AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES the Complete Collection Ofblog & Mablog Posts on the Federal Vision

THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES The Complete Collection ofBlog & Mablog Posts on the Federal Vision

DOUGLAS WILSON

THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES

THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES The Complete Collection of Blog & Mablog Posts on the Federal Vision

DOUGLAS WILSON Blog & Mablog Press and Tire Center Moscow, Idaho www.dougwils.com

Cover design and interior layout: Valerie Anne Bost Cover image: “En Barnedaab (A Baptism),” Michael Ancher, 1888.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of the author, except as provided by USA copyright law.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from the King James Version.

Scripture quotations marked niv are from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. For Steve and Wendy Wilkins

CONTENTS

Introduction ...... 1 April–June 2004 ...... 5 July–September 2004 ...... 29 October–December 2004 ...... 67 2005 ...... 101 January–June 2006 ...... 133 July 2006 ...... 147 August 2006 ...... 173 September–December 2006 ...... 191 January 2007 ...... 221 February 2007 ...... 255 March 2007 ...... 293 April 2007 ...... 343 May 2007 ...... 383 June 2007 ...... 411 July 2007 ...... 443 August 2007 ...... 465 September–October 2007 ...... 499 November 2007 ...... 533 December 2007 ...... 583 January–February 2008 ...... 609 March–May 2008 ...... 637 June–October 2008 ...... 681 November–December 2008 ...... 711 2009 ...... 739 2010 ...... 761 2011–2012 ...... 797 January–November 2013 ...... 813 December 2013 ...... 841 2016–2017 ...... 859 Appendix: Email Correspondence with Members of the Fort Lauderdale Group . . . . 883 INTRODUCTION

The controversy over what came to be called the Federal Vision was big enough, and extended enough, that by this time some young bucks who were just ten years old when the controversy broke are now in seminary and are thinking of doing a research paper on the controversy. I thought it might be a good idea to put my particular contributions to that controversy into a form that is easily accessible. That form comes in the shape of this e-book, available as a PDF, or Mobi, or EPUB. In addition—in case a seminary library wants to have a hard copy of it—an arrangement has been made with Canon Press to have print-on- demand copies run off, if you insist, and shipped to your door. But I do need to give fair warning—this puppy weighs in at over 300,000 words. If it is a puppy, it is kind of a Tibetan mastiff. If anyone wants to read the sum of the matter, I would recommend you just read the entry entitled “Federal Vision No Mas” (January 17, 2017). I will only say here what I said a number of times in the controversy. From the beginning of the controversy to the end of it, and down to the present, I have been a Westminsterian Puritan. The only place where I diverge from the standard Reformed take on these issues is in my agreement with child communion—which I believe can be harmonized with that larger system, while remain robustly Calvinistic and evangelical. If anyone believes that I have shifted my views during the course of this controversy, I would simply invite them to read through this straightforward chronological record of what I wrote. There are some housekeeping issues that I ought to address as well. This is a collection of the blog posts that I wrote in the course of that controversy,

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and they are submitted in simple chronological order. They have been lightly edited, with that editing being limited to the cleaning up of obvious typos and various grammatical infelicities. Published as blog posts, there were numerous links to other posts, and these links may no longer be good. There were some places where we were able to correct the link. If the link is good, then if someone wants to use this in a footnote, then it would probably be best to consider the date of my post as the access date. In some cases, we were able to find current URLs for the same content, in which case there is a footnote supplied. The access date for these should be a vague September/October 2018 time frame. In other cases, the content appears to be lost in the ether, though perhaps somebody clever might be able to find it via theWayback Machine. It is also the case that there is a north/south problem because of the original blog format. On a blog, the earlier posts are located below the newer ones. In a book, it goes the other way. The reason I bring this up, is that I will occasionally refer to an earlier installment, and the “below” language is retained. If that happens, don’t be fooled—look above. As Blog & Mablog has switched platforms a time or two over the years, some things were unfortunately lost along the way. We’ve done our best to catch any quotes that may originally have been block quotations without quotation marks, but a few may have slipped past. We trust the context will be clear enough to indicate who said what. Photos were all stripped out at some juncture, though we did manage to dig up and replace one. And if you were hoping to go read the posts in situ and delve into the comments sections, you will be disappointed, as comments before a certain date were not raptured along with the main content. The form of my citations has been closer to the jeans-and-T-shirt end of the formatting spectrum, and not so much the white-tie-and-tails end, but that comes from the nature of the medium. It must be confessed that this thing is kind of a slab of theological controversial writing, and so I do confess it. But at the same time, I believe there is a lot of edifying theology here— distinctions that the Reformed used to make still need to be made, as long as

2 the people of God need to be pastored. I trust that the experience of reading this will be edifying over all, even if it includes working through some of the blunders I later repudiate and repent of. Don’t try to get through it in one sitting.

DOUGLAS WILSON Christ Church Reformation Day 2018

APRIL–JUNE 2004

NICODEMUS AND JUDAS APRIL 24, 2004 The current controversy over the objectivity of the covenant is caused, in part, by the penchant certain theologians have for ignoring the importance of plot lines in story. These plot lines obviously show up in the stories of Scripture, and consequently, a lot of confusion results from theologians treating plot problems as though they were math problems. But Nicodemus was a card-carrying member of the Sanhedrin, the body which condemned Jesus. And Judas was a card-carrying member of the Twelve. Plot involves plot twists, of the kind one ought not to get while doing a math problem. “And then the 7 betrayed his fellow odd numbers and became a 6!”

JOHN ROBBINS IS A HOOT APRIL 27, 2004 The most recent Trinity Review put out by John Robbins is dedicated to ex- tinguishing the heresies of my good friend Peter Leithart. Congratulations to Peter are in order. It has been a long time coming, and he was beginning to worry. Of course for a Robbins to try to deal with a Leithart in this fashion is like trying to put out a bonfire by pelting it with wadded up Kleenex soaked in kerosene. As Robbins is one who prides himself on his strict adherence to logic (“all rise!”), I was particularly pleased with this one from the article in question: “There never was a time when the proposition ‘April 19, 2004, was a sunny

5 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APRIL–JUNE 2004 day in Unicoi, Tennessee’ was not true.” Of course to say this, he has to maintain that this proposition was true on April 18, 2004. But the proposition, on April 18, is clearly claiming that April 19, 2004 is a past event. After all, it says, ‘April 19, 2004, was a sunny day . . .’ What fresh irrationalism is this? Take it away. I am not amused and would be alone. For those who do not go to the link provided, here is a sample quote, which shows that putting John Robbins in charge of fighting heresy is like making Typhoid Mary the director of the Center for Disease Control. Robbins saith, “Truth, not historical events, has primacy. Christianity is not events, nor is it based on events.” Maybe he doesn’t think the resurrection counts as an event. And if Christ be not raised . . . For those who would like to see the entire article (and if you do, you are probably the kind of motorist who slows down to gawk at automobile accidents), here it be.1

AS CLEAR AS I CAN APRIL 29. 2004 Many bystanders have been trying to figure out what the whole “Auburn Avenue” controversy is all about. As one of the players in this, I feel it is my duty to try to make this as clear as I can. Some Lutherans are concerned about us because they have heard that somebody might be questioning justification by faith alone. At the same time, southern Presbyterian TRs are concerned about us because we seem awfully Lutheran to them, and everyone knows how weak the Lutherans are on justification by faith alone. Some good folks at Westminster West think that one of our central problems is our denial of the covenant of works. But David Engelsma of the Protestant Reformed Church has come out swinging against us because we are developing the natural and logical consequences of the doctrine of the covenant held by the OPC, PCA, and URC, and which happens to be the doctrine of the covenant held by all of our critics. I am glad to have been of assistance.

1 Updated link.

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THE IRENIC BOMBSHELL MAY 4, 2004 The Auburn Avenue Hubbub (AAH) of course has a number of texts going. But those who are theologically astute have no doubt noticed some subtexts also. One of those subtexts is the question about the covenant of works and the covenant of grace, and the grounding of those covenants. Fundamentally, what is the relationship of any covenant that God makes with man to His own eternal and triune nature? Ralph Smith carefully addresses this question in his small book Eternal Covenant: How the Trinity Reshapes Covenant Theol- ogy2 (it can be found at http://www.canonpress.org/pages/bibstudies.asp and I urge you all to find it there). This book makes sense out of a good deal of what sometimes appears to be an irrational controversy. This book is an irenic bombshell. It shows (in my view, decisively) how the contemporary dichotomy between a covenant of works and a covenant of grace is fundamentally a man-centered approach to salvation. Faithful to the Reformed tradition, Ralph Smith nevertheless blows up (irenically) a few current Reformed shibboleths. For all who would understand the current fracas, this book is a must.

WAS JESUS FAITHLESS? MAY 11, 2004) What I would like to do in brief compass is explain how a particular understanding of a pre-Fall covenant of works requires us to say that Jesus was faithless. In short, I want to explain the problem some have with our rejection of their covenant of works, and then explain the problem with that problem. The view we reject is that the covenant with Adam must be considered a covenant of works, based on Adam’s merit or demerit. But those who defend this position say that it is necessary because the first Adam sets the pattern for the second Adam. And if Adam did not merit (or demerit) anything in the Garden, then we cannot be saved by Christ’s merit. And if we cannot be saved by Christ’s merit, then we must be saved by our own merit. And that is works-salvation, and that is why people are talking as though the gospel of grace were at stake.

2 This title has since gone out of print..

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Here is the problem with that problem. If Adam had not fallen, would he have been under any obligation to say “thank you” to God? And when Jesus was obeying His Father, even to the point of the cross, was He doing so in faith? If He was doing so in faith, then that means the problem with the first Adam was his unbelief, and not an action that brought about raw demerit. The problem is the use of the word merit, which does not imply a covenant relationship. Rather than saying we are saved by Christ’s merit (Bible verse?), we should rather say that we are saved by Christ’s obedience. This is because obedience implies and requires a relationship—with the someone He was obeying, the same one in whom He was trusting. A man cannot merit anything by grace through faith. But a man can obey by grace through faith. Adam disobeyed through His unbelief. And Jesus Christ is our faithful High Priest. But if Christ must win our salvation for us through raw merit, and not through obedience, this means that Christ must be considered faithless. Our opponents must face up to this conundrum. If Jesus merited our salvation through His faith in His Father, then it isn’t really what they mean by merit. But if Jesus obeyed God in faith, and that obedience is our only possible salvation, then what is the fuss about?

AUBURN AVENUE HUBBUB (AAH) COOL QUOTE 1 MAY 11, 2004 More and more it has occurred to me that the big issues between the Anabaptists and the Reformers of classical Protestantism are still among the biggest unresolved agonies of modern American Protestantism. —Hughes Oliphant Old, The Shaping of the Reformed Baptismal Rite (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1992), p. x.

AUBURN AVENUE HUBBUB (AAH) COOL QUOTE 2 MAY 11, 2004 All who are baptized into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, recognizing the Trinity of Persons in the Godhead, the incarnation of the Son and his priestly sacrifice, whether they be

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Greeks, or Arminians, or Romanists, or Lutherans, or Calvinists, or the simple souls who do not know what to call themselves, are our brethren. Baptism is our common countersign. It is the common rallying standard at the head of our several columns. —A.A. Hodge, Evangelical Theology(Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1976), p. 338

AUBURN AVENUE HUBBUB (AAH) COOL QUOTE 3 MAY 12, 2004 But to protect the importance of faith we do not have to deny His presence, which is what many people, in opposition to formalism, want to do. They say, ‘No, we don’t want to find Christ in the water, we want to find him just by faith.’ But Luther and Calvin’s point is that the water bears Christ to us . . . Does baptism relate to regeneration? Sure it does. When we look, in faith, to our baptism, we are sure we are regenerate. —Robert Godfrey, at the Blue Ridge Bible Conference (6/16/97)

MONOCOVENANTALISM, A GREAT WORD, OR WHAT? MAY 14, 2004 One of the charges leveled against me for my Auburn Avenuing is that of monocovenantalism. But what is that, exactly? If the critics mean that I hold that there has only been one covenant throughout the history of mankind, then the charge is false. God made one covenant with mankind in Adam, and He made a distinct and separate restorative covenant with mankind in Christ. So that would be two covenants, not one. The covenants are also distinct in that it was possible for Adam to fall, and it was not possible for Christ to fall. Further, the first covenant did not have to deal with the forgiveness of sin, and the second covenant was remedial, dealing with sin after the fact. So why am I accused of being a “monocovenantalist”? The reason appears to be that I assert that both covenants were to be kept by the grace of God through faith. God spoke His Word, and both Adam and Christ had a covenanted obligation to believe Him, and to act accordingly. Adam did not, and Christ did. But the assigned way for both covenants to be kept was through simple trust in God.

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Further, several prominent men on the other side of this flap have acknowledged to me privately that, had Adam stood, it would have been by the grace of God, appropriated by the faith of Adam. So if I am a monocovenantalist, so are they. But I am not, and neither are they. But that is no reason to stop fighting, now is it?

AUBURN AVENUE HUBBUB (AAH) COOL QUOTE 4 MAY 16, 2004 Before baptism, the minister is to use some words of instruction, touching the institution, nature, use, and ends of this sacrament, shew- ing . . . that they [children] are Christians, and federally holy before baptism, and therefore are they baptized. —Westminster Directory for the Publick Worship of God, emphasis mine

I GOT A QUESTION MAY 17, 2004 So here it is. Q. What should the Reformed establishment do with a teaching or doctrine that emphasizes our need to believe all the promises of God, especially those promises that concern our children? Keep in mind that this is a doctrine that underscores the necessity of faith from first to last. The purveyors of said doctrine (as in, like, me) believe that we are justified by faith, through faith, unto faith, on faith, under faith, and everything else a squirrel can do to a tree. All faith, all the time, all the way down. A. Well, of course, the only appropriate response would be to question the commitment of said fellows to sola fide. And have conferences. And this is why I prefer my theology Auburn. Rather than Blonde.

FAITH UNPLUGGED MAY 18, 2004 I guess I should be pleased that I caught up with Peter Leithart. The April edition of The Trinity Review is a chapter from a book called Not Reformed At

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All, which presents itself as a response to my “Reformed” is Not Enough3. I am tempted to write another book entitled And Both Are Too Much. One striking thing about this piece is the repeated use of the phrase “justification by belief” (instead of “justification by faith”) This highlights, as I suppose, the, um, heterodox Clarkian approach that wants us to be justified by assent to propositions. So then, we are living in a time when assensus can be severed from fiducia, and the fiducia thrown away like it was a wrapper, and this can be done in the name of a defense of Reformed orthodoxy! Maybe LaHaye and Jenkins are right and it is the last days.

THANKS FOR NOTHING MAY 18, 2004 In my post on monocovenantalism (5/14/04), I said that some prominent folks on the other side of the AAH had agreed with me that had Adam stood, it would have been by the grace of God appropriated by faith. One of those gentlemen has since contacted me, saying that this misrepresents his views. He believes that Adam would have stood by faith, but not by grace. He said, “had Adam fulfilled the covenant of works he would have presented his own works.” So then, in once sense I am happy to clarify his views (even though I did not name him). But I am sorry that the view as amended is a lot more unbiblical than it was before. What does the Bible say about works? It is tied, necessarily, to the principle of boasting (Rom. 3:27). In other words, had Adam stood by His own works, he had no obligation to say “thank you” to God, for “thank you” presupposes a gift, and a gift is grace. The Bible contrasts works with election (Rom. 9:11). The Bible treats works as a paycheck in principle (Rom. 6:23; 11:6). If grace is excluded from the Garden, then so is gratitude. And Eve said, “Adam, let us give thanks to God for our great deliverance!” “No need for that, honey. I withstood the serpent all by myself. It was my own intrinsic righteousness at work here.”

3 Douglas Wilson, “Reformed” Is Not Enough: Recovering the Objectivity of the Cove- nant (Moscow, ID: Canon, 2002).

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“But still, Adam, shouldn’t we acknowledge that our obedience was a gift from God?” “Woman, you clearly don’t understand the deeper issues of theology. No wonder that serpent had you going for a bit.” “Yes, but only for a bit. God gave me insight to the nature of his lies. I am so grateful, and I think we should thank Him together.” “But, dear, you are being grateful to the wrong person. We must of course thank God for the Garden, and for the fruit, and for one another. But who should be thanked for this particular act of obedience? Me. Me.” “Well, I do thank you. But can’t we thank God too? Doesn’t He ordain all things? Shouldn’t we see this obedience of ours as His grace to us?” “Trust me, Eve. I do know there are subtleties involved. But the only way to preserve a true God-centeredness for all our children in the ages to come is for us to acknowledge that God did not do this. I did it. Me.” “But I feel so empty not thanking God for this grace.” “I understand that feeling, at least in part. Maybe we can compromise. When the Lord comes walking in the cool of the day this evening, we can make a point of thanking Him.” “Adam, that’s wonderful! What shall we thank Him for?” “Thanks for nothing. But we needn’t put it that way of course.”

THE COUNCIL OF TRENT FINALLY REPENTS! MAY 19, 2004 In response to my Thanks for Nothing post (5/18/04), one correspondent argued that this was essentially the same position that Trent affirmed. It was a bit hard to follow, but I will do my best to replicate it here. If the creature’s works are the ground of his justification (which I was denying, actually), but the creature can only do such works by grace through faith, then it follows that the creature is saved by grace through faith, but the grace and faith are no longer alone. Somehow. But the problem is that I was asserting the sovereign, inexhaustible, exhaustive, glorious, high-octane grace, jet fuel grace, grace all-the-way-down

12 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APRIL–JUNE 2004 kind of grace prior to the Fall. The creature always and for everything must give thanks to God, for every blessed thing comes from His hand, and to Him goes all the glory. As in, soli Deo gloria! To be contrasted with this new version of reformational thunder, which appears to be soli Deo gloria nisi ante lapsum. All glory to God, except before the Fall, when Adam gets a cut. Had Adam withstood temptation in the Garden, the Lord would have said, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” and Adam in return would have (rightly) given all the glory to God. “I was a good and faithful servant because it was a gift from Your hand, and Your hand alone.” All grace, all the time, in every direction, run it out over the horizon and don’t stop then. All grace as the ground of any possible justification. No works as the ground of any possible justification. Works are bad as ground of any possible justification. (Background muttering, building to a crescendo) “Word games! More word games! What is he trying to say? Wilson insists that sovereign and exhaustive grace is the sole ground of any creature’s obedience, anywhere, any time (and he think no works can be the ground of justification anywhere, works, bah!). Since when Wilson defends tota gratia he must be sneaking in works, we will fool them all. We will deny works by affirming them.” If this doesn’t make sense to you, don’t worry about it. Not your problem.

COMMON GRACE. UH OH. MAY 20, 2004 I just can’t stay off this monocovenantal thing. This whole fracas is a real head scratcher, and the word grace appears to be the thing that causes the great game of paradigm bumper cars to begin. But this is highly selective. The fact that I want to use the word grace to describe the unearned favor of God that was bestowed on unfallen Adam is highly offensive to our critics. And yet (most of them, I think) would not object to the word grace being applied to unregenerate reprobates after the Fall, as in the phrase common grace. Unfallen Adam, no grace at all. Local abortionist, common grace is the order of the day.

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Why are the critics struggling with something that is so simple?

1. God’s favor was shown to the unfallen Adam, the grace of creation. All glory goes to God. 2. God’s favor would have been shown to Adam had he not fallen, the grace of sovereign preservation. All glory would have gone to God. 3. God’s favor was shown to the unfallen Christ, the grace of sovereign preservation. All glory to God. 4. God’s favor is shown to the reprobate, the common grace of earthly goods and postponed judgment. All glory to God. 5. God’s favor is shown to us, His believers, the grace of salvation from sin. All glory to God.

“Too much grace around here! Too much emphasis on the fundamental graciousness of God. You must not be Reformed!”

JUSTIFICATION BY SAYING THE RIGHT THING ABOUT JUSTIFICATION MAY 24, 2004 If I taste too many more delicious ironies, I think I will become a theological diabetic. The latest one is the way in which John Robbins has taken to denying justification by faith alone. Justification by faith alone is not accomplished by asserting justification by faith alone. Justification by faith alone occurs when a sinner trusts in Jesus. There will be men who affirm justification by faith alone who will be in Hell, and there will be men who do not affirm justification by faith alone who will be in Heaven. This is because this particular tenet of the faith is true. But however true it is, and it is true, it is not our Savior. It, like every other faithful servant, points to the Savior. It can only point this way because justification by faith alone is true. Requiring people to affirm justification by faith alone in order to get saved is like requiring a two-year-old to get a degree in electrical engineering before he is allowed to turn on the lights. Allowing men to be ordained who cannot

14 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APRIL–JUNE 2004 explain justification by faith alone from the Scriptures, men like John Rob- bins, is like letting your two-year-old install your electrical system. But some still do not get this basic distinction. When you point to a stick on the ground, a dog might mistake this signal, and look at your finger and not the stick. But the finger is pointing at something else. Affirming justification by faith alone is a work. It is different than the sheer gift of God that is simply trusting Jesus. Affirming sola fideis a work that is most necessary for ordination, not for salvation. For some reason, John Robbins has turned this around.

ANABAPTISTS IN PURITAN FACE PAINT MAY 29, 2004 When was the first appearance of the strict regulative principle? And what does this tell us about certain deep affinities between certain streams of the Reformed faith and the streams of other communions? I have before charged that some of the pietists in the Reformed world are completely at odds with their own heritage. And when they encounter living, breathing examples of men in line with their Reformed fathers, they bring them up on charges, saying that they have departed from orthodoxy. But they are the ones who departed. Thus they build the tombs of the prophets, and name their seminaries and churches after men they do not care to understand. In short, I am saying that many of our staunch Reformed brethren are actually anabaptists in Puritan face paint. This is why the first appearance of the strict regulative principle (“that which is not commanded is forbidden”) as opposed to the Reformed regulative principle (“worship must be according to Scripture”) is quite instructive. The anabaptist Conrad Grebel was writing to the radical Thomas Muntzer in September of 1524. He praised a number of things that Muntzer was saying, but he had this criticism, that Muntzer allowed singing in worship. And here comes the origin of a whole lot of trouble in the sectarian world of our reformational backwaters. “Whatever we are not taught by clear passage or examples must be regarded as forbidden, just as if it were written: ‘This do not; sing not.’”

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The Auburn Avenue Hubbub (AAH) is happening because we have not yet resolved the boundary lines between the magisterial reformation and the radical reformation. And some folks who live near the border don’t know what country they are in. Think of it as kind of an ecclesiastical Alsace Lorraine.

AUBURN AVENUE HUBBUB (AAH) COOL QUOTE 5 MAY 29, 2004 Now in particular I ask you to pray with me that as I baptize this child with water and receive him into the number of Christians, that God himself inwardly baptize him with his Spirit and hold him in the number of his elect. —John Oecolampadius, Basel Service Book of 1526

AUBURN AVENUE HUBBUB (AAH) COOL QUOTE 6 JUNE 7, 2004 Almighty God, Heavenly Father, we give you eternal praise and thanks, that you have granted and bestowed upon this child your fellowship, that you have born him again to yourself through your holy baptism, that he has been incorporated into Your beloved Son, our only Savior, and is now your child and heir. —Strasbourg Psalter of 1537

JOHN ROBBINS AND THE COUNCIL OF TRENT JUNE 8, 2004 The controversy over justification by faith shows no signs of letting up. Every day I hear from some new quarter that the hubbub continues. One of the larger ironies in all this is that men who have abandoned the historic, Protes- tant understanding of faith have accused other men (who have not abandoned it) of doing precisely that. Thus we have closet Tridentine writer like John Robbins accusing faithful Protestants of adopting the errors of Rome on the question of justification by faith.

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Naming is central in all this. Because the initial controversy was caused by a surprise attack, those making the charges had the luxury of naming as they pleased. Thus, the Auburn group was falsely accused of drifting Romeward. And initially the controversy was shaped by this. False accusations were made, and then accurately denied. “You deny sola fide.” “Actually, we don’t.” But if there must be a controversy, the next stage in it is most necessary. We need to show how the charge needs to be turned around. Many of those who are attacking us have adopted the same basic definition of faith as was held by the Council of Trent—that is, that faith is assent to raw propositions, and is primarily an intellectual transaction. Trent held that faith was primarily an act of the intellect, and that is what John Robbins holds. The difference between them is that Trent went on to say that this raw assent was not enough, and had to be supplemented by works somehow. Robbins thinks that this lonely faith is the instrument of justification. In contrast to both Trent and Robbins, the historic Reformers held that saving faith did not need to be supplemented from the outside in any way because one component of this faith was fiducia, or loving trust. For the Reformers, faith was a gift from God, and when God gives faith, He does not give anything other than a living, obedient faith. Being the kind of God He is, this living faith is the only kind of faith He can give. So the debate is not whether we are justified by faith alone. The debate is over what kind of faith God actually gives. And many of our hostile brothers need abandon their heterodox opinions, and return to the historic Reformed faith.

STRANGE ALLIANCES JUNE 9, 2004 A specter is haunting the Reformed world—the specter of biblically grounded teaching on marriage, family, and elder qualifications. The threat is causing new ecumenical alliances to form, all calculated to meet the rising and im- minent danger. TR Frank Smith is teaming up with openness theology, rabid anti-theonomist John Robbins is shoulder to shoulder with the theonomist Joe Morecraft, crypto-Lutherans in the west are cheek by jowl with anti-Lu- therans in the east, and the lion lies down with the lamb.

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Of course, it won’t do to try to distract attention away from the general familial disarray in the current Reformed establishment by saying that one disagrees with the teaching that husbands should love their wives as Christ loved the church. That wouldn’t fly. So one must say, regretfully, that the family books are all very well, but it is “unfortunate that the author is heterodox on justification,” or that “he owns half of Las Vegas and is a gambling impresario.” That’s the ticket! What saith sola Scriptura? “Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation” (Heb. 13:7). “Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?” (Matt. 7:16). But enough with the embarrassingly scriptural ad hominem. Some men want to defend ministerial credentials through shibbolethian propositions, making the truth walk around on stilts. Others, more biblically, want to do it through sons and daughters, children who love God and His Christ, and who embody and live the glories of propositional truth in an imitative and incarnate fashion. By the way, another book on the family is at the printers now, and is due out within the next few weeks. It is entitled My Life for Yours. Let us, as the apostle Paul might say, keep on keeping on.

WHEN STUCK, TRY THEOLOGICAL INNOVATION JUNE 12, 2004 How is it that we are assailed for having a high (and very Reformed) view of the sacraments, when others, like the Lutherans and the Westminster West cadre, are given a pass by the anabaptist reformed? The answer that is given to this question is that there is a basic compatibility between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace (as it is currently understood in the American Reformed world), and law and gospel (as it is understood by the Lutherans). It is claimed that these concepts function in largely the same way, and hence, since we deny that the unfallen Adam was assigned the task of earning merit badges (and want to say that the covenant of life made with him was fundamentally gracious), our motives and our persons are therefore suspect.

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But of course the covenant of works and the law (in the history of Re- formed theology) do not function in the same way, and those who are trying to get out of a dicey debate situation by equating them (or even kinda equating them) are frankly beginning to flail. Those who doubt this assertion need to answer just a few basic questions at presbytery.

1. Is the Reformed believer today to use the covenant of works as a rule of life? 2. Would you please expound on the third use of the covenant of works? 3. In the life of the believer today is my entire duty to my neighbor summed up in the covenant of works? For he who loves his neighbor keeps the covenant of works. 4. Can the believer be under the covenant of works and the covenant of grace at the same time? Please explain, and feel free to use the blackboard

AUBURN AVENUE HUBBUB (AAH) COOL QUOTE 7 JUNE 14, 2004 Surely the Sacraments can remind us of grace, help us to appreciate grace, and exhort us to walk in grace, but do they actually give us the grace promised in the Gospel? The Reformed and Presbyterian confessions answer “yes” without hesitation. A Sacrament not only consists of the signs (water, bread and wine), but of the things signified (new birth, forgiveness, life everlasting). And yet, the experience of Reformed and Presbyterians churches in the odd world of American revivalism has challenged the confessional perspective. —Michael Horton

CROSSFIRE JUNE 14, 2004 As Stevie Ray Vaughn might have put it, “I’m caught in the crossfire.” The East Coast Reformed Police say that it is all right to believe in a kind of baptismal

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regeneration so long as you also believe in a prelapsarian meritorious covenant of works. And the West Coast Reformed Police are saying that so long as you believe in a prelapsarian meritorious covenant of works, it is all right to be a evangelical anabaptist who practices wet dedications. The only ones who are decidedly not okay are those who say that God was covenantally gracious to Adam before the Fall. For some reason. That has not yet been explained.

AUBURN AVENUE KERFUFFLE (AAK) AND TRANSITIVE VERBS JUNE 17, 2004 Always trying to be helpful, I would like to suggest something else that might help good Reformed folks out of the impasse we have gotten ourselves into. In the current debate over faith alone, obedient faith, faith and obedience, and so on, we have a tendency to reify things like faith and obedience, and then talk about them like they were two billiard balls. Then, when one of the Auburn guys talks about obedient faith, it seems to others like we are trying to get two billiard balls to occupy the same space at the same time. Everyone knows that obedience in sanctification is this billiard ball, and that faith is that billiard ball. And they do not mush together well. But the problem is that faith is an abstract noun that describes the action of a multitude of verbs—numerous actions of believing. Obedience does the same thing—and refers to numerous actions of obeying, generally considered. But an abstract noun should never forget that in its abstract form it never does what it is talking about. “Love,” as found in the dictionary, does not have a beloved. But love, in order to exist in the world, requires a beloved. This is another way of saying that love is a transitive verb. So is obey. So is believe. Now in order for someone to check out someone else’s Protestant bona fides (such as mine, for instance), it is necessary to ask what I understand the direct object of any given sentence to be. When I say obedient faith, the question should be “faith that obeys what?” or “obedience that believes what?”

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The response should not be “Faith obeys? That sounds like obedience. Obedience sounds like works. Works? Akkk!” Saving faith obeys the gospel, and only the gospel. Saving obedience believes in Jesus Christ, and saving obedience does nothing but believe in Jesus Christ. What is the direct object? God in Christ, Christ on the cross, Christ ascended.

YELLING AT MY WINDSHIELD JUNE 19, 2004 I have begun listening to the audio recordings of the recent conference at Westminster West on The Foolishness of the Gospel and will make a few comments here from time to time as circumstances warrant. Initially, just a few remarks. While it is quite true that Scripture speaks of the foolishness of the gospel, it is equally true that Scripture speaks of the foolishness of foolishness. Be- ware of affirming the consequent. Second, it simply will not do to assume that the historic doctrine of justification under attack, and then to defend it against all imaginary comers. There are two issues here. One is exegetical theology—what did Paul actually say? But there is also historical theology—what was the actual position of the Reformers? By “position” I mean those things which they taught, wrote, said, and put in their catechisms. To treat the “Federal Vision” as a self-conscious challenge to the historic Protestant doctrine of justification when a number of us claim to be recovering the historic Protestant doctrine of justification is a bit thick. And third, to mush E.P. Sanders, N.T. Wright, Norman Shepherd, Steve Wilkins, et al., all together, “the better to generalize with,” and then defend this hopeless process because E.P. Sanders did it to the first century Jews is enough to make me call for the smelling salts. “I object to how your leader E.P. Sanders blurs the distinctions between disparate groups among first century Jews.” “E.P. Sanders is not my leader.” “And therefore I will do the same to you. For he is your leader.”

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“Um . . . being from a podunk town in northern Idaho, I’m not used to this level of scholarly discourse. What can I say to this? Is not.” “This process your leader has employed is fatally flawed. And that is why I employ it on his minions like you—to show that it is fatally flawed. A reductio ad absurdum, as it were.” “I agree that this is screwy process, and it is part of the reason why I don’t listen to E.P. Sanders. It is also part of the reason why I don’t listen to West- minster West.” But alas, I am listening to Westminster West. And I have a significant number of these CDs to go. I am listening to them in my pick-up truck, so if anyone in the Moscow area sees me driving around yelling at my windshield, this datum is likely to have something to do with it.

YELLING AT MY WINDSHIELD, PART TWO JUNE 21, 2004 Maybe this doesn’t count as yelling at my windshield, because I would like to respond to something from the Westminster conference that was reported in Christian Renewal. That means my windshield wasn’t anywhere near when I read this. Dr. Hywel Jones was reported as saying this: “Justification is the realization that one is pardoned of all sin, accepted by God without works of any kind, and this motivates and supports one in doing the will of God as nothing else does.” This is not the only difference between us and our, um, discussion partners, but it is a significant one. Notice what Dr. Jones is saying here—”Justi- fication is the realization that one is pardoned . . . .” Emphasis is mine. In contrast, we believe that justification is the grace of God on our behalf through the obedience of Jesus Christ alone. That obedience is ours through our union with Christ, and consequently all that Jesus ever believed and did is reckoned to our account. Our discussion partners apparently think that justification is a process within us that includes believing the right things about justification. Notice again. “Justification is the realization . . . .”

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Now is this an imputed realization or an infused realization? If I may, allow me to edit Dr. Jones’s statement back into orthodoxy. “Jus- tification is the pardon of all sin, in which we are accepted by God without works or realizations of any kind, and this motivates and supports one in doing the will of God as nothing else does.”

AUBURN AVENUE HUBBUB (AAH) COOL QUOTE 8 JUNE 28, 2004 Through the outpouring of water is meant that the one on whom the water is sprinkled belongs to the Church and the people of God, that just as water washes away the smudges and stains of our bodies, so also the one upon whom there is this outpouring, being received by grace, is washed with the blood of Jesus and pledged to a new life. —Heinrich Bullinger

YELLING AT MY WINDSHIELD, PART 3 JUNE 28, 2004 In his talk on “Justification Under Fire,” Dr. Baugh works through three positions. First he takes on the New Perspective. Then he moves on to Norman Shepherd. And third he addresses the Federal Vision, which he regards as having adopted and advanced the positions of Shepherd. When he gets to (as the Victorians would have put it) the present writer, this is how his argument proceeds: 1. 1. After a few brief comments, read quote from Wilson; 2. Allow time for laughter from audience; 3. Move on.

This is not to say that Dr. Baugh is not advancing his position by this means. Far from it. In his brief comments, he does not argue exegetically or theologically, but he does an admirable job in how he contextualizes what he reads. But unfortunately, that context is entirely of his own manufacturing.

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For example, he read one quote from the special issue of Credenda entitled A Pauline Take on the New Perspective [click here to see for yourself], which said that amillennial crypto-Lutherans and revivalistic Reformed fundamentalists had drifted from their confessional roots, and this is why they were opposed to the New Perspective. Ho, ho, ho from the audience, and contemporary scholarship then advanced to the next point. The problem with this is that Dr. Baugh neglected to mention that this issue of Credenda was my critique of the New Perspective, that according to his definition of the NP I am not among them, and that the basic arguments he advanced against the NP I fully share and argued for in that issue (which he appears to have read). But no one listening to this tape as an introduction to the controversy could possibly have gathered any of this. What are we to make of it? This is a classic example of misrepresenting an opponent by means of nothing but true statements. If one of my students were to write home, “Dear Mom, Had a great day in class today. Mr. Wilson came in sober,” the fact that everything written was true will not prevent Mom from coming to false conclusions. So one conclusion of ours should be that Westminster West is not to be trusted for an accurate assessment of the various positions in this controversy. Someone down there apparently bought a spray can of Careful-Distinctions-B-Gone.

YELLING AT MY WINDSHIELD, PART 4 JUNE 28, 2004 At the conclusion of his talk, Dr. Baugh offered some salient comments on the first verses of Galatians 5, over against various forms of covenant nomism. And shoot, I AGREED WITH HIM (the “all caps” are so that theological scholars might pick up on this particular nuance) in his critique of the idea that we get into the covenant by grace and stay in by our obedience. Never heard anything so crazy in my life. Anyhow, because at that point I AGREED SO FUNDAMENTALLY WITH DR. BAUGH, I was interested to hear what he did next. But alas, he did not keep up the pace.

