle, Augustine, Copland, Weaver, Pascal, Tozer, Kaplan, Gardiner. . . . I offer not what I consider to be proofs, but evidence of past belief. I am not primarily arguing the church is wrong—though obviously I do think that—I am arguing that the church has changed.

This is a necessary distinction I make here. It is essential to your understanding of the blog.

We do not oppose the philistines because they hold different views from ours. We oppose them because they oppose the view of the historic Church.

Remember that that is our reason for Remonstrans. Our first post was a list of readings that would militate against these contemporary eccentricities.

We reject the spirit of the age and we oppose the philistines. We do not complain that the church has departed from dissidens’ point of view. I couldn’t care less, and you shouldn’t much care. It is important that we recognize that if dissidens were never born—while an attractive possibility and a preferable alternative—Christians would still have to deal with this apostasy.

I have as many opinions as your typical Brooklyn Jew, and half as shy about sharing them with the world. Ask anyone who knows me. (In fact, I started my own blog for that purpose when this one began just so I could remain single-minded here. But Remonstrans dominated my spare time, so the world is stumbling along without my help right now. Which is regrettable.)

The level of this apostasy is profound, in my view: it touches on the very transcendentals of our life: the good, the true and the beautiful. On Remonstrans we seek to illustrate the fundamental nature of this critique. The church today is more profoundly wrong than it has ever been, and it no longer has a commonly accepted standard of what is good, true and beautiful. In the past there could be reformers, dissidents and fundamentalists. Today I do not anticipate any parallel remedy.

This critique is perhaps uncommon, but even then it is not unique. All of which is to say, when we have certain nattering defenders of the status quo, especially when being deliberately obtuse, I do not take them seriously. I will continue not to take them seriously.

For example: if the church has long rejected doing X (both explicitly in its writings and consistently in its practice) and if modern acceptance of it is nearly universal, and I come to make this point, it is clearly beyond the scope of this blog for me to insinuate my personal views. My views, my assent to the conclusions of my forebears, are irrelevant. What we have had here are some guests who wish for me to speculate about how the church could have been wrong, or how X might have become harmless over the centuries, or how church fathers might have been incorrect, or how proponents of defective worship should be acceptable because they were “famous for trusting Jesus”.

This is silliness.

(There is a reason I find syllogisms useful: they clarify our thinking.)

We have had people speculating about some very strange things for no reason other than to find a pretext for their objections. Some demand to know my entire Theory of Art. Remonstrans is not for them, they just don’t know it yet.

We have been considering for a little time now a kind of “dump” for this sort of participant: to your right you will notice a category called Landfill. We may have to implement that for those who persist in ignoring the essential purpose of this blog. Till then, please take the blustering illiterates for what they are: an intrusion. Think of them as dusty exhibits in oak cabinets with beveled glass and brass hinges: examples of the sort of objections one can expect to find in the local churches we minister in.

As we said in the past, we are not offering a solution, we don’t think there is a solution. But we do know there are still people in the ministry (or who are preparing for it) who need to serve the Lord in this irreparable state of affairs.

We speak to them first.

I hope that puts everything in a clearer context.