Why "Wronger" Should Be a Word

Reading Charles Ryrie's Basic Theology in preparation for a Sunday school lesson, and came across a phrase that was so wrong that it begs a new, more intensive word: there's wrong, but then there is wronger. Now, I'm not knocking Ryrie or his book, as a whole. But this particular claim was pretty far off the beam:


"Historically, this consideration has been labeled the ordo salutis, or way of salvation, and it attempts to arrange in logical order (not temporal order) these activities involved in applying salvation to the individual. But like the question of the order of the decrees in lapsarianism, the ordo salutis in reality contributes little of substance."
- Charles Caldwell Ryrie, Basic Theology : A Popular Systemic Guide to Understanding Biblical Truth (Chicago, Ill.: Moody Press, 1999), 374.

Au contraire, mon ami. There is a universe of difference between a soteriology that begins with faith, and one that begins with regeneration. One is synergistic; one monergistic -- and that is two totally different gospels at the core. In fact, I would argue that the ordo salutis is one of the watershed issues of the whole debate!