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He came next to that “faith working by love” part (Gal. 5:6). He said (a little briskly, I might add) that our faith is alive, and does works of love, because it has been justified. Huh, I thought, looking out my windshield. I thought faith was the instrument of justification in the ordo salutis, and therefore preceeded it. In other words, faith is what it is before justification gets to it, because justification doesn’t happen without the instrumentality of faith, which has to be what it is in order for justification to happen at all. If you follow me. If you don’t, it is all right. Has happened before, most recently in Escondido. So let me put this another way. When God gives the gift of faith, the instrument that will be used (any nano-second now) to appropriate the imputed gift of justification, is that faith changed when the justification happens? Is dead faith the instrument of justification, and then under the influence of imputed righteousness it changes into living faith in order to do all that sanctification stuff? Or is it living faith from the get go? If the latter, then what did Dr. Baugh mean by saying it was living because of justification? It seems that faith working by love appropriates the gift of righteousness. That’s what I think, but I am the heretic, and so I don’t trust myself anymore. By the way, did I mention that I AGREED COMPLETELY with Dr. Baugh’s critique of covenant nomism?

YELLING AT MY WINDSHIELD, PART 5 JUNE 29, 2004 Just finished listening to Michael Horton’s contribution to the Westminster conference. He made lots of fine points, and is clearly well-read in all the literature that surrounds this particular embarrassment to Christian discourse. Nevertheless, some fundamental misapplications are still there, and the stumbling block is that pesky word merit. I am reminded of that section in Pirates of Penzance: “When you say, offen, do you mean offen, a person who has lost his parents, or offen, frequently?” Horton believes that we have gone back to the medieval category of congruent merit, and this frankly baffles me. Whenever I see congruent merit on

25 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APRIL–JUNE 2004 the street, I never fail to heap opprobrium on his pointy little head. Con- gruent merit is nothing if not synergistic, and when you are high octane predestinarians, as all the Federal Vision men are, congruent merit is simply a theological impossibility. Horton may not like what we are articulating, and we would be happy to discuss it. But it is not congruent merit, or any kind of merit at all. Near the end of his talk, he rejects the idea that we “get in” by grace, and “stay in” by works. As do I, with enthusiasm. We get in by grace, we remain in by grace, we walk by grace, we talk by grace, we persevere by grace, we eat dinner by grace, we go to church by grace. We get in by grace. We stay in by grace. We finish by grace. Sola gratia. Tota gratia. Tota et sola gratia. Grace, grace, grace. But you know me. Mr. Ambiguous.

YELLING AT MY WINDSHIELD, PART 6 JUNE 30, 2004 I am mostly through Dr. Clark’s talk on the active obedience of Christ. In one part of his lecture, he gives a great long list of theologians who affirm and believe in the active obedience of Christ. Missing from this section of his lecture was a sentence like the following: “Douglas Wilson, well known advocate of the Federal Vision, also affirms the active obedience of Christ, and declares with Machen there is no hope without it.” Had the sentence been included it would have been accurate and everything, but it frankly would have ruined the symmetry of the occasion. And some of the faithful would have left scratching their heads.

YELLING AT MY WINDSHIELD, PART 7 JUNE 30, 2004 Dr. Clark makes the statement that we bad guys are teaching somewhere that Christ lived, not a life of perfect condign merit, but rather a life of okay congruent merit. Where we affirmed this, I am sure I don’t know. Maybe one of us is writing for WTJ under a pen name. And maybe he is on drugs

26 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APRIL–JUNE 2004 while he is doing this. And maybe the editor was distracted and published it anyway. And maybe Dr. Clark forgot to footnote this outrageous claim that we somehow teach that Jesus did not live a life of perfect obedience. But we are claiming this somewhere, for those who only have eyes to see.

JULY–SEPTEMBER 2004

YELLING AT MY WINDSHIELD, PART EIGHT JULY 1, 2004 I finished listening to Dr. Clark’s lecture on the active obedience of Christ. Jeepers. I never knew I believed and taught such things as alleged, and we here at Christ Church have launched a full-scale investigation to determine why it was that I was never informed.

YELLING AT MY WINDSHIELD, PART NINE JULY 2, 2004 I am a good chunk of the way through Robert Godfrey’s talk on sola fide, and even drove around a little extra at lunch to hear more of it. Really fine talk, actually, and I am not saying this satirically at all, although there is some irony involved. If anyone wants to know what DW’s position on sola fideis, just check out what Robert Godfrey has to say. Me and Godfrey, just like this (holding up two intertwined fingers). Good exposition of Calvin’s exposition of Paul, and they all stated accurately what I believe on this subject (Paul, Calvin, and Godfrey). Let me add my own voice to this lovefest. “Me, too!” The irony is that on this subject Godfrey and I are in complete harmony. Just like ham and eggs. But this means that something is seriously out of joint somewhere. Either he ought to be in serious trouble with the rest of his amigos down there, or I ought not to be. I wonder which it is. Just for the record (again): We are justified by grace through faith, and we are justified by this grace from first to last, through the instrumentality of faith from first to last.

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So where does the problem lie? Here is the report card: Exegesis of Paul: A Exegesis of Calvin: A Exegesis of Luther: A Exegesis of Federal Vision: D minus

AUBURN AVENUE HUBBUB (AAH) COOL QUOTE 9 JULY 2, 2004 His covenant with Adam was gracious in character, sovereignly imposed, mutually binding, called for trust and submission on Adam’s part, and carried sanctions (blessings or curse). When Adam fell into sin, God mer- cifully re-established a covenantal relationship with him, one in which the gracious and promissory character of the covenant was accentuated even further—in the promise of a coming Savior, a promise which is progressively unfolded and elaborated upon throughout the Old Testament. —Greg L. Bahnsen, “Cross-Examination: Practical Implications of Covenant Theology,” The Counsel of Chalcedon,December, 1992.

YELLING AT MY WINDSHIELD, PART TEN JULY 2, 2004 Robert Godfrey raises a great question concerning objections to Pauline theology. If what we teach is not generating the same objections that Paul’s teaching did, then the chances are good that we are not preaching the same thing he did. If our preaching of grace does not provoke the charge of antinomianism from the legalists, then we are not having the same effect on the legalists that Paul did. I accept the argument, which I think is a very good one, and I also accept the challenge. Dr. Godfrey says that he cannot see the Federal Vision writings having that effect on anyone. But that is probably because he is not a legalist (and cannot think like one), coupled with the fact that he ought to get out a little more. But as far as quite a few others are concerned, I have gotten the antinomian wind in my sails and do not give two cents for the law of God. And for his opposition to Regulative Principle Dour Party (RPDP) lots of people

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think that Schlissel is the original antinomian orangutan. But the closest Dr. Godfrey has gotten to the precipice of antinomianism is that he was once tempted to sing a hymn instead of a psalm. For good measure, doubling the effectiveness of this particular argument, for their part the antinomians think I’m a legalist. And to retrofit an argument of Chesterton’s, this is probably not because I am wicked enough to encompass multiple contradictory sins, but rather that any stick is good enough to beat me with. Over the course of the last few years, I have been accumulating so many slanderous accusations of evil doing that the local landfill had to start charging the Wilson family extra. If this is to be the test of orthodoxy (and in part, it ought to be), I will glad to be welcomed back into the ranks of the faithful by an official emissary of Westminster West, and will sit by the phone waiting for their call. At last, a test I can pass with ease. Why, (and you will scarcely believe this), just the other day I was listening in my pick-up to a tape by a gentleman named Dr. Scott Clark, and he said that we Federal Vision types did not believe that Jesus lived a life of perfect, sinless obedience! I was so flummoxed by this that I pulled my truck over to the side of the road, and had to lay myself down on the highway with my feet on the bumper just to get the blood back into my head. Then when the state patrolman asked me what I thought I was doing, I explained it to him, and he couldn’t believe it either. Actually, I made this last little bit up—just a little fib—but that’s okay. We’re all under grace. I well remember when I first learned this argument that Dr. Godfrey presented—I was standing in front of a local LDS study center handing out literature, and one of the fellows who came out to talk to me said something like this, “If what you are saying is true, then what is to prevent us all from living a life of sin?” That’s when I first heard the echo of Romans 6. Just curious. When was the last time Westminster West had to fight off charges of rampant antinomianism? Anybody heard recently that the seminarians down there are party commandoes? That they frequent casinos? That the administration winks at such sin?

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YELLING AT MY WINDSHIELD, PART ELEVEN JULY 3, 2004 Finishing up Dr. Godfrey’s tape, I realized that it was not until the last couple minutes that I encountered any doctrinal or theological disagreement. Of course, he was wrong about the Federal Vision throughout, but his treatment of Paul and Calvin was admirable. Would that he handled what we have written with the same care. But there was disagreement on substance right at the end. Dr. Godfrey cited Romans 5, “Therefore we have peace with God . . .” and went on to say that Paul does not say, “We have peace with God, but beware! You might lose it.” The problem with this is that it is simply wrong. That is precisely what Paul spends the 11th chapter of Romans doing. The Jews fell from their position on the olive tree—you Romans, beware! What Dr. Godfrey says here is simply a glaring exegetical error. And keep in mind that I agreed with everything he said about sola fide. But exegetically, this has to be harmonized with the doctrine of covenantal apostasy, which Paul addresses in Romans 11. This harmonization is right at the center of the Federal Vision project and does not depend on any of the medieval scarecrows that were being produced at this Westminster conference. Congruent merit, bah! Arminianism, ptooey! Semi-Pelagianianism, ha! I spit in their general direction. Romans 11 must not be treated as the invisible chapter in Reformed systematics. It must be incorporated. It is fully consistent with what Dr. Godfrey said about sola fide. But if you speak as though Romans 4–5 and Romans 11 are part of the same apostolic argument, be prepared to be attacked as one who is attacking the gospel.

YELLING AT MY WINDSHIELD, PART TWELVE JULY 3, 2004 Dr. Hywel Jones begins his lecture by noting that in the weeks and months to come, some of us on the other side will “cry foul.” And that is precisely what I have been doing in these posts—crying foul. Dr. Jones goes on to say that

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when someone is struck under the fifth rib, this is precisely the response we should expect from them. But the problem is not that we have been struck, it is that we have been struck by people who manifestly have not done their homework. There are times when a blow under the fifth rib should arouse a concern about a foul blow. Joab and Abner come to mind. I don’t think our discussion partners at the Ft. Lauderdale colloquium understood us. But I will say this—they labored to understand us. The results of that labor can be found here. But this is simply not the case with our critics at Westminster West—and it shows. The tragedy is that I believe that both Dr. Horton and Dr. Godfrey have the wherewithal to understand us. Had that labor been invested the way it ought to have been, this conference would not have been the standing embarrassment to the seminary that it is.

GONE FOR A WHILE, BACK IN A BIT JULY 4, 2004 Heading out of town for a week or thereabouts, and I don’t know if I will have Internet access there. If I do, I will post as I can, but I am afraid that my pick-up and CD player are staying right here in Idaho. Therefore, I will not be yelling at my windshield for the time being. This is a shame really, because I think my windshield was actually starting to get it.

YELLING AT MY WINDSHIELD, PART THIRTEEN JULY 14, 2004 I have resumed my duties of listening to the Westminster West conference tapes, and have made it all the way to the Q&A. Imagine my surprise when these worthy gentlemen (in effect) all denied the imputation of the active obedience of Christ. A question was asked which quoted my statement from Credenda, to the effect that I believed that the faith and faithfulness of Jesus Christ was imputed to us. “What do you make of that?” The answers all showed that they did not understand the plain statement being made, and the plain statement being made was an affirmation of the

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imputation of Christ’s active obedience. They began discussing a bunch of things that I was not talking about, and missed the whole point. One of them even said that Christ’s faith was utterly different from ours, because He was trusting in God, and not in a mediator. Of course he was trusting in God! Of course He was not trusting in a mediator! He is the mediator! I wrote (in English, just for the record), that the faith and faithfulness of Christ were imputed to us. His faith was imputed to us. His faithfulness was imputed to us. One of these gentlemen said (I did not recognize the voice) that I was thereby equating Christ’s faith with our faith. The problem with this analysis is that it is (sorry, windshield) THE OPPO- SITE of what I was saying. When I read a cultbuster book, like Walter Martin’s Kingdom of the Cults, I come away knowing what the cult thinks, why they think it, where they say it, and how they defend it. Listening to these tapes all I hear is hopeless muddle and confusion. This muddle is the result of a fundamental conviction that Norman Shepherd, N.T. Wright, the NPP, and the Federal Vision are all engaging in the same basic set of monkeyshines. This fundamental conviction is Not To Be Questioned, despite plain statements to the contrary. It is like the old joke about the guy who was convinced he was dead, and so he went to a shrink. The shrink decided not to take the direct approach, and showed the gentleman over a series of weeks the incontrovertible proof that dead men don’t bleed. He showed him encyclopedia articles, medical journals, took him to the morgue, and what not. After an arduous number of weeks, the man was finally convinced. “Dead men don’t bleed.” Whereupon the shrink took out a pin and pricked the man’s thumb and a drop of blood appeared. The man’s face turned ashen white. “Dead men bleed after all!” How is their confusion on this point a denial of imputation of Christ’s active obedience? In order for Christ’s obedience to be truly imputed to us, it has to include the motive force, and not just the motions of his body. But the motive force was faith in His Father. (That is, faith in His Father. Who ever said anything about some other mediator? Not me.) So the imputation of Christ’s active obedience must include His faith—His reasons for obeying.

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And the imputation of His faithfulness is simply the imputation of the visible aspects of His obedience. That’s what I said. And that’s what they all disagreed with.

YELLING AT MY WINDSHIELD, FINIS JULY 14, 2004 I am thinking of getting a tattoo. I know, I have argued against it elsewhere, but here’s my thinking. I could have the Shorter Catechism tattooed on my back, and then the guys at Westminster West would have to believe me, right? And maybe I’d get really sick with ink poisoning with a tattoo that big, and they would visit me in the hospital, and we would have us a Reformed reconciliation. What I mean by Reformed reconciliation is, “Don’t hold your breath.” I am starting to feel as lonely as one of Ken Sande’s Peacemaker counselors at a Scottish revival. Seriously, just a few last comments about this particular conference and on to greener pastures with me. First, my experience with Norman Shepherd is pretty limited. I have read Call of Grace once, and it is a short book. But there is all this yelling and hol- lering about him, so a fellow like me doesn’t have much to go on. However, the one thing I do have the privilege of going on is my first-hand knowledge of how my words have been handled. And if they have misunderstood just half of his positions as I know they have misunderstood mine, then Shepherd must be one orthodox dude. Second, the Federal Vision is not a heresy. But if it were, this caliber of critique would not be keeping us heretics up nights. As a case in point, for the record again, here are my positions. I believe in and openly teach:

1. Predestination 2. Total inability 3. Sovereign election. 4. Particular redemption 5. Resurrecting grace 6. Perseverance of the elect saints 7. Tota et sola fide

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8. Tota et sola gratia 9. Tota et sola Scriptura 10. Totus et solus Christus 11. Toti et soli Deo gloria 12. The objectivity of the covenant. 13. And that baptism and the Lord’s Supper are effectual means of salvation for worthy receivers, which is to say, to those who trust in Christ alone by grace alone through faith alone according to the gospel found in the Scriptures alone, with all the glory going to God alone.

And what does this position get labeled as in the Westminster Q & A session? Pelagianism. I must say, it is the strangest form of Pelagianism as ever I encountered. This whole controversy is starting to resemble the Jabberwocky on stilts. Third, various references were made to a book they are working on. I will let you know if they represent my views accurately in that book. They did not in this conference. Time to soothe my windshield with a little Norah Jones.

YELLING AT MY WINDSHIELD, POST SCRIPT JULY 15, 2004– Okay. Just one more thing on these audio recordings. Robert Godfrey was asked about the full-throated support that Cornelius Van Til gave to Norman Shep- herd during the Westminster East controversy. In his response, Godfrey basically said that during this period Van Til was not as sharp as he used to be, that despite this, he was a thorough-going confessionalist, and that he was out of the loop anyway, getting his information from Richard Gaffin. Godfrey then went on to say that, all these things notwithstanding, even if Van Til knew his own mind fully in his support of Shepherd, nothing requires us all to accept everything Van Til held as though it came down from an oracle on the mount. A number of others reinforced this point, and there was a good deal of oracular joking around. But this misses the point completely. The question is not whether Van Til must be an oracle, or whether current Reformed theologians must agree with him. The question is why I and my friends are assailed for being heretics because we might

36 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JULY–SEPTEMBER 2004 agree with Shepherd in some things, and Van Til, when he enthusiastically supported Shepherd, is simply “not an oracle.” Why not say what your position seems to entail, and condemn Van Til as a heretic? And John Murray while you are at it? If I agreed to be considered a non-oracle by the men at Westminster (which shouldn’t be too hard), can we drop all this “assault on the gospel” foolishness? Related to this, why the attack on me and my friends instead of on Rich- ard Gaffin, who was apparently feeding all the bum dope to Van Til? Not that I want anybody to attack Richard Gaffin, but this Esconditic zeal for the gospel looks like it is choosing political targets of opportunity instead of standing for principle. Why the attack on a church of another denomination in Idaho when The Contagion is obviously present in one’s very own Sister Seminary? It is as though Paul, deciding that withstanding Peter to his face at Antioch for hypocrisy would be too dicey politically, started an argument over sola fide with the church janitor in the parking lot.

AND ANOTHER THING JULY 15, 2004 Along the same lines as the previous post, the latest Modern Reformation has a short article on “American Tragedy: Jonathan Edwards on Justification.” The article maintains that Edwards was, in significant respects, closer to the Thomists than to the Reformers on the question of justification. I waited for the other shoe to drop—e.g., Edwards was a heretic, covenant and justification under attack, etc.—but nothing. Nothing but an eerie silence. One reason why they don’t finish their syllogisms should be obvious. If you write off Van Til, John Murray, and Jonathan Edwards as not Reformed, and heretical to boot, you start to look like those Turbulent Waters Revival Books johnnies, who are the only Christians left in the world.

YELLING AT MY COPY OF MODERN REFORMATION JULY 15, 2004 Actually I am not yelling at all. This is merely a poetic conceit, kind of like George Herbert yelling at his pulley.

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I want to raise a question I have asked before, only in different terms. Ac- cording to our discussion partners, within the Covenant of Grace does the Cov- enant of Works have any members? Are the elect simultaneously members of both covenants? If members of both, please explain. No man can have two masters. If of one only, then why do the residual terms of the covenant we are not member of have any force or authority at all, even as directions for living?

AS REFORMED AS I WANNA BE JULY 18, 2004 In their recent book, Not Reformed At All, John Robbins and Sean Gerety ask the following, somewhat rhetorically. “Is Wilson suggesting that because parents are Christians, their baptized children also are Christians?” No, not at all. Baptism is not necessary. The unbaptized children of Chris- tians are Christians. That’s why we baptize them. But I do wonder why John Robbins thinks we should baptize them. I also wonder why he thinks I am out of conformity with the Westminster position, and he is not, for which, see below.

Before baptism, the minister is to use some words of instruction, touching the institution, nature, use, and ends of this sacrament, shew- ing . . . that they [children] are Christians, and federally holy before baptism, and therefore are they baptized. (Westminster Directory for the Publick Worship of God, emphasis mine)

SLOW MOTION HELICOPTER CRASHES JULY 18, 2004 Okay, then. My previous post gave away the fact that I have been reading Not Reformed At All4 by Robbins and Gerety. Just three comments. First, I have read up through page 63 with that curious sense of fascination that one has while watching slow motion videotape of helicopter crashes. Second, why is it that rationalists and propositionalists and logicians are the most

4 John W. Robbins and Sean Gerety, Not Reformed at All: Medievalism in “Reformed” Churches (Dallas: Trinity Foundation, 2004).

38 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JULY–SEPTEMBER 2004 unreasonable people in the world? Why is it that they cannot follow an argument to save their soul? Fortunately, the salvation of their souls does not depend on following arguments (sola fide!), but still, the fact is troublesome. Third, the graphic design of the cover is superb, and is the best argument the book contains, at least in the first 63 pages. But alas, a great cover on a book like this is like that woman in Proverbs without discretion. If someone is looking for a well-reasoned, thoughtful critique of the Auburn position, it ain’t here. But try getting a look at the cover sometime.

UNCORKING THE WHOLE JUG JULY 20, 2004 Every faithful servant of God has to learn how to respond to the lies that are told about him. One reaction is to do precisely that, react, and respond in the flesh. If someone slaps you in the face, that initial reaction is probably what the flesh wants you to do. The reason for responding has less to do with the honor of God than it has to do with the fundamental desire to “get even.” But Paul teaches us not to take vengeance, not because vengeance is wrong, but because vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord. Vindication is the Lord’s. But it is important to emphasize that the desire to get even is a fleshly response because of the motives; the problem is not that it is an actual response in the physical world. Another carnal reaction is what we might call the pacifist option. Taking the truth that God is the one who vindicates, it is assumed that this must mean no action or words or defense on the part of the slandered is ever appropriate. If someone says something in his own defense, it is simply assumed that he is angling for his own vindication, not the Lord’s. But we don’t apply this foolishness to other aspects of our lives, nor should we. I thank God for the food, but I also buy the food with the paycheck that I earned. The biblical position on all such matters is trust, not quietism. If someone defends himself vigorously against slander (as the apostle Paul frequently did), this is not evidence that he was not trusting God. From time to time, I have contemplated writing a narrative story of the events of the last couple years—on all the controversies, and how all of them

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have come together into one grand donnybrook. And what a story it would be! But I have put this off for various reasons. One, I want to be sure that I am not reacting in the flesh. Thomas Watson put it well, “Better to be wronged than to do wrong,” and waiting a bit while making such a decision seems to be prudent. Second, the elders of Christ Church have told me not to worry about defending myself, and they have done a very capable job of saying and doing everything that needs to be said and done. One of the things a telling of this story would do is reveal what a group of stalwarts they have been. Third, a complete story would reflect badly on people who should have known better, people I don’t want to hurt in the telling. And there is no real way to tell this story without uncorking the whole jug. But for the present, I will say one thing. The Psalms are amazingly relevant. Not only do they describe what is going on, they also are very descriptive about how the story ends. Diggers of pits fall into them, and vindication is the Lord’s.

REFORMED JUST A SKOSH JULY 21, 2004 From time to time, I want to make a few comments on passages of the Robbins/ Gerety Not Reformed At All book. The passages generally have this in common—they are marked with exclamation marks in the margins, sometimes more than one, in my personal copy of this book. I will not be yelling at these margins for, as everyone knows, it does no good to yell at inanimate objects. In their discussion of authority and tradition, these gentlemen reveal that they have not mastered a basic distinction in this argument. They take me to task for saying the traditions of the Church are not infallible, and yet claiming at the same time they are authoritative. “This is the same position on church tradition—it is both authoritative and fallible—that many so-called scholars take about the Scriptures. One must ask of Wilson, as we ask of them, what epistemic authority does error have? Why are we obliged to believe something that might be false?” (p. 27). I have been asked a question, and I answer the call!

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First, if we are not obliged to believe error, as Robbins claims, then I wonder what he is doing publishing a book full of them. What did he want us to do with them? Second, to answer the question seriously, error has no epistemic authority at all. If a father commands his young daughter to make meat loaf with five times more salt than the recipe demands, she can know that he is being silly even while she graciously makes the meatloaf. His folly has no epistemic authority over her at all. She is not required to believe it is going to be edi- ble. But is there no authority here? This question they ask me is the fruit of hyper-propositionalism. If everything in the universe is a proposition with a little T or F beside it, then of course, everything reduces to epistemic issues. But the universe is not like that (what is the propositional value of the music in Handel’s Messiah?), and everything does not so reduce. Third, what possible relevance does it have to bring up scholars who deny the infallibility of the Scriptures in a debate with someone who affirms sola Scriptura? Scripture alone provides an ultimate and infallible word. Other spiritual authorities exist—parents and pastors, to cite two—but they are not ultimate (appeal can always be made past them to the Scriptures) and they are not infallible (they can and do err, like me and John Robbins). And last, I am thinking of inventing a new school of theology, since that is all the rage these days, and Robbins has already shown us the way. But instead of hyper-propositionalism, I think we need to pay some attention to the neglected prepositions of Scriptures. I call this school of thought hyper-prepo- sitionalism, and want to reduce everything to words like, above, to, on, under, and so on. I think this is the key to answering the rampant unbelief of our day. Hyper-propositionalists, please note: the paragraph above is a trap. Beware of it.

THE WHOLE TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH JULY 22, 2004 In Not Reformed At All, at the bottom on page 29, Robbins/Gerety breath- lessly announce that I have denied the very concept of truth. They put it this

41 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JULY–SEPTEMBER 2004 way. “In 1999 Wilson published an essay titled ‘The Great Logic Fraud’ in his book The Paideia of God. It expresses his revolt against excellence, precision, and logic. That essay belies any claim Wilson might make to be believe the system of truth in the Westminster Confession. In the essay, Wilson even denies that 2 + 2 = 4 is true. His exact words are, for those who might find my accusation incredible, ‘Because of our realist assumptions in mathematics, we have come to believe that 15 + 20 = 35 is true. But it is evidently not true.’” Ah, but there is more. In that essay, I went on to say (in the very next sentence) that “15 unicorns plus 20 unicorns will not get 35 unicorns, try as you may. Of course, on the other hand, 15 turnips plus 20 turnips will result in 35 turnips, and it will do so every time. The structure of the addition table is sound, and the ‘argument’ is valid. And if unicorns existed, we would wind up with 35 of them. But this means the argument is valid, not true” [emphasis added]. I was talking about truth and validity (an elementary distinction in logic, one we teach to our eighth graders), not truth and falsity, or truth and relativism. From this distance, it is impossible to say if the Robbins/Gerety problem is one of paradigm-induced incompetence, paradigm-induced dishonesty, ordinary incompetence, ordinary dishonesty, or some mixture of the four. And so I do not presume to say. But I can say that Robbins/Gerety are not to be trusted in representing to their reading public anything about what I have to say. Somebody is struggling with the concept of truth, all right.

THEOLOGICAL SPAM JULY 23, 2004 My spam filter catches hundreds of invitations a day—invitations to check out these mortgage rates, these crazy chicks, these unbelievable cell phone offers, and more. One nagging question concerns why these companies go to all this effort. Does anybody actually get their mortgage this way? And the answer has to be yes. Otherwise, there would not be all this traffic. The percentages may be extremely low, but apparently (judging from the volume of invitations) there is enough of a response to keep these fellows in business.

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And this is why I am taking the time to answer John Robbins. However much he has discredited himself in the responsible Reformed world (consigning C.S. Lewis to Hell, attacking the Apostles’ Creed, and much, much more), he still has a hearing in certain quarters. And some of the people who listen to him are dear Christian people. On page 33 of Not Reformed At All, Robbins/Gerety say: “Wilson lets us know that by redefining this word, he is simultaneously re-structuring all other doctrines. Please keep that in mind as we examine what he says.” The word under discussion here is Christian. The thing to emphasize at this point is that Robbins/Gerety are incapable of understanding what their opponents are saying. They say, “It is not Wil- son’s point that ‘the word Christian can be used in two senses.’ That is trivial, and he is being disingenuous.” But of course, that is precisely my point. The word Christian has more than one legitimate biblical usage, and I want to use them both. Jesus said to make disciples by baptizing them as such. Such disciples were first called Christians at Antioch. This is the category I understand as Chris- tian by covenant. But there is another category—those who are born again to God, those who worship in Spirit and truth, those who are regenerate, and any other phrase you might take from traditional soteriology. This is the kind of Chris- tian who goes to Heaven when he dies. Why can’t Robbins/Gerety understand this? They don’t want to.

LOGIC 101 JULY 29, 2004 Throughout their book, Robbins and Gerety show a genuine inability or unwillingness to engage with the arguments I present for the objectivity of the covenant. For example, one of my common illustrations for what I am talking about is the covenant of marriage. A husband is covenantally a husband, and whether or not he is a faithful husband is a separate question. All husbands are married, but not all husbands are faithful to their marriage vows. In the

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same way, all the baptized are covenantally bound to Christ, but not all such Christians are faithful to their baptismal vows. (And faithfulness to these vows consists of faith alone, incidentally, and not by works as some slanderously report me as saying.) But look at how Robbins/Gerety misconstrue this illustration and argument. “Wilson’s denial of the class ‘nominal husband,’ implies that all fornicators are husbands, just as his denial of ‘nominal Christian’ implies that all hypocrites are Christians” (p. 115). The apostle Paul had to deal with a similar problem—teachers of the law who knew nothing about the law (1 Tim. 1:7). Robbins and Gerety make a great fuss over the inviolability of logic (which I agree with, by the way, since the character of God is the basis for all rational thought), but after they have claimed great things for logic, they go on to show that they don’t understand how it works. In this instance, they are guilty of affirming the consequent. They do this in an oblique way, by misrepresenting my argument as though I were affirming the consequent. This particular fallacy is committed when someone says, “If p, then q. Q. Therefore p.” “If he studies hard, he will get a good grade. He got a good grade, therefore he must have studied hard.” Well, no. He might have bribed the teacher, got lucky on a multiple-choice test, etc. Reasoning this way is called affirming the consequent. I argued that every husband bound by covenant is obligated to keep that covenant, whether he does so or not. All husbands are obligated to refrain from adultery, whether they do or not. If they do not, this does not make them nonhusbands, it makes them adulterers. Robbins and Gerety respond to this by saying that a “fornicator remains a fornicator—he does not become a husband—by participating in some of the activities of a husband” (p. 116). Let me make this concrete, in order to illustrate fully the intellectual dishonesty of how they are arguing. I said that all horses are horses, even those that are black. Robbins and Gerety respond that Wilson thinks— ho,ho,ho!—that being black makes you a horse!

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I say that all husbands are husbands, even those who have sex with women to whom they are not married. Robbins and Gerety respond that this entails saying all who have sex with a woman they are not married to are therefore husbands. Really? I would like to see them try to sketch this on the blackboard. Those who are tempted to listen to what John Robbins puts out need to understand that he is either unwilling or incapable of following the arguments he has assumed the role of refuting. This has been shown repeatedly. For those on the other side of this fracas, you need to find another champion. He is not really helping you out. I say this because if too much more of this goes on, we will be accused of secretly paying The Trinity Foundation to maintain their position as our real-life straw man.

A HANDY GUIDE FOR NAVIGATING THEOLOGICAL CONTROVERSIES AUGUST 3, 2004 For all those interested second-year seminary students who are watching the varied logomachies being undertaken on their behalf by their elders in the gates of Zion, it seems that someone ought to have prepared a handy guide like this long before now. But they haven’t, and you know how it goes. But you can’t tell the players without a scorecard. In some disputes, the answer to these questions runs along the lines of “neither,” but in those cases it is best to abandon all interest in that dispute anyway and give yourself to a perusal of Monday Night Football. That said, here are some basic questions to help keep things sorted out:

1. Which side is capable of stating the position of their opposition in terms that the opposition would own and recognize? 2. Which side is threatened and behaves as though it is threatened? 3. Which side has a donor base that would dry up if they did not point to a “threat to the gospel” to keep the money coming in? Which side has a donor base that would dry up if they successfully preserved the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace?

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4. Which side takes offense when extreme members of their party are answered? 5. Which side behaves as though it is competing for a market share? 6. Which side is characterized by grimness, and which by gladness? 7. Which side resorts to theological dishonesty in representing the arguments and positions of their adversaries? And refuses to be held accountable for it? 8. Which side looks as though they are trying to position themselves to be the next Ligonier when R.C. Sproul retires? 9. Which side resorts to Bulverisms in accounting for the motives of the opposition?

Answer key: 1. Good 2. Bad 3. Bad, bad 4. Bad 5. Bad 6. Bad and good, respectively 7. Bad, bad 8. Really bad 9. Bad, except when insightfully done, as here

THE POTENCY OF SOLA FIDE AUGUST 7, 2004 One of the reasons why John Robbins and Sean Gerety are not to be trusted is because of their deliberate misrepresentations, as has been shown in previous posts. But there is another problem that runs throughout the book, which would be better classified as an inability to grasp the argument. For example, consider this:

In opposition to this counterfeit covenant, Paul teaches a Covenant of Grace in which “the promise might be sure to all the seed.” There is no sure promise of salvation in Wilson’s counterfeit covenant. His appeal

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to ritual baptism for assurance is asinine, for he admits that some baptized people go to Hell. (Robbins and Gerety, p. 90)

Now the problem here, ironically, is an inability to understand sola fide. God makes promises in His Word and in His sacraments. But a man can have a Bible and go to Hell. He can read his Bible and go to Hell. He can hear the Bible preached and go to Hell. He can nod his head yeah, uh huh at what the Bible says and go to Hell. But nevertheless, the Bible still contains the promises. What secures the promises for an individual? What is the instrument that causes an individual to close with Christ? Faith and faith alone. The same is true of the sacraments. When the Reformers taught Chris- tians to “look to their baptism,” they were not teaching them to look there faithlessly. A faithful statement of “look to the Bible, look to your baptism, look to the Supper” is actually saying look to Christ, and look where He has promised to meet with you. And do this in faith. Faith alone is that which enables a man to see the promise of God (the promise who is Christ Himself) in what would otherwise be paper and ink, water, bread and wine. Let me use the words of Martin Luther’s wonderful baptismal hymn to make the point I am making, and which Robbins and Gerety are missing.

The eye of sense alone is dim, and nothing sees but water; Faith sees Christ Jesus and in Him the Lamb ordained for slaughter; It sees the cleansing fountain, red with the dear blood of Jesus, Which from the sins, inherited from fallen Adam, frees us And from our own misdoings.

When I tell someone to look to Scripture, I am not telling them to trust in leather bindings, ink and high-quality paper—though some people do trust in their Nehushtan Bibles in just this way. And there are people who superstitiously come to offend Jesus through their use of unbelieving ritual, water and bread and wine. Their condemnation is just. But Robbins and Gerety cannot imagine how a man might look to his baptism and see, with Martin Luther, Christ Jesus and the Lamb ordained for slaughter. In short, they cannot grasp the potency of faith alone.

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UPCOMING DEBATE AUG 10, 2004 I am looking forward to my debate with James White this fall. I am currently halfway through his book The Roman Catholic Controversy, which is actually quite good. I agree with bunches and bunches of it. The debate, for those not up to speed, has to do with whether Roman Catholics are members of the New Covenant. I am taking the affirmative, and Dr. White the negative. The debate doesnot have to do with whether or not I approve of the errors of Rome. Well, actually, it might have to do with that in John Robbins’s mind, but ol’ John is marching to a different drummer. Those who are interested in more information on the debate can click here.

ANSWERING ALL THE QUESTIONS AUG 11, 2004 When trust breaks down, it is hard to say anything without the suspicious seizing upon whatever it is and twisting it to suit themselves. This is just another way of saying that when trust breaks down, one of the first things that people forget is that affirmation of innocence until guilt is established and proven is a biblical requirement. And within confessional churches, orthodoxy is a given unless the contrary is proven in accordance with how the Bible says things are to be proven. This is the context in which I am debating. This means that in this debate, Steve Schlissel, Michael Horton, Cal Beisner, Rick Phillips, Steve Wilkins, Robert Godfrey, are all orthodox Christians, and should be treated as such. If there is a case to be made for changing our conviction of this truth, then the case should be made in an appropriate way, and in the appropriate place. But not everyone is treating my words in this way, and so it is necessary to make adjustments, as best you can, before you say anything publicly. That said, let me risk something . . . again. Theological models are designed to represent important biblical truths. Pointing to the inadequacy of a particular model in some of its details is not the same thing as rejecting the important biblical truths illustrated by the model.

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The ordo salutis is one such model. Many of those who are nervous about what we are saying about the traditional Reformed ordo salutis are nervous because they think we are challenging the central truth that the model is pointing to—which is false. The purpose of a model is to explain and illustrate, and not to provide a photograph. For example, the model of an atom in a high school science class looks an awful lot like a tiny little solar system. And this helps explain a number of basic concepts. But if someone assumes, in their subsequent study of sub-atomic physics, that the tiny solar system model is correct in every detail, they will soon encounter things that they simply cannot explain. This is what has happened with many who are holding to the traditional ordo salutis in a wooden way—to mix the metaphor, they are treating it as though it were a paper-mache “solar system” atom, hanging from the ceiling of a high school science classroom. There are important truths hanging there, but the model simply does not answer all the questions. Lest anyone take this general statement as further justification for increas- ing nervousness about what I am saying, let me reiterate what important truth the traditional Reformed ordo salutis protects, a truth which I heartily affirm. Here is it. “Salvation is monergistic. Salvation is all of grace. A man does not bring about his own regeneration. He does not prepare himself for regeneration. Justification is also a matter of free grace, wherein the righteousness of Jesus Christ is imputed to the sinner. This righteousness is imputed to him, not infused within him. The order of regeneration, repentance, faith, justification, and sanctification protects and illustrates this, and rightly so.” But here are some questions that the model does not answer. This is not said so that we would jettison the model, but rather so that we would refine it. This is not said as a challenge to the central truth of the model. Those who agree with me that these questions do not threaten the distinctively Reformed understanding of salvation need to work together with us to explore these questions. But those who insist upon seeing these questions as a threat need to do more than just fulminate. If the paper-mache ordo is the only way to go, they need to show how their approach fully answers these questions. Note, in

49 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JULY–SEPTEMBER 2004 either case, the questions need to be answered. I reiterate again that this entire battle is for the hearts and minds of second-year seminarians. In the presence of those who are following the argument, and who understand it, these issues really need to be engaged. Those debating us really need to answer the following questions in some manner.

