The CREC Scholastic? Part I: Introduction

In which I begin to account for my own idiosyncrasies and why I think they make some degree of sense

For about two years now, I have been in the CREC and enjoying it rather well. Depending on where you’re coming from, this may raise different questions. For some people, it’s “Wait, what’s the CREC?” For others, it’s “Why somewhere that’s so invested in baptizing babies?” However, for many of my more traditionally Reformed friends and associates, the question is often more, “Why the CREC when there are less idiosyncratic Reformed denominations to choose from?”

All of these, but especially the last, are fair questions in their way. It is with the last that I am most particularly interested when it comes to giving some account for myself. After all, I am neither the most abrasive rhetorician in the world nor the most inclined to do new things with theology. I pay fairly little attention to Doug Wilson and Canon Press, and my method for doing theology is, per the title of this post, more immediately akin to medieval and early modern scholasticism than to the rather poetic and perhaps associational approach often associated with the “Federal Vision” and the CREC. So how did I, a relatively traditional and status quo-loving autistic logic-chopper, end up comfortably among people often more likely to write verses than syllogisms, and more likely to cry “Connections!” than “Distinguo,” besides some famously controversial doctrinal distinctives?¹