R. Scott Clark’s Heidelblog has been deleted.
The final message left on my feed was:
The status of the Heidelblog will be changing very soon. If you operate a blog with links to the HB you will want to remove them.
Feisty and provocative, it’s a sadness that Clark has felt unable to continue his public advocacy of confessional Christianity in such a forum.
There’ll be some broken links on this blog as a result.
mgpcpastor's blog 
I’m sad about this too – it was a great blog. Surprised not to have seen more comment around the traps about its demise.
You would have noticed that a few days previously Scott had apologised on his blog to the session (“consistory”) of his church for some comments he had made about worship issues in his congregation and the United Reformed Churches of North America more broadly. I can’t help wondering if the two events are connected.
Ben
I can only say that if a committed, confessional churchman came to a conviction that airing a position that was at odds with his local congregation and denomination’s standards in a public forum was wrong I can understand that.
A confessional person would seek to deal with the issue through the proper channels within, not criticise in a public forum (the internet) with no accountability.
Hopefully that’s something you won’t read me doing on this blog.
Critical comments about other theologies will occur only in so much as to point out how they don’t line up with biblical teaching or our commonly agreed standards.
I will miss the blog as well but it’s easy to see why it might have got under the skin of the powers that be.
Steve, thanks for dropping by.
See my response to Ben above, but also consider that it may not have been so much the response of the powers that be, but an individual conviction that the correct forum for some of the positions and observations that Clark was making was not in the general public but through denominational channels.
It struck me as an expression of personal integrity.
I don’t want to come off as a jerk, but my experience with Westminster and the URC for 15 years of my life has given me some insight into the mindset of people like Scott Clark. Reformed theology tends to really not blend well with the internet, and why places like puritan board are forbidden for people like me (Orthodox) from even chiming in. If anything, Clark’s continual rants about the internet not being a place where “real theology” is done, probably helped him with his exit from it. But, if I know the URC as well as I think I do, then Scott Clark was told to get the heck off the internet because of some issue the “church” thought was controversial. There is a very thin line between how much authority a blog has and the URC elders have..one has to go at one point in a duel between importance I guess.
Eric ~
Thanks for offering your perspective.
Accepting what you’ve commented at face value, if I commented on this blog in a way which would seem to criticise the elders alongside whom I serve or the other pastors and elders of the denomination I’d expect them to call me on it.
And I hope I’d realise the priority that real relationships with people who I’ve promised before God to work in partnership with should come before the public prosecution of my opinions.
It’s not so much the issue of controversy itself as recognising the proper forum for the controversy if it needs to happen.
The blogosphere/internet has probably made people less reflective in expressing their opinions and less thoughtful about who their opinions, so expressed will impact on their relationships.
I wish Clark and the URC every blessing.
Gary.
I must say I’m grateful it’s gone. I had several very cordial interactions with Scott Clark, but he pretty much told me in an email after blocking me (I inquired why since I was very respectful) that he didn’t want to hear my opinion anymore because he had already made up his mind on issues of the Federal Vision (I had been discussing that in particular with him). Someone who posts publicly on a blog that allows comments should allow people to ask honest, polite, and respectful questions. If he can’t do that, or was embarrassed by the questions, he shouldn’t have a blog.
I am also glad his very unbalanced and often erroneous writings on The Federal Vision are offline. They were very unhelpful. I had friends asking me what was up and whether I was really a heretic only to have to explain that they can’t believe just anything they read online. “No, I don’t deny justification by faith alone!” “No, I don’t believe in Baptismal Regeneration” 🙂