As topics change and as readership adjusts, it is possible that new Remonstrans readers could benefit from an orientation class. We'll give some thought to that. Meanwhile we should remind everyone of the environment we find ourselves in. (You are all as concerned about the environment as I am, right?)

"This is a country with all too much civility...especially on important issues." I think Berlinski is essentially right. I wouldn't quite say he has the authority of an Apostle, but he does have a sense of proportion religious folk now lack, and besides, religious people don't seem to have much regard for Apostolic authority anyway. Issues of orthodoxy were never more important, never have the clerics so quickly abandoned their flocks, never under more frivolous pretexts, and never with such impunity.

Elsewhere someone posted Ephesians 4:1-6. This would have been a slightly more effective reprimand if the speaker had not already told someone to go masturbate, effectively ending the "dialogue" altogether. To defend the normal meaning of theological terms and to question inane doctrinal fancies is to be, in this person's mind, a demagogue.

And what we have reviewed recently are assorted carpetbaggers, interlopers and dilettantes pretending to know theology and instructing the church on its obligations. We have read moral failures who preach at us about global responsibilities never mentioned in the New Testament. We have dabbled in views of how sexuality aims at the eschaton. We have heard threadbare pleas for "a conversation" from the very same person who creates YouTube videos wherein he accuses others of heterodoxy.

Clearly this is conversation of an extremely low order.

We are at a moment in church history where it can be suggested that the perfect church is one where people can sit around and say whatever they want.

What should be our attitude toward these wolves?

If these pretenders were consistent, if they were honest with the facts of church history and theology, if they showed a willingness to converse with the MacArthurs, Mohlers, Carsons, and Driscolls, Remontrans might welcome "dialogue". Dialogue can be illuminating and enjoyable. (It rarely is, but it can be. I think it happened at the Algonquin Hotel on occasion.) But most of us have grown up observing that this kind of cheap "dialogue" is merely war by other means. These chatterboxes are not after conversation, and nothing could be clearer. We are not obligated to consider your heresy just because you call it a conversation.

This alleged dialogue, this bogus conversation is not aimed at understanding, it is to insinuate error.  I will give you a simple case in point. Find a bookstore or library with a copy of The New Christians, turn to Appendix B, page 229, and read the fifth point—top of the page—which purports to be a "response to our critics".

Fifth, because most of us write as local church practitioners rather than professional scholars, and because the professional scholars who criticize our work may find it hard to be convinced by people outside their guild, we feel it is wisest at this juncture to ask those in the academy to respond to their peers about our work. We hope to generate fruitful conversations at several levels, including both the academic and ecclesial realms. If few in the academy come to our defense in the coming years, then we will have more reason to believe we are mistaken in our thinking and that our critics are correct in their unchallenged analyses.

In other words: it may be apparent to you that we are talking rubbish, but before you tell us we're talking rubbish, talk to other academics, and if in the coming years they say we are talking rubbish, then we will reconsider our position.

Now there is the bracing wind of a Reformation is it not? Imagine that sentiment rife among the Wycliffes, Huses, Zwinglis, Luthers, Melanchthons, Knoxes, Calvins....

If few in the academy come to our defense in the coming years, then we will have more reason to believe we are mistaken in our thinking and that our critics are correct in their unchallenged analyses.

Like a mighty army moves the church of God.

Contrary to what Doug Pagitt tells you, this is not how theology was done in the past; this is not a continuation of a venerable Christian tradition.

This is malarkey.