A literary detour

One of my projects is to read through Jane Austen’s major works.  I read a few in high school, but I really can’t remember what they were about except for some vague reference to a Keira Knightley film, I think.  I finished Pride and Prejudice a few weeks ago.   I am reading Peter Leithart’s Miniatures and Morals alongside it.  Sure enough, Leithart finds a way to bring chiasms into it!   I think it works.

 

A.  Mr and Mrs Bennet
B.  Bingley and Darcy arrive in Netherfield; hopes for Jane
C.  Collins;  hopes for Elizabeth
D.  Wickham
C’  Collins proposes; Dashes hopes for Elizabeth
B’   Bingley and Darcy leave; dashes hopes for Jane
A’ Mr and Mrs Bennet

(Leithart 52)

Someone could object, “He’s projecting that chiasm onto Austen.”   But the response is simple, “Is it there or not?”   Anyway, fun.

Terms of surrender for the Federal Vision

Not that I have any authority to issue these, but if any FV wants to know why no one likes them and takes them seriously (and even more:  on points perhaps where you guys actually get it right), this should help:

1. Renounce all language that states or suggests temporal unions, elections, and justifications based on obedience.   At the end of the day, your theology must say that God justifies the ungodly.  How is it good news for me to hear that I have temporal salvation based on my obedience?
2. Begin merging the CREC into accepted NAPARC denominations.   By all means keep the same structures in terms of Presbyterianism but submit to oversight.
3. Fully endorse the Confession’s teaching on sacramental union.   These two words would solve 90% of the problems.

In doing so, NAPARC will hear you on:

1. Literature and hermeneutics:  granted much of the stuff at Biblical Horizons borders on insanity, I fully grant that the chiastic hermeneutics is more “natural” to the text than the American “Three Points and a Poem.”  And it is far more interesting.
2. We will tone down a lot of the “Baptistic” stuff in American Presbyterianism
3. We acknowledge that it is hard to criticize you guys on “loose Confessionalism” when much of NAPARC compromises on the 2nd, 4th commandments and often gives more weight to parachurch ministries than to the local church.
4. Given the coming collapse of the PCA, we will gladly accept the more robust (and biblical) expressions of the CREC re-formed around a Confessional framework.
5. We acknowledge that Canon Press often produces challenging and incisive literature that can counter-balance the tendency to “theological inbreeding” in some Reformed publishing venues.

We will even let you name the location in which the surrender was signed.  We’ll call it something like Greyfriars.