Pardon my addenda. After this I promise I’ll shut up, because I assure you, this subject is really very tiresome.

1. “Together”. The fellers are “together” for the gospel. Can we talk? Let’s be frank about what this code word means. This is purely and simply anti-ECT return fire. Remember ECT? Evangelicals and Catholics…together. “Ohnoyoudon’t, we’re not ‘together’ with them. Fellers, let’s figger out a way to take back that beautiful word ‘together’! We can’t let those ECTers have it.”

“Sounds good, chief. What are we gonna be ‘together’ for? The Reformation? The Chicago Statement?”

“No, that sounds too narrow. Let’s think bigger, hoss.”

“Jesus?”

“No, that sounds like those dear sweet simple folk back home who drift off when I’m preaching about God’s eternal decree.”

“The gospel? Together for the gospel?”

“Watson my dear boy, I think you’ve got it!”

And so we get the T4G manifesto which, among many other things it is agin, its very title declares: “We are agin the Catholics and their protestant collaborators.” Whoever thought ‘together’ could be invested with such a bizarre exclusionary, not-together sense? We’re together…all 9 of us.

Scusi, but if we must have a manifesto on the gospel, may we have one that includes people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer (see my next point) and Karl Barth, Malcolm Muggeridge and G. K. Chesterton, Mother Teresa and Father Damien, C. S. Lewis and Robert Capon, John MacArthur and Kallistos Ware, Flannery O’Connor and Walker Percy? Cuz if that group of folk aren’t “together for the gospel” (even if some of them don’t think they are) I just don’t want to be on your team, k? (Yes, that’s arrogant of me, I know.)

2. Last time we knocked back a couple of Co-colas, Josh made an observation about T4G in between eye rolls (he’s Lutheran—if you’ve never seen a Lutheran eye roll, you really haven’t seen one at all (although PWinn’s got a good one, too)). It goes something like this: It used to be the case that the Reformed were all eager beavers to make nice with the Lutherans. We tried to work out our differences over the sacraments; alas, to no avail. That Thirty Years War thing really dampened our passion for the Lutherans. Now it seems that we presbyterians are falling all over ourselves to make nice with the Baptists. Hence, T4G. Blandest of throwaway statements on the Supper and exactly ___________ on baptism. Baby dedicators, wet and dry, together…for a disembodied, anti-physical gospel.

I guess we Reformed types are just full of insecurities and co-dependency. We’ve always got to have someone’s love. Now the Baptists have been kind enough to forgive and forget about that whole “throw you in a sack and drown you in the river” over the sacraments. They’ve got big hearts. But for some reason we can’t be “together” with the Lutherans. Your T4G manifesto makes sure of that. May I make a proposal to the presbyterians involved in the next conference? Ask yourself why you’re willing to give big wet sloppy kisses to the Baptists (and good for them for being forgiving) but a big “We’re Number 1!” middle finger to the Anglicans and Lutherans? We can’t be with them, right, because it’s more important to be be anti-NPP, anti-FV, anti-NTWright, anti-_________, isn’t it?

3. Historical relativism. Why did the T4G fellers put in Article XVII, the one about racial attitudes and being against bigotry? Because they’re a bunch of mostly Southern fellers, that’s why. Plenty of other good gospel folk wouldn’t have had to even mention this. It would go without saying. But SBCers and Southern presbyterians have to explicitly address it because it’s part of their history. And well they should.

What doctrines are implicated in this statement which seeks to redress past wrongs? They have a lot to do with the gospel, don’t they? One might even say that it indicates something “essential” or “central” about the gospel that is proclaimed and lived, today, in the South. Now, reconsider what I was saying about sola fide in this light. Do we ever get to the point where we can look around the broad tent of Christendom and see that no one much is denying sola fide? That we really do get it? Or when the next ECT, EOT or ECOT comes along, are we going to have endure this same johnny-one-note gospel because Luther said we have to?

4. Culture. So much of the manifesto is concerned with lamenting the church’s enculturation. Pragmatism, marketing techniques, cultural fashions, oh my! And why has the evangelical church fallen prey to this? Look no further than yourselves, fellers. Why is corporate worship a festival of pop sentiments and styles celebrating individualism? Well, in Mohler’s case, he’s got no one else to blame than himself. Southern’s music program is a shell of what it once was, for example. So lament the loss of God-honoring worship all you like. You’ve totally erased the tradition of sacred music from Western consciousness (it all comes down to style and preference, right?) and anything resembling liturgical theology. Congratulations. Now you and the European Union have something in common. By your actions and theology you have declared that pipe organs are hazardous to our spiritual health (the EU just settles for declaring them hazardous to our physical health; not sure which is sillier).

You lament the cultural invasion into the church, but you have done nothing but create more “space” (as we postmoderns like to put it) for the commodification of liturgical elements. You are obliterating musical, literary, philosophical and historical literacy and rootedness. We’ve got to continually reinvent ourselves because we’ve planted the church squarely in the cracks of the cultural pavement and our roots are continually giving out under the pounding they take. PDL, emerging church, health-and-wealth, self-help positive thinking: all these make you cry. Well, boo-hoo. Take a look in the mirror if you want to discover all the conspirators who have reduced the gospel to a commodity. Because you were so busy in your political sandbox, you stood by while the current and previous generations eliminated all trans-cultural elements of the Western church save one: the global lust for a consumable product to feed the insatiable I.