1. Justification is fourth, and sanctification is fifth in this ordo. Justification is imputed, and sanctification is infused. But regeneration is first on the list. Now regeneration is a gift (from God alone) of a righteous heart in the place of an unrighteous heart. So in some manner, it involves a transfer of righteousness. Now, is regeneration an imputed transfer of righteousness, or an infused transfer of righteousness? Or a third way? 2. If imputed, then does this make regeneration a part of justification? And if it is that, then how can faith be the sole instrument of justification because faith is the fruit of regeneration? 3. If infused, then does this make regeneration a part of sanctification? If so, then how can sanctification precede justification? And is the regenerate heart justified before it exercises faith? Or is it an unjustified regenerate heart? 4. If a third way, please explain.

These questions fade into the background when we think of them in terms of union with Christ, and stop trying to measure them with a stopwatch. But when we think of this union with Christ in a non-chronological way (and rather a covenantal way), this generates new questions. And the way we address these new questions must preserve what we knew and affirmed in our embrace of the old model as traditionally affirmed. And I do. Salvation is of the Lord, and let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.

JESUS OR ARISTOTLE? AUG 12, 2004 I have to begin by saying that it should be self-evident that logical fallacies exist, and that they should be avoided. Having the mind of Christ includes

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avoiding the kinds of confusions and mistakes in reasoning that are so characteristic of our time. I think it was John Stott who said that fuzzy-mindedness is one of the sins of the age. That said, it needs to be reaffirmed yet again that for Christians the standard is Scripture. But the problem is that good little Christians tend to make a standard for themselves out of bits and pieces of good advice, lessons, and lectures that they picked up over the years from their teachers and other intimidating authorities. When I tell people what I believe is going on in various controversies (including the Auburn flap) a common response is that I should limit myself to the argument, stick to the issue, and not go bringing in the character of my opponents. This is because the ad hominem is a logical fallacy, they say. Well, actually it is a fallacy of distraction, not a fallacy of logical structure, and this is a good thing. Sometimes the character of an opponent is the issue, and it is not a distraction to bring it up, still less a fallacy of distraction. Think of a lying witness on the stand—a good attorney will go after his credibility precisely because his credibility is the issue. When Jesus attacked the hypocrisy of Pharisees, He was not indulging in fallacious reasoning. Rather, He was teaching us how to reason in any comparable situation. If I am losing an argument on the merits and I tell my adversary that his mother is a lizard, I am doing this to distract attention away from the fact that he has the better part of the argument. If I start a fight because I am losing the argument, then I really am guilty of trying to distract attention away from my lost cause. And this really is an intellectual sin. But this was not Eve’s problem. She had the opposite problem in that she did not consider the character of the one who brought the argument. She considered the argument apart from considering the source of the argument. The serpent was up to no good, as she ought to have known. And Adam knew the character of the God who had given him the requirement to stay away from the tree in the middle of the garden. Adam also ought to have known the serpent was up to no good. Jesus specifically instructed us to weigh the competing claims of theologians, writers, authors, preachers, teachers, and pastors on the basis of fruit. Some want to

51 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JULY–SEPTEMBER 2004 devour the sheep; they are wolves in sheep’s clothing. Pretend for a moment that it was not Jesus who came up with that metaphor. I can imagine many people telling the hapless one who said it that he really ought to content himself with addressing the arguments of that strange-looking sheep over there, and to stop trying to pull the fleece off to reveal the wolf beneath. “That sort of ad lupum argument (or is it ad ovem? Can’t be sure.) hardly does credit to your position.” When we are told in Hebrews to remember our rulers and instructors in the Scriptures, we are required to follow their faith (not just the argument they laid out on the blackboard), and we are to do so while considering the outcome of their conduct. We are to consider the fruit of their lives. “Remember those who rule over you, who have spoken the word of God to you, whose faith follow, considering the outcome of their conduct” (Heb. 13:7, nkjv). An elder must be “one who rules his own house well, having his children in submission with all reverence (for if a man does not know how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the church of God?)” (1 Tim. 3:4–5, nkjv) The Auburn Avenue controversy is a controversy about our theology of children. What does it mean to be a covenant child? What is the covenantal position of those who are born into Christian families? Does God promise us generational succession within the covenant? How are such promises to be apprehended? What does the Bible command us to do as we consider such controversies? This is not the only thing we are commanded to do, but it is right at the center of what we are commanded to do—we are to look at the children. Whether this is “disobedience to Aristotle” is debatable, but it is certainly obedience to the Lord Jesus.

MY SANE BAPTIST FRIEND AUGUST 13, 2004 I recently had an email exchange with someone I shall call my “sane Baptist friend,” or SBF for short. He had some questions about the Auburn Avenue deal, and I thought our exchange might prove helpful to others. There are a couple back-and-forths here. For ease of following, my original words are underlined, his words are in bold and mine are in italics.

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Dear SBF, My answers are interspersed below. And if you give permission, I would like to post a portion of this exchange on my blog (with your name removed so that people wouldn’t jump to conclusions about you. I would just call you a “sane Baptist friend”). I have been trying to answer a lot of these same questions for a lot of people, and I think this might help.

At 06:20 AM 8/13/2004, you wrote: Dear Doug, Thanks for your message, and please forgive me for this delayed reply. It’s been a hectic week on several fronts. You wrote:

I heard from ______that you might be concerned that I had gone wobbly. Just a couple quick comments, along with an invitation to ask me anything your heart desires, at any time.

Thanks for that. I hope you know that I have great respect for you. Of course, as a Baptist, I can’t help regarding Presbyterian sacramentalism as somewhat wobbly. Still, I wouldn’t normally criticize a Presbyterian just for being Presbyterian. But “Reformed” Is Not Enough seems to advocate a view of church, sacraments, and soteriology that wobbles to the point of teetering dangerously.

Right. And my problem is not with Baptists who think Prebyterian sacramentalism is wobbly. It is with Presbyterians who think it is. Perhaps we can agree on this—that many of our critics in the Reformed world need to become more consistent with their critiques of us by becoming Reformed Baptists?

1. I affirm the imputation of the active and passive obedience of Christ to every regenerate believer, apart from which no one has any hope of salvation. No hope without it, as Machen put it. Everything that

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Christ is and did is credited to the elect believer at the moment of justification, and faith (itself a gift from God, lest any boast) is the sole instrument for appropriating God’s grace to us in Christ.

2. Lesbian Eskimo bishops must be excommunicated without one moment’s delay, and God is very angry with those who tolerate such abominations in the Church. May I never be in that number, or look to any of the faithful as though I might be. Thanks for those clarifications. I do still have a few questions: 1. Would you also say the imputed righteousness of Christ is the sole and sufficient ground of our justification? Saying it’s essential is not quite the same thing as saying it’s sufficient.

Yes. I would say it is the sufficient ground of our individual justification. Without it, there is no individual justification. With it, there must be individual justification.

2. Why wouldn’t your ecclesiology constrain you to conclude that any body that would deliberately ordain practicing lesbians as bishops is no true church?

There are several aspects to this reply. First, for example, I am fully supportive of what the Third World Anglicans appear to be doing in their discipline of the renegade Americans, Englishmen, and Canadians. I believe that this sort of disciplinary action ought to occur, and I support it wherever it does occur. In short, I support disciplinary against individual clerics who are practicing homosexuals, and support as well disciplinary action against those ecclesiastical bodies that deliberately ordain such people. I think that ought to happen.

But the second thing is this. What I believe ought to be done does not make me believe that it is automatically done. Suppose a wife has a husband who is rampantly and unrepentantly promiscuous. I think she ought to

54 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JULY–SEPTEMBER 2004 divorce him. But until she does divorce him, he is still her husband. In a similar way, the American Episcopal Church ought to be disciplined by Christendom, but she hasn’t been yet.

And one other thing. We should remember that things have been worse than this in the history of the faith, and God (who raises the dead) has brought about Reformations. On the verge of murdering the Messiah, Caiphas, being high priest that year, prophesied. 3. You do still seem to be suggesting that we daren’t put the lesbian bishop in the Jude 4–13; 17–19 category until and unless she has been formally excommunicated. Have I misunderstood what you’re saying?

Yes, there is a misunderstanding here. Paul denounces as false brethren men who had not been formally excommunicated, and I believe we can do the same. Go back to my earlier illustration. I think false husbands should be both denounced and divorced. And if there is a faithful Christian in the diocese that now has a homosexual bishop, a man who ought to be deposed and excommunicated, that faithful Christian can and should denounce the infidelity whether or not any excommunication has happened or will happen. But until it happens, that person is objectively in some sense a Christian, just as the husband pre-divorce is objectively in some sense a husband.

4. If your view of church and sacraments obliges you to regard a lesbian Eskimo bishop as “a New Testament Christian”—i.e., if her baptism (and ordination) are “efficacious” irrespective of her lack of faith or moral fitness—how does your view differ from the notion that the sacraments automatically confer grace ex opere opera- to? I’m having a hard time seeing any meaningful distinction.

An essential part of understanding this is the notion of blessings and curses in the covenant. I do not hold to an ex opere operato result from baptism if we are talking about baptismal grace or blessing. I hold to an ex opere

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operato covenant connection, which increases the judgment if the person is faithless. This is because the blessings of the covenant are appropriated sola fide, by evangelical faith alone. All others who despise the covenant through their unbelief, while receiving the mark that obligates them to have faith, receive a much stricter judgment.

I appreciate your taking time to write. I can only imagine how busy you must be these days. Since we last corresponded about the Auburn controversy (probably a year and a half ago) I’ve tried to keep up with how you have answered your critics. (I try to read your blog regularly but can’t do it daily.) No doubt my Baptist presuppositions are a definite handicap as I try to make sense of what you’re saying, but I have to say that your position seems more ambiguous to me now than before you began trying to clarify it.

Sorry about that. Hope this helps.

AUBURN AVENUE HUBBUB (AAH) COOL QUOTE 10 AUG 17, 2004 This is why God has to stoop down to us, which he does by means of the sacraments. This, then, is how we put on the Lord Jesus Christ at baptism . . . . Thus, you see that our baptism becomes precious to us when we use it as a shield to deflect all assailing doubts. —John Calvin, Sermons on Galatians, (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1997), 346.

HERESY STEW AUG 23, 2004 Having become a heretic in the broader Reformed world, I am sometimes asked how I did it. What is the recipe? How might a young man who wants to cook up something similar go about the business?

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Here is the good news. You probably have the ingredients in your library . . . kitchen . . . having trouble sustaining the metaphor. Anyway you can cook up your own batch of heresy stew, and you don’t even have to use suspect items purchased at the Grocery Store of Rome, or the Mini-Mart of Pop Evangelicalism. Everything can be assembled if you simply read and pay attention to the following: Given for You, by Keith Mathison, Resurrection and Redemption by Richard Gaffin, “The Church: Its Definition in Terms of ‘Visible’ and ‘Invisible’ Invalid” by John Murray, and assorted other stuff published by impeccable publishing houses located in places like Carlisle and Phillipsburg. The best I can figure, these publishers don’t mind you cooking up this kind of stew, for, after all, the ingredients are all still available from them (for a modest price). But they do want you to throw the stew out after you have cooked it. No serving it to anybody. Reformed people eating stuff instead of thinking stuff appears to be what has gotten everybody riled.

REFORMATION AND OUR CHILDREN AUG 24, 2004

Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse. (Mal. 4:5–6)

One of the great marks of a true, God-given reformation is the characteristic described here by the prophet Malachi. The hearts of fathers are turned to their children. The hearts of children are turned to their fathers. This characteristic is not at odds with correct theology, rather it depends upon it. And any vaunted “correct theology” that does not issue forth in this result is either false theology, or what might be called true-on-paper theology. Jesus was noted as a teacher because he taught with authority, and not like the scribes. This did not make everything the scribes said false. They sat in Moses’ seat, the

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Lord said. What they said was true enough. But how is it to be lived? How does it translate into everyday application? I have said on different occasions that the Auburn Avenue controversy is all about our children. How is that? Not only so, but some of the other controversies that have arisen are directly related to this as well. And how is that? A brief glance at the books and tape sets off to the right should quickly show that our ministry has a particular driving emphasis—on marriage, family, children, discipline, and education. This is not because this is an area where theology is irrelevant, but rather because this is where theology is un- deniably enfleshed. I am fond of saying that your theology comes out your fingertips, and whatever it is that is coming out your fingertipsis your theology. Therefore, orthodox Reformed theology means loving your wife as Christ loved the church. Orthodox Reformed theology means bring up your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. For many years, we have emphasized that parents should believe God for the salvation of their children, should love and nurture their children accordingly, that elders and pastors have a profound obligation before the Lord to lead the way in this, that the elder qualifications in 1 Timothy 3 about managing households well are widely and routinely disobeyed in the Church, and that reformation will not occur unless all this is addressed in a lived-out, loved-out fashion. If I have memorized all of the Westminster Larger Cat- echism, but speak harshly to my wife, then, as the apostle Paul noted, my theology is just so much balloon juice. All of this converges. The covenant is not an abstraction. The covenant exists in history, and extends over generations. Generations involve children. And covenantal reformation therefore means . . . turning the fathers back to their children. Reformation does not mean turning the fathers back to big, fat books of theology—except to the extent, and only to the extent, that God uses such theology to turn fathers back to their children. Further, when this happens, the hearts of the children are turned back to their fathers. Is a man genuinely Reformed? I don’t know. Do his children love him, and faithfully serve his God? If a man’s children do not love him, and do not faithfully

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love, worship and serve his God, and then that man presumes to engage in theological polemics, we should not be surprised when we are suddenly surrounded with sounding brass and tinkling cymbals. We are engaged in pursuing theological and liturgical reformation, but we are pursuing familial reformation as one of the most important indicators of how we are doing. As God blesses, we will continue to do this. Some of the attacks on our ministry have been calculated to make people think we have abandoned our standards (on elder qualifications, for example), which we have not. Some of them are calculated to drag the debate back into the realm of abstractions, rather than within the realm of the covenant itself. But if we think biblically, we are not to debate the covenant in the classroom, as though the ins and outs of this were merely to be followed like a proof from Euclid. Paul asks the Thessalonians, what is his joy? What is his crown? Is it not you? Authentication of ministry is to be found in people, and when a minister is a family man, that authentication is to be found both in little people and in grown people who grew up in his household. Biblical ministry, and biblical qualifications for ministry, are always written on human hearts. By the grace of God, every Saturday night, our household begins our extended family’s observance of the Lord’s Day. Not counting guests and boarders, with just our family, there are fourteen of us. In a few months, there will be seventeen. All of us love and serve the Lord Jesus Christ. “Knox, what day is it?” “It’s the Lord’s Day.” “Jemma, why is this the Lord’s Day?” “Because Jesus rose from the dead.” “Bel, what kind of day is it?” “A sweet day.” “Rory, what did God make in the beginning?” “Light.” And as I look at this exuberant gathering of saints—a shadowy type of what “here am I, and the children you have given me” actually means—I rejoice that the lines have indeed fallen for me in pleasant places. This is all the grace of God, and this is what we declare. This will seem to some as though it is just more “covenant confusion.” But following the glazed rolls around the table, following the love in the conversation, following the theological argument, and following the gospel of sheer unmerited grace, are all the same thing. And what is that “thing?” It is faith, the gift of God, lest any boast.

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SHOW ME A TOKEN AUGUST 26, 2004 Nothing reveals a person’s approach to epistemology more rapidly than trouble-shooting in conflict does. “What’s the trouble here? How did the trouble start?” Almost always the way this kind of question is answered serves to extend and continue the trouble. When Ahab decided to start worshiping Baal, the end result of this was a drought that turned Israel brown. Jezebel persuaded him to start worshipping the idols of green, and the first thing that happened was lots of brown everywhere. But the interesting thing was that when Ahab and Elijah encountered one another after three years of this drought, they still had differing interpretations. Ahab thought Elijah was the trouble, and Elijah thought that Ahab and his idols were the trouble (1 Kings 18:17–18). Scripture tells us clearly that Achan was a troubler of Israel (1 Chron. 2:7). Is that how he thought of it? Is that what Achan’s mom thought? Let’s get her on CNN to tell her side. Whenever we get to this point in the polemical proceedings, continued conversation (as mere talk) is fruitless. Those who are stubborn remain stubborn. Those who are faithful remain faithful. Those who are ignorant remain ignorant. Over the last several years, in our various controversies, I have seen a remarkable amount of treachery, dishonesty, and invincible ignorance. But if this is the case, then how are these things ever to be resolved? But as we answer this question, we have to take care. Giving up on endless discussion, dispute, debate, etc. is not the same thing as giving up generally. When we tend to think that to give up on talking is the same as giving up period, this indicates that perhaps our faith was in our words, and not in Christ. Theological impasses are resolved in two ways—the first is obviously the ultimate way in which God will sort out everything in the final judgment. We will not enter eternity still trying to tie up all the loose ends. God will bring everything together, and the entire story will make wonderful and perfect sense. But what about in the meantime? The second way a sovereign God resolves many of these issues is through how He governs the course of history.

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The names of many honored saints today have that position precisely because of the abuse they were willing to endure at the time. Athanasius is not against the entire Christian world now (contra mundum) precisely because he was willing to be in that position then. When controversy erupts in the Christian world, there are the two sides of the dispute, and then there is a large, getting-up-to-speed group in the middle that spends its time trying to figure out who started it. And regardless of who started it, some members of this middle group usually take St. Paul, or Athanasius, or some other faithful Tishbite aside, and urge them to be more gentlemanly in how they fight the Lord’s battles. And more words won’t sort it out. We must appeal to God, who sees it all. “Shew me a token for good; that they which hate me may see it, and be ashamed: because thou, Lord, hast holpen me, and comforted me” (Ps. 86:17).

WINESKINS AND OTHER METAPHORS SEPTEMBER 2, 2004 A recent letter writer to Touchstone magazine (responding to a review of a couple of D.G. Hart’s books) says this: “If one wishes to locate a separate Prot- estant ‘confessional’ tradition, where should one go? Conservative American Protestantism is root and branch a tradition that depends for its existence and vitality on revivalism and the historical forms we describe as Evangelical. A theologically orthodox Protestant who would stay Protestant must make peace with that fact—and all its related ironies and tensions.” As a confessional Protestant, I have no trouble with accepting this assessment, as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough. Not only do confessional Protestants have to make their peace with revivalism, the kind of movement to which they generally object, they also have to make their peace with genuine movements of the Holy Spirit, which can be far more troublesome. In the revivalist stream, the institutional Church often suffers at the hands of nutjobs, and they come and punch holes in the wineskins with the icepick of fanaticism. This does create ironies and tensions. But the new

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wine of the Spirit is sometimes just as unkind to the wineskins. As we recall, there was a time when virtually every trained theologian in Jerusalem voted to kill the Messiah. A high view of the institutional (and confessional) Church does not necessitate a view that we can now see where the wind comes from or where it is going. One of the things we confessional Protestants confess is that God converts how, when and where He pleases. When He does this, He is bringing His bride to a glorious consummation, and at that day, there will be no wrinkle or spot. The tensions will have been removed. We don’t have to choose. High Church Puritanism is possible and highly desirable. But if you make me choose, I prefer the Ringling Brothers tent of Evangelicalism to the marble mausoleum of Rome.

MORE ON ROBBINS SEPTEMBER 16, 2004 In a recent Trinity Review, John Robbins tackles the work of Richard Gaffin, and spends quite a bit of energy fulminating about the departures of said theologian from the traditional Reformed ordo salutis. In the course of his discussion, Robbins says, “Believers do not die with Christ ‘existentially’ or ‘experimentally,’ but legally. They do not possess Christ’s perfect righteousness ‘in the inner man.’ Christ’s righteousness is imputed, not infused. His act and righteousness are legally, not experientially, theirs.” And if we are talking about the (isolated) justification of the individual believer, this is quite right. But such things can never be absolutely isolated. And it appears clear that Robbins does not even understand the nature of the problem that Gaffin is wrestling with. Let me try to bring it home by asking Robbins a question. What is regeneration? That is an existential and experimental reality. God takes away a heart of stone and replaces it with a heart of flesh. Now, when does regeneration occur? According to the traditional ordo, which Robbins is defending, regeneration is first, then repentance, then faith, then justification. Imputation arrives with justification. What is the righteousness that this new heart has, both

62 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JULY–SEPTEMBER 2004 experientially and practically? It is an infused righteousness. Regeneration is not imputed, right? Regeneration is a change of heart, from an unrighteous heart that hates God to a righteous (but still imperfect) heart that loves Him, repents of sin, and believes in Him. Now, according to the traditional ordo (that Robbins is defending), this means that if faith is the instrument of justification (not the ground), and if faith arises naturally from this new heart (which is there because it was “infused”), difficulties arise. At the end of the day, this means that Robbins is defending infused righteousness as the instrument of imputed righteousness. Gaffin, and others, are aware of the threat this model (when taken woodenly) poses to monergistic grace. By defending sola gratia in one place, it threatens it in another. So let me say it again. The traditional ordo, if taken as the only possible model for considering these things, gives us a problematic order.

1. Regeneration (infused righteousness); 2. Repentance and faith (fruit of infused righteousness; 3. Justification (imputed righteousness); 4. Etc.

So let’s talk about union with Christ. And Richard Gaffin has done just that, in an admirable way.

WHERE IS THE PULPIT? SEPTEMBER 24, 2004 One of the common mistakes in creating hypothetical scenarios to test where someone “comes down” in the Federal Vision controversy is the mistake of saying, “How do you preach to the baptized? Do you preach as though they are unconverted, needing constantly to question? Or that they are converted, in need of encouragement?” The question is far too broad. Which baptized are we preaching to? Are we preaching in Thyatira? Ephesus? Laodicea? Corinth? Rome?

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WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN? SEPTEMBER 25, 2004 One of the stories circulating out there is that the Federal Vision folks have changed the definitions of words, words like Christian or justification. This is said because it is simply assumed (not demonstrated) that any expansion of a word’s uses must necessarily include an abandonment of previous uses. I was brought up in an evangelical home, and was taught that a genuine Christian was the kind of Christian who goes to heaven when he dies. This is an important (and precious) use of the word. I agree with it as strongly as I ever did. But somehow, because of a slavish and superstitious reverence for that one definition as the only possible definition, my recognition that the word can be used in other senses has completely thrown some people. Suppose there were two young boys, Sammy and Dougie. Both of them were pleased one day to start receiving an allowance from their fathers, and they received a quarter a week. They both enjoyed the allowance, and Dougie particularly liked the sound of the word quarter. He used it a lot. One day, years later, when Dougie was in third grade, he learned another definition of the same word. The class was learning fractions, and he learned that quarter could refer to things other than the coin. You could divide pies into quarters for example. Proud of his new knowledge, he came into his house one afternoon with his friend Sammy, and asked his mother, who was cutting up a pie, if he could have a quarter. “You want a coin?” Sammy asked. “No,” Dougie said, “I would like a fourth of the pie. I am famished.” “That’s not how you used to use that word,” Sammy said. “You’ve changed.” “No, I’ve not changed. I still think quarter means a silver coin. I just don’t think that is the only thing it means. But it still means that for sure. See, here is a quarter in my pocket.” “No,” Sammy said. “I heard you. You just called a piece of pie a quarter.” “Well, yes. But that is not a change.” Sammy still looked dubious. “Well, I don’t like it. But I’ll go for it if you admit that the two words quarter have absolutely nothing to do with each other.”

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“Well, I can’t do that. They do have something in common—a quarter is a fourth of a dollar and a quarter is a fourth of a pie.” “See! We can’t be friends anymore. You are using the word differently than you used to, and, worst of all, you won’t even admit that you have changed. Quarter means a silver coin. Now you say it means a piece of pie. Which is it? Yes or no. A coin or pie? No matter what you say, that’s change.” “Now when you said change,” Dougie said. “Do you mean going from one state to another? Or do you mean coins in your pocket? Because . . .” But with that, Dougie’s mother interrupted, told them both to stop being silly, and shooed them out into the back yard.

OCTOBER–DECEMBER 2004

FAITH ALONE OCTOBER 1, 2004 Faith is the alone instrument that God uses to bring justification to the individual believer. This faith that He uses is the real thing, living faith, faith that looks to Christ alone (apart from any defective works that person might have). But a very common form of “defective works” would have to include defective theories of justification by faith alone. Because justification by faith alone is true, it is possible for someone who is screwed up on justification (in his theology) to be actually saved. And because justification by faith alone is true, it is possible for someone with an orthodox theology on the subject to be actually looking at His correct theory instead of to Christ alone, and so he is lost. Rome is wrong on justification, and so Rome is not qualified to teach the saints of God. But precisely because Rome is wrong on justification, it is possible for particular Roman Catholics within her pale to be saved.

PLUS NOTHING OCTOBER 1, 2004 The points made in the previous post apply in another way to the problem posed for sola fideby theological Arminianism. To be faithful to Scripture we have to reject all notions of faith-plus-something-else salvation. Salvation must be all of God. The ground of our salvation must be Christ and His work alone. Just as we are lost through our union with Adam, so we are saved through our union with Christ in His perfect life, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension.

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When we speak of the ground of salvation, we are talking about the basis for it, the reason for it. Everyone who comes to salvation is saved because of the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ, plus nothing. His work is the sole reason we are saved. But does this mean that we do nothing? And if we do something, is that something “our part” which is the partner with God who does “His part”? Not at all. Of course, we do something (we repent and believe), but everything we do is built upon the foundation of Christ’s work. We do not extend our work out from Christ’s work; rather, we build our work upon Christ’s work. We do not build out, we build up. But in order to build upon God’s work, instead of extending out from God’s work, it is necessary for us to grasp the biblical truth that both repentance and faith are gifts of God. Repentance and faith don’t get us grace; repentance and faith are grace. But this distinction between the ground of our salvation and the instrument of our salvation is only possible if faith is God’s instrument for saving us, not our instrument for getting the job done. If it were our instrument, then our wielding of that instrument would necessarily become part of the ground of our salvation—that upon which our salvation rests. “Even so then, at this present time there is a remnant according to the election of grace. And if by grace, then it is no longer of works; otherwise grace is no longer grace. But if it is of works, it is no longer grace; otherwise work is no longer work” (Rom. 11:5–6, nkjv). But we don’t have to depend on theological extrapolations. This is what the Bible says. Apart from repentance we cannot believe, and apart from faith we cannot be saved. And both repentance and faith are gifts from God. First, we see that the Bible speaks of repentance being granted to us. “When they heard these things they became silent; and they glorified God, saying, ‘ThenGod has also granted to the Gentiles repentance to life’” (Acts 11:28, nkjv). The apostle Paul speaks the same way. “And a servant of the Lord must not quarrel but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient, in humility correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance, so that they may know the truth, and that they may come to their senses and escape the

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snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will” (2 Tim. 2:24–26, nkjv). The same thing is true of faith. “For to you it has been granted on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake . . .” (Phil.1:29, nkjv). Luke describes Christians as those who have believed through grace, not “believed in grace.” “And when he desired to cross to Achaia, the brethren wrote, exhorting the disciples to receive him; and when he arrived, he greatly helped those who had believed through grace; for he vigorously refuted the Jews publicly, showing from the Scriptures that Jesus is the Christ” (Acts 18:27, nkjv). The conclusion is plain. God gives the gifts of repentance and faith, so that no one can boast. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it [i.e., faith] is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:8–10, nkjv). The first good work we were created for is conversion—turning away from sin in repentance, and turning to God in faith. This work we do because we are God’s workmanship, and the work we do was prepared beforehand by God so that we could walk in that work. And what is the work of God? “Jesus answered and said to them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent’” (John 6:29, nkjv). This is the work of God, that you believe. Now if this is true, and it is, then what becomes of those who deny it? What becomes of those who believe, contrary to Scripture, that faith is our contribution? Are they lost? The biblical answer is—of course not. We are saved by faith in Christ, plus nothing. We not saved by faith in Christ, plus a passing grade on the theology exam. This is where self-righteous Calvinists so often trip up. Imagine an exam that God made us all take. It has ten questions on it, each of them amount- ing to something like “Who saves you?” with the correct answer being “Je- sus.” Two men take the exam—an arch Calvinist and an Arminian. Further in our supposal, imagine the exams are being graded by John Owen, John

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Murray, and the apostle Paul. The Calvinist got a 100% and the Arminian scored an 80%. The Arminian had put down a couple of things about “God voting for him, the devil voting against him, and so he broke the tie, voting for God.” The Calvinist dances back to his desk, trusting in his 100%, and the Arminian bowed his head and asked God to be merciful to him, a B-minus Christian. Which one went home justified? The Arminian was justified because his answer was wrong. The Calvinist went home unjustified because the glory of all those right answers dazzled his eyes. So there it is—faith in Jesus, plus nothing else. Nothing else.

TALKING REASONABLY TO MY WINDSHIELD OCTOBER 2, 2004 A friend recently gave me a couple of CDs of a recent broadcast of The White Horse Inn with Michael Horton. While I was listening to the program (I am not done yet) a couple of comments caught my attention. I think that if we worked though the issues surrounding these comments, we might have the possibility of coming to an understanding. That is why I am talking reasonably to my windshield, and not yelling at it. The comment was made that to see the covenant of works made with Adam as a gracious covenant has the effect of making the covenant of grace into a legal covenant. On the surface this seems absurd—to turn a watermelon into a tomato is surely not the same thing as turning a tomato into a watermelon. But his reasons for saying this showed that it was not an absurdity at all. A previously hidden assumption came out a moment later when one of the participants revealed that he is hearing us say, when we say that the covenant of works was gracious, that God in the Garden of Eden somehow relaxed the standard for Adam. In other words, “grace” is being heard as “cutting of slack.” Now if this were what we meant, then it does follow that grace and law are being blurred and confused. But we are not using grace as meaning the standards are lowered. We mean by grace the exhaustive sovereignty of divine favor. In the covenant that God had with Adam in the Garden, there was no lowering of the standards at all. Adam was obligated, by the grace of God,

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to a perfect obedience. The only thing we mean about this covenant being gracious is that if Adam had obeyed perfectly (which he was obligated to do, in every sense of the word), he would then have had the additional obligation to thank God for that perfect obedience. In other words, the only thing we are saying here is that, had Adam obeyed, that obedience would not have been autonomous. But if Adam had obeyed, that obedience would have been perfect—otherwise it would not have been obedience at all. Grace does not ever involve a lowering of divine standards of righteousness. The grace of God brought to us a way of salvation in which God would be both just and the one who justifies.

RAISING EYEBROWS AT MY WINDSHIELD OCTOBER 4, 2004 I am continuing to listen to the White Horse Inn series on covenant confusion and was duly astonished by something Michael Horton said. By registering this astonishment, I am not saying that I differ with him on this necessarily, but just that I was surprised to hear him talking this way. He said that Jesus Christ, by His perfect sinless life, fulfilled all the requirements of the covenant of works. Amen. In saying amen, I am not abandoning my previous assertions that the covenant of works was fundamentally gracious, but the point here is a different one. Here is the rub. In order to fulfill the requirements of the covenant of works, the Lord Jesus would have had to have been a member of that covenant. The terms of the covenant would have to be a requirement for Him to fulfill. The covenant would have to pertain to Him somehow. Now, how was He a member of it? Was Adam His federal head? No, that would mean that Adam’s sin would have to be imputed to Him. But Christ could not have fulfilled that covenant unless he was a party to the covenant, and in what sense was it possible for Him to be a party to it? Further, that obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ, both active and passive, is imputed to us, as believers in Jesus. Amen again. But this means that the particular obedience that is reckoned to our account is obedience to the terms

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of the covenant of works. And this means that my justified status is that of one who is obedient (through Christ) to the covenant of works. In other words, the covenant of grace is God’s instrument for making us fulfill the terms of the covenant of works, and the covenant of works never goes away—because we are constantly in need of the imputed righteousness of Christ. And so this imputed righteousness of Christ is a righteousness defined by the covenant of works. Through the imputed righteous of Christ, I am now obedient (by grace through faith alone, lest anyone from the Trinity Foundation read this and think to write another book). So through Christ alone I am obedient now. Obedient to what? Now, there is a point here, I promise. All this means that Michael Horton is a monocovenantalist of some stripe. What is imputed to me in the covenant of grace? Covenant-of-works-obedience-through-Christ, that’s what. This means that the continuing validity of the covenant of works is a distinguishing feature of the covenant of grace and is an essential part of it. These covenants are joined at the hip, at least according to Horton. Now I have denied in the past being a monocovenantalist because it seems clear to me that two federal heads necessitate two covenants. No man can serve two masters, and one static covenant cannot have two heads. But it is equally clear that throughout the course of history the headship of Adam is “swallowed up” by the headship of Christ. This is the sense that I believe Horton was pointing to. History matters in all this. At the eschaton, there will only be one covenant, the new covenant. And that new covenant will include within it all the terms of the broken covenant of works, now restored through the obedience of Christ. The point is a simple one—so long as I need the obedience of Christ reckoned to me (which is constantly and always), I will always have some relation to the covenant of works. Through Adam, I was a disobedient son of a broken covenant (of works). Through Christ alone, by the covenant of grace, I am an obedient son of a restored covenant (of works). My thanks to Michael Horton for this suggestive and stimulating line of thought.

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CAN WE PLAY TOO? OCTOBER 6, 2004 I finished listening to the White Horse covenant confusion series. Covenant confusion is right. We have a lot of knots to untie. The center of the problem concerns the use of the word grace in speaking of God’s relationship to Adam before the Fall. Because the word grace is linked in their minds to the idea of overcoming demerit, it is assumed that we must either be asserting some sort of fallenness in the created order, even though God said it was all very good, or we are abusing a perfectly good theological word like grace when we could be using other words like goodness, kindness, etc. And so I return to a question I have posed before, and have not even received an attempt at an answer. What about common grace? We agree that a firm distinction must be maintained between the creational grace enjoyed by Adam in the Garden and the redemptive grace that God bestowed on His elect in Christ. The word grace signifies divine favor, and divine favor to an innocent creature and a fallen sinner will necessarily be manifested in different ways. But in these broadcasts, it was insisted that grace can only be used to describe unmerited favor to sinners, favor that overcomes their sins and demerit. The word charis in the Scripture does mean this overwhelmingly—but not exclusively. Jesus grew in grace. The grace of God was upon Him (Luke 2:40). God’s goodness to Adam in the Garden was expressed through a multitude of gifts—a world, a body, a life, a wife, a Garden, and all the trees but one. None of this is redemptive, none of it implies any deficiency on Adam’s part. This is creational grace. After Adam broke the covenant of creation, God determined to restore what had been done through another covenant. This new covenant had a new federal head, the second Adam. This new covenant was redemptive grace. It does presuppose sin. When grace is extended to sinners, it is manifested differently. Fine, our opponents might say. We agree that God was good to Adam before the Fall, but why do you insist on calling it grace? Well, not because

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we want a controversy, or because we are trying to be perverse. We call it this because this is what we think it is. God was gifting Adam. And this is why I am astonished that those who are fighting our use of creational grace for unfallen Adam in this way are not rejecting the far more problematic concept of common grace for fallen Adam. If the gifts of God bestowed on an unfallen man cannot be called grace (without running the risk of being dubbed a heretic), then how can the gifts of God bestowed on fallen (and reprobate) men be called grace? In other words, our opponents are saying (in effect) that Adam enjoyed no grace from God at all until he disobeyed, and then he started enjoying common grace. Moreover, Cain enjoyed common grace his entire life. But before the Fall, no grace at all. But if grace must overcome demerit, then why is common grace for the reprobate called grace at all? It does not overcome demerit. The answer might be that we understand common grace to be a theological phrase with a stipulated meaning. Okay. Can we play too? Creational grace is not redemptive grace.

AUBURN AVENUE HUBBUB (AAH) COOL QUOTE 11 OCTOBER 7, 2004 In the original creation of the world God made us perfect with the perfection of nature, which consists in our having everything due to our nature. But over and above what is due to our nature there were later added to the human race certain perfections that were solely owing to divine grace. Among these is faith, which is a ‘gift of God,’ as is clear from Ephesians 2.8. —Thomas Aquinas,Exposition of Boethius’ De Trinitate, Question 3, article 1, reply to objection 2.

PRESBYTERY EXAM NOVEMBER 3, 2004 A few weeks ago, I was examined at the presbytery meeting of the Confed- eration of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC). The exam consisted

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of a written portion, and a three hour oral exam, all of it on the doctrinal issues surrounding the Auburn Avenue business. If you are a glutton for punishment, or if you are up on charges for having read Reforming Marriage once, or if you are an insatiable theology wonk, you may find all that stuff by clicking here.

JUST BACK FROM L.A. NOVEMBER 6, 2004 I just arrived back in town from a debate jaunt down to L.A. The hosts of the debate, Alpha/Omega Ministries, were gracious in every respect, and I enjoyed meeting James White, and thoroughly enjoyed our debate. The event was vid- eotaped and will be available sometime soon. When it is, I will post a link here. In some respects, the debate was another round of what I have called “paradigm bumper cars,” but I thought that some of the exchanges were particularly helpful and revealing for those who stand to profit from this debate the most. I have said before that this whole thing is a battle for the second-year seminarians, and I believe they will be able to gather a lot from this exchange. My thanks again to James White and his colleagues for the gracious reception, and for the debate. My opening statement will be in the next post. I was under a full court press by the time limit, and so some portions of the opening statement were dropped and showed up later in the debate. But this is how it was originally written.

OPENING STATEMENT NOVEMBER 6, 2004 “Are Roman Catholics Members of the New Covenant?” a Debate with James White I would like to begin by offering my thanks to Alpha/Omega ministries for inviting me to this event, and to James White for engaging in this debate with me. I have been looking forward to it, and I am genuinely glad to be here. I would also like to thank the many in attendance here, some of whom have come a great distance. It is a great pleasure to be able to address an issue

75 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | OCTOBER–DECEMBER 2004 of some importance in a way that I hope will be truly edifying to the larger Christian community. Before proceeding to my argument, I would like to begin with an assertion so there will be no confusion about my position concerning the Church of Rome. I detest the errors of Rome, and I pray for the day of her repentance. Among those errors I would include the idolatry of the Mass, the use of images in worship, their profound confusion on the matter of faith and works, Purgatory, Mariolatry, merit, the saints, the papacy, and much more. In preparation for this debate, I read James White’s book The Roman Catholic Controversy, which I thought was quite good. Judging from that book, I do not know of any distinctive Roman doctrine concerning which James White and I would disagree. At the same time, I believe our Lord’s teaching requires us to detest our own failings more than those of others, and, as a classical Protestant, I can only lament what the larger Protestant world has become. As someone who wants to be fully identified as a dedicated, convinced, and practicing Protestant-one who by the grace of God is going to die in the evangelical faith he was brought up in-honesty still compels me to state that I detest our sectarianism, in-fighting, gimcrack evangelism, hostility to covenant connections, and lack of historical awareness. These are our besetting sins, and I believe the best way to demand that Rome repent is to show them how. And no, repentance does not require returning to Rome. But it does require returning to the Scriptures, and it does require a new reformation. I fully believe that the issues we are discussing tonight are not at all peripheral to that reformation. Before proceeding to my positive case, I would also like to make a brief preliminary argument (in order to set boundaries for what others might do with our discussion). I appreciate how James White has already framed his understanding of our debate, and so these remarks are not directed to him. But as one who has been condemned as a heretic by certain scribes in the Re- formed Sanhedrin, some of whom could not locate their confessional hinder parts even if allowed to use both hands, I really cannot afford to participate in

76 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | OCTOBER–DECEMBER 2004 a debate like this without making certain things abundantly clear. I am sure you understand my dilemma-and perhaps your heart goes out to me. At the center, this debate is really going to revolve around the question of whether or not Protestant churches should “receive” Roman Catholic baptism, thereby acknowledging it (at some level) to be a valid new covenant baptism. This means that part of this statement will necessarily be an exercise in historical theology, and not just an exegetical question. I understand (fully) that just because certain Reformers held to a position does not automatically make that position scriptural or right. Synods and councils have erred and do err. But bringing this up might prevent modern adherents of these same positions (like me) from having to endure the absurd charge of having abandoned the Reformed faith. From 1517, when the Reformation broke out, down to 1845, when J.H. Thornwell and Charles Hodge differed at the General Assembly of that year over this issue, the overwhelming position of the Reformed churches was that of receiving Roman Catholic baptism. This was not an issue that can be dismissed as an unexamined holdover from the medieval era. It was thoroughly examined, and regularly debated. This was one of the defining issues that distinguished the magisterial reformation from the radical reformation. As I said, this in itself does not make one position or the other right. To determine that, we must turn ultimately to Scripture, as I will seek to do in a few moments. But it does mean that a man should be able to hold this same position today without fear of being labeled sympathetic to Rome. This is not the road to Rome; it is the road our fathers took out of Rome. The magisterial Reformation was not closet popery, and yet some of us today who hold to certain positions articulated and defended in the magisterial Reformation too often have to endure this kind of profound misunderstanding. So, who held to the view that Roman Catholic baptism was a valid administration of new covenant baptism? Among others, I would like to name (as my cohorts in crime) John Calvin, John Knox, Theodore Beza, Wil- liam Perkins, Samuel Rutherford, Richard Baxter, Francis Turretin, Charles Hodge, and A.A. Hodge. Providing implicit support for this view would be

77 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | OCTOBER–DECEMBER 2004 the position outlined by the Westminster Confession of Faith. I am not going to quote extensively from all these gentlemen because we do need to get to the scriptural arguments. But I want to make it perfectly clear that this debate we are having is a comparatively recent intramural Reformed debate (since 1845), and it does not represent a clash between light and darkness, good and evil, Klingons and Smurfs. So here are just a few quotations, to give you some idea of where I got my unsavory opinions. Bad companions, as they say, corrupt good morals.

The French Confession of 1559 “Yet nevertheless, because there is yet some small trace of a Church in the papacy, and that baptism as it is in the substance, hath been still continued . . . we confess that they which are thus baptized do not need a second baptism.”

John Calvin “Such in the present day are our Catabaptists, who deny that we are duly baptized, because we were baptized in the Papacy by wicked men and idolaters; hence they furiously insist on anabaptism.” —Institutes, IV.15.16–17

“So it is with Baptism; it is a sacred and immutable testimony of the grace of God, though it were administered by the devil, though all who may partake of it were ungodly and polluted as to their own persons.” —Commentary on Amos 5:26

John Knox “No more ought we to iterate baptism, by whomsoever it was ministered unto us in our infancy; but if God of his mercy [should] call us from blindness, he maketh our baptism, how corrupt that ever it was, available unto us, by the power of the Holy Spirit.” —Letter, 1556

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Samuel Rutherford Samuel Rutherford provides us with an interesting case, because he not only argues for the legitimacy of Roman Catholic baptism, but does so while arguing for the legitimacy and necessity of Roman Catholic orders. Virtually all Protestants accepted baptism performed by Roman Catholic priests, while there was debate on, for example, baptism performed by Roman Catholic midwives. “[John] Robinson [the Separatist] and our brethren acknowledge that the Church of Rome hath true baptism, even as the vessels of the Lord’s house profaned in Babylon may be carried back to the temple . . . But I answer, if baptism be valid in Rome [then] so are the ministers baptizers.” —“The Validity of Roman Catholic Ministry” in The Due Right of Presbyteries, 1644 (Rutherford is not arguing a reductio here, but rather was arguing for the validity of Roman Catholic ordination.)

A.A. Hodge “All who are baptized into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, recognizing the Trinity of Persons in the Godhead, the incarnation of the Son and his priestly sacrifice, whether they be Greeks, or Arminians, or Romanists, or Lutherans, or Calvinists, or the simple souls who do not know what to call themselves, are our brethren. Baptism is our common countersign. It is the common rallying standard at the head of our several columns.” —Evangelical Theology(Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1976), p. 338.

Note that Hodge called Roman Catholics his brethren. Note only so, but he managed that particular stunt in a Banner of Truth book. Nevertheless, despite this cloud of witnesses, if I am in error on this, and shown to be in error from the Scriptures, I hope before God that I would receive the truth in humility, and confess my fault. But if I were prevailed upon to do this, I would be confessing a characteristic Reformed fault, held by virtually all of our Reformed fathers for 328 years. I would also hope that those same

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Reformed fathers would be equally correctable on this issue, although Knox might present a little trouble. But in any case, for all of them, the arguments would need to be pretty good, and better than the arguments presented to them in their day.

Scriptural Argumentation If the scriptural phrase new covenant is to be taken as synonymous with the elect, or the invisible church, then of course we cannot answer our question in the affirmative. With such an understanding, we could not say that Roman Catholics are members of the new covenant. But of course, because we would now be dealing with the secret decree and the invisible church, we also could not say that Southern Baptists were members of the new covenant, or Free Methodists, or Presbyterians. While I think that the doctrine of sovereign election is an important doctrinal truth, and one that I heartily affirm, I do not believe that this is strictly in view when the Bible uses the phrase new covenant. The number of the elect and the members of the new covenant are not an interchangeable set of names-until the last day. Put in familiar categories, the new covenant people in the New Testament are the visible church, not the invisible church. And as we consider this question, it all comes down to whether or not the Bible teaches that the new covenant can be broken by any of the members of that covenant. Does the new covenant contain covenant-breakers? And because all of us in Adam are in some sense covenant breakers because of the first covenant made with man, the covenant of life made with Adam in the garden, I am pushing the question further. I am asking if the new covenant contains any covenant-breakers of the new covenant itself. Can the new covenant itself be broken? I want to begin by setting a scriptural pattern, and I want to show how this pattern can be seen as culminating in a specific apostolic warning to the Church at Rome, which is the subject of our proposition being debated tonight. Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood

80 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | OCTOBER–DECEMBER 2004 of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace? (Heb. 10: 29) The book of Hebrews was written to a new covenant people, and it was written in order to head off a looming apostasy. That is what the entire book is about. In this verse, we learn that the sanctions of the new covenant are more severe than the sanctions under Moses—“sorer punishment.” The new covenant does not contain “no sanctions,” it contains “more severe sanctions.” If we allow the New Testament to define what Jeremiah meant when he prophesied of the new covenant, we will spend most of our time with the entire book of Hebrews. This book is where we receive an extended and inspired commentary on this prophecy of Jeremiah, and that commentary makes it plain that apostasy is a very real threat for new covenant members. Members of the visible church can and do fall away from Christ. Now is apostasy a possibility for those who are decretally elect? Of course not, but here in this passage we find new covenant members who will receive sorer punishment because they trampled the Son of God underfoot, and reckoned the blood of the covenant, the blood which sanctified them, as an unholy thing. For various reasons, we have a tendency to draw contrasts between the old and new covenant people at precisely those places where the New Testament draws parallels.

Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice, Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness: When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways. So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.) Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we are made partakers of Christ,

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if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end. (Hebrews 3: 7–14)

We are not told that in the new covenant it is impossible for new covenant members to depart from the living God. We are not told that in the new covenant there will be no bodies scattered over the wilderness. We are warned, solemnly, again and again, about the dangers of hardening our hearts in just the way that our fathers the Jews did. Now whatever this means, it cannot mean that in the new covenant such hardening of heart is an impossibility. Again, for clarity’s sake, I want to assert that such apostasy, such hardening of heart, is an impossibility for the elect. And again, just for the record, I am so Calvinistic it makes my back teeth ache. And if the Synod of Dort had come up with six replies to the Remonstrants, then I would be a six-point Calvinist. In another place, the Corinthian Gentiles were beginning to boast, and puff themselves up a little.We have baptism. We have the Lord’s Table. We have spiritual food and spiritual drink. We have Christ. Not so fast, Paul said. So did the Jews in the wilderness, and their bodies were scattered across the wilderness to provide a solemn example for you.

Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; And did all eat the same spiritual meat; And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ. But with many of them God was not well pleased: for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted. (1 Cor. 10: 1–6)

In short, our fathers are our examples, and with a number of them God was not well pleased. But what does all this have to do with the Roman Cath- olic Church? Rome has fallen into the errors it has because she has refused to

82 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | OCTOBER–DECEMBER 2004 heed the warning explicitly given by the apostle Paul to that specific church-a warning very much like the ones we have just been considering. The apostle could already see the stirrings of hubris in that church, in that ancient capital city, and so he spoke to it bluntly. The apostle Paul saw (with remarkable prescience) that the Church at Rome was going to be a problem, and he addressed it forthrightly. And the only thing that is more remarkable than the Church of Rome ignoring these Pauline warnings aimed straight at her besetting sins is that fact that Protestants have also largely ignored the fact that these warning were directed at Rome.

For if the firstfruit be holy, the lump is also holy: and if the root be holy, so are the branches. And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert grafted in among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree; Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee. Thou wilt say then, The branches were broken off, that I might be grafted in. Well; because of unbelief they were broken off, and thou standest by faith. Be not highminded, but fear: For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee. Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off. (Rom. 11:16–22)

“Rome, thou shalt be cut off.” Why? Because of unbelief and covenant presumption. Luther said it well when he said that sola fide is the article of a standing or falling church, and here is the text. Unbelief caused the Jews to be broken off, and “thou standest by faith.” Now this is not a statement that Rome has fallen into complete apostasy, but it certainly is a statement that Rome is capable of complete apostasy. She can fall away, she is not indefectible. This being the case, then why could we not say that Rome has been broken off because of her formal and judicial denial of sola fide at the Council of Trent? Four comments:

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First, the unbelief for which the Jews were cut off in AD 70 was a problem that had plagued them for centuries. God does not operate on a covenant hair trigger. All day long He holds out His hands to a disobedient people. Second, if we drum out of the new covenant anyone who does not hold to a pure understanding of sola fide, then we have not only gotten rid of Rome, but also of most Protestants. Take, as one example of a Protestant Trent, this statement from the Free Will Baptist Articles of Faith. “The human will is free and self-controlled, having power to yield to the influence of the truth and the Spirit, or to resist them and perish.” Would we accept their baptisms? Well, of course we would. Third, if we require a pure understanding of sola fide in order to be included in the new covenant, then we have denied sola fide. It is not faith plus a passing grade on the ordination exam. It is not faith plus anything. It is God-given faith in Jesus, period. Fourth, this is not an issue to be decided by this individual or that one. Either God will do it in a signal and unmistakable way, as He did with the Jews in AD 70, or He will do it working through an ecumenical council of the continuing and faithful church. And unfortunately, the Protestant church is too fragmented to make the kind of statement that one day soon might need to be made. We are too much in need of repentance on this point to be entrusted with any judgment of the lack of repentance on the part of others. But more on this in a moment. It is important for me to acknowledge that this has not always been my position. In the past I have maintained (although I cannot find where I said this) that Rome was guilty of a final apostasy at Trent, where in solemn ecumenical council she anathematized any who faithfully held the biblical gospel. This is no longer my position, and if my worthy opponent has found a quotation of mine that says this, and returns to this point to press me with it, I will merely say, “I changed my mind, and it is a practice I commend to you.” It is nevertheless still my position that what happened at Trent deserved removal from the olive tree, that is, from the catholic church. But I am now convinced that such a removal has not yet occurred. God does not always give us what we deserve.

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Why is this no longer my position? First, I find no signal event of providence that could be interpreted this way. No blazing meteor has landed on the Vatican, while crying out, “Come out from among her, and be ye separate.” Secondly, there has been no concerted ecumenical rejection of Rome as entirely and completely apostate. It might be countered that the Westminster Assembly should count, and they reckoned the papacy as the antichrist. Does that not matter? No, because that Assembly occurred 198 years before classical Protestants began rejecting Roman Catholic baptisms in 1845. The men of Westminster would have been on my side in this debate-again, consider men like Rutherford. The apostle Paul gives us a textual basis for all this in Ephesians:

I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, With all lowliness and meek- ness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love; Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; One Lord, one faith, one baptism, One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all. (Eph. 4:1–6)

The unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, which we are required to preserve, is foundationally Trinitarian. One God and Father. One Lord. One Spirit. Woven in with this Trinitarian reality is the phrase “one baptism.” Baptism into the triune name means what God says it means, and not what the men performing it say or think about it. Let God be true, and every man a liar (Rom. 3:4). In principle, could anything happen in the future that would make Ro- man Catholic baptism “unreceivable” by faithful Protestant churches-with or without a Protestant ecumenical council? Yes, and I honestly don’t know if it is far off or not. The Roman church is shot through with theological liberalism, which Machen correctly identified as another religion entirely. And it is interesting to note in passing how Machen spoke of Rome in this regard:

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Yet how great is the common heritage which unites the Roman Catholic Church, with its maintenance of the authority of Holy Scripture and with its acceptance of the great early creeds, to devout Protestants today! . . . The Church of Rome may represent a perversion of the Christian religion; but naturalistic liberalism is not Christianity at all (Christianity and Liberalism, p. 52).

But Rome now has a bad dose of that same liberalism. Couple this with feminism, the appeal of Mariolatry to the natural man, and it is quite possible that Mary will eventually get her big promotion, and people will be baptized into the name of a Quaternity. When the creedal core has rotted out, the liturgy cannot remain indefinitely the same. We see this in the mainline denominations which abandoned the faith in substance, but kept the old triune form for a time, a form which we should receive. Let God be true. But the rot has to spread, and eventually people will be baptized in the name of God the Mother, or Allah, or Shiva. And of course, all such baptisms are no baptisms at all. So then, Trinitarian baptism, baptism into the triune name, places an individual into an objective covenant relationship with Christ. This does not mean that he is automatically regenerate, or that he is necessarily among the elect. The baptism, however, constitutes a word from God, and it requires of that person that he repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. If he does not, then he is a covenant breaker, and God will remove him from the covenant. If he repents and believes, then he is keeping covenant through the perfect righteousness of Jesus, the only perfect covenant keeper. If he repents sometime after his baptism, he does not need to be baptized again. This is the position of our Reformed forefathers, and it is a position that is fair and orderly. The conclusion is that I believe that faithless Roman Catholics are in fact members of the new covenant. Otherwise, how could they be covenant breakers? To illustrate our difference, James White believes faithless Roman Catholics to be guilty of the sin of spiritual fornication. I believe them to be guilty of the far more serious sin of spiritual adultery. Part of my mission here tonight is to encourage my brother to be a little harder on Rome.

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MYSTERY THEOLOGY THEATER NOVEMBER 16, 2004

Color Commentary on A Précis of the Federal Vision (FV) Précis by the Mississippi Valley Presbytery (PCA) Play by Play Commentary by Douglas Wilson in italics

‘Proponents of the FV identify themselves as Reformed. You betcher. Most appeal to the writings of the sixteenth century Reformers in support of their views. But this is only because they were obliging enough to provide us with all those neat quotations, and to teach us all these things in the first place.Many regard the Reformed thought of the British Puritan and American Presby- terian traditions to have capitulated to the Enlightenment, what is termed Revivalism, and what is termed baptistic theology. I don’t think it is quite that bad, but statements like this one aren’t helping. FV proponents define the covenant as an objective relationship that is independent of the covenant member’s subjective considerations of the strength or nature of his membership. Right. Marriage is marriage, whether the marriage is a good one or a bad one. FV proponents also define the covenant as essentially a vital relationship between God and the covenant member. What? Huh? Downplayed are the legal and forensic dimensions of the covenant. Huh? What? Membership within the covenant is conceived in an undifferentiated manner: the distinction between a non-communicant and a communicant member of the church is either downplayed or eliminated. Non-communicant members of the church? I just gotta get me some new Bible software. I can’t find this stuff anywhere. FV proponents argue that this doctrine of the covenant requires reformu- lation of the doctrine of the Trinity. Learning and applying the doctrine of the Trinity is not the same thing as reformulating it. The divine unity is framed in terms of covenantal relationship among the three persons. FV proponents deny the traditional doctrine of the covenant of works. I keep forgetting. Are we against tradition or for it? One proponent has denied

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the imputation of Adam’s sin to his posterity. And another proponent affirms it while standing on his chair! FV proponents deny the imputation of Christ’s active (and perhaps passive) obedience to the believer for justification. When did I do that? I don’t remember. It was dark. They were big.The “righteousness” of the believer in justification is sometimes said to be the believer’s covenantal faithfulness. Jus- tification is defined in terms of a process not a definite act nuh uh; and good works are said to be necessary to justification, particularly to the believer’s “final justification” at the Day of Judgment. One proponent has argued for not fewer than three instruments of justification: faith, covenantal faithfulness, and baptism. As opposed to the four they argue for—preaching, hearing, faith, and convincing the session that something happened in your heart. Following Norman Shepherd, FV proponents argue that election must be understood in terms of the covenant, not vice versa. The result is formulations of election that render one’s election a process and a function of one’s covenantal obedience. I give up. I don’t care anymore. Coupled with this is a denial of the traditional doctrine [more tradition! but different from Rome’s!]of the visible and invisible church and a practical denial of the distinction between common and saving operations of the Spirit as distinguishing the sincere believer from the hypocrite. So what do we think does distinguish them? One proponent has even denied the doctrine of individual regeneration. Oh? Does that mean the rest of us didn’t? FV proponents point to objective grounds for one’s assurance while practically denying subjective grounds for one’s assurance. Except for the entire chapter I wrote on subjective assurance in RINE5. For assurance, the believer is directed away from discerning the inward and spiritual graces unique to the regenerate person, and we all know how much assurance that produces, and is directed towards his water baptism. FV explanations of apostasy suggest that a believer may genuinely possess Christ’s redemptive benefits and yet lose them. I would give up some more, but I already did that.

5 Here and throughout, RINE stands for “Reformed” Is Not Enough.

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FV proponents understand the doctrine of the sacramental union to mean that the sign and the thing signified invariably accompany one another. I agree with this assessment, provided I can understand it as meaning that the sign and thing signified frequently do not accompany one another.Baptismal efficacy is affirmed, therefore, of every recipient of the sacrament. I agree with this too, provided I am allowed to change it into what I actually do believe. All the blessings and benefits of Christ’s work are sometimes said to be conferred upon the recipient in baptism. Baptism is assigned a place in the doctrine of the Christian life that denigrates the place of preaching as the instrument of conversion. Preaching is an instrument of conversion? Holy moly! What happened to sola fide?

DISTINGUISHING AND CONSTRUING NOVEMBER 16, 2004

“There’s an ill fama of you gone abroad, Mr Sempill, and it is my duty as your elder in the Lord’s service to satisfy myself thereanent. It is reported that you pervert the doctrine of election into grace, maintaining that this blessed estate may be forfeit by a failure in good works, as if the filthy rags of man’s righteousness were mair than the bite of a flea in face of the eternal purposes of God.” “I say that a man who believes that his redemption through Christ gives him a license to sin is more doubly damned than if he had never had a glimpse of grace.” “But ye maun distinguish. The point is far finer than that, sir. I will construe your words, for there is an interpretation of them which is rank heresy.” The task of construing and distinguishing did not fare well, for every few minutes the teeth of Mr. Proudfoot were shaken in his head by his horse’s vagaries. He had just reached a point of inordinate subtley, when the track of Bold branched off, and his animal, recognising at last the road home, darted down it at a rough gallop. The last seen of the minister of Bold was a massive figure swaying like a ship in a gale, and

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still, if one might trust the echoes the wind brought back, distinguishing and construing. —John Buchan, Witch Wood

AUBURN AVENUE HUBBUB (AAH) COOL QUOTE 12 NOVEMBER 18, 2004 From Death of Death by John Owen

[Christ’s] own exaltation, indeed, and power over all flesh, and his appointment to be Judge of the quick and the dead, was a consequent of his deep humiliation and suffering; but that it was the effect and product of it, procured meritoriously by it, that it was the end aimed at by him in his making satisfaction for sin, that we deny.

IF FEDERAL VISION WERE A BEER NOVEMBER 26, 2004 My friend Cal Beisner sent me a copy of a new P&R book, which I just finished reading this morning. The book was entitled Justification and the New Perspectives on Paul, so guess what it was about. Overall I would rate it as a very fine book, one that I highly recommend, but one with a handful of unfortunate spots. The author, Guy Waters, studied under E.P. Sanders, and so this book should be read for what it is—a careful, sane, and nuanced criticism of the various forms of the New Perspective from someone who is well qualified to offer that criticism. The book begins with a background history of modern critical thinking on Paul (Bultmann and such) and treats various figures in the development of the New Perspective (and as the title indicates, there is more than one New Perspec- tive). Waters works through Stendahl, Sanders, Raisanen (sorry, can’t do those little Scandanavian dot thingies over the gentleman’s a’s), Dunn, and N.T. Wright. In descending order, I agreed enthusiastically with Waters’s criticism of Sanders and Raisanen, I agreed almost entirely with his criticism of Dunn, and largely with his criticism of N.T. Wright. I do think there were a few places where Waters does not do justice to Wright (e.g., pp. 133, 142), where he

90 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | OCTOBER–DECEMBER 2004 fills in what Wright “must be saying.” But the section where Waters describes why N.T. Wright is so attractive (and genuinely helpful) to many among the Reformed was really insightful, and I thought, dead on. The unfortunate spots in this book are small, but unfortunately, still there. The last eight pages of the book undertake to deal with Norman Shepherd and the summary doctrinal statement of the session of the Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church. To attempt this in the scope of just a few pages, and as the conclusion of a book dedicated to the New Perspective, can be counted on to confuse and mislead. And if there is one controversy where we could use a little less of that, it has been this one. More than once in this whole farce, it would have been a good idea for everyone to look down and double-check the color of their own uniform. Allow me to throw together a bunch of random facts that should show clearly that this should have been done in these 8 pages. Norman Shepherd’s project has almost nothing to do with the New Perspective. Richard Gaffin wrote a cover blurb for Call of Grace, Shepherd’s book, put out by P&R, the same folks who put out Waters’s book. But Richard Gaffin is commended in the bibliography of Waters’s book for writing a fine critique of the New Perspective. In fact, at this next Auburn Avenue conference, Richard Gaffin is going to be engaged in a critical but amicable discussion with N.T. Wright. Now, when we Federal Vision troublemakers are sitting there listening to the discussion between Gaffin and Wright, though Christian charity will radiate from us in every direction like heat from a stove, where shall our doctrinal sympathies be? Mine will be with Gaffin; his concerns are mine. This means, according to the bibliography, that since his concerns are the concerns of Waters, my concerns are those of Waters. But Gaffin is friendly to Shepherd, and I don’t know who is on what team anymore. Now it is quite possible that I am lined up with Gaffin because I am a Federal Vision Amber, and that some of the Federal Vision Lagers might sym- pathize more with Wright. Maybe, but I don’t think so. And in any case, the whole thing is way too complicated to undertake a treatment in 8 pages. The only thing that those 8 pages will do is reinforce the false impression that the

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Federal Vision is just another form of the New Perspective, but with minor adaptations to the American Reformed scene. This is particularly problematic for me since it has been about a year since the special issue of Credenda came out, critiquing the New Perspective. The central concerns I laid out in A Pauline Take on the New Perspective line up very nicely with the central concerns of Waters’s book. So why are agreements being ignored? Still, one last positive comment. Even in this unfortunate conclusion to an otherwise fine book, Waters still writes like a gentleman and a Christian. It is evident that he is not in the business of hyperventilating, heaving dead cats, or getting spittle on his keyboard. He seeks to make distinctions worth making, even in this section, and I believe that doctrinal discussion with a man like this would be a discussion well worth having.

HORTON AND WILSON NOVEMBER 30, 2004 Yesterday I had a very productive conversation with Michael Horton, arranged by the good folks at St. Anne’s Pub, an audio journal. The proceedings were of course taped, and will be available from them in a week or so. While you are there, please check out the other things being done by that most valuable ministry. A CD version of our discussion will be available from Canon Press.6 Coincidentally, I just finished reading Alister McGrath’s The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation. That book accented one of the things that is tripping us up, centuries later, in this conversation. And that, it seems to me, is the tendency to blur uses and applications of something with the inherent nature of that something. The threeuses of the law are very different from the inherent nature of the law. And when I look at a passage (“law or gospel?”), it is easy to miss the fact that this is a question of hermeneutical use, and not a statement about the inherent nature of the law (or the gospel), or the scriptural passage I am looking at for that matter.

6 Available at St. Anne’s or Canon.

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What the text is saying, and what the text is doing to me, may be two different things entirely. At any rate, I hope the conversation shows that productive conversation on these issues is possible, and I hope that we can widen the discussion—if for no other reason to identify the places where we genuinely differ, getting rid of superficial or apparent disagreements. Anyhow, if you are at all interested in this issue, try to get this recording when it is available.

TRAILER COMMITTEE NOVEMBER 30, 2004 A few days ago, I mentioned Guy Waters’s book on the New Perspective on Paul, and did not heap scorn upon it. Rather, I commended it, all but the last eight pages, which really were unfortunate. When I wrote that review, I did not know that Guy Waters was on the committee for Mississippi Valley Presbyery that recently (pre)released a committee report on all this Stuff. It seems funny to me to have a report like this circulating in public before the presbytery has a chance to approve it (or not). But I am a stranger to the ways of the Presbyterians’ MVP (heh heh), and so what do I know? Maybe it is like the movie industry where they release trailers before releasing the movie, in order to stir up interest. Anyhow, the trailers had something on Shepherd, something on the New Perspective, something on Auburn Ave, etc. A few days ago, I provided a color commentary on the section devoted to the Federal Vision, which made a dog’s breakfast out of what we are supposed to believe. Nevertheless, I continue to appreciate Waters’s book (may its pages never yellow!), but the last eight pages showed that he does confound things that ought not to be confounded. And the MVP committee trailers show that some of those same things are being confounded by this trailer committee. The vast majority of Waters’s book shows that he is capable of critical analysis that is fair to those he is criticizing. So far, this does not appear to be true of the committee he is on. My thanks to the reader who pointed out Waters’s membership on this committee.

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FAITH, DEAD OR ALIVE? DECEMBER 6, 2004 In my recent conversation with Michael Horton, he raised a question that I did not get a chance to answer in the course of our discussion. He had a problem with the fact that I had said somewhere that “works is the animating principle of faith.” By saying this, I do not mean that faith is one thing, and that works are another, and that when you put the two of them together, you get an autonomous basis for commending yourself to God in the day of judgment. We are saved by grace through faith, period. But what is the nature of that faith? Is it alive, or dead? And if it is alive, then what is the qualitative nature of that life? The answer to that question can be found in James 2:26, using James’s theological vocabulary (and not Paul’s!). “For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.” For James, the spirit is the animating principle of the body. Without the spirit, the body is unanimated, i.e., dead. This relationship is identical to the relationship of faith without works (James tells us). Faith without works is like a body without the spirit. In this analogy (which is in the Bible), faith is compared to the body, and the works are compared to the spirit. I was simply trying to be faithful to what James said. I recognize that James and Paul have differing stipulated vocabularies. “Works” is a word that does not refer to the same thing for the two men. Paul is at war with dead works, and James is at war with dead faith. We are the heirs of both men, and ought to be at war with both dead works and dead faith. The enemy is death, not faith or works. Works for James is fruit for Paul. But within the clear usage that James gives us, it is indisputable that works is the animating principle of faith.

WHEN PROBLEMS GLARE DEC 6, 2004 He may not be thrilled with this commendation, but in a recent journal article (Mid-America Journal of Theology), Alan Strange has an outstanding review of Gordon Clark’s What Is Saving Faith?

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He praises where praise is due and points out glaring problems where said problems glare. And as Strange notes several times in the article, the nature of saving faith is a “significant factor in the current debates about justification.” And the question that this review article raises is this: What on earth are Clarkians (like John Robbins) doing in the forefront of “defending” traditional Reformed orthodoxy on this subject when their position necessarily involves a rejection of traditional Reformed orthodoxy on this subject? Is saving faith really intellectual assent to propositions?

FEDERAL AUDIO STUFF AVAILABLE DEC 13, 2004 A week or so ago I mentioned that the folks at St. Anne’s Public House had interviewed me together with Michael Horton on issues related to the Federal Vision. Well, the glad day when that interview can be made available has arrived, and so here it is.7 Of course, I was there when we recorded it, but I just had a chance to listen to it again and was very encouraged. We were doctrinally close in a number of areas, some of them predictable, and some of them not. If you are following this subject at all, you need to give it a listen. While you are there at the Canon website, you can also check out the recording of my doctrinal examination at the most recent CREC presbytery. And a hearty thank you to Christ Church in Spokane for setting up this forum, and for putting out the St. Anne’s Pub.

YEAH, UH HUH FAITH DECEMBER 13, 2004 John Robbins says the following, in an ostensible defense of Protestant orthodoxy. Gordon Clark apparently closed the back door “through which much of this Neolegalism has entered the churches: the notions that saving faith is different from belief, and more than belief, and that it is ‘commitment’ as well” (The Current Justification Controversy, p. 74).

7 Available from St. Anne’s or Canon.

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The fact that someone who believes that saving faith is nothing more or less than mental assent to propositions has somehow come to be regarded as a defender of the Reformed faith is a remarkable phenomenon, and worthy of study.

AUBURN AVENUE HUBBUB (AAH) COOL QUOTE 13 DEC 17, 2004 This covenant is variously styled, from one or other of these several elements. Thus, it is called the ‘covenant of works,’ because perfect obedience was its condition, and to distinguish it from the covenant of grace, which rests our salvation on a different basis altogether. It is also called the ‘covenant of life.’ because life was promised on condition of the obedience. It is also called a ‘legal covenant,’ because it demanded the literal fulfillment of the claims of the moral law as the condition of God’s favour. This covenant was also in its essence a covenant of grace, in that it graciously promised life in the society of God as the freely-granted reward of an obedience already unconditionally due. Nevertheless it was a covenant of works and of law with respect to its demands and conditions. —A.A. Hodge, The Confession of Faith (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1958), p. 122, although the emphasis is emphasis here is mine.

SOME RESPONSES TO DR. FESKO DEC 18, 2004 Dr. Fesko is an Adjunct Professor of Theology at RTS, Atlanta, and is serving on a study commission of the OPC, a group tasked check out the Federal Vision. He recently released a paper toward that end, entitled “The Federal Vision and the Covenant of Works.” To that paper, I offer a few comments. The first comment belongs in the “talking past one another” department. Dr. Fesko says, “The traditional view posits Adam in a covenantal relationship that is conditioned by obedience in order to obtain eternal life. The Federal Vision, on the other hand, sees Adam in a covenantal relationship that is conditioned by a need for maturity . . .” Well, okay thus far. But how would that

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maturity be reached? By personal and perpetual obedience, that’s how. The issue we have with the covenant of works is not on the need for obedience. It is whether or not that obedience is necessarily related to something else called merit. For a second example, Dr. Fesko says, “We must ask, however, where in the Scriptures do we see a covenant defined only as a relationship. While relationships certainly take place within the context of a covenant, we must recognize that Scripture sees a covenant primarily as an agreement.” This is the kind of unnecessary disagreement that is just exasperating. We do have substantive disagreements, and we should be discussing them. But this is not one of them. To say that Scripture sees a covenant primarily as an agreement, setting it in opposition to seeing covenant as relationship, is simply missing what an agreement is. An agreement is an agreement between persons. It is a relationship. An agreement is an agreed upon relation. A lease agreement form sitting on the shelf of a stationery store is just a form. It is not an agreement until persons make the agreement.

SMITH AND FESKO DEC 18, 2004 Dr. Fesko also objected to seeing the covenant as part of the triune life and spent a good bit of time answering some of the points raised by Ralph Smith on that score. “The legal element in the covenant is not a problem unless one argues, as does the Federal Vision, that covenant is part of the opera ad intra of the Trinity.” But the covenants that are made with men are not exact reenactments of the covenantal nature of God. There are aspects of God’s nature that are communi- cable, and aspects that are not. Nevertheless, there should be no problem in acknowledging that there are elements in our covenants, such as the legal aspect, that answer to something in the divine nature. What we are looking for is not a Platonic form of “legal element,” but rather a transcendent and divine basis for all that we experience in covenant. I have begotten children, and the Father has begotten His Son eternally. These are not even remotely identical, but they do

97 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | OCTOBER–DECEMBER 2004 answer to one another, and the Bible encourages us to see it that way. So when I submit to a legal stipulation of a covenant, this is not even remotely identical to the Son obeying the will of the Father, taking the form of a servant, and dying for us. But they do answer to one another somehow.

