Leading Questions & Poisoning the Well

Joel Garver at sacradoctrina has an interesting bit on chicken-hearted leading questions, PCA devotionals, and "prejudicial language" regarding "the new gospel" of the Federal Vision, etc., theology.
This [language] is especially [prejudicial] given that the denomination has taken no official stance on the so-called New Perspectives or the supposed "Federal Vision" theology. Furthermore, views associated with these outlooks deeply influence a wide range of pastors, seminary professors, ministries, and laypersons all across the PCA precisely in their missionally-focused commitment to the Reformed tradition, its retrieval, development, and proclamation to a world in need.

It's also the case that a number of study committees and Presbyteries are in the midst of working through these issues and the outcome is far from certain. A process of careful reading, discernment, and determination is not helped by such prejudicial language, which could be seen as poisoning the well. As it's been famously observed, if something is repeated as true often enough, people will eventually come to believe it is true, whether it really is or not.

After all, it remains unclear and a matter of ungoing dispute whether either of these outlooks, properly understood, threatens or redefines anything with regard to our confessional teaching, let alone "redefines justification" or "remakes the Gospel."
Read the post here.

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