Vaccination or quarantine?

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-If Rick Warren was to have a Romanist speak at his church on a Sunday evening talking about cultural issues and politics, he would be criticized immediately by those in my theological circles for embracing an ecumenical paradigm (unity without theology) that is destroying the church today. But let one of "our guys" have a Romanist in the their church on a Sunday night to share the platform on political and cultural issues, then you better not say anything publicly against them because you’d be attacking the motives and ministry of a fellow servant of Christ. They are immune and above such scrutiny.

-If Rick Warren were to host a leading Roman Catholic writer and teacher to explain to his church the mysteries, metaphors, and allegory of “Lord of the Rings”, he would be challenged immediately for compromising the faith, partnering with those who deny the gospel and dumbing down doctrine for wider acceptance in religious circles about a fictional movie that is not Christian to begin with. But let one of "our guys" invite a Romanist as a guest lecturer to one of "our" seminaries to speak on the “Lord of the Rings” we must give them a pass and mustn’t say anything publicly about it for it would be unloving to characterize those in "our camp" who would do such things as “a turkey.” They are immune and above such satire and scrutiny.

http://stevenjcamp.blogspot.com/

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I haven’t frequented Camp’s blog since last summer. But a friend drew my attention to his latest post.

The first statement is demonstrably false. As far as Jus Divinum and I were concerned, the objection was never to attacking the ministry of a fellow believer, per se. Rather, the objection was to the quality of Camp’s argumentation. No one is immune to scrutiny, and that includes Steve Camp.

This is old stuff. But his second paragraph strikes a new chord.

1.I agree with Camp that LOTR is not a Christian movie, although it does depict a chivalric honor code which has its roots in Christian theology and ethics.

2.But is Camp saying that there’s something inherently wrong with making a movie on a fictitious subject?

3.And what, exactly, is wrong with having a Roman Catholic giving a guest lecture at a Reformed seminary on LOTR? Tolkien was a Roman Catholic. And that does color the book in many subtle and subliminal ways.

Is Camp saying that Reformed seminarians should never be exposed to a real live Roman Catholic? That they need to be hermetically sealed off from direct contact—as if every Roman Catholic were Typhoid Mary?

Do Reformed seminarians have such a deficient doctrinal immune system that any degree of exposure to Catholic theology will cause them to contract a fatal infection?

If some Reformed seminarians are really so sickly that mere exposure has that effect, then by all means let us expose them as a screening process; better they succumb to the Catholic contagion before they get licensed and ordained than afterwards, leaving broken churches behind and taking parishioners along with them to Rome.

Instead of shielding them from every airborne illness, it would be better for Reformed seminaries to stage debates between, say, James White and Karl Keating, or Eric Svendsen and Scott Hahn, or David Wells and Fr. Pacwa.

Speaking for myself, I prefer vaccination to quarantine. Inoculate them with a strong dose of the truth, then send them out into the world.