JORDAN AND FESKO DEC 18, 2004 Dr. Fesko also takes issue with Jim Jordan on the subject of death and maturity. Before defending Jordan’s point, let me agree with Dr. Fesko’s objection on his use of terms. To use the word death to describe the transformation/ glorification/maturation of Adam, had he not sinned, is, in my judgment, prone to do nothing but mislead. This is so on two counts. First, one of the driving themes of the Federal Vision is that we must be allowed to speak as Scripture speaks, and we should strive to function within those categories. But, as Dr. Fesko points out, the Bible describes death as an enemy, something introduced to the world by Adam’s sin. (Incidentally, I am looking forward to Dr. Fesko using this point, which is a very good one, to critique all the old- earthers out there who think that the fossil record of death somehow could predate Adam.) To use the term death to refer to an unfallen transformation to a higher degree of glory is, at the very least, a non-biblical way of speaking. And this leads to the misunderstandings that are likely to occur among the saint as a result, which is my second point. This is comparable to saying something like, “Had the serpent not sinned, and had Eve not been deceived, and had Adam not rebelled, they would have all walked in the garden in warm satanic fellowship, which, as we know, is the best kind of creaturely fellowship there is. Therefore, let us promote a godly satanic fellowship today.” There are too many ifs here, and our theology starts to inch out on to the skinny branches. What is the use in saying that if we had some ham, we could make a ham and cheese sandwich, if we had some cheese? That said, Jordan’s point, to which Dr. Fesko also objects, should be considered incontrovertible. There should be no disagreement among the Re- formed that Adam’s condition was probationary. Had Adam not sinned, is

98 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | OCTOBER–DECEMBER 2004 there any doubt that he would have been glorified? Is there any doubt that this transformation would have resulted in Adam coming to full maturity? In fact, I think that Jim’s point is so obviously true that the only thing that could have thrown Dr. Fesko off the point is the use of that word death.

WILSON AND FESKO DEC 18, 2004 Dr. Fesko’s critique interacts mostly with Jim Jordan, Rich Lusk, and Ralph Smith. In his critique, he frequently misses the point being made by these men, although I also believe he raises some legitimate questions. But when he comes to summarize his concerns, he does so in a way that expands his critique to include others, including me. Dr. Fesko says this: “The evidence has demonstrated that the Federal Vi- sion does not merely represent one variant of reformed theology but an entirely different system of doctrine. They deny the primary authority of Scrip- ture in theology, the covenant of works, the adversarial nature of death, the ability of man to obey the command in the garden, the traditional distinction of the active and passive obedience of Christ, the imputation of the active obedience of Christ, the historic understanding of the work of Christ, and the traditional definition of faith. What is troubling is that proponents of the Federal Vision claim they are building upon the historic reformed faith. One writer, for example, states that ‘we do understand ourselves to be in the middle of the mainstream of historic Reformed orthodoxy.” Note the reference to the “Federal Vision” as a whole in the first sentence, the words “they deny” that begin the second sentence, the catalog of doctrinal problems that follow, and then his quotation of my essay on union with Christ in The Auburn Avenue Theology. He is guilty at this point of what can only be described as extraordinary sloppiness. Let me run through his catalog of our deficiencies to show what I mean. In my responses I am speaking only for myself, although I believe many of the same responses would apply also to other Federal Vision types. Moreover, my responses on these points are very much part of the public record of this controversy.

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Dr. Fesko says:

1. They deny the primary authority of Scripture in theology. But I affirm it, stoutly. 2. They deny the covenant of works. If you mean a covenant of obedience, I affirm it. But if you mean a covenant of autonomous merit, I deny it. There is likely a true disagreement here. 3. They deny the adversarial nature of death.But I affirm that death is an enemy, an adversary, and that this is necessarily so. 4. They deny the ability of man to obey the command in the garden. I affirm the ability of man to have obeyed God in the garden. And had he obeyed, he would have thanked God for His gracious preservation. 5. They deny the traditional distinction of the active and passive obedience of Christ. I affirm the traditional distinction between the active and passive obedience of Christ. 6. They deny the imputation of the active obedience of Christ. Turns out that I affirm it. Like Machen said, no hope without it. 7. They deny the historic understanding of the work of Christ. I affirm it. Me and Leon Morris are fishing buddies. 8. They deny the traditional definition of faith. I affirm the traditional definition of faith, which rests upon Christ alone as He is offered in the gospel.

This is an accuracy rate that is (at its highest, depending on how the covenant of works discussion goes) around twelve percent. And then Dr. Fes- ko quotes me as defending this collage of misrepresentations as being in the middle of the Reformed mainstream. This is more than embarrassing. If Dr. Fesko wants the OPC study commission to be received with anything other than a horse laugh, he needs to take far better care in gathering his facts. This is such a striking misrepresentation, that I would like to take this opportunity to call upon Dr. Fesko, who is a godly Christian gentleman, to retract that portion of his paper, and to apologize for it.

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AUBURN 2005 JAN 7, 2005 The Auburn Avenue Pastors’ Conference 2005 just concluded this last Wednesday, and I just got back from Louisiana last night. I’d like to briefly review the conference in three posts. Here in the first one I would like to thank the conference organizers and the participants for a very helpful conference, both in terms of structure and theme. The structure and theme were a set of parallel lectures on the theology of Paul by Richard Gaffin and N.T. Wright, each of them giving five lectures. In the question and answer sessions, each session would begin with the lecturers asking one another questions before we got to the questions from the audience. The conference was not a debate, but it was very helpful in highlighting areas of agreement between a classical (historical/redemptive) expression of the Reformed faith represented by Gaffin, and a conservative expression of the New Perspective on Paul represented by Wright. In addition, the set up was well suited for showcasing where there is continuing and significant disagreement. The last thing about this topic has to do with the helpfulness of this kind of irenic theological discussion. Nothing was more apparent than that there is a great deal to talk about and work through. Each speaker was very respectful of the other, and the way the conference was set up it is probable that a good many misunderstandings were cleared up, and no whacking great new ones were generated. This expression of gratitude is not so that we will never differ in some sort of false ecumenism, but rather that we might get to the actual differences. In many ways, it was a very satisfying conference.

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RICHARD GAFFIN AT AUBURN 2005 JAN 7, 2004 Richard Gaffin is a gracious Christian gentleman, who really knows his subject. I learned a great deal from his talks and appreciated how careful he was being. Some of this was no doubt because of the setting, for, after all, he was speaking at the Auburn Avenue Pastors’ Conference. This means that his words are going to be gone over in a painstaking way by examiners with unsympathetic eyes, not to mention a small contingent of people who don’t know what “careful” means. Because they will not be careful, Dr. Gaffin needed to be. This meant that Gaffin’s talks could not really be described as stemwinders, but they were thorough, solid, and very good. He did not jump into the fray in media res, but rather started with a prolegomenon, and laid his foundation stones carefully. Some listening to the lecture tapes might initially wonder at the method (“what’s his point?”, but he was simply being diligent in his approach. By the time he was done with his talks, the value of the early preparation work should have been evident. The most helpful thing to me personally was his treatment of the sense in which we may speak of future justification. Without denying the declarative (and definitive “once-for-all-ness”) nature of justification in the life of the believer, Gaffin did a masterful job of showing how the central “already/not yet” elements of Paul’s theology have to be taken into account when we talk about the final vindication of God’s people in the resurrection. No one could honestly think that Gaffin was saying that God will justify us on the basis of our own autonomous works, and yet he did full justice to the language of Paul on this, particularly when it came to the question of our adoption as sons. This adoption as sons is described by Paul as finalized in the redemption of our bodies. If adoption has a forensic component, as Dr. Gaffin showed, then this means that this declarative and forensic component has a future manifestation. This is just a thumbnail sketch of his argument, and so I refer you to the tapes. I am very grateful to Dr. Gaffin for his agreement to speak at the conference, for the work he did in preparing for it, and for the help he was to me in

102 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | 2005 his lectures. It was an honor to meet him, and to talk about some of the larger controversies we are all involved in. If more in the Reformed establishment responded to so-called “new stuff” in the sober and sane way that Gaffin has, all of us would be a lot better off. N.T. Wright said during the conference that if New Testament studies had been flowing in a Ridderbosian channel (my expression, not his), the reaction of Sanders to Lutheranism (and Lutheran- ism gone to seed in folks like Bultmann) would have been unnecessary. In my view, the same compliment should be accorded to Gaffin and his work. That in the New Perspective which is a healthy corrective to older errors actually antedates the advent of the New Perspective.

N.T. WRIGHT AT AUBURN 2005 JAN 7, 2004 The bulk of my review of N.T. Wright’s presentations at Auburn 2005 will be occupied with concerned observations and/or criticisms, so I need to establish the context of all this in the first couple of paragraphs. In all my years of listening to Christian speakers, I have to say that I have never heard anyone so gifted, or so compelling. He is a very great gift of God to the Church at large, and to the Church of England particularly. He was witty, humble and self-deprecating, very effective as a speaker, and a master of the raw material under discussion. He spoke as though all the text of all Scripture were laid out flat before him on a table, and he could instantly point to any place in Scripture and show its relevance to the topic under discussion. I have never seen anyone who had so much Scripture instantly at his fingertips. This gift of God to the Church at large is currently the Bishop of Durham, and the Church of England is in the midst of a very great crisis indeed. This is the crisis provoked by the arrogant ordination of a practicing homosexual as a bishop by the bishops of the American Episcopal Church. I don’t know if we can be optimistic about the outcome, but if something good comes from it, I think Wright will be involved in that good. When I went to the conference, I was already appreciative of much of Wright’s work, and came away with a much deeper appreciation of him. His talks were extraordinarily edifying.

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That said, just a few comments. Much of this comes from things he said in the course of his talks, some from things in the air, and some of it from questions I was able to ask him. One of the great emphases in Wright is the impossibility of depoliticizing the gospel. His talk on eschatology (I think it was Tuesday night) was simply stupendous, and he notes, rightly, that the restoration of humanity in Christ cannot be tucked away in some private place. These things cannot be done in a corner. But when Wright comes to make the (necessary) applications of this, his socialistic environment manifests itself. In England, and in some of the circles he visits in America, he is considered something of a dangerous conservative, and this is something of an optical illusion. Wright needs to come to grips with the fact that many Americans who are attracted to what he is saying about the public nature of discipleship will not make the same political applications of this truth that he would. To him, one public application of the lordship of Christ means the forgiveness of Third World debts. The way believing Americans would apply it would be more likely to involve protecting gun ownership. All this serves to warn us—the Church needs to work through a lot of things before we take the show on the road. Americans would be prone to simply reproduce our radical individualism in the name of Jesus, which is not helped if the English evangelicals simply reproduce the quasi-socialism that they are used to—in the name of Jesus. Related to this is Wright’s acceptance of women’s ordination. How someone who knows Paul the way Wright knows Paul can process this is simply beyond me. But because Wright generally is so masterful in things Pauline, I think something like this is a good reminder for us. We should be extremely grateful for Wright, but not so dazzled that we allow him to slip something in that is manifestly not true (and in this case, something that is at odds with Wright’s larger project). The whole thing reminds me of the old joke told about Charles Spurgeon (by a Presbyterian): God gave so many gifts to Spurgeon that He knew we would be tempted to idolize him . . . so He made him a Baptist. Then there is the question of whether Saul (before the Damascus road experience) was blameless according to the law. Paul says that he was in

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Philippians 3:6, a point made by Wright at the conference. But is Paul saying that he really was blameless, or that he thought he was (to the admiration of all his fellow Pharisees)? I asked Wright if he thought that Paul and Zacharias, who is also described as blameless in his observance of the law (Luke 1:6), would have gotten along. Wright said he thought Zacharias would have thought Paul a dangerous hothead, which I think is exactly right. But being a dangerous hothead is not blameless. Paul describes himself as having been an insolent man, which was not okay according to the law. Wright acknowledged that Paul did have something wrong with him, but this issue lies right at the heart of all the “boundary marker” questions. Zacharias was a covenant-keeping Jew, and Saul was a covenant-breaking Jew. I was happy that Wright acknowledged a difference of some sort between them but concerned that he doesn’t appear to see the relevance of this to one of the big New Perspective issues. The last point regards inerrancy. Wright is clearly committed to the functional authority of Scripture, but the way he answered the question looked like a dodge. I believe he has an important point to make about inerrancy (and the problems of precisionism), but the question itself is not a matter of American categories. Perhaps I can note more about this later.

THE B.T.K. KILLER AND THE OBJECTIVITY OF THE COVENANT MARCH 4, 2005 The recent arrest of Dennis Rader for the infamous B.T.K. killings presents an interesting dilemma for those who want to maintain, as I do, the objectivity of the covenant. For the sake of this discussion, I want to assume that the reports are true that Rader has confessed to a number of the killings, and that Rader is in fact guilty. If that were not the case, then our discussion should revolve around rules of evidence, and what constitutes proof. The thing that makes this a problem for the objectivity of the covenant is that Rader does not meet the standard profile of a serial killer. He is a family man, and the president of his congregation, Christ Lutheran

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Church. His pastor has visited him in prison and has said some things that provoke these musings now. After his visit, Rader’s pastor said, “We are not going to cut him off. I could tell that he was relieved . . . He is still a part of the body of Christ—and that is something some people will have a hard time hearing.” Now some might say that this is the “objectivity of the covenant” coming back at us with a vengeance. Here is a man who has confessed to a number of horrendous murders over a span of decades and who remains a member of a Trinitarian church. He is baptized and has not been excommunicated. His pastor certainly seems to think (in some measure) in terms of Dennis Rader’s objective standing within the covenant. But how are we to process this? Here are some preliminary thoughts.

1. No one has ever done anything so horrendous that God’s forgiveness in Christ cannot reach him. Salvation is according to grace, not according to works. Of course Rader does not deserve to be saved. No one does. 2. Because Rader was a member of a Christian church, he had a standing obligation to repent of his grotesque sins, and believe in Christ. 3. His confessed behavior indicates that he was in defiance of this covenantal obligation over an extended period of time, over decades. 4. This does not mean that he cannot repent now, but the Bible must be the only rule for us in defining what actual repentance looks like. There is a sorrow that leads only to death, but a godly sorrow leads to repentance without regret. 5. In a situation like this one, again, assuming the confessions of guilt, what would repentance look like? In short, what sort of repentance should Christ Lutheran Church accept, so that Rader might remain a member, and not be “cut off,” as his pastor put it? 6. A genuinely repentant man in such circumstances must confess everything, fully and completely, and this would include any crimes he has not been charged with. The chances are good that the authorities do not know everything he has done. He must plead guilty in court to

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any crimes he committed, publicly declare that he has sought God’s forgiveness, and ask for forgiveness from the families of the victims. So that they might know that this is not just talk, Rader must strive to receive the death penalty. A repentant man who had done these things would evidence his repentance in his whole-hearted desire to be executed. In this, he should echo the words of the apostle Paul. “For if I be an offender, or have committed any thing worthy of death, I refuse not to die” (Acts. 25:11). 7. If in substance he manifests repentance this way, that repentance should be accepted by his brothers and sisters in Christ, and he should willingly go to his death a communicant member of Christ Lutheran Church. If he does not do these things, if his declared repentance is only an emotional sorrow that does not bear the marks of true repentance, then he should be excommunicated from his church.

The situation is obviously filled with tangles, and I do not envy Rader’s pastor at all. He was right that a godly response to the situation contains things that “some people will have a hard time hearing.” But the difficulty should cut across the political spectrum. Those who think that the grace of God could never come to someone like Rader will have a hard time hearing about any kind of forgiveness for such a man. And those who think that forgiveness must mean a removal of all consequences will have a hard time hearing that a repentant man in such a case must ask to be executed and must be supported in this desire by his church. But there it is.

THREE STUMBLING BLOCKS MARCH 15, 2005 When it appears that the Holy Spirit has begun to create new wine in the church, why do Christian leaders sometimes fail to drink it? Let us begin by acknowledging that sometimes it is because they are courageous and insightful. Athanasius was against the world, and the new wine of Arianism was actually stump water with clever marketing. The same kind of

107 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | 2005 thing could be said of all the slick hype over ministry in a postmodern matrix, whatever that is supposed to mean. But let us assume for a moment that the Holy Spirit really has begun to work in a significant way, and that entrenched religious authorities oppose that work. What are some of the reasons given in Scripture for why they might want to do this? Three basic motivations come to mind:

Envy Jesus was opposed because of envy, a reality that even Pilate could see (Matt. 27:18; Mark 15:10). When Paul preached in Antioch, things were going great until the local authorities saw the large multitude that showed up to hear Paul preach the next week. So they were filled with envy (Acts 13:45). The same thing happened in Thessalonica (Acts 17:5). This is a human problem—not only were Jewish leaders afflicted with it, so were Christian preachers (Phil. 1:15). When someone teaches or preaches with authority, and not like the scribes, there have been times when the scribes haven’t taken it too well. Some- times the new wine can’t get into the old wineskin, not because of the old wine, but because the skin is stuffed full of learned scribes, writing treatises on what it was like back in the glory days, back before we drank all the old wine.

Fear in John 12:42, we are told that many of the rulers (leaders, teachers, etc) believed in Jesus. But they did not admit this publicly because they were cowed by a powerful, conservative faction within the church. They loved the praise of men more than the praise of God (v. 43). The establishment always knows how to defend itself, and how to intimidate that large group of men in the middle, men who can follow the argument, so long as following it doesn’t lead to any unpleasant consequences. So men remain quiet at presbytery, lamenting the injustice being done, but unwilling to stand.

Laziness And for a few too many, the ministry is an indoor job with no heavy lifting. Jesus spoke of the hireling who flees (John 10: 12–13), and one of the

108 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | 2005 prophets spoke of shepherds who feed only themselves. Sometimes these men are insightful enough to see their main chance might lie in going with a new reforming movement, but usually this mentality likes the quiet the status quo provides, a quiet in which a man may butter his bread, and not have to read any books.

WHEN WAS ABRAHAM CONVERTED MARCH 30, 2005 It seems to me that this is a very important question, on two fronts. First, it is important to note that Abraham was in fact converted from idolatry. He, like all sons of Adam, was dead in his trespasses and sins and needed to have the righteousness of another granted or imputed to him. He was an idolater and had no righteousness of his own. We know he was an idolater from the account we are given in Joshua: “And Joshua said unto all the people, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor: and they served other gods. And I took your father Abraham from the other side of the flood, and led him throughout all the land of Canaan, and multiplied his seed, and gave him Isaac” (Josh. 24:2–3). So Abraham was not just an uncircumcised Gentile when God first called to him, he was an idolatrous Gentile. But a second point also needs to be emphasized. Although he clearly needed to be converted, Abraham was not converted in Genesis 15. When did Abraham first respond to the true and living God in genuine faith? “By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God” (Heb. 11: 8–10). So when Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees, he was responding to the word of God in faith (Gen. 12:1–2). He built several altars to the Lord in Canaan, calling upon the name of the Lord there (Gen. 12:7–8). He is

109 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | 2005 clearly a faithful believer, father of all faithful but uncircumcised Gentiles (Rom. 4:11). A few chapters later, God reiterates His promises to Abraham, promises that Abraham has already heard and already believed. And it says, well into Abraham’s life of faith, “And he believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness” (Gen. 15:6). St. Paul quotes this as a hinge in his argument in Romans 4. In Genesis 17, God reiterates the promise yet again, and grants the sign of circumcision. Abram is renamed Abraham. Now, here is the question that may make all the participants on all sides of the Federal Vision discussion unhappy with me, but here goes anyhow. When was Abraham given a new heart? When was he converted? When was he raised out of his condition of Adamic death and brought into a living relationship with God? When was the righteousness of Christ imputed to him in the theological sense? I am not asking whether these things happened, for I affirm that all of them happened. I am asking when. The answer that exegesis demands is that he was converted when he left Ur of the Chaldees, and he was not converted in Genesis 15. But that means that the language of imputation in Genesis is not as narrow has some have assumed. And on the other side, it appears just as plain to me that what the New Testament teaches about heart regeneration can and must be applied to Abraham in Genesis 12.

GOD PROMISES US OUR CHILDREN APRIL 5, 2005 A few days ago, I wrote about how I became a paedobaptist. I attributed that change to a connection that was shown to me between the promises of God for our children and the practice of infant baptism. That connection stirred up a reasonable question out there, which I would like to try to answer here. When God promises us our children, how are these promises to be understood? Head for head, each baptized child of the covenant will be saved? If that is the case, then why is God not keeping His promises? But if his promises are for this group of Christian parents and not that group, then exegetically

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how do we determine what our response should be? Exegetically, how do I know what group I am in? The answer is that this is a covenant promise. The promises concerning the salvation of our children should be understood the same way that promises of answered prayer are to be understood. We know that God promises to answer our prayers—whatever we ask in Christ’s name. The language of some of these promises is, frankly, quite exuberant and over the top. The promises are for every Christian; they apply to every Christian. No Christian has the right to say, “no, that promise is not for me. No sense in me praying.” Neverthe- less, some Christians do not pray as they ought to, and faithlessly they do not ask God for those things they have every right to ask for. The promise is still good, but all God’s promises are always apprehended by faith. It is the same with God’s promises for our children. The promises are ours; they are part of the terms of the covenant. God promises that our children will serve Him faithfully, but He does not promise that they will serve Him automatically. We are summoned to believe these promises, and our faith in what He has declared is His instrument for bringing the promises to fruition. For those who believe the promises, the unbelief of others does not negate the promises. God promises things for His people, and some of His people do not believe Him. What else is new? Christian parents who do not believe these promises, who explain them away, or who throw them away, will often find that their homes contain the very sad results of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The just shall live by faith, from first to last, and this includes our life of bringing up children. We bring up our children in the Lord by faith, and not by works. One of the strangest charges I have had to deal with in the Federal Vision controversy is the charge that I deny the centrality of faith through my insistence that we must believe God’s promises in this regard. But believing God is no work, and not believing God is not faith. At any rate, there is no theological or doctrinal problem with the position that God promises us our children that could not be urged equally against God’s general promises to answer our prayers. And a biblical answer to one supplies the answer to the other.

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PETTY TRADITIONS APRIL 22, 2005 John Robbins continues to display one of his chief polemical attributes, which is kind of a bad attribute for a rationalist to have, to wit, his inability to follow an argument. He has recently said that one of our tactics is that of quoting John Calvin, who said “some foolish things about the sacraments.” He goes on to say that we know that we “can dredge up foolish statements from Reformed theologians that support or seem to support [our] heretical view.” Robbins then counters by citing some (genuinely) foolish things that B.B. Warfield said about evolution. But then Robbins says, in a brief and aberrant burst of charity, that Warfield’s status as a Reformed theologian is “without challenge.” I am afraid he has missed the point of the citations of our Reformed fathers. The fact that the Westminster Shorter Catechism calls the sacraments “effectual means of salvation” does not make that statementright . The only ultimate and infallible court of appeal on such things is the Scriptures. Rob- bins is exactly right on that score. But this quotation does mean that I should be able to say that I believe the sacraments are effectual means of salvation without being told that my expression, as it stands, is contrary to the West- minster Standards. Robbins himself exercises the kind of discretion we are looking for, only not with us. He proves that Warfield gave away the store on evolution, and yet Warfield retains Robbins’s respect as a Reformed theologian. I would say Warfield gave away other important things too (e.g., his doctrine of the au- tographa being the only inerrant Bible we have, only unfortunately, we don’t actually have it), and yet my respect for Warfield is still quite high. I differ with him on some important issues, but I know that he represents an important part of the Reformed tradition, and the caliber of his work on a number of issues was quite good. The same with Calvin. I don’t agree with Calvin on everything. But what I reserve to myself is the right to agree with Calvin and not have that agreement be used as the reason for denying that I am a Calvinist.

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So my question for Robbins is this. Why can the Reformers say such “silly things” and retain your respect? Why can Warfield say genuinely silly things and still be honored by you as a great theologian? Robbins concludes by saying, “We Protestants are not traditionalists. We are radicals for Christianity, and that Root is Scripture alone.” But what is a Protestant? Robbins in effect has said that “we in the Protestant tradition do not have a tradition.” Unless, as I am beginning to suspect, Robbins believes that true Protestantism began with Gordon Clark and will end with John Robbins. But even that is a (very short) tradition. And not only is it short, it is also petty.

EXCEPT FOR PRISMS MAY 11, 2005 Been a while since I wrote anything about the Auburn Avenue stuff. So why not? says I. A gentleman named Paul Manata has written a detailed and very fine refutation of Cal Beisner’s claim that the root of the Auburn Avenue teaching was our embrace of Van Til’s apologetic. Manata’s post is called “The Root of The Problem With Auburn Avenue Theology?” and can be found somewhere on this site. In his discussion of this issue (in The Auburn Avenue Theology: Pros and Cons8), Cal says this, “Federal Vision theology will continue to be unstable and plagued with error so long as its adherents continue to resist the universal application of logic to theology—which is, in the final analysis, all that is meant by systematic theology.” (pp. 323–324). He chastises me in particular, because I co-wrote a logic textbook, and consequently ought to know better. But it is precisely because I have taught logic that I can identify a straw man fallacy. Cal made much of the fact that I spoke about the need for recognizing differences between “levels of discourse.” John Robbins has done some tub-thumping on this point as well, acting as though by “levels of discourse” I meant some sort of irrationalist leaping about. Cal took it similarly, as though I was ignoring the warnings

8 E. Calvin Beisner, ed., The Auburn Avenue Theology: Pros and Cons (Fort Lauder- dale, FL: Knox Theological Seminary, 2004).

113 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | 2005 given by Francis Schaeffer about upper-story/lower story dualisms. But actually, I was simply restating in other words what Cal himself argued in a footnote in this very section. “Whether McNeill knew it or not, Calvin knew that affirming something in one sense and denying it in another was not a contradiction. He distinguished between God’s (secret) will and His moral (revealed) will . . . Consequently he could affirm that God could will decretively what He forbade morally.” Now before I have some fun with this, let me speak distinctly into the mi- crophone and say that I am making fun of something that I agree with completely. That’s because I like levels of discourse, and let it never be said that I am an unjust or unfair maker of fun. Cal makes this point on p. 321. Then on pp. 322–323, he chastises me for wanting to distinguish levels of discourse. But Cal had just finished saying that we should distinguish between God’s upper story will and His lower story will. When answering McNeill, we must distinguish levels of discourse. When answering Wilson, we must not do so. This is not a contradiction on our part because we must distinguish levels of discourse. Different levels of discourse do not represent a contradiction, he argues, unless Douglas Wilson tries it. Then it is creeping irrationalism, and is built on the errors of Van Til who made all the same careful qualifications about logic that I have. But these careful qualifications are not made by the rationalists, unless answering Barthians named McNeill. This must be some A–M, and then N–Z thing. And which part of the alphabet has to obey mo- dus ponens? For the record (again): All creation was brought forth from nothing by the self-consistent triune God. All reality is therefore self-consistent. No contradictions. To deny the law of non-contradiction (to use the pagan name for it) is to open the door to Trinitarian heresies that maintain that Father is also not the Father. Nobody around here wants to do that, and we would be abandoning the faith if we did. But we do need to learn how to ground the way we speak of these things on the revealed triune nature of God, instead of on some of Aristotle’s preliminary sketches. So I am not against the use of reason in studying and sorting out what God has given to us. I am in favor of

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reason, and am therefore opposed to arid rationalism. As the poet said, beware of all isms, except for prisms. Now, when we come to the promises of God for our children, here is the issue. The promises are just like God’s promises to answer prayer. There are sweeping statements in Scripture that promise to grant anything to any believer if the prayer is made in Jesus’s name. At the same time, we know from the rest of Scripture that not all Christians will believe these promises; not all Christians pray in faith the way they ought to. But they are invited to do so by the promises. If Cal were to argue that a man should never pray in faith until he has some kind of a priori determination from the decrees of God that his prayers were decretively determined to be among those that are answered, he would be arguing in exactly the same way he is arguing with regard to God’s promises for the salvation of our children. God gives general promises—for many things, not just our children. Those for whom the promises are intended are those who hear and believe. Faith sorts things out, not a deductive argument, the premises of which are filled out because we have pried into the secret decrees of God. So, when I referred to levels of discourse, I was saying that believing the promises of God is a moral duty (which not all Christians fulfill). God decretively has determined the names of those who will believe Him in this way. But in order to believe Him, all I need is His Word, and not access to the decrees. And if I start casting sidelong glances at others, and say, “But what about them? The promises don’t seem to be fulfilled in their case,” the answer comes back clearly—”What is that to you? You follow Me.”

THE LAWS OF THOUGHT MAY 12, 2005 I mentioned in the last post that I had co-written a logic text. The following is a draft of something that will be going into the next revision. Here tis: In order to reason well, we have to assume certain things that never show up as particular items in our argument. They are simply (and quietly) assumed. For example, if you were putting together an argument about light

115 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | 2005 bulbs or tricycles, it is very important that they not turn into something else (like a toaster oven or catcher’s mitt) halfway through the argument. If they did, the argument would just have to lie down and sob quietly. It could never get anything done. Traditionally, these assumptions have been called the “laws of thought.” There is nothing wrong with the specificcontent of these assumptions, but for Christians, there is a significant problem with another deeper assumption lying beneath them. That assumption is that you can have laws without a law- giver, and ultimately, that you can have reason apart from the triune God of Scripture. All you need to do, it is thought, is postulate some laws of thought, and off we go. Because this is the case, we are going to begin by showing how these correct assumptions are actually grounded in the nature of the triune God, and how He revealed Himself in Jesus Christ. After we have done that, we will then be able to discuss the traditional terminology. The reason for doing this is that many modernists have been guilty of thinking that impersonal “laws” have authority in themselves, which of course they do not. In order to deal with this, we will start with the basic Christian confession, which is that Jesus is Lord. When God reveals Himself in Christ, the decision that everyone has to make is whether to believe it or not. These are the only two options-faith or unbelief. This means that the statement Jesus is Lord must either be true or false. A faithful person confesses that it is true. An unfaithful person denies it as false. But God does not leave open the option of saying something like, “I believe that the higher reality of the lordship of Christ cannot be contained in our paltry categories of true and false, and so I cannot say whether I believe in Him or not.” Such a response is simple dishonesty masquerading as humility. The fact that any statement is either true or false is one of the three basic laws of thought, upon which much of logic is based. This law of thought is called The Law of Excluded Middle, because it excludes the possibility of a truth value falling somewhere in the middle between true and false. Statements are either one or the other. If a statement is not true, then it is false, and vice versa.

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As Christians we confess that God is triune. If asked, we would say, “Yes, that is true. God is triune.” Now if it is true that God is triune, then it must be true that God is triune. For ordinary people, in ordinary conversation, such rules are not thought to be necessary. But when people are fleeing from God, they will often take refuge in any folly. This assumption keeps people from changing the meaning of a term in the middle of an argument. If you are seeking to show from Scripture that God is triune, it is important that the word triune not take on the meaning of “six persons” halfway through the argument. Honesty requires the meaning of the word to stay put. In its traditional formulation, this is called The Law of Identity. This law simply states that if a statement is true then it is true. This law may be employed to answer the unbeliever who says, “Christianity may be true for you, but not for me.” No. If the Christian faith is true, then it is true. The third law says that a statement cannot be both true and false. This is called The Law of Noncontradiction. Without this law, we could not argue for the exclusive truth of any statement which we hold. We could try to assert, for example, that “Jesus is God.” But our opponents could respond, “Oh, I agree that what you say is true. But it is also false.” We see that if we deny these laws, we lose even the possibility of rational discourse. Think for a moment what would happen to our faith if we were to allow someone to deny these fundamental assumptions. If we confess “God in three persons, blessed Trinity,” someone who denied the law of the excluded middle could say that this wonderful confession is not true, and it is not false. It is just wonderful, and perhaps even a little inspiring. The one who denied the law of identity could say that “yes, it is true that God is a Father for you, but my truth is that She is a Mother.” And one who denied the law of noncontradiction could say that God is our Father, and, also, in the same way and in the same respect, He is not our Father. In other words, denial of these bedrock assumptions would make a hash out of the simplest Christian confession like the Apostles’ Creed. Having said all this, there is an important warning. The Bible does assume that the Father is the Father, and not the Son. The Spirit is the Holy Spirit and

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not the Father. The Father is not “not the Father.” At the same time, the Bible also teaches that the Father perfectly indwells the Son, and the Son indwells the Father. Statements about the Father are not detachable from statements about the Son. Jesus said that if you had seen Him you had seen the Father. Through a wooden application of these “laws” some logicians have gotten to the point where they cannot understand or appreciate poetry, metaphor, sacraments, or marriage. The world is full of “indwelling” and mutual partaking because this is also what our God is like. In our study of logic and reason, we must always leave room for mystery. We know that the Father is Father, and no one else. We know that the Father is not the Son. But we should also know that the Father revealed Himself perfectly in the Son. Summary: Faithful reasoning assumes these three laws of thought. The Law of Identity says that if a statement is true, then it is true. The Law of Excluded Middle says that a statement is either true or false. The Law of Non- contradiction says that a statement cannot be both true and false.

OUR HERETICAL HAIR MAY 19, 2005 A friend pointed me to a new master’s program at Knox Seminary, which actually looks pretty good. Click here9. But that Auburn Avenue heresy stuff is like an insidious gas that permeates everything, up to and including this new master’s program at Knox. In bold-face type (no less), they say the following: “We need to publish the reality that cultural choices have eternal consequences in salvation or judgment: character determines destiny.” Jumping Jehoshaphat and Land of Goshen! Just imagine if Rich Lusk had said this. In the space of a few short words, we have rabid Arminianism (choices have eternal consequences), we have worldliness (cultural choices have eternal consequences), and we have a particularly egregious example of John Robbins’s euphonically named Neolegalism (character determines destiny). Of course, we know that if we were to ask the orthodox brethren at Knox about it, they would qualify these comments carefully. And when we heard

9 https://knoxseminary.edu/programs/christian-and-classical-studies/

118 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | 2005 their qualifications, we would believe them as brothers in Christ, and put our doctrinal revolvers back in the presbyterial holster. But when we say things like this (and we do, honestly), our qualifications after the fact do not matter. To extend the metaphor, the doctrinal bullets continue to whistle through our heretical hair. Oh, well. On the bright side, Knox Seminary has realized the cultural issues are central to the future of the Reformed faith and have devoted a non-Gnostic program to it. And good luck to them on seriously engaging with these cultural issues without getting in trouble with the Internet Wardens of Doc- trinal Precision.

DOING IT RIGHT MAY 21, 2005 Dr. Bryan Chapell of Covenant Seminary has written a very reasonable treatment of the New Perspective on Paul, which can be found here. He distinguishes things that need to be distinguished, he knows what central issues of the faith need to be defended and preserved, he criticizes without hysterics, and his admonitions to all parties are worth listening to prayerfully, even if you initially think you might differ. This is an example of the kind of interaction that actually might get us somewhere.

SOME PING-PONG JUNE 1, 2005 When I was in junior high school, I used to play a lot of ping-pong. Occa- sionally, in the course of these bouts, one of my friends would hit a lofter—a slow ball about three feet above the table, just on my side of the net. I confess that when this happened it brought certain feelings to life in me, feelings that could probably be characterized as ungodly. The works of the flesh are manifest, St. Paul says, and one of them no doubt would include the desire to drill a hole through the other side of the ping-pong table with your slam, and then to whoop and dance in an unseemly way around your friend’s basement, which is where the ping-pong table was located.

