Rev. Andy Webb has written a “brief thought” up on the Warfield List, in which I think he means to score some points in the FV debate, but really just shows that he’s confused on how to keep score. He writes the following (I tried to keep the emphasis and formatting the same):

While Waters amply proves this point in the lecture itself, if one simply looks around on the net one finds ample proof of this in the fact that FV proponents fall over themselves to establish cordial relations with the RCC, while at the same time hammering Scots, Puritans, Southern Presbyterians and the vilest of all imaginable creatures… B A P T I S T S… shudder

Well, as I wrote in a previous post, I think this should probably be the case. I wrote, “the Roman Catholic Church still contains nuggets of Biblical theology within her, and in some cases, better than many Protestant denominations do. One aspect of this is the idea of the authority of the Church.”

One thing that I think people like Rev. Webb doesn’t understand is that a false view of the sacraments (i.e., the Baptists) is just as concerning as a false view of how justification works (i.e. Roman Catholicism). I believe that Roman Catholicism gets a lot of things right, and that Baptists and those who espouse a “puritan experimental theology” (as Rev. Webb calls it) get a lot of things wrong. In terms of getting useful theology in a conference, I think I would get better information from John Cardinal Newman, and wouldn’t get very useful advice from Charles Ryrie.

If you’re going to have conferences on the Church, FV proponents would rather hear from people who have a high view of the Church (Catholics, Anglicans) than from those who have a low view (Baptists and other Independants). Of course, they may disagree with Catholics on Soteriology and the efficacy of the sacraments, but they disagree with Baptists on the same thing!

He later writes:

In other words the men we have historically shared common cause with in the Reformation Solas are to be discarded in favor of better relations with an organization that formally anathematized the gospel in the 16th century.

Here, Rev. Webb compares apples and oranges. I would ask whether his views on abortion more closely align to the RC Church or the Presbyterian Church (USA). I would ask whether his views on glossia would more closely align to the RC Church or the Assemblies of God. Methinks it would be the former in both cases. Does this put Rev. Webb into the RC “camp”? Not at all… it simply shows that you can’t say that anyone is “closer” or “further” unless one defines the standard.

Of course, even Webb himself admits that we just can’t talk to those baptists about certain things, saying that Banner of Truth “purposely stays away from divisive wranglings over the sacraments”. I guess Rev. Webb considers the sacraments so unimportant that they can be ignored in such discussions. I disagree… the Baptist view of sacramentology is just as dangerous as the RC view of soteriology. Both need to be discussed, without compromise of the truth.

So, perhaps Rev. Webb thinks his post is a succinct little “gotcha”, but in fact, all he’s done is point out something which the FV folks would probably agree with immediately, and it also shows that Rev. Webb misses the point entirely.