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Anyhow, what brought these thoughts to mind was the most recent edition of The Trinity Review. John Robbins therein reviews the book recording the Fort Lauderdale colloquium on the Auburn Avenue theology, which book was edited by Cal Beisner. Anyhow, in these brief comments, I will attempt to restrain myself, In the first place, since Robbins belongs to the “ready, fire, aim!” school of thought, he takes issue with our debating partners on the other side of the table, who were seeking honestly to determine what we were saying before they decided whether or not they needed to oppose it. This gracious behavior was too much for Robbins, who spends a good deal of time denouncing them for not denouncing us in the manner which Robbins has determined is meet. This kind of indiscriminate approach has been tried in the history of the Church before—“Kill them all and let God sort it out”—but to their credit our discussion partners did not do anything like that. I do think they got us wrong at some significant points, but they conscientiously sought to get what we were saying. I am grateful to be able to say that none of those who differed with us at the Knox colloquium belong in any way to the extremes pursued by Robbins. But my point here was to briefly respond to some of the howlers that John Robbins directed at me personally, so let me get to it. 1. “Wilson claims, ‘One of our fundamental concerns is this: we want to insist on believing God’s promises concerning our children.’ Unfortunately, neither he nor any other proponent of Neolegalism ever quotes those promises.” The problem for this thesis is that I wrote a little book called Standing on the Promises, the first part of which is dedicated to a discussion of many of promises God has given us in Scripture concerning our children. 2. Robbins says (of Acts 2:39), that “the last clause of the verse, ‘as many as the Lord our God will call,’ modifies and limits all three referents: ‘you, your children, and all who are afar off.’ And to this assertion I cheerfully agree, and further assert that the grammar demands it. But if Peter, in preaching to the crowd at Pentecost had said something like: “for the promise is to you, to those in your neighborhood who live in blue houses, and to those who are

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afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call,” there would be two comments worth making. The first is the realization that not all who inhabit blue houses in my neighborhood need be elect. On this point, Robbins is correct (and ironically, so am I!) But the second point is that blue houses must be important to this process somehow, otherwise why mention it? Children are singled out. Why? Peter is referring to the promise of the Holy Spirit of God in the Old Testament, which I treat in detail in Standing on the Promises. And those promises graciously invite Christian parents to believe God for the salvation of their children. But they do not do this by giving a list of names for all the elect children that will be born in the history of the church. Herein lies the fundamental flaw in Robbins’s epistemological approach. Oddly, earlier in the essay, Robbins says that many Christians have a lack of courage in opposing the likes of us because of “a lack of belief in the promises of Scripture.” All right—let us talk about the promises of God in Scripture, and talk further about the problem of specificity. God promises salvation to Abraham directly. He does the same for a handful of other saints in Scripture. But most Christians who believe the promises of God unto salvation do so even though their names are not mentioned anywhere in the Bible. If I can only believe what is propositionally revealed in the Bible, and if my name is not propositionally revealed in the Bible as one who believes the promise of salvation rightly, then how can I believe the promise? How can I believe any promise there? Do I have direct warrant? No, not at all. I can, however, believe indirectly, but I must supply one of the missing ingredients (which I cannot do apart from grace). Christ promises to give rest to all those who labor and are heavy-laden, and who come to Him (Matt. 11:29–30). I can believe (on Robbins’s terms) that He will do this for a particular group of people. But how can I insert myself into that group? Following Robbins’s logic, I cannot. Christ promises salvation to those who repent and believe. But what warrant do I have for saying that this promise applies to me? God promises to answer prayer. But how can I proceed to pray on the assumption that the promise applies to me? Shouldn’t I wait until after the day of judgment to see

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if I should have taken God up on it? It is the same with God’s promises to us concerning our children. He promises, on the basis of His covenant, that our children will serve and worship Him. This promise, like all God’s promises, is apprehended by faith only, by faith alone, by faith plus nothing else, by faith apart from works, and by faith all by its own self. (Incidentally, I do understand how this kind of language is confusing to Robbins who sees in it a display of a dangerous mixture of faith and works.) Why are some children of the covenant lost then? For the same reason that some prayers are unanswered—the prayers were not offered in faith. The children were not brought up in the faith that God would fulfill this promise. The thing that closes the circle is always faith. This particular faith cannot be based on propositional warrant from Scripture, because Scripture says nothing about my prayers, nothing about my children, nothing about whether I am elect. I close the circle by faith. God gives the general enscriptured promise. He then works in me specifically through the person of the Holy Spirit to bring me to the conviction that these general promises are mine, and so that I may enter into rest. Not only do I have reason to believe the promises, I am commanded to believe them. But when I believe these promises about children, someone could hand me an exhaustive concordance and demand to see my descendants’ name in there. And when they do, I would just smile, shake my head, and hand it back. “I will show you my grandchildren’s names in Scripture when you show me Gordon Clark’s name there.” “Gordon Clark believed the gospel,” the reply would come. “Yes, he did, without any specificwarrant to do so. Just like my grandchildren.” 3. Robbins charges one of our debate partners (Fowler White) with not really believing in the inerrancy of Scripture, and then indicates that I agreed with the general point that Dr. White was making. This treatment shows once again how Robbins (for all his vaunted rationalism) cannot really follow the simplest of arguments. Of course I affirm the absolute infallibility and absolute authority of Scripture. Because I do, I reject the idea that Robbins has picked up somewhere that Scripture must submit to every last stipulated definition of

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a modern logic text. Now don’t get this wrong (as Robbins easily might do). I am not denying that all reality, grounded as it is in the nature of God, must be internally consistent, and I heartily assert there no such thing as an absolute contradiction. That said, there are uses of “all” in Scripture which do not conform to the standards of All P are Q statements. This is not an embrace of irrationalism, not even a little bit. In a strict A statement, all Ps are Qs, head for head, and every last stinking one of them is distributed, as the logicians say. But in the world inhabited by regular English speakers, the word all admits of a whole bunch of variations. For example, God wants all men to be saved. Because Scripture is the absolute authority, we must submit to its usages. And when Paul addresses those “called to be saints” in Corinth (1 Cor. 1:2), he is not intending to make the claim that everyone within the boundaries of the visible Corinthian church was necessarily elect. He is not using the vocabulary that way here, because there are a number of places in the same epistle where he warns the saints at Corinth against the danger of falling away, just like the Jews in the wilderness did (1 Cor. 10). Related to this, John Robbins did not understand my point about levels of discourse at all. So here it is again, in another form. When Paul tells us about the cup of blessing which was the cause of many Corinthians getting sick and dying, is he intending to tell us that it is a blessing to get sick and die under the judgment of God? Or is he speaking about blessing at one level, and then when we get to the specific problems at Corinth, he addresses the situation at another level? When I am preaching to a group of Christians, I address them as saints. I address them as Christians because that is what they are. In the call to worship, I do not welcome the saints to the worship of God, and then in an aside comment on the fact that it is a shame about the reprobates who got in. I address them all as saints because it is a Christian worship service. That is one level of discourse. Later in the week I may be counseling one of the members of the church who is completely defeated by some sin in his life and may come to the conclusion that he is not regenerate. And I would be bound to try to lead him to the understanding that he needs to be born again to God. That is another level of discourse. It is not a matter of truth shifting—it is

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rather a matter of avoiding the fallacy of equivocation, where terms admitting of different definitions are used with those different definitions in the course of the same argument. As in: Stevie Wonder is blind. Love is blind. God is love. Stevie Wonder is God. This is a fallacy because the words have different uses and definitions, and they are being treated in the argument as though they did not. The same thing happens with words and phrases like saints and cup of blessing. To recognize that such words have different uses and applications in different settings is to master a basic part of a basic logic course. And to be unable to do this, as Robbins appears to be unable, indicates that he cannot master the logical point (which is unlikely), or that he is too proud to admit that he has attacked me for teaching heretical things that I don’t actually teach.

COMMON HERITAGE JUNE 15, 2005 Phil Johnson has an interesting entry entitled “Machen Speaks From the Grave,” and I am in sympathy with much of what he notes there. In an era of postmodern and relativistic mush, we ought to be wary of all ecumenical common-causers who think that moralism is the most important thing about religion. But while Machen was a staunch Protestant, as noted in Phil’s post, he was no sectarian Protestant—and there is a difference. I would be interested to know how many of Phil’s readers, who were able to say amen to that quote from Christianity and Liberalism, would be able to say amen to this one as well.

Common heritage? Was Machen wobbly?

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WHITE HORSE INN JUNE 27, 2005 I just got a chance to listen to an interview I did for the White Horse Inn with Michael Horton, along with their follow-up comments to that interview. For those who are interested, they can find it here—although it costs a few bucks to download. As far as the interview went, it was pretty much how I remember it. But the follow-up comments were new, and so I thought I should give just a few responses here. Before responding to particulars, I was reminded yet again how grateful I was for the opportunity to have the discussion in the first place. Despite the disagreements that remain, there was at least the recognition that this was an in-house Reformed discussion, and that the issues we were talking about were not matters of heresy. Compared to much of the debate thus far, this was a distinct improvement, and I’ll take it. For that, my continued thanks go out to Michael Horton, and his discussion partners. That said, there are three issues that were raised in the discussion after the interview that call for a response. First, while the movement of generic evangelicals toward the historic Reformed faith was applauded (and it really was), the downside of this trek to Geneva was described as the tendency of some newly-arrived Reformed folk to start rearranging the furniture as soon as they move in. For those who have lived in these Reformed habitations for some time, this can be more than a little unsettling. Of course, I am sympathetic with this concern in principle, and I am sure there have been refugees from goo-evangelicalism who have tracked all kinds of things in, which can be distressing to the curators of that great Persian carpet of Calvinist soteriology. But other interesting things can happen as well. For example, to change the image we are using, the new guy who starts to hang around the great and vast library of Reformed thought might find himself taking dusty books off the shelf and reading through them. He then says something like, “Hey, did you know that Calvin said thus n’ such?” To which he hears a great deal of har- rumphing and is told in solemn tones that the only authoritative thing Calvin

125 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | 2005 actually said can be found in the glass display case in the hall outside. In other words, sometimes the new guy comes in because he is attracted to some feature of historic Reformed thought, and he then discovers to his dismay that there are many contemporary Reformed folks who are not aware that “Calvin said that.” Not to put too fine a point on it, a man might be rejected by the current folks at Banner of Truth because he teaches things that he learned from a Banner of Truth book. Secondly, I don’t know how one of the commentators came away with the idea that we have some kind of “nervousness about affirming the confessions.” I explained in the interview that Christ Church was in the process of adopting a book of confessions, the doctrinal screen of which was the Westminster Confession. The vast majority of CREC churches have a historic Reformed confession of faith. I think this was an instance of us talking past each other. And last, I think we were criticised in the discussion for two opposite and inconsistent faults. In the first place, we were dinged for what seemed to them to be convoluted and Byzantine explanations of doctrine, e.g., lack of clarity, and then, just moments later it was asserted that we should not be trying to do “theology by blog,” meaning that detailed study, seminary, graduate studies was necessary. Now I am quite prepared to believe that my teaching is opaque, murky. And I am quite prepared to believe that my teaching is pithy, cogent, memorable, and succinct. Being a sinner, I would like to flatter myself on which it is. But I also have certain limitations, and Aristotle’s observation that a toaster oven cannot simultaneously be not a toaster oven in the same way and in the same respect is one of them. Anyhow, there it is.

HERETICAL COOTIES AUGUST 5, 2005 I recently wrote to Steve Wilkins, saying that it was almost time for him to come up to Moscow again, bringing some of his heretical cooties with him. We were almost out, I said. He wrote back, somewhat too triumphantly I am afraid, with something about him having been declared fully orthodox by

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the Louisiana Presbytery, along with something else about me being a smarty pants. I am disconsolate. Who am I going to hang with now? Seriously, the presbyterian form of church government is doing its work, which you can read about here. And I have been examined by the presbytery of the CREC as well. This kind of careful examination, deliberation and judiciousness is bad news, but only for rogue internet presbyterians (RIP).

ANTHONY BURGESS SEPTEMBER 8, 2005 Anthony Burgess was one of the delegates to the Westminster Assembly, and was one of the men who helped to write that puppy. A very helpful correspondent wrote to me to note that in his defense of the covenant of works, Burgess repeatedly denies the idea of merit. He put it this way—”though it were a Covenant of works, it cannot be said to be of merit.” (Vindiciae Legis, 1647, p. 129). Maybe this can help us reach some common ground in our contemporary discussions. Should it be within the Reformed pale for someone to deny any covenant of merit, while affirming a covenant of works? If so, then we are making some headway. If not, then we have a problem with Burgess—a voting member of the Westminster Assembly. Could Anthony Burgess be ordained by the Mississippi Valley Presbytery?

SECURITY GUARDS AND BOUNCERS OCTOBER 16, 2005 I appreciate Frank Turk’s comments and input from time to time, and would commend his discussion10of my recent posts on the minimum of orthodoxy required to get one through the pearly gates. I commend them, not because I agree, but because it is a pleasure to interact with someone who at least gets what you are saying, or is obviously making diligent efforts to do so. This, on any issue within a stone’s throw of Auburn Avenue, is quite an achievement.

10 This seems to have been a reference to a few posts that can be found in Frank’s October 2005 archives.

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That said, let me toss a few more carrots into the crock pot of truth. Con- scientious paedobaptists and credobaptists are both concerned about the purity of the visible church, and are both concerned about the practice of biblical discipline in the church. But the two groups go about trying maintain this purity in two different ways, which I may be able to illustrate with (what else?) an illustration. Godly credobaptists hire security to guard the front door. Godly paedobaptists hire bouncers. Before getting to the question of which one is biblical, let us at least admit that each position is faced with peculiar temptations and challenges. The obvious concern is that the bouncers might not do their job well enough, leaving people inside the road house of Christendom who shouldn’t be there. The other concern is that the security guards might exclude from the nightclub of Christendom individuals who had been specifically invited by the one giving the party. In addressing which approach is more biblical, I offer the suggestions below with the recognition that I have been a participant in both approaches. I have been a neck-deep participant in both approaches, and when I abandoned the credobaptist position for the paedobaptist I was in principle abandoning the security guard approach for the bouncer approach. This took some time for me to sort out but the two approaches to discipline are implicit in the positions on baptism themselves. As I consider the condition of the church as described in Scripture, I have to come to grips with the fact that God seems to like riff-raff. We are to invite all kinds to our banquet and not worry too much about the silver. This is not because God wants us to remain riff-raff—He has big plans for this motley collection of forgiven adulterers and winos, and so He cares very much for the qualifications of those who run His soup kitchen (to alter the metaphor). Training of His ministers is very important, along with a godly family, and a fierce love for orthodoxy. These are all crucial. But—and this is the glorious thing—God does not have high standards for the winos. “But I am all screwed up.” “That’s great! You qualify!” I am not accusing conscientious adherents of the security guard approach of having evil motives, but I do suspect an element of safety-consciousness and

128 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | 2005 prudence in all this that I think should be missing from our evangelism and ministry. Let’s live on the edge for a bit. Let the tares grow too. The servants in Christ’s parable (Christians) were more conscientious about wanting to weed the field than the farmer (Christ) was. This is the way it frequently is. We confuse our constant inclination to be fussy-mussy with diligence in rightousness. We have a hard time with taking Christ’s teaching straight up the middle (“And the Lord said, ‘Aw, what can a few weeds hurt?’”) and so we tidy it up a bit.

EXPRESS WARRANT FOR PAEDOBAPTISM OCTOBER 18, 2005 With regard to the baptism of infants, I no longer accept the requirement for “express warrant” that I used to hold to when I was baptistic in my convictions. The “express warrant” hermeneutic winds up prohibiting way too much—worship on the Lord’s Day, women taking communion, and so on. At the same time, when I was baptistic I really wanted the question to be settled by an express statement of the Scripture. It would be really cool, thought I, if there were only a verse recording Paul baptizing an infant from the household of Demetrius. When I was working through the material for my book on infant baptism, I came across what I believe is express warrant for infant baptism (by good and necessary consequence). Those who want the fuller development can find it in the book, but here is the outline of the argument. Like I said, I don’t believe express warrant from the New Testament is necessary, but it turns out we do have express warrant. Gravy. The New Testament identifies believing synagogues as churches. James identifies the two in his letter. If a man in filthy rags comes into your synagogue (James 2:2), don’t do thus and such. And if anyone there is sick, let him call for the elders of the church (James 5:14). Now when Paul came to Jerusalem (where many of these believing synagogues were), he went out of his way to reassure everybody that he was not teaching Jews to discontinue circumcising their infants. This means, in the short form, that there were New Testament churches that had infant members. A circumcised infant in a

129 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | 2005 believing synagogue was a member of that church. Now if Jewish churches/ synagogues had infant members, on what grounds could we exclude infants from membership in Gentile churches? We could not exclude them. But we could say that circumcision was not required for them, because the sign and seal of the covenant was in the process of being changed to baptism. “For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek . . . And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Gal. 3:27–29). The question for our baptistic brethren is this. Are you prepared to maintain that an infant brought to your congregation (formally and covenantally excluded) is in the same position as an infant brought to a believing synagogue in Jerusalem in AD 52? Not only would the believing synagogue not exclude such an infant, I believe that they would have difficulty even comprehending the concept of excluding the infants. And if there was such a generation-long uproar over the inclusion of the Gentiles, what would the commotion have been if the apostles really were teaching the Jews that not only must you start admitting the Gentile adults, but you must start excluding your own children? I have trouble believing that this would not have caused the Mother of all Theological Controversies. But there is not a word about such a controversy in the New Testament.

OBJECTIVITY AND EMERGENCE DECEMBER 4, 2005 Frank Turk raised a question about the objectivity of the covenant and emergence, but at least had the presence of mind to realize it was a baptist question. This is not a detailed answer to the question, but it provides the initial outline of an answer. I believe emergent errors need to be identified and opposed, just as I believe Roman Catholic errors need to be identified and opposed. This is a separate question from whether or not emergents or RCs have a covenantal obligation to abandon their errors, which they do. If they are baptized in the triune name, then they have an obligation to follow Jesus in true truth.

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Now suppose someone came to our church from Brian McLaren’s church, baptized by McLaren himself, and requested membership here. Would we require rebaptism? The answer—in line with the objectivity of the covenant—is absolutely not. I do not deny that McLaren has the authority to perform valid sacraments. I will return to my standard illustration, which is that of the covenant of marriage. A man who is married to a woman is obligated to be faithful to her. But if he is not faithful to her, this does not mean that he is not “really” married to her—because that would mean, ironically, that he was not really being faithless to her. You have to be covenantally obligated to be covenantally faithless. People who chase after various winds of doctrine should stop it, regardless of what they are. They should remain true to the faith once delivered to the saints. But if they do not stop it, this does not change the objectivity of their obligation. So, to take an easier case than McLaren, let us consider an overt infidel who happens to be baptized. He is a Christian in one sense (in terms of the objectivity of his covenant obligations) and not a Christian in another (because of his faithlessness). If a cheating husband repented and came home to his wife after years of infidelity, and she forgave him, and said to him, “Today, you have become my husband,” we would all know what she meant. He had to have been a husband before his repentance in order to cheat, but when he repented of cheating, he “became a husband.” A lot of faithless covenant members have “become Christians” the same way. A lot of the problem is caused (in my view) by the evangelical absolutizing of the noun Christian. But the word can be used in more than one way.

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PAUL AND JAMES JANUARY 3, 2006 Not that I want to beat a dead horse or anything, but I would be interested in feedback from any critics of Auburn Avenue stuff on the following statement. Would you all be comfortable with this expression of the relationship of faith and works, Paul and James?

What are we to do with James’s apparent contradiction of Paul? In James 2:14–26 the writer is apparently in direct conflict with Paul. According to Paul, justification is by faith alone and not by the works of the law- see for example, Gal. 2:14–21; according to James, a man is justified by works and not only by faith (James 2:24). Upon closer examination, however, the contradiction is seen to be one of form and not of substance; and like other apparent contradictions in the Bible it serves only to reveal the Scripture combination of rich variety with perfect unity. So what is meant by faith? According to James faith without works is dead; according to Paul faith is all sufficient for salvation. But what does James mean by faith? The answer is perfectly plain. The faith which James is condemning is a mere intellectual assent which has no effect upon conduct. The demons also, he says, have that sort of faith, and yet evidently they are not saved (James 2:19). What Paul means by faith is something entirely different; it is not a mere intellectual assent to certain propositions, but an attitude of the entire man by which the

133 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JANUARY–JUNE 2006 whole life is entrusted to Christ. In other words, the faith that James is condemning is not the faith that Paul is commending. The solution of the whole problem is provided by Paul himself in a single phrase. In Gal. 5:6, he says, “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision; but faith working through love.” “Faith working through love” is the key to an understanding both of Paul and James. The faith about which Paul has been speaking is not the idle faith which James condemns, but a faith that works. It works itself out through love. And what love is Paul explains in the whole last division of Galatians. It is no mere emotion, but the actual fulfilling of the whole moral law. “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” (Gal. 5:14). Paul is fully as severe as James against a faith that permits men to continue in sin. The faith about which he is speaking is a faith that receives the Spirit who gives men power to lead a holy life. And so what is meant by works? Moreover, as the faith which James condemns is different from the faith which Paul commends, so also the works which James commends are different from the works which Paul condemns. Paul is speaking about “works of the law”-that is, works which are intended to earn salvation by fulfilling the law through human effort. James says nothing in chapter 2:14–26 about works of the law. The works of which he is speaking are works that spring from faith and are the expression of faith. Abraham offered Isaac as a sacrifice only because he believed God. His works are merely an evidence that his faith was real. Such works as that are insisted upon by Paul in every epistle. Without them no man can inherit the kingdom of God (Gal. 5:21). Only-and here again James would have been perfectly agreed-such works as that can spring only from faith. They can be accomplished not by human effort, but only by the reception of the power of God. We see then the value of James. If James had had the epistles of Paul before him he would no doubt have expressed himself differently. He might have said not that faith without works is dead, but that faith

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without works is not true faith at all. This is what he clearly means. But the expression of his thought is all the more poignant because it is independent. His stern, terse insistence upon moral reality in religion, of which the passage just considered is only a typical example, provides a valuable supplement to the rest of the New Testament. Of itself it would be insufficient; but taken in connection with the Gospels and with Paul it contributes a necessary fiber to the woven cord of Christian character.

CHARGES AND SPECIFICATIONS FEBRUARY 9, 2006 It is about time that somebody realized the source of all the trouble. High time we brought old Jean Calvin of St. Peter’s Reformed Church in Geneva up on charges. Somebody had to do it. HT: Peter Leithart

THE SCARECROW’S HAT MARCH 23, 2006 One of the regular charges leveled against Auburn Avenue types is that we are paving the way for our folks to go over to Rome, or, mayhap to the other church, farther to the east, that has apostolic credentials going all the way back. Unless you count the Copts. And the Armenian Orthodox. Bunch of others too. Keeping track of all the groups that go all the way back is almost as hard as keeping track of all the Presbyterian microbrew continuing church movements that go all the way back to Thomas Chalmers. Oh, and I forgot the Baptists. Their trail of blood goes all the way back. But I got distracted. One of the charges we have to answer from our critics is that our Calvinistic sacramentalism (say) necessarily sets a course for Rome. In vain do we point out what Jean Calvin himself taught, and that he did it coming out of Rome. In vain do we quote the Westminster Catechisms on the subject (in which those sturdy divines apparently took time out from their pilgrimage to the Holy Father in the Vatican to call the sacraments effectual means of salvation). I got distracted again. We have to answer this charge, right? And every once in a while, somebody in our ranks buys the argument and bolts for Rome, or

135 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JANUARY–JUNE 2006 parts farther east. The fact that this happened is then trumpeted by those who are alarmed by us as evidence for the claim, and we have to answer the charge again. This requires a lot of further development, but allow me just two brief observations here. We recently took a poll in our congregation, and from the significant number of those who responded, it appears that about ten percent of our congregation is made up of former Roman Catholics. I know, Evangelicals and Catholics Together deplored sheep stealing and all that, but I do not intend to try to keep people away from a genuine relationship with Christ for the sake of ecumenical dialogue. The dialogue is fine, but we must understand what it can and cannot do, and not stop preaching the gospel in the meantime. As much as the evangelical cliche of having a “personal relationship with Jesus” is overdone and wrongly done in our circles, the fact remains that many thousands of Prot- estants today grew up God-fearing Roman Catholics but became acquainted with God for the first time in a personal way when they went off to college and wound up rooming with a kid who was with Campus Crusade. We rejoice that Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy are still robustly Trinitarian. These two one true, holy apostolic churches do have many things going for them. But at the same time, they are encrusted with a lot of man-made traditions which have supplanted the Word of God and obscured the gospel. Consequently, the Reformation must never be considered as a ghastly mistake, but a necessary, Spirit-led reformation of the life and liturgy of the Church. And so, as much as we hate to lose anyone to these groups, and treat it as a significant back-sliding (even when not exacerbated by other factors) on the whole, taking the long view, the “balance of trade” is still heavily in favor of the Protestants. My second point needs to be said some time, and so I will say it here. When one of our guys converts to Rome or the East and says that an essential part of their pilgrimage was the stepping stone of Auburn Avenue theology, the line goes something like this: “Couldn’t have made it here without those Federal Vision guys!” My one request is that somebody get me the name of this fellow’s new parish priest so I can call him up and warn him. “Hey, heads up. We are sending over a guy who pays no attention at all to what his teachers

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try to tell him.” In fact, one of the guys we lost to Rome wasted very little time in denouncing John Paul II as a heretic and discovering that the papal throne was empty. All such things remind me very little of classic Roman Catholic doctrine and remind me a great deal of bottle-rocket anabaptism. There are, of course, thoughtful converts from Geneva to Rome (wrong, in my view, but still thoughtful). But headstrong men who won’t receive instruction are not in that number. Those who accept the wooden analysis offered by baptistic antisacramentalists, only to embrace the caricature instead of running from it in fear as was intended, are demonstrating one thing beyond any reasonable doubt. They cannot faithfully represent or follow out what they clearly never understood. All they do is provide our adversaries a few extra snatches of straw for the scarecrow’s hat.

DOCTRINALLY BILINGUAL MAY 8, 2006 I have come to a conclusion. I have been in the midst of doctrinal fraci (what’s the plural of fracus?) because I am bilingual. I speak both TR and FV. When I talk with others who are bilingual, we get along famously, and I feel like peace is going to break out across the Reformed world any minute now. There are TRs who are bilingual, and there are FVs who are bilingual, and God bless ’em all. Group hug! But there are, alas, members of each party who speak their own provincial dialect, and that is it, and you had better pronounce shibboleth right, darn it. The TRs who are like this can hear Calvin quoted and think it’s the pope on a bad day. And FVs who are like this forget that it was dispensational baptists who kept the Christian faith alive in our nation over the course of the last century.

PRESBYTERIANS AND PRESBYTERIANS TOGETHER MAY 11, 2006 I would like to direct your attention to an important statement here. A group called Presbyterians and Presbyterians Together has drafted a statement, and they are inviting you to attach your signature to it. I would strongly encourage the same thing.

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The importance of this can hardly be overstated. This is not an abandonment of necessary debate within the Reformed world, but rather a commitment to conduct theological and doctrinal debate (within our confessional boundaries) in a particular way. The bottom line of that “particular way” is a commitment to avoid rash and intemperate judgments concerning those who share a commitment to the historic Reformed faith. In other words, don’t drop the H-bomb on your brother. As I have argued elsewhere, the Reformed tradition has contained diverse elements from the beginning. That continues down to the present—which is why we have the URC, the OPC, the PCA, the OCRC, the CREC, and so on. We can have our various distinctives, and even think that they are important enough to guard during presbytery exams, without consigning any of those who differ to Dante’s fifth level. So please, check this site out.

WELL, AT LEAST SOMEBODY UNDERSTOOD US MAY 14, 2006 I finally got around to reading Joseph Minich’s paper on the Federal Vision and the New Perspective on Paul. Maybe you heard about it too. I ran it off when it first came out, and then after that I threw it in my briefcase and hauled it around for a while (trying to earn me some of that seductive medieval merit, which I actually did, but then the whole thing fell through because Westminster West wouldn’t accept the credits), and I then finally got around to reading it. What a delightful business. Reading this paper was timely too, because I have to get myself spiritually prepared for when Guy Waters’s book, The Federal Vision and Covenant Theology: Which Shall It Be? comes out. Actually I made up the subtitle, but not by much.

BEYOND THE FIVE SOLAS MAY 26, 2006 It is important for us to consider recent events in our town and around the country in the light of God’s Word. The Lord has been very kind to us thus

138 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JANUARY–JUNE 2006 far, but part of our responsibility is to understand His kindness, and not just to receive it. The Lord has given us the great privilege of holding a contested part of a field of battle, but part of our duty lies in understanding what has just recently transpired and understanding it in all wisdom.

Would to God ye could bear with me a little in my folly: and indeed bear with me. For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him. (2 Cor. 11:1–4)

And they continued stedfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers . . . And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, Praising God, and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved. (Acts 2: 42, 46–47)

The gospel is not overengineered. Consider what we learn in these passages. Paul sarcastically notes that adultery and treachery are complicated, but fidelity and loyalty are simple. The serpent came to Eve in all subtlety, and this is contrasted with the “simplicity that is in Christ.” Other Christs, other gospels, other spirits are easy enough to put up with (in this fallen world), but they are complicated. Rationalizations are always tangled, and sin breeds rationalization. But true simplicity does what the early Christians did. They accept what the apostles taught, period, they fellowship with one another, period, they take the Lord’s Supper together, period, and they pray together, period. This brings the glorious result—gladness and simplicity of heart,

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praise to God and favor from outsiders. And God uses this to bring salvation to those who are being saved. So what is at issue? One of the obvious concerns that we should have before us is whether all the controversies that the Lord has brought to us over the course of the last few years have anything in common. And the answer is yes, they do. In fact, at bottom they are all really the same controversy. When- ever the Spirit moves in the history of the church, He does so in a way that sweeps away all our carnal complications and restores that primitive and apostolic sense of gladness and simplicity of heart. But, in the meantime, the slogans of a previous period of simplicity have often been transformed (in the hands of trained professionals) into something that only a scribe could love. We need to get beyond the five solas. Initially some might worry that this entails an abandonment of the glorious revival that came in what we call the Reformation, but nothing could be further from the truth. But it is an abandonment of much of jargon that has grown up around the solas. Loving the original ship does not mean loving the barnacles. Over against the errors of so many false religionists, we still affirm what the solas originally meant. Salvation is by Christ alone (solus Christus), not by Christ and some kind of creaturely help. Salvation is by grace alone (sola gratia) and not some mixture of grace and merit, grace and works, grace and ungrace, or grace and brownie points. Salvation is received through faith alone (sola fide) and not some mixture of faith and works. We understand all this through ultimate reliance on Scripture alone (sola Scriptura) and not through some combination of the Word of God and the words of men. And all this comes together to glorify God alone for all that He has done (soli Deo gloria). All of this is most important, and most cool. But all glorious confessions of faith can be attacked in two ways. One is the assault from without (persecution), but the other is corruption from within. In the grip of Enlightenment individualism, pietism, sentimentalism, and so forth, in our day the meaning of the solas has been turned aside from their earlier and more glorious meaning. Now they are solo Christus (just me

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and Jesus), solo gratia (narrow, sectarian grace), solo fide (when I “prayed the prayer”), solo Scriptura (just me and my Bible), and solo Deo gloria (God gets all the glory for saving me, and maybe somebody else). Now please realize that the word solo here constitutes a bad macaronic pun, and not a serious attempt at matching gender, number, and case. No letters from the Latinists, please. The need of the hour is to restore the five solas, and get them up out of the narrow crevice some folks have pushed them into. We need the five totas. Our answer to such things must be simple, and not complicated. The claims of Jesus Christ, Lord of heaven and earth, are necessarily and always total, never partial. The solo tendency always tends to restrict the work of God to just a part or portion of reality, and this makes the rest of reality incomprehensible—and obviously complicated, with great “subtlety” required of those who seek to understand the godless part of the universe. But there is no godless part of the universe, and so to all this we reply with totus Christus (all Christ and all His people), tota gratia (to be a creature is grace, to be saved is more grace), tota fide (we are saved by faith from first to last), tota Scriptura (we do not pit the Old Testament against the New, or law against grace), and toti Deo gloria (all the glory for all things goes to God). God save us from all partialism.

THE OPC REPORT ON THE FEDERAL VISION JUNE 18, 2006 The OPC report on the Federal Vision is being considered at their General Assembly this week. Because of this, I want to say just a few things for the record. It is not that my opinion matters all that much, but I feel free to make these comments because I am labeled as one of the players in this report, where it says, “Though a number of men have come to be identified as FV advocates, it is the Auburn Avenue speakers, together with those who have published essays in Backbone of the Bible and The Federal Vision, whom we have identified as those chiefly representing the FV and whose works we -ad dress herein.” And because I show up in the footnotes here and there in this report, it should not be considered out of line if I respond briefly.

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The committee qualifies its critique of my positions somewhat. “Perhaps the most fruitful interaction between an FV proponent and his critics has occurred on the part of Douglas Wilson, who, in being examined by his judicatory (at his request), affirmed the covenant of works, with some qualifications, as well as the imputation of the active obedience of Christ in our justification” (p. 1659). And a little later, they allowed that I was one of the “more moderate FV men” (p. 1684). But given the fact that they were aware of my examination at the CREC presbytery, some of the direct critiques they offer in the body of this report seem a little bit strange. Right near the end of the report, we have a summary of the OPC’s critique of the FV. Speaking only for myself, I would like to hold this template up against my own positions, as I actually hold them, in my own words, in my native habitat. As I do this, I think it is fair to say that my position on virtually each of these points is clearly laid out in my published writing on this subject, indicating that I do think the OPC committee should have been a little more careful. The committee summary is below, and my brief comments are interspersed in italics.

The committee believes that the following points that are held by some or the other advocates of FV are out of accord with Scripture and our doctrinal standards:

1. Pitting Scripture and Confession against each other. No. Christ Church in Moscow incorporates the reading of the Heidelberg Catechism into each Lord’s Day service. The doctrinal stand of our church is a Book of Confessions which includes the original Westminster Confession of Faith. The WCF is the standard that is used in case of doctrinal disputes. As part of our doctrinal and liturgical growth and development, we adopted the HC in worship and the WCF as the doctrinal standard after the beginning of the FV controversy.

2. Regarding the enterprise of systematic theology as inherently rationalistic.

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No. Systematic theology is inescapable, unavoidable, and it is not inherently rationalistic. Doctrinal Euclidianism is a possibility, but the temptations in that direction are always present because systematics cannot be avoided. The only question is whether our systematics will be obedient and subservi- ent to Scripture or not.

3. A mono-covenantalism that sees one covenant, originating in the intra-trinitarian fellowship, into which man is invited, thus flattening the concept of covenant and denying the distinction between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace. No. I see two covenants made with man, one that is prelapsarian and the second postlapsarian. I maintain that the covenant of life in the Garden did not depend on Adam’s raw merit, to be sure, but this is not the same as saying that there is only one covenant. Any covenant that God makes with man will reflect His character, and so the question of one or two covenants is logically separate from whether or not the intra-trinitarian fellowship is covenantal. The committee acknowledged my position on this.

4. Election as primarily corporate and eclipsed by covenant. No. Corporate election is primarily corporate. Individual election is primarily individual.

5. Seeing covenant as only conditional. No. God’s covenant decree to save the elect is unconditional. The covenant as it is manifested in history is conditional (as seen by us), but this must be sharply distinguished from our affirmation (as believed by us) that the salvation of God’s elect is an absolutely monergistic affair.

6. A denial of the covenant of works and of the fact that Adam was in a relationship with God that was legal as well as filial. No. The covenant of life (works) was filial and gracious, and it was also legal. “The day you eat of the fruit of the tree in the midst of the Garden you shall surely die.” The committee acknowledged my position on this.

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7. A denial of a covenant of grace distinct from the covenant of works. No. I affirm the existence of a covenant of grace distinct from a covenant of life (works). The committee acknowledged my position on this.

8. A denial that the law given in Eden is the same as that more fully published at Mt. Sinai and that it requires perfect obedience. Yes. I do deny this. The WCF identifies the law that was published at Sinai as part of the administration of the covenant of grace. But I also believe that the “righteous that is of the law” (a certain religious mentality) distorted the Mosaic code and turned it into a system of self-salvation, which of course, God being who He is, would require perfect obedience.

9. Viewing righteousness as relational not moral. No. These do not exclude one another. My relationship with my wife is both relational and moral. It cannot be moral unless it relational, and it cannot be relational unless it is moral.

10. A failure to make clear the difference between our faith and Christ’s. No. I insist that we keep this distinction clear. But at the same time, because I affirm the imputation of Christ’s life of perfect obedience (both active and passive) this would include the root motivation of His obedience, which would be His perfect faith. This is part of what is imputed to us, is it not? My faith is derivative from Christ’s faith, and distinct from it, but it is entirely dependent upon it.

11. A denial of the imputation of the active obedience of Christ in our justification. No. I affirm the imputation of Christ’s active obedience in our justification. The committee acknowledged my position on this.

12. Defining justification exclusively as the forgiveness of sins. No. I do not define justification exclusively as forgiveness of sins. Justification has the eschatological element of adoption. It also involves vindication. It involves resurrection. It includes the Gentiles in Israel.

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13. The reduction of justification to Gentile inclusion. No. And incidentally, note the contradiction between #12 and #13. My interest is to broaden our understanding of justification without taking away anything from the historic Reformed understanding of an individual’s justification. That I continue to affirm.

14. Including works (by use of ‘faithfulness,’ ‘obedience,’ etc.) in the very definition of faith. No. To include faithfulness in the very nature of living faith is not to intrude works. Faithful faith justifies. Faithless faith does not.

15. Failing to affirm an infallible perseverance and the indefectability of the grace. No. I affirm an infallible perseverance for the elect, and I affirm that the effectual grace given to the elect is indefectable.

16. Teaching baptismal regeneration. Yes, but only in the sense that the WCF plainly does. My argument for this is laid out elsewhere, but let me just make the point from a quotation from the Directory of Worship cited in a footnote to this report. “The prayer following baptism is particularly noteworthy, beseeching the Lord that if the infant should live ‘and attain the years of discretion, that the Lord would so teach him by his word and Spirit, and make his baptism effectual to him.’” The report goes on to say that the Directory asks the Lord to effectuate “in the baptized that which was signified in their baptism.” But that is not what the prayer asks for. It asks that the baptism be made effectual, not that which was signified by the baptism to be made effectual.

17. Denying validity of the concept of the invisible church. No. I do not deny the validity of the visible/invisible church distinction. I affirm it. But I do question its sufficiency as a solitary description of the Church.

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18. A overly-objectively sacramental efficacy that downplays the need for faith and that tends toward an ex opere operato view of the sacraments. No. I do not downplay the need for faith. I jump up and down on the need for faith. If you die without faith in Christ, you go to Hell. The efficacy of the sacraments for blessing depends entirely on faith. The sacraments are only efficacious apart from faith in the sense that they increase the condemnation of faithless covenant members. To whom much is given, much is required.

19. Teaching paedocommunion. Yes.

20. Ecclesiology that eclipses and swallows up soteriology. No. Ecclesiology is of course the study of corporate soteriology. But ecclesiology does not swallow up the study of what happens in what might be called individual soteriology. How could it?

So, taking these twenty points, and assigning them five points each, if this were a test that the OPC committee took on what my views actually were, I am afraid they only scored a thirty-five percent out of a possible one hundred. I don’t know how they did with the other FV guys, but that is frankly not very good.

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GUY WATERS JULY 13, 2006 Well, the time has finally come. I have received my copy of Guy Waters’s new book, entitled The Federal Vision and Covenant Theology: A Comparative Anal- ysis11. It is my intent to blog my way through this book, offering my thoughts on this general subject for the edification of a bemused Christendom, and to do so whenever one of three conditions pertain: a. I am amused b. I am about to burst a blood vessel on my forehead, or c. I need to set the record, as they say, straight. I will begin with the Foreword by Cal Beisner. Cal says that when it comes to soteriology, the FV is a “hybrid of three components.” Those three components he identifies as a modified Amyraldianism, a modified Arminianism, and a modified Roman infusionism.

Original Amyraldianism posited a hypothetically universal atonement; the Federal Visionists hold that the atonement is hypothetically for all in the historical-objective covenant but effective only for the “elect” . . . Original Arminianism affirmed that Christ died as a substitute to pay the penalty for the sins of all people. The Federal Visionists will affirm that Christ died to pay the penalty for the sins of all in “the covenant,” including some who wind up in hell . . . . The third is a modified

11 Guy Prentiss Waters, The Federal Vision and Covenant Theology: A Comparative Analysis (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R 2006).

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Roman infusionism. We are “justified” at first by grace through faith but at last by the merit . . . of the works produced in and through us by God. (pp. viii-ix).

So let me say what I think about those three things. No, I insist. With regard to the atonement and Amyraldianism, I believe that Jesus Christ, by His death on the cross, absolutely secured the salvation of an innumerable host, each member of that host being known by name to God before the foundation of the world. I believe that the number of those so known and numbered by God can neither be increased or diminished by anything conceived by the mortal mind of man. With regard to the atonement and Arminianism, I believe that when Christ died to pay the penalty for someone, the penalty for that someone is actually paid. As a result, there is no one in hell for whom that redemptive penalty was paid. With regard to modified Roman infusionism, I hold that justification results from a legal declaration from God, as a result of which the righteousness of Jesus Christ is imputed to me and Cal both. Since this is an accurate summary of my positions, the conclusion is inescapable. With respect to this modified Amyraldianism, modified Arminianism, and modified Roman infusionism, I have modified them all right—modified them right into Reformed orthodoxy. I hold that, before the heavens and earth were created, God freely and unalterably ordained whatsoever was to come to pass, and this would include every aspect of every man’s salvation. I have my theological toolbox right here. What phrase could we use to describe this position? I know! Modified Arminianism! That won’t confuse anybody. On to the next problem.

In sacramentology, Federal Visionists offer a modified sacerdotal sacramentalism that borders on affirming the Roman Catholic doctrine of ex opere operato. The sacraments are objectively effective means of converting, not only of sanctifying, grace because they are administered by properly ordained people in the community of the faithful. (p. ix)

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Now I have to confess that I am not as gifted as some writers are in detect- ing juxtaposed ironies. But then, sometimes things are just handed to you on a platter. Just a few pages later, Guy Waters writes in the Preface:

My daughters are, through my wife, descended from men and women who sat under and, I trust, profited from the ministries of Solomon Stoddard and Jonathan Edwards. It is my fervent hope that the biblical doctrine preached from that pulpit in Northampton will, by the blessing of the Holy Spirit, thrive in the Reformed churches of my own and my young daughter’s generations. (pp. xv-xvi)

Solomon Stoddard. Solomon Stoddard. That name rings a bell. Who was he? I am wandering around here among these tombs that somebody built for the prophets, trying to make out the inscriptions on the plaques. Here it is!—he was that Reformed minister who believed that the Lord’s Supper was a converting ordinance. And comes now Guy Waters, praying that the biblical doctrine preached from that pulpit will once again be preached in Reformed churches to his daughters’ generation. Well, okay. We’re trying. And lest I get into more hot water than I already am, this is as good a time as any to say that the previous line was an attempt to be funny, and not a serious attempt to align myself with the Halfway Covenant. Lots of problems there, created by over-scrupulous Reformed types. But I will say this—is it okay to read what our Reformed fathers wrote and preached back in the day? And learn from them? Or must we simply invoke their names with pious looks on our faces? We got distracted there. Let me also point out that I do not understand what it might mean that we “border on” affirming something. If a black swatch and a white swatch are placed on the table side by side, does the black “border on” the white? If I deny the RC doctrine of the ex opere operato efficacy of the Mass (which, actually, I do with enthusiasm), does this denial “border on” affirming it? Apparently so. Now, if we are allowed to radically redefine the phrase, I believe that there is an ex opere operato aspect to the Lord’s Supper. Whenever someone comes

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to the Supper, something happens(either blessing or condemnation). But I deny the Roman doctrine with regard to what happens (as Cal defines it in his footnote 4). But both Cal and I affirm that when an unworthy recipient comes to the Table, such a person is, by his “unworthy coming thereunto . . . guilty of the body and blood of the Lord, to their own damnation” (WCF 29.8). Something happens. And, as we have just now learned, if we think something (anything at all) happens, our denial of Roman ex operate operato efficacy somehow borders on affirming it. These things are hard to follow, but it would appear that Cal is now in trouble too, right along with us. He continues. He was recently reading a book on developments in Cath- olic/Protestant relations, and while reading one section, he kind of free associated.

In ecclesiology, the Federal Visionists are more nearly Roman Catholic than Reformed. (p. ix)

What sorts of things were in that quotation? What brought this about? Well, for example, there was the sentiment that no one can have God for a Father who does not have the Church as Mother. This is the problematic doctrine taught by that pestilent troublemaker Calvin in his Institutes (4.1.1), and . . . wait a sec. Did we get the sides switched again?

. . . so also the Federal Visionists’ ecclesiology, by taking the metaphor of Christ and the church as Head and body literally rather than metaphorically, nearly equates Christ and the church and so is the foundation of both their soteriology and their sacramentology. (p. x)

So now I confess that I am now officially lost. Take Head and body literally? What is that supposed to mean? As opposed to metaphorically? Is Cal saying that we are supposed to believe that Jesus is a literal head, neck up, and the body of Christ is the rest of the body, literally, neck down? I do not know where he got this, but I am confident he never got it from anything I

150 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JULY 2006 wrote, said, thought, or dreamed in a pizza dream. It is not a literal bond. It is not a metaphor. The bond between the Bridegroom and the Bride is a covenant bond. Okay, so Guy Water’s book is not exactly off to a roaring start.

But it isn’t clear just what it means to the Federal Visionists to remain faithful. One thing is crystal clear: it doesn’t just mean one believes the gospel, or, in the words of the Westminster Confession, that he rests ‘upon Christ alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life, by virtue of the covenant of grace,” for faithfulness means something other than faith. (p. x)

One comment more, and I am done for the day. First, faith rests upon Christ alone. Amen. Faith rests upon Christ alone for justification. Amen again. Faith rests upon Christ alone for sanctification . . . now wait just Ro- manist minute! What is sanctification doing in here, right inside the defintion of saving faith (WCF 14.2)? One of the principal acts of saving faith is to rest upon Christ alone for faithfulness, I mean, sanctification? John Robbins, call your office.

MOSES THE BLENDER JULY 16, 2006 Chapter Two of Waters’s book is on covenant and biblical history. This post will not go on and on, but for two cents, it could.

What is clear is Wilson’s emphasis upon grace as the hallmark of the first covenant and as the principle that unites the first and second covenants. (p. 31)

This is true enough. I believe that God is a gracious God, and that all His dealings with His children are necessarily gracious. This emphasis is on grace from first to last, grace above and grace below, grace before the fall and grace

151 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JULY 2006 after, grace to the uttermost and amen, and this is an emphasis that needs a name. Why not neolegalism? But the fact that God is gracious if He makes a gracious covenant with unfallen Adam, which Adam broke, and then another gracious covenant with fallen men in the second Adam, which Christ kept, does not mean these two gracious covenants have to be the same thing. If I graciously give ten dollars to Smith, and twenty years later, I graciously give twenty clams to Murphy, does it follow from this that I am somehow trying to flatten the differences between Smith and Murphy? If I graciously rent one house on Elm Street to Smith and then five years later rent one to Smith’s kids on Maple, am I trying to flatten the differences between the houses? I deny it, but what do I know? Waters quotes me saying that faith is necessary in both covenants (the covenant of life, and the covenant of grace). And this is accurate. I said it. I believe it. “The condition is always to believe God” (p. 32). But then this is the inference Waters draws from this:

Wilson, therefore places great emphasis upon continuity, not contrast, between the first covenant and subsequent covenants. (p. 32)

Well, if we are talking about the presence of God’s grace and the need for man to respond in faith, I do. But if we are talking about the presence of sin, I don’t. Note that Waters says that I place “great emphasis” on continuity. Why? Because I said the “condition is always to believe God.” But then, just a little bit later, Waters says this: “No Reformed theologian has denied that Adam was to exercise faith in the covenant of works . . . covenantal blessing would come by obedience to the moral law and to the command not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil” (p. 43). So then, Adam was supposed to have been obedient to God’s requirement (which I hold), and he was to have done so by means of exercising faith (as I hold, along with all other Reformed theologians apparently). So what is the beef? If all Reformed theologians hold that Adam had faith in his covenant, and we have faith in this one, how is that not flattening the

152 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JULY 2006 differences between the covenants. Both have faith in them there. Strong element of continuity! Waters even acknowledges that I stress the radical distinction between the older covenants and New Covenant.

While Wilson stresses that the movement into the New Covenant was as bold and as radical as a movement from death to resurrection . . . .” (p. 33)

True enough. I do. And I stress that the covenant with Adam was a distinct covenant from the covenant that God established to secure our salvation. But stress these things as I may, it all avails for naught. Least around these parts. Because this is how Waters summarizes my take on the covenants, and he does this with virtually no argumentation.

In summary, then, we have a flattening of a confessional understanding of the relationship among the covenants. (p. 33)

He says that I flatten the covenants because I maintain that both of them were exhibitions of the grace of God. But he acknowledges that Adam had to have faith. And he acknowledges that there were aspects of grace in the covenant of works. I simply have one question for Waters. If Adam had withstood the temptation offered by the serpent in the garden, would he have had an obligation to thank God for his deliverance. If he had been delivered from the fall, would God have done it? One other thing. Waters acknowledges that the Mosaic law was gracious, and not a flat-out recapitulation of the covenant of works. This is something he pretty much has to do, seeing how the Bible describes it that way. But he needs to get a recapitulation in there somehow, probably because of the people he is hanging out with.

Does this mean, however, that he could not have spoken of the covenant of works surfacing in some sense in the law—to which his opponents looked to establish the grounds of their justification? (p. 47)

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In other words, the covenant of grace is there on the surface, which is what the Westminster Confession says that law of Moses was—an administration of the covenant of grace. But, from time to time, there are sightings of the covenant of works, like the Loch Ness Monster. These sightings enable Paul’s opponents to establish the grounds of their justification on some other basis than grace, because they saw the monster. Now I ask you. Who is flattening covenants around here? I hold the covenant of life was made with Adam, was contingent on his perfect obedience, and he forfeited the blessings promised in it by his disobedience. Because of that sin, and completely new state of affairs ensued, and God (whose gracious character had not changed) makes a new covenant through which He promises to redeem man from the wreckage he made of the first covenant. One gracious God, two covenants, separated by a definitive moment in time—when Adam took the prohibited fruit. Easy to keep them distinct. But Waters has the Mosaic covenant, the covenant of grace, just sitting there all placid like, and this covenant of works keeps surfacing in it, scaring and misleading the Pharisees. This is not just a cute debating trick. Waters is the one who has flattened the covenants. The law of Moses, what is it? If he says that in one sense it is the covenant of grace (which the WCF says) and in another sense it is the covenant of works, who is the flattener? My point, which Waters interacted with and dismissed, was that the law of Moses was the covenant of grace. But the legalistic hearts of the Phar- isees insisted upon seeing another kind of covenant in there, a covenant of works. This was an error God anticipated, and typified in the person of Hagar. She was a type of those who would break covenant by seeing the covenant with Moses as being anything but gracious. Waters dismissed this as “subjectivist,” which means that he must hold that the covenant with Moses is simultaneously the covenant of grace in one way and the covenant of works in another, and is both kinds of covenant together objectively, all in one big confusing bundle. I of course deny that I have flattened these two covenants. But I go further. I assert that Waters himself has gone out of his way to jumble the two

154 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JULY 2006 covenants all together. And he has done so while accusing others of getting these two covenants mixed up. What would he accuse us of if we affirmed a covenant of works with Adam, but said that the covenant of grace kept mysteriously “surfacing” in it? Now frankly, I don’t mind that much if Waters and others mysteriously make Moses the blender in which the covenant of grace and covenant of works are pureed. I have more pressing things to get worked up about. But if he does this in the chapter where he is charging us with this very offense, and it is being done in such a way as to propagate a completely unnecessary controversy in the Reformed world, then I have to say that I do mind. And I do.

THREE EXTRA EGGS IN THE PUDDING JULY 26, 2006 After nine days on the road, occupied with this and that, I have just now had opportunity on the plane back to Idaho to comment on Guy Waters’s next chapter, the chapter on “covenant and election.” In order to work through this, we should begin by taking note of what it really means to read election through the lens of the covenant, as opposed to reading the covenant through the lens of election. It appears to me that a great deal of the confusion in this debate is confusion at just this point. For example, after lengthy analysis, Waters chides John Barach for his quasi-Arminianism:

It is in this sense, notwithstanding his profession of the Reformed doctrine of (decretal) election, that we may say that Barach’s overall doctrine of election is Arminian or at least semi-Arminian. (p. 120)

And this, after Waters quoted Barach saying this: “God has eternally predestined an unchanging number of people out of the whole world to eternal glory with Christ” (p. 112). To see election through a covenant lens does not mean to define decretal election as though it were identical with covenant election. The fact of

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decretal election is affirmed by every FV spokesman that I know of, as indicated by the quote from Barach above. But we do not drag the decrees down into our understanding of history—we let God unfold His unchangeable decrees throughout the process of all history. The content of the ultimate decrees is none of our current business, although we cheerfully acknowledge that the decrees are really there and that they have an unchanging content. Our connection point to these decrees is the covenant, given to us to use in this way. Because of the promises of the covenant, we may deal with election on our end, which is covenant election. The decrees are on God’s end. It is important for us to know that God does what He does on His end, but we only know that He is doing it, not what He is doing. What He is doing will only be fully manifest on the Last Day. Until that Day, we walk by faith, not by sight. Now Waters says of the FV that “we find a reticence in grounding the marks or evidences of election in anything inward or subjective” (p. 111). He says this despite the fact that I devoted a full chapter to the subjective marks of assurance in “Reformed” Is Not Enough (pp. 125–130). Not only that, but the next chapter of Waters’s book indicates that he actually read that chapter, and comments on it. But here in this chapter, where my chapter on assurance contradicts his summary of my position, he goes on to describe my position this way:

In this sense, that which in part the doctrine of the invisible church is concerned to guard—the existence of a body of sincere believers who are discernible to God and to themselves by certain infallible marks (marks that hypocrites do not and cannot possess)—is functionally neglected in Wilson’s ecclesiology . . . the practical distinction between the sincere believer and the hypocrite is not ontological (they possess different types of grace) but historical in nature. It is the sincere believer’s perseverance that Wilson will stress to be what identifies him as a genuine believer . . . It is simply not the case that Wilson is offering us the same doctrine but new terminology. (p. 123)

But, clean contrary to Waters’s assertions, I have taught in multiple places that there is an ontological difference between what the sincere believer

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experiences and what the hypocrite experiences. When the grace of God effectually converts one covenant member, enabling him to persevere in holiness subjectively experienced, and does not convert another in the same way, what else can you call it? To pummel the point (if I may), I have taught (in very clear and divers ways) that the grace given to the decretally elect at the point of the effectual call is grace that is qualitatively different than the common operations of the Spirit enjoyed (for a season) by the unregenerate covenant member. I have heaped this point up in a rumpled pile and have danced around it, gestic- ulating with enthusiasm. I have made a big building out of this point and put a blinking neon sign on top of it. If this point were an overpass, I have spray-painted my agreement with it in bright green letters at least eighteen inches high. With my white chef’s hat on, I have wheeled this point out of the kitchen on a cart, poured brandy all over it, and set it on fire. If the point were a pudding, I would have added three eggs beyond what the recipe called for. To summarize briefly, this is not something I have somehow neglected to say. What Waters has done here is a real travesty of scholarship. He is free to argue that what I have written on this is not consistent with what some of the other FV fellows might say. But this would require far more argument than he is presenting thus far. And if all I had to go on for my understanding of the other guys’ positions was Waters’s take on what I have written, I frankly have no confidence that he is representing them fairly at all. He is not free to mangle my position this way, to pretend that I have not qualified what I have in fact qualified, to invert my meaning as he has. This really is a disgrace—does P&R employ fact-checkers?

FEDERAL VISION ASSURANCE JULY 28, 2006 The first half of chapter five in Waters’s book addresses the question of assurance of salvation. After recognizing that I had dedicated a full chapter to this subject and granting that I emphasized a number of subjective aspects to assurance, Waters goes on to doubt the whole deal. Because I concluded

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that chapter with a call to look away, to look to Christ, to ground assurance in objective certainties, Waters concluded that I was backing away from what I had said earlier. But this is simply a category confusion. Waters says this: “We might recall that Wilson’s ecclesiology, specifically his insistence upon covenantal objectivity and his questioning of the classical Reformed doctrine of the visible and invisible church, appears to render it practically impossible to frame the question of assurance in any traditional subjective sense” (pp. 142–3). He says, at best,

Wilson has outlined in this chapter a doctrine of assurance containing two unreconciled components, namely, subjective and objective assurance. (p. 143)

So how is this a category confusion? By definition, assurance is not objective. It is a subjective response to an objective reality. Every pastor knows what it is to deal with introspective souls who struggle because they try to have faith in their faith, instead of faith in Christ. Faith in Christ works this way. Subjective faith rests in an objective (outside the self) Christ. Subjective faith looks in faith to objective (outside the self) means of grace, like Word and sacrament. Now when I tell someone to look away to Christ, there are two elements in this—subjective and objective. There is the looking away (subjective) and there is Christ (objective). Everyone understands this if we are talking about a Bible verse. “Don’t torment yourself this way,” the wise pastor says. “Look away from yourself. Look to Christ. Look to the text. See? All you have to do is look.” Now if I were listening to an evangelical say this, I would not catch at words, and tell him that he was teaching false doctrine because he said all that was necessary was to look. “Really? That’s all? Just look at the ink on the paper?” Of course, we know that this means to look in true evangelical faith. But true evangelical faith does not have its origin in a hunt for true evangelical faith. The seed that germinates is the imperishable word—objective. The life that springs up

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is subjective. These are not two alien principles that need to be reconciled— not unless faith and the object of faith need to be reconciled. The covenant is objective. Means of grace are objective. Grace itself is subjectively experienced, of necessity. Faithfulness to the covenant is not objective. But covenantal faithfulness is only possible if there is an objective covenant there. Marriage is objective. Fidelity is personal and subjective. Trying to reconcile these two things is like trying to reconcile ham and eggs. And so this assessment by Waters radically misrepresents my views on this. My understanding of assurance is in no way at variance with the classical Reformed understanding of this. Not only so, but I wrote a chapter explaining this in detail. Why on earth would Waters think there was a contradiction between the subjective experience of faith and the objective ground of faith—and not understand the perfectly uncontroversial idea, advanced in that chapter, that faith flourishes when it looks, not at itself, but rather at the Faithful One, who has promised to meet us in His means of grace? What is the problem?

YOU BETCHER JULY 28, 2006 In the second part of chapter five, Waters goes on to misrepresent me on some other issues, particularly on the subject of the perseverance and apostasy: “While Wilson admits the existence and presence of hypocrites within the covenant community and stresses the necessity of the inward operations of the Holy Spirit for an individual’s salvation, his ecclesiology is weighted toward defining the Christian in an undifferentiated way” (p. 147). Actually, I argue for defining Christian in two different ways. I define quarter as a coin in my pocket, and I define quarter as a fourth of something. I don’t “weight” my definition of quarter one way or the other. Why is this so difficult? I hold that a Christian is someone who is born again of the Spirit of God—“Paul’s statement is blunt—he is not a Christian who has only the externals” (RINE, p. 18). And then, in a completely distinct sense, a Christian is anyone who is baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit: “they

159 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JULY 2006 were baptized in infancy or when they were ten in a Baptist church, they sang in the choir and went through catechism class, and they are not Buddhists” (RINE, p. 17). When it comes to sorting out the sheep and goats before the eschaton, Waters tries to argue that I make no distinctions within the church and make no distinctions within the Word.

In preaching and pastoring, Wilson counsels against attempting to raise explicitly the question of hypocrisy. ‘Pastorally, you don’t need to flush these people out by probing and doing private detective work of a pastoral nature. What you need to do is just back God’s truck up to the pulpit and unload it.’ This is not, Wilson stresses, defaulting on one’s pastoral duties. Ministers preach the Scriptures, Wilson argues, which ‘have all these severe warnings in the New Testament.’ He seems fairly confident that hypocrites, under such preaching, will generally choose to leave rather than ‘to slug it out.’ And undifferentiated word (at least in terms of its application to various groups within the church delineated according to the doctrine of regeneration) is therefore to be preached to an undifferentiated church (pp. 147–8).

I don’t know where he gets this idea, but I do not hold to it. In fact, I deny it in the quotations that Waters produces to prove that I do too hold to it. Look at the citation just past. After I say that the New Testament contains many warnings for the hypocrites (making the point that the Bible differentiates between hypocrites and non-hypocrites), Waters cites this as proof positive that I do not believe the Bible differentiates between covenant members. And so why did I have two separate chapters on sons of Belial and false brothers (chapters 17 and 18)? If the Bible differentiates between faithful covenant members and faithless covenant members, then so must we. But Waters has got this idea in his head and it will not be dislodged. He says again that I do not believe in doing this. “First, Wilson’s pattern of preaching (preach an undifferentiated Word to an undifferentiated church) is not in keeping with

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Scripture” (p. 152). I agree. It isn’t. That is why I don’t believe in doing it. I had just said, with Waters quoting me on it, that the Word differentiates, and that if you preach the whole counsel of God (the biblical expression behind my phrase about backing God’s truck up to the pulpit and unloading it), hypocrites will scram. If we unload it, we unload it. The Word differentiates. The Word winnows. The Word is a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces. And why Waters would say that my confidence that the Scripture preached will establish this differentiation within the church (causing hypocrites to flee) is actually proof that I hold there is no such differentiation to be made, is a matter quite beyond my capacity to explain. He says,

The pattern of biblical teaching and preaching in both the Old and New Testaments, then, respects and addresses the distinguishing heart conditions found within the visible church. (pp. 152–3)

To which I reply,

You betcher.

But wait, there’s more, on a different subject. Waters maintains that I deny a qualitative difference between regeneration as experienced by the faithful covenant member and the faithless covenant member.

Wilson, then, refrains here from defining apostasy in qualitative terms—that, apart from considerations of the grace of perseverance, the grace given to the elect is qualitatively different from that given to the reprobate. Rather, apostasy is defined temporally: the apostate is one who simply does not persevere. (p. 151)

Having said this, he then quotes me saying precisely the opposite: “‘The grace experienced by the apostate and the persevering grace experienced by the elect differ . . . regeneration extends (or not) to every covenant member’” (quoted on p. 152, my emphasis in the original). In that quote, Waters cites

161 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JULY 2006 my agreement on this point with Carl Robbins, a FV critic in the Knox colloquium book. Then he says this:

Wilson’s comments, however, do not substantially alter our analysis above. His affirmations regarding the necessity of individual regeneration are appreciated, but do not resolve the issue at hand . . . The question at hand is whether apostate members of the covenant were ever at all properly said to be regenerate. (p. 152)

If Waters is objecting because he thinks I might believe regeneration to be reversible, then he has radically misread my position. Regeneration (in the effectual call sense) is not reversible. And if he is objecting because he thinks I might use the word regenerate of the apostate covenant member in any sense, however distinct from effectual call regeneration, then he has radically muddled my position. When talking about apostates, and talking about effectual call regeneration, I deny that said apostates can be properly said to have ever been regenerate. As I said in “Reformed” Is Not Enough, “This might be called regeneration, theologically considered. A man is either regenerate or he is not. When the word regeneration is being used in this sense, we are talking about an invisible operation performed by the Spirit of God, who does what He does when and how it please Him. And when we are talking about what might be called this ‘effectual-call regeneration,’ we have to repudiate every form of baptismal or decisional regeneration” (RINE, p. 19). In addition, I have written an extensive series of posts on this blog in order “to offer a defense of the historic evangelical understanding of regeneration” (6/16/04). Here is a small sampling from that series12:

12 The “Life in the Regeneration” series of blog posts formed the basis for Against the Church (Moscow, ID: Canon, 2013).

162 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JULY 2006 benefits. Perseverance would, on this reading, be what was subjectively done with what God has objectively given. In this view, the person who did not persevere was not given less of Christ. But this necessarily means that persevering grace is not an objective gift or grace. God’s willingness to continue “the wrestling” would depend upon what kind of fight we put up, or cooperation we provide, and because no one’s fundamental nature has been changed, those natures remain at “enmity with God.” In this view, whatever total depravity means, it is not ontologically changed, just knocked down and sat upon. The Spirit pins one snarling dog, but not another. But this in turn leads to another thought—eventually at some time in the process we stop snarling and start cooperating (if we are bound to heaven), and what do we call this change or transformation. The historic name for this change has been regeneration, and I see no reason to change it. (7/24/04)

Affirming the absolute need for personal regeneration is the sine qua non of historic evangelicalism. Affirming that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church is the sine qua non of historic catholicity. Deny the former only, and the end result is the deadly nominalism found in many quarters of the institutional Church. Such saintlings need to be told that God can make sons of Abraham out of rocks. Deny the latter only, and you have the endless splintering sectarianism that has come to characterize American pop evangelicalism. This comes about when Christians cease affirming the need for an invisible work of the Spirit of God, and presume to be able to see exactly how and when that regeneration happens. But the moment of regeneration is never visible to us. Lack of regeneration, however, is visible over time because the works of the flesh, Paul tells us, are manifest. And the fruit of the Spirit manifest themselves publicly as well, and Jesus tells us to make our judgments on the basis of fruit. But it must be noted that biblical judgments of this sort are mature, and are based on the mature outcome of a person’s way of

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life. All this to say that genuine discernment is based on the video, not on the snapshot (8/5/04).

Not to put too fine a point on it, Waters represents me as holding a view that is 180 degrees out from what I actually hold. Not only do I not hold the views he attributes to me, I have argued energetically against them in print. There must be a qualitative difference between unregenerate baptized hypocrite and the faithful covenant member. From overt misrepresentations of my position, we may now move to disagreements and interactions of an ordinary kind.

Second, Wilson’s doctrine of new covenant curses raises certain questions. How then may we affirm Paul’s declaration that Christ has borne the curse of the law for believers (Gal. 3:13)? How may we say, with Paul, that believers no longer fall under condemnation (Rom. 8:1)? (p. 153)

Well, the point would be that believers within the covenant know that Christ has bore the curse for them. But covenant members who do not believe this are thereby identified as unbelievers. Because they are unbelievers, and all the promises of Christ are apprehended by faith alone, and because there is a fundamental differentiation within the covenant during the course of history, unbelievers within the covenant receive the curses of the covenant, and not the blessings of the covenant.

One may agree in principle with Wilson that ‘covenant members in the new covenant were judged more severely than the covenant members in the old were,’ but Wilson’s explanation of Hebrews 10:26f. in terms of specifically covenantal curses is a dubious one. When we consider its likely connection to Wilson’s doctrine of covenant election, we are further inclined to be skeptical of its merit. (p. 153)

This quotation above may serve as a sampling of how Waters undertakes to refute something. Note that this is under a section labeled “Critique.”

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One may agree with me in principle about how curses in the New Cove- nant are more severe than those of the Old, but he says my explanation of Heb. 10:26 is a “dubious one.” Furthermore, my explanation has a “likely” connection to my doctrine of “covenantal election” and so Waters is further inclined to be “skeptical of its merit.” Oh? Might there be any reasons? This is just academic handwaving. He says nothing more than that he doesn’t buy it, which is fine, but ought not to be confused with offering reasons for not buying it. We now come to the last point, which is the problem of sap in John 15.

Third, it is gratuitous, that is, baseless to say that Jesus’s analogy in John 15:1–6 teaches that the broken branches partook of the sap of the vine. Jesus does not use the term sap in this parable. That metaphor is an inference that Wilson has drawn. As Beisner has rightly commented, ‘It is dangerous enough to draw doctrines from parables; it is more dangerous to draw doctrines from details within parables; it is exegetically fatal to draw doctrines from details that are even there!’ There is no hint in this parable that the broken branches ever existed in any vital, living relationship with Christ. Far less is it clear that the broken branches sustained the same relationship to Christ as those who prove to be decretally elect. Wilson’s argument fails to overturn conventional Reformed readings of this passage, which see branches that are outwardly and inwardly related to Christ. (pp. 153–4)

Excuse me if I have just a little bit of fun with this one. First, the point of the sap illustration was not to turn John 15 into a complex allegory, with the sap representing the internal motions of grace or something. The point of mentioning the sap was to emphasize something that Christ’s metaphor says explicitly, and which Reformed exegetes consistently run away from (in the best tradition of an Arminian in Romans 9), which is to say, the branchness of the branches that were broken off. Christ says nothing of sap, or bark, or leaves. But He does say that branches in Him were

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cut out of Him, and were then taken away and burned. He does say that. So, Mr. Reformed, what does it mean? What is taken away from the Vine which is Christ? They are branches, which had a branchy connection to Him. All I mean by sap in the branches is to say that they are true branches. A branch can be fruitless and still be a true branch—a branch that needs to be pruned. A branch cannot be sapless and still be a true branch. That was my only point in talking about sap, which leads to this next point. Waters chides me for mentioning sap in my discussion of this (although every branch I have ever seen has had sap), and then moves blithely on to talk about branches that are “outwardly related” to the Vine and branches that are “inwardly related.” Now I have never in all my born days seen a branch that is merely outwardly related to a vine or tree. We have never seen it in nature, and Christ makes no mention of it. But it is responsible Reformed exgesis to have outwardly related branches and inwardly related branches, but exegetically fatal to have branches with sap in them, that is to say, branchy branches. And third, Waters says, “Far less is it clear that the broken branches sustained the same relationship to Christ as those who prove to be decretally elect.” Well, of course not. They were cut out because they did not have the same relationship; one was fruitful and the other not. But in some sense, at some level (not in every sense, not on every level), they did have the same relationship to Christ. How’s that? They were both BRANCHES.

SALTY DOGS AND CRUSTY LUTHERANS JULY 30, 2006 The first part of chapter seven in Waters’s book is dedicated to my views of sacramental efficacy and baptism. And so, here we are. He begins by saying that I misread B.B. Warfield definition of sacerdotalism and seeks to establish that I misread it by simply stating why Warfield said what he did (p. 199). But this does not change the fact that Warfield defined sacerdotalism as the notion that God uses any means to accomplish his saving purposes (as I said he did). Warfield holds that the evangelical

166 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JULY 2006 position is that God’s saving action is never mediated. So Waters’s response here is simply beside the point. Suppose I say that Smith believes that we ought not to be fighting in Iraq. Waters says that I have misread Smith because he holds this position because the war is too expensive. How would I be misreading Smith’s position? Waters notes that I quote the WCF (28.5) and that I draw a certain inference from the way they talk about baptism there: “Although it be a great sin to contemn or neglect this ordinance, yet grace and salvation are not so inseparably annexed unto it, as that no person can be regenerated, or saved, without it; or, that all that are baptized are undoubtedly regenerated.” Waters says (accurately) that I argue from this expression that grace and salvation are ordinarily annexed to water baptism, although not inseparably annexed. Waters responds by saying that the “paragraph says nothing about who among the baptized will be saved.” This is quite true, but it is also not the point of my argument. Let’s just consider the structure of this sentence from the WCF, changing the topic completely: “Although it be parental neglect not to enroll your kid in a good Christian school, yet a good education is not so inseparably annexed unto it, as that no person can be educated well without it; or, that all who are enrolled are undoubtedly educated well.” Now what is this speaker claiming about Christian education? He is saying that not enrolling your kid in a good Christian school is a big negative deal. He is saying, however, that it is possible to get a good education without doing so, and he grants that to claim that all who are so enrolled are educated well would be an overstatement. It would be fair to say, however, that the speaker is saying that a good education is the ordinary result of enrolling your kid in such a school. It would be nothing to the point for Waters to say that the speaker was making no claim about who among the students would receive a good education. This is quite true, but it is also not the subject under discussion. A man can be convinced that a school is ordinarily good for the kids without making any particular claims about who will be educated well. But this is structurally the same argument the Westminster divines advance concerning baptism.

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Waters then says that I believe that baptism seals what it signifies, and that it is not a “front operation.” Good enough. He then says of me that “Wilson does not qualify here the objects of the redemptive sealing of the sacrament as those who have saving faith. It may be that he understands the redemptive sealing operation of the Spirit in the sacraments to transpire, at least sometimes, in the absence of faith. This suspicion is heightened . . .” (p. 200). Thus far Waters on my view of baptism, emphasis mine. Here is my take on my view of baptism, the first of which is just a few pages after the citation Waters quoted.

Of course this baptism does not automatically save the one baptized; there is no magical cleaning power in the water. (RINE, 99)

The blessings are appropriated by faith, not by water, and the curses are brought down upon the head by unbelief, against which curses the water provides no protection whatever. (“A Short Credo on Baptism,”13 emphasis added)

An unbelieving covenant member incurs all the curses of the covenant, while the believer appropriates all its blessings by faith alone. (“A Short Credo on Baptism,” emphasis added)

Now I ask you . . . The next section of Waters’s chapter is worth quoting in some detail. He says this:

Fifth, Wilson conflates Westminster Larger Catechism 161 and WCF 27.3 to read as follows: ‘Worthy receivers of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper are effectually saved by these sacramental means through the working of the Holy Spirit and the blessing of Christ.’ This, however, is what neither statement affirms. The Standards are careful to say that the sacraments are ‘effectual means of salvation,’ but this is a far cry from saying that ‘worthy receivers . . . are effectually

13 Can’t remember for sure where this was published, but we suspect Credenda.

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saved by these sacramental means.’ Wilson’s latter statement places a far greater emphasis on the necessity and importance of the sacraments to one’s salvation than the Standard’s statements do. (p. 201)

This is simply unbelievable. The difference between Waters’s summary (“The sacraments are effectual means of salvation for worthy receivers” and mine (“Worthy receivers are effectually saved by these sacramental means”) really amounts to a difference of voice. But “The ball hits John” is apparently a “far cry” from “John is hit by the ball.” Bill, a worthy receiver, is effectually saved by these sacramental means” is a “far cry” from “These sacramental means save Bill, a worthy receiver.” Sometimes I really am at a loss for words. How are you supposed to debate people like this? Waters says that my summary “places a far greater emphasis on the necessity and importance of the sacraments.” Why? How? In what way? What on earth is he talking about? Waters then reproduces another argument I advanced from the Westmin- ster Confession.

Sixth, Wilson takes Westminster Shorter Catechism 92 (‘wherein, by sensible signs, Christ, and the benefits of the new covenant, are represented, sealed, and applied to believers’) to mean that ‘the benefits of the new covenant) are applied to a man through the sacraments when that man has faith.’ Wilson certainly intends to be provocative by this statement . . . Is he saying that baptism and the Lord’s Supper are instruments of justification? If so, they he most certainly would be out of accord with the Standards. Is he saying that a believer’s sense of his justification may be built up by improvement of his baptism and by a right use of the Supper? If so, Wilson is saying nothing new. (p. 202)

This is the same kind of thing as an earlier point made about persevering grace, a question that is sometimes legitimately directed against some FV expressions. If a baptized individual receives all of Christ’s benefits, then how can we account for such a person not having persevering grace? Isn’t that part

169 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JULY 2006 of Christ’s benefits, and doesn’t he have them all? A reasonable kimd of que- sion, I think, and so now I present it back to Waters. The Shorter Catechism teaches that Christ and the benefits of the new covenant are applied to worthy receivers by means of sensible signs. Waters wants to see this as the relatively uncontroversial notion that a man’s sense of his justification can be built up by improvement of his baptism and through a right use of the Supper. But no, that can’t be it. The Shorter Catechism says, “Christ and the benefits of the new covenant” are applied by sensible signs, not my “sense of Christ, and my sense of the benefits of the new covenant.” And so my question for Waters is whether he believes this. If so, what is his beef with what I have been saying? If not, has he taken an exception to the WCF at this point? Spelling it out, justification is one of the benefits of the new covenant, is it not? Just like persevering grace is. Put this another way. If I were to be so foolish as to say that Christ and the benefits of the new covenant were applied to a man (a worthy receiver guy) by means of the sensible signs given in the sacraments, would Waters interpret me as saying this meant nothing more than a man’s sense of these benefits being strengthened as he rolls these propositions around in his brain? Not a chance. He would interpret me as a roaring sacerdotalist, as he has done. How about if Wilkins said it? No, wait . . . what if Lusk said it? For misrepresentations, Waters is setting a record in this chapter. He then says this:

Wilson’s doctrine of sacramental efficacy is intriguing in that it con- ceives of redemptive sacramental efficacy in the case of an unconverted recipient (the ‘nominal Presbyterian, baptized in infancy’). As SC 92 and many other passages state, however, the Westminster Standards conceive of redemptive sacramental efficacy in the presence of a faith that embraces what the sacrament holds forth to it. (p. 204)

Well, of course. That was the whole point of my illustration. The Westmin- ster Standards clearly teach that the grace conferred by means of baptism is

170 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JULY 2006 not anchored to the moment of baptismal administration. Someone is baptized in infancy, grows up a hellion, lives in unbelief for a time, and is then converted. When he is converted, he comes to “a faith that embraces what the sacrament holds forth to it.” I say, “By means of baptism, this efficious grace is conferred on the elect at the appropriate time, the time of conversion, and it is the applied grace of their baptism.” And yes, I said that, because that is what the Westminster Standards teach. Waters summarizes this as saying the exact opposite of what I said. “We may speak, then, of redemptive baptismal efficacy quite apart from the subjective condition of the recipient” (p. 208). Okay. So I say that the applied grace of baptism is conferred on someone at the time of their conversion (e.g., when they are brought by God to a subjective condition of repentance and faith), and Waters represents this as me saying that this baptismal efficacy occurs quite apart from “the subjective condition of the recipient” (p. 208). Now I am no salty dog, or crusty Lutheran, or anything like that, but this really is a “what the hell?” moment. Maybe I should start typing words like CONVERSION or REPENTANCE or FAITH in all caps so that scholars can find them. Waters ends his section dealing with me by saying that “Wilson’s understanding of precisely what is conveyed to the recipient in baptism is not at all clear” (p. 210). Well, not at all clear to some people’s children.

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CONFESSIONAL LAXITY OVER AT MISSISSIPPI VALLEY AUGUST 1, 2006 In my previous Auburn Avenue post, in the comments section Mark Horne supplied the following quotation from Turretin. The emphases are Mark’s, and Turretin was da bomb.

The question is not whether faith alone justifies to the exclusion either of the grace of God or the righteousness of Christ or the word AND SACRAMENTS (BY WHICH THE BLESSING OF JUSTIFICATION IS PRESENTED AND SEALED TO US ON THE PART OF GOD), which we maintain ARE NECESSARILY REQUIRED HERE; but only to the exclusion of every other virtue and habit on our part . . .. For all these as they are mutually subordi- nated in a different class of cause, CONSIST WITH EACH OTHER IN THE HIGHEST DEGREE. [16.8.5]

I bring this up because I just finished chapter seven of Waters’s book- length material. I don’t have much to say here because in the second part of that chapter, Waters was taking other fellows to task. As I said at the beginning of this series of posts, I will let my compadres answer as the fit takes them, and their wives are unable to restrain them. But a few things in this were too delicious to pass up, and the Turretin quote provides a good spring- board for just a few comments. Waters says

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By way of preface, we may note that Lusk’s argument is filled with quotations from Calvin, other sixteenth-century Reformers, and certain seventeenth-century divines. He points to these quotations as evidence that his position has some pedigree and precedent in the Reformed tradition. To engage each of these quotes seriatim would distract us from our primary concern . . . .” (p. 211)

I dare say it would. Nevertheless, Waters does give a general hand-waving response to the quotes, though it is nothing quite so magisterial as a seriatim response. First, he wonders aloud what the context of those pesky quotations might be. Of course, this is reasonable as a general point (context always matters), but the substance of these sorts of quotations would only be seriously affected if the context of the above quote (say) had an intro like this from Turretin: “Here I summarize the position of my opponent, that hardy blasphemer Ser- gius Smith. He maintains, and we deny, that . . . .” It is not really an appropriate response to muse thoughtfully that it is possible that some contextual clues in the original setting might possibly “bail my position out. Let us prayerfully hope that it is so.” Second, he grants that it sometimes sure looks like Calvin and all those other home boys of ours were saying the same thing that Lusk is. But were they advancing “that statement in service of of the same theological ends for which Lusk as adduced it”? (p. 211). Hmmm? Maybe not, and so there we rest our case. Third, Waters wonders if certain qualifying or balancing statements have been left out. Oh? Sort of like how Waters has left out all my qualifying or balancing statements? When talking about the same things? I have to grant that this argument from Waters is the most persuasive. This sort of thing does happen. And last, Waters and his readers have “bypassed these quotations and have restricted ourselves to a single argument, the argument from the Westminster Standards” (p. 212). But to do this is to miss one of the central historical

174 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | AUGUST 2006 and theological arguments that the FV guys are advancing. And for a critic, to miss it is fortunate because if you miss it, you don’t have to answer it. To read the Westminster Standards in the light of Dabney, Hodge, Miller, and Thornwell is to read the document in the light of theologians (to whom all praise!) who, despite all their signal strengths and virtues, cannot be said to have had an impact on the theological climate that led to the writing of the Standards. This is because they all lived a long time later. This is not the case with Calvin, Beza, Knox, Turretin, et al, men who lived, wrote, and reshaped the continent of Europe prior to the writing of the Standards. The Westmin- ster Standards are not a confessional standard that fell from the sky. It was composed by men who were self-consciously doing theology in the Reformed tradition, and a battery of quotations from the fathers of that tradition would seem to be to the point. A battery of quotations from those men from whom the Westminster divines learned their theology would seem to be pertinent. The issue is not what can be read back into the Standards in the light of subsequent developments in anabaptist America. Thatis anachronism. The issue is what the Standards meant to the generation that first adopted them. And in order to understand that, a grasp of 16th and 17th century Reformed thought would be, shall we say, screamingly relevant. Waters cannot simply say that to study the context of the Confession would take him far afield, far away from his attempts to interpret a pristine Confession of faith that mysteriously showed up (in a place of honor)on his bookshelf. To this point in his book, Waters has quoted (a number of times) that portion of the Westminster Confession (28.6) that says that the efficacy of baptism is such that, by a right use of it, the grace promised in it is not only offered,but really exhibited and conferred. He has done this, and yet he himself cannot bring himself to say that baptism confers the grace promised in it. He objects to Lusk’s argument from this portion of the Confession. “He does this by isolating such terms as confer, sign, seal, and exhibit from their confessional qualifications” (p. 231). Okay, let’s not do that. Let us not fall into the Error of Lusk (just because Lusk didn’t doesn’t mean that we should). Let’s qualify it like Zeus distributing thunder, lightning and blue ruin. Worthy receiver,

175 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | AUGUST 2006 repentance as deep as David Brainerd on steroids, evangelical faith sloshing out the ears. Dr. Waters, has there ever been a Christian in the history of the Church to whom you believe this sentence applies? One who used his baptism rightly, and who, as a consequence, had the grace of salvation promised in that baptism, not only offered to him, but also exhibited to him and conferred upon him? Has this ever happened? If you think it has, then lay off us already. If you think it has not, then when will you notify your presbytery that you have to take exception to this portion of the Confession? I don’t think you need to worry because Mississippi Valley is kind of lax when it comes to this kind of thing. They overlook this particular discrepancy all the time.

A TULIP FROM CALVIN’S GARDEN AUGUST 2, 2006 The last chapter of Waters’s book gives him an opportunity to wrap up. But although I will interact with some elements of this chapter, I am not going to wrap up, not just yet anyhow. Nossir. I am going to go through the footnotes too. First, Waters charges me with a “misuse of logic.” Were it true, ’twould be serious, for it might affect sales. He quotes me arguing the following: “Branches can lose their position on the tree. You can be on the tree, someone can be on the tree right next to you and he is as much on the tree as you, he’s as much a partaker of Christ as you are, he is as much a member of Christ as you are.” After saying this, I then respond to a criticism that says this cannot be reconciled with election. I say, “Well, first it is reconcilable, that is the first thing. Secondly, if you can’t reconcile it, it’s not your problem. What does the Bible say?” ( quoted on pp. 268–269). Waters then says,

In fairness to Wilson, he believes that his doctrines of election and apostasy can be reconciled. He argues, however, that there is no burden on the interpreter to reconcile what he perceives the Bible to teach. We are “just [to[ take the Bible at face value.” Logical reconciliation is not necessary for the student of the Bible. (p. 269)

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Once again, is not accurate at all. No burden on the interpreter to reconcile disparate elements in the text? No. God gave us minds for a reason. I believe we should use them to harmonize various passages of Scripture, whenever possible. The temptation that comes with this, and the one I was addressing, was the temptation to do violence to the text for the sake of a “harmonized system.” Don’t be like the fellow who got the wrong box top on the wrong jig saw puzzle, and who wound up having to put some pieces in with a mallet. It is all consistent in the mind of God, and if we submit to the plain teaching of Scripture, at the end of the day we will have a much fuller (and harmonized) sense of what God has revealed to us. The alternative is to be like the guy who has a sailboat that was supposed to be a lighthouse. Later he says that I have contributed with a vote of “no confidence” with regard to logic as a means of “assessing and attaining to the truth.” (p. 272). This is simply not true. But it is true that I would register a vote of no confidence in slipshod reasoning and dogmatic bluster masquerading as tough-minded orthodoxy. But the problem I have with it is that it is unreasonable . . . illogical. One of my complaints against Waters is that he is unwilling to follow certain arguments that proceed by good and necessary consequence. If baptism exhibits and confers a certain grace on those who use the sacrament rightly, it follows, by good and necessary consequence that baptism exhibits and confers a certain grace on those who use the sacrament rightly. I am using a straightforward example here. He who says A must say A. A second criticism that Waters offers concerns the matter of curses in the new covenant. Water says of my handling of 1 Cor. 10:1–14 that I have a certain interpretive assumption, which is true enough.

Observe now the interpretive assumption behind Wilson’s argument. It is that the national blessings and curses that pertained to Israel under the old covenant now pertain to the church under the new covenant. This speaks a much stronger conception of covenantal continuity than most nontheonomic Reformers interpreters have allowed. (p. 286)

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Two problems here. Have allowed? Is St. Paul not allowed to say certain things? This leads to the second problem. Where did my interpretive assumption come from? How did I get the idea that the national blessings and curses pertaining to Israel under the old now pertain to the Church under the new? Who comes up with this stuff? Well, maybe it was because of what the apostle Paul expressly said. “Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted” (1 Cor. 10:6). I think it is plain enough on the surface, but I have also argued for this position in some detail. Some interaction with the arguments would be nice, and then Waters would not have to resort to saying that I have come up with a stronger covenant continuity than I was allowed to. A third criticism in this last chapter returns to the question of differentiation in preaching to the covenant people.

We have also seen Wilson’s concern that we not preached in a differentiated manner to the covenant community. We are to preach the promises and the warnings of the covenant and presume that most hypocrites, not tolerating such preaching, will leave the church. (p. 293) I have a hard time figuring out what Waters means by undifferentiated preaching. If I preach that the covenant tree contains fruitful branches and fruitless branches, and I also preach the promises and warnings that apply to each, what else does he want? Egg in his beer? Is it undifferentiated preaching unless and until (from the pulpit) I nail Smith, three rows back, for being a shoddy tither, intermittent Sabbath-breaker, and grumbler, all the result of his unconverted heart? “Yes, you, Smith! Don’t act surprised, you whitewashed tomb!” Waters also returns to the question of what happens to the nominal Presbyterian, baptized as an infant, but who lived in a wild and unconverted way until his conversion. When he is converted, Waters describes my position this way:

It is, we may note, to this man’s baptism that Wilson will ultimately attribute the man’s conversion, whatever proximate causes and means

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may have intervened between his baptism and his conversion. (pp. 293–4)

According to Waters, the “doctrine of saving faith” is already being “out- shone by baptism” (p. 294). Now the Westminster Confession says that the efficacy of baptism is not tied to the moment of its administration. That means, good and necessary consequence again, that the efficacy of baptism is not tied to the moment of its administration. Thatmeans, in its turn, that when a baptized person is converted later in life, he is coming into true evangelical faith. He is becoming a worthy receiver, to use the description of the Standards. That being the case, what happens as a result of his newly-given “right use” of the sacrament later in life? The grace promised in it is not only offered (as it has been throughout his whole unconverted life), it is now exhibited and conferred. It can be conferred later in his life because the efficacy of baptism is not tied to the moment of its administration. This really is a tight argument, and I would be interested if someone like Waters interacted with it. I am not a doctrinal imperialist. All kinds of wonderful Christians don’t subscribe to the Westmin- ster Confession, and that is fine. But I do subscribe to it, and I take my vows seriously. And at this point, like it or not, Waters is out of conformity with the Standards and I am not. This is not a cute debating ploy. I have advanced a serious argument here. There is a difference between believing that the efficacy of baptism is not limited to the time of administration and believing the impotence of baptism is not tied to the moment of its administration. Waters concludes his book of failed criticism with this hope:

It is my sincere hope that FV proponents will recognize this discord and return to their first love. Barring that, may the souls of believers be spared, to borrow Samuel Miller’s phrase, from the ‘poisonous exotic’ that the FV offers to the Reformed church. (p. 300)

In order to issue this kind of pastoral warning to the Church, there are a few prerequisites. One of them is that you have to do your homework. You

179 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | AUGUST 2006 have to know what you are talking about. The plant that Waters is pointing to is not a poisonous exotic at all. It is a tulip, right out of Calvin’s garden.

MAKING THE NECESSARY QUALIFICATIONS AUGUST 3, 2006 One of the things that became obvious throughout this review of Waters’s book on the Federal Vision was the extraordinarily sloppy job done by Wa- ters in representing my views fairly or accurately. Unfortunately, this pattern continues in the footnotes and bibliography. An astonishing omission in the bibliography is the doctrinal examination I took before my presbytery in order to address these question. That examination can be found here14, under the heading of Ecclesiastical Issues. Another striking example of sloppiness is the following summary of my contribution to the Knox Colloquium on sacramental efficacy. Waters says,

Wilson charges the modern Reformed church with compromising the “sacramental theology found in the Westminster Standards,” and proceeds to elaborate precisely what he understands that sacramental theology to mean. In so doing, he advances a doctrine of baptismal efficacythat neglects needed confessional qualifications. He thereby trans- gresses the very Confession that he professes to espouse. (p. 363, emphasis added)

My point here is not to dispute the doctrinal issue itself—that is forthcoming in response to a footnote from Cal Beisner’s Foreword. My point here is simply to illustrate Waters’s critical methods. I want to simply quote from the article in question, in order to see if I in fact neglected “needed confessional qualification.” Remember, the issue is not our disagreement over what we believe baptism does. Later for that. The issue is whether I qualify what I believe it does in accordance with the Confession’s qualifications. Waters says that I

14 http://www.federal-vision.com/?p=259

180 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | AUGUST 2006 neglected this important task. Read the following, and see if you agree with this assessment:

Let us grant that the Catechism here is not maintaining that all those who are baptized with water are automatically and inexorably saved. Let us grant that it is not saying that individuals are watertight jugs and that baptism pours an ‘effectual call fluid’ into each and every one of them. Let us grant that those who are baptized but who remain in unbelief are worse off for having been baptized, not better off. Of course the Confession is not teaching baptismal superstition (and, incidentally, neither are we). The Confession is talking about worthy receivers, who in the broader context of the Confession should be understood as the elect. (The Auburn Avenue Theology: Pros and Cons, “Sacramental Efficacy in the Westminster Standards,” p. 236, italics original, bold added) So positively, what is the Confession saying about such worthy receivers? (p. 236) Spiritual blessings work the way they do because of the involvement of God in them. God is always the one who gives the increase—not water, not bread, and not wine. He works through His instruments, but it is His involvement that gives the increase for blessing. (p. 237) Those who come to the sacraments with true evangelical faith in God are those on whom this blessing of salvation is bestowed. (p. 238) In the words of the Confession, a sacrament . . . is a holy ordinance that uses sensible signs to represent, seal and apply the benefits of the new covenant to worthy receivers. Who are worthy receivers? The elect. (p. 240) [Note—I am aware that an elect individual who is foreordained to be converted next year is not yet a worthy receiver. I am telescoping here.]

In my quotation of the Shorter Catechism 91, I italicized the phrase from the answer that says “in them that by faith receive them.” (p. 238). I did this in order to jump up and down on it.

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Now faith is the only instrument that occupies this place. We cannot intrude works, or good looks, or willing, or running here. But there are multitudes of other instruments, used by God, that occupy other places in the process of salvation. (p. 244)

So then, the Standards limit the efficacy of the sacraments (for blessing) to worthy receivers, to those who use the sacraments rightly. Do I agree with this? Did I say so? Why would Waters say that I had not made these qualifications? Beats me. The whole thing is beyond weird.

TALMUDIC LAYERS OF REVIVALISM AUGUST 4, 2006 In the footnotes of Waters’s book, Cal Beisner makes this statement: “The Westminster Standards present the sacraments solely as means of sanctifying grace, not as means of converting grace” (p. 302). In his response to my essay on sacramental efficacy in the Westminster Standards, Rick Phillips makes a similar point:

In reading Wilson’s paper I find that a single issue or question determines the whole, namely, ‘What is the nature of the grace conveyed via the sacrament?’ Is the grace of the sacraments limited to edifying or sanctificational issues, or do the sacraments regenerate or enter the recipient into a new relationship with God, conveying a grace not previously received through faith alone? (Auburn Avenue Theology: Pros and Cons, p. 245)

I have already argued on behalf of the sacramental teaching of Westmin- ster in several places—in “Reformed” Is Not Enough (pp. 103–107) and in “Sacramental Efficacy in the Westminster Standards” in Auburn Avenue The- ology: Pros and Cons (pp. 233–244). My purpose here is not to rehash all of this, multiplying words unnecessarily, but rather to provide a simple summary of the argument. There are additional questions or qualifications that I

182 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | AUGUST 2006 would want to make beyond this, but at the heart of this issue, I subscribe to what the Westminster divines taught in the following:

1. The grace that we are talking about here is limited to what Westminster calls “worthy receivers,” those who have been graciously given (by God) a “right use” of the sacrament. I take this to mean evangelical faith as evidenced in the one being converted at the moment of his or her effectual call. And that evangelical faith is a gift of God, lest any should boast. 2. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are both sacraments, but they signify different aspects of the overall process of salvation. Baptism is about entry and the Lord’s Supper is about nurture. 3. There is a sacramental union between the sign and the thing signified in baptism (WCF 27.2) Baptism in water is therefore united in this sacramental way to what it represents. 4. So what does Christian baptism represent? Baptism represents solemn admission of the party baptized into the visible Church; it is a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, it represents the baptized individual’s ingrafting into Christ, it represents regeneration, it means remission of sins, as well as surrender to God, through Jesus Christ, to walk in the newness of life. There is therefore a sacramental union between water baptism and all these things. Note that baptism means or represents a number of things on this list which we would normally associate with conversion, and not with sanctification—things like ingrafting into Christ, regeneration, remission of sins, and so on. This is the language of conversion, not surprisingly, because baptism is the sacrament of initiation. 5. The sacramental union between the sign and the thing signified is not tied to the moment of time when it is administered (WCF 28.6). The union is a sacramental union, not a temporal union. 6. If this converting grace promised in baptism (and sacramentally united to it) belongs to someone (one of the elect), then by a right use of the sacrament (remember what right use means), then the promised grace

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is, by the power of the Holy Spirit, not only offered to this individual, but exhibited to him, and conferred upon him (WCF 28.6). What is conferred? Remission of sins, regeneration, ingrafting into Christ, etc. 7. This baptismal grace is not limited to those who are “of age,” but can also belong to infants. This means that the Holy Spirit can offer, exhibit, and confer this baptismal grace upon infants. Notice what this does to Rick Phillip’s alternative, where baptism only conveys a grace previously received through faith alone. If someone restricts faith only to those who can knowingly give their assent to propositions, then they are out of conformity with the Standards. If baptismal grace is possible for infants (who die in infancy, say), and evangelical faith is the only way to have a “right use” of the sacrament to receive this blessing, then the Confession teaches that infants can have evangelical faith. Right? Great—glad that’s settled.

Such is the teaching of the Confession. I subscribe to it and agree with it. Guy Waters does not. Cal Beisner does not. If the Confession gives a detailed description of a sacramental union between water baptism and converting graces (which it plainly and unambiguously does), then what do you call it when guardians of the Confession just wave their hands over it, and pronounce (ex cathedra) that is doesn’t mean what it says? When this kind of inversion happens, then only one thing can follow it—accusations must be brought against those who still hold to the original meaning of the Con- fession at this point. And that is what is happening. The rabbis are cracking down lest the original sacramental Calvinism of the Confession break free from the talmudic layers of revivalism that have been imposed upon it. It is like the Second Amendment to the Constitution. If you maintain, with a straight face, that the right to keep and bear arms means that you don’t have the right to keep and bear arms (as many solons and political chin-scratchers do), then what is to be done with those raving lunatics in Idaho who think that they somehow have the right to keep and bear arms? When you twist the original intent of words like this, then only one thing

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can be done with those who remain faithful to the original intent of those words. Attack them as innovators, which is exactly what Beisner and Waters have done in this book. Incidentally, just for the record, I don’t put Phillips in the same category. He shares the same paradigm with the other anti-FVers, but has in a number of instances shown a fair-minded willingness to hear his opponents out in a judicious and nonpolitcal way. I differ with him as much as I ever did, but it is (as far as I can tell) a straight-up doctrinal difference. I can’t say the same thing about some of the high-octane weirdness elsewhere. And I hope this doesn’t get Rick into trouble with any of his friends, but there it is.

LAST POST ON WATERS AUGUST 5, 2006 Okay, one last comment, and I am done reviewing Waters’s book. In the bibliography, Waters says this about my lecture on heretics and the covenant at the 2002 Auburn Avenue Pastors Conference.

Wilson calls for a “covenantal approach to heresy,” one that recognizes the “objective . . . covenantal obligations” of the heretic, who, if “lawfully baptized,” must be “received[d] . . . as a fellow Christian.” Such an individual must then be treated as a covenant breaker. This lecture well illustrates the overwhelmingly external cast of Wilson’s ecclesiology. (p. 361)

I won’t take long with this. Jesus teaches us that it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks. The good man brings forth good things, and the evil man brings forth evil things. We must deal with it when it gets to the outside because we are not competent to address it at the root. I cannot convict someone of incipient heart-heresy—that is the way to ecclesiastical tyrannies. Only God can deal with the heart directly. I am called to deal with the person in accordance with what I can deal with—and that means what Waters calls the “externals.” But there is a difference between my practice, which of necessity deals with externals, and my ecclesiology, which does not. My ecclesiology takes

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full account of the heart—the fact that covenant members have them, the fact that they must be transformed by the Holy Spirit, and the need for the Church to deal with external corruptions that follow when hearts are corrupt. So it is false to say that my ecclesiology is external. If there is anyone who has gone out of his way to emphasis the absolute necessity of heart regeneration, true conversion to God, the needed for true closure with Christ, I would be that guy. In addition, I have emphasized that while the hidden things of the heart (as such) are out of our reach, the Bible teaches that the works of the flesh are manifest. You identify the tree by the fruit. And when you see the heretical manifestation of fruit that unregenerate hearts always bring forth—you deal with it. Although Waters’s clear departures from Westminster sacramentalism are not (in my view) heresy, this whole thing does provide us with a good example of this principle. I do not have any idea of Guy Waters’s motivations. I have no way of ascertaining what his heart’s intent was in writing this book. All I have to go on is the external product—the slipshod book he actually wrote. This does not mean that I think that there is nothing more to Guy Wa- ters than the book he wrote. This does not mean that I have an “externalist” view of Waters. I just have an externalist view of what I am competent to deal with. I can answer the book he wrote; I cannot answer for why he wrote it. To summarize this series of posts, I would conclude by urging the anti-FV forces to reconsider their choice of a champion. Guy Waters is clearly more than capable of reading mountains of material. He can assemble evidence in print that he has read it by using the usual scholarly apparatus. As I have shown repeatedly in this series of posts, what he cannot do is represent that material fairly, or refute it with theological integrity.

CHUGGING THROUGH THE MEADOW AUGUST 10, 2006 What does it look like when the Presbyterian locomotive jumps the rails and finds itself chugging valiantly through a meadow? Let a recent statement from Evangel Presbytery (PCA) answer the question. HT: Jeff Meyers

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Evangel Presbytery declares that the doctrines of the “New Perspective on Paul,” “Auburn Avenue Theology/Federal Vision”, and teachings of Norman Shepherd, N.T. Wright, and Douglas Wilson which foster these positions, to be outside of the bounds of acceptable theological doctrine for Teaching Elders and Ruling Elders in Evangel Presbytery and are not to be believed or taught within the churches of this Presbytery; and each Teaching and Ruling Elder be charged with equipping the members of their churches to stand against these doctrines.

I don’t think this is general enough yet. I think they need to back off a bit and just condemn anything we teach “to the extent that it might be in error.” What do they mean, “the doctrines of”? If they are charging TEs and REs to equip the members of their churches “to stand against these doctrines,” is this pronouncement supposed to be an example of how to do it?

CONSERVATIVES BLITZ ANYWAY AUGUST 20, 2006 I believe it was Samuel Francis who said that Washington, D.C., was run by two political parties—the Evil Party and the Stupid Party. The same thing is true in contemporary ecclesiastical politics. We have the people who are selling out the “faith once delivered,” and then there are those who are clueless about what is going on. A dangerous subset of this latter category is made up of those who know that the faith is being corrupted, but they have no idea of how it is being done. They don’t know what play is being run. That being the case, they enthusiastically set up exactly the wrong defense. They blitz, which is what the conservatives usually do, and so then the unbelievers in the Church run a really sweet screen pass. Not only that, but it always works. I am not really sure what category to put this post under—it could be any number of them. Postmodernism, Auburn Avenue Stuff, N.T. Wrights and Wrongs—this thought relates to any number of those topics, but not directly. So I am going to put it under Auburn Avenue Stuff, but please make applications elsewhere.

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An uproar begins in conservative circles about the relationship between faith and works. With some parties to the dispute, it is just a matter of semantics (this is at the heart of the Auburn Avenue controversy). But outside conservative circles, there are people who really are trying to intrude autonomous works into the process of justification, which is, of course, a really bad thing to do. This is what religious man always wants to do. Conservatives react to this like it was catnip, and it does not matter that it was catnip set out especially for them. Making this observation does not mean that I am friendly to the idea of making anything-that-could-lead-to-boasting into an instrument (or partial instrument) of justification. But what is the actual play being run here? Taking the broad picture in the Church today, who is most likely to be talking about the need for love, good works, missional concern, social ethics, and so on? Right, the liberals. And why do they do this? In order to seize the high ground, and to make sure that no one brings up their lack of love, lack of good works, contempt for real evangelism, and their corruption of social ethics. Conservatives don’t bring up this glaring inconsistency because they don’t want to play into the “works salvation” scheme. But Scripture requires us to bring up any such discrepancy. Of course we are not saved by good works (Eph. 2:8–9). But we are saved to good works (Eph. 2:10), which God prepared beforehand for us to do. Not only so, but we are told expressly that the testing ground of true faith is true works. Show your faith by your works, man. Not mere affirmation of good works with the lips, either, but genuine, honest-to-God good works. Not good works redefined to fit comfortably into some humanist’s social agenda, but good works defined biblically, and structured biblically on the foundation of real faith in the revealed will of God. This is why we should be opposed to the ordination of women—because faith without works is dead. This is why it is a profanation of God’s Tem- ple to solemnize homosexual unions—because faith without works is dead. This is why we have no business redefining sentimentalism as love—because faith without works is dead. This is why godly Christian leaders must stand

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opposed to the growth of the idolatrous state (even when done in the name of the poor)—because faith without works is dead. Nothing wrong with sola fide. Amen seven times over. But by emphasizing it the way they have done, some contemporary conservatives have done a grave disservice to the gospel. This is not because they themselves are distort- ing the gospel, but rather because they are unaware of how the adversary is seeking to distort the gospel at this point. Because of this, the conservatives unwittingly help with the distortion. Many years ago, I learned (talking with Mormons) that we need to speak as though all the Bible belongs to us, and not as though we have Romans and Galatians and they have James. When an evangelical says “by grace are ye saved . . .”, they say, “faith without works is dead.” And there we both are, safely barricaded behind our respective passages. But suppose an evangelical said to a Mormon (I am using them for illustrative purposes because they explicitly avow a role for works), right out of the starting blocks, “You know, a central reason why I can’t embrace the LDS approach is because faith without works is dead.” Faith and works (biblically) have a robust relationship—like the body and the spirit, designed to work together. Some conservatives, in the interests of keeping these two things really, really distinct, want the body and spirit separated, the result of which is death. Liberals want the body and spirit together, and are all about it, but on closer inspection, the spirit turns out to be an unclean spirit. When we get to the place where it becomes apparent “what play was run,” it will be seen that one kind of conservative ran a bunch of other conservatives out of their Reformed denominations, paving the way for the liberals. The conservatives who were made to feel unwelcome were those who had been trying to insist that orthodoxy and orthopraxy belong together, and that faith without works is dead. But suspicious of good works that proceed from the grace of God, other diehard conservatives prepared the way for the “good works” that proceed from the devious mind and heart of man. Instead of faith, hope, and love, we will find ourselves with the “good works” of sodomy, tolerance, and free chocolate milk for everybody. All that, and a group hug after therapy.

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ACTIVE OBEDIENCE AS THEMATIC STRUCTURING DEVICE SEPTEMBER 9, 2006 And with a sexy title like that, if you can avoid being dragged in then you are beyond all hope. I know that I have been referring to Peter Leithart a bit lately, but that is just the way it goes. This last Wednesday, Peter presented an unpublished paper to the NSA faculty forum. The paper, not surprisingly, was fantastic. But this post is different than the discussions of postmodernism—in those posts I have just been repeating and reinforcing Peter’s deconstruction of faux-deconstruction. This is a little different. Peter’s paper was on the life of Christ in Matthew as a recapitulation of the history of Israel. In the course of his paper, another line of application entirely bounced into my mind unbidden. I think this application is compelling, but want to ask you not to blame Peter for any weirdness you detect in it. First, the fact that the New Testament writers saw Christ as the new Isra- el seems to me to be beyond dispute. In Matthew, for example, Christ was baptized in the Jordan as Israel was in the cloud and in the sea. After the baptism Christ spend forty days in the wilderness, as Israel spent forty years. During the wilderness Christ was tempted as was Israel. Christ stood, and Israel failed. After the wilderness sojourn, Christ began His “invasion” of Canaan, and Israel invaded Canaan. Beyond these obvious sorts of parallels, Peter’s paper went on to show that Matthew presents the life of Christ according to the structure of Israel’s history throughout the course of the entire Old

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Testament. There is certainly room for discussion in the details, but Matthew is explicit in the central fact of this identification. When he quotes Hosea (out of Egypt I called my son) and applies it to Jesus, he is quoting a verse which in its original context applied to Israel and the Exodus. When Israel was a child I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. This is an egregious misquote . . . unless Matthew rightly sees Christ as Israel. So then, what does this have to do with the doctrine of active obedience? This is where my jeep left the road and went bouncing across the meadow. If the history of the Old Testament can be summed up as “Israel screws up,” then the story of Christ is summed up as “Israel does it right.” If Christ is fulfilling all the failed promise of Israel’s long story, then it is obvious that the perfect life of Christ is far more important than just a precondition for His sinless sacrifice on the cross (His passive obedience). His entire life is obviously crucial to the justification of all Israelites (those who are in Him, the true Israel). The recapitulation of Israel’s history in the life of Christ shows that the perfect life of Christ is significant to believers in a soteriological sense. If it is undeniable that the New Testament shows Christ as the new Israel (and I believe it is), and if this is self-evidently because He is being the true Israel for us, so that we can be true Israelites in Him, it follows that we are participating in His obedient life. The perfect obedience that He rendered to God throughout the course of His life was a life lived before God, and He did it for us. This is nothing other than the doctrine of the imputation of the active obedience of Jesus Christ. It is being stated at a broader level than perhaps some talk about it, but it is clearly and recognizably the same thing. Some of the problems that some have with the doctrine of the imputation of the active obedience of Christ is that is our focus is too individualistic— we put the thing under the microscope. What we see is accurate, but out of context. In that setting, a glorious truth can look outlandish or surreal. We think of Christ’s perfect individual righteousness being transferred to another individual, as an individual. This is true—that does happen at the end of day, but there is some broader context.

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But if we look at it in the native habitat (say, in the gospel of Matthew), and not under the microscope of individual soteriology, we see that the active obedience of Christ is not an esoteric doctrine tucked away in some obscure part of the Bible for some Puritan divine to find in the seventeenth century. Rather, it is one of the grand structuring devices of the original writers. It is clearly Matthew’s thematic structuring device. Think about it. If Matthew structures his entire gospel around the theme of Christ being an obedient Israel, and not a disobedient Israel, and He is doing this so that we could be a restored and true Israel because of His obedience, what else can we call this? A shorthand form of the doctrine of active obedience is that Christ’s obedience throughout the course of His sinless life has been imputed by the grace of God to me. I believe this is true, but there is a fuller way to explain it, and this fuller way makes the doctrine not only true, but one of Scripture’s primary truths. Christ’s obedience as the true Israel has been imputed to us, to all of us who are the Israel of God, and therefore to me. The reason I can be an Israelite and not be destroyed is Israel is now obedient. And whose obedience was this? How did it happen? The active obedience of Christ began with His miraculous birth, and His exile in Egypt, and His restoration from Egypt. Out of Egypt God called His Son. And when God called His Son, we came too.

NO DEBATE SEPTEMBER 18, 2006 Some weeks ago, after I finished reading Guy Waters’s book on the Federal Vision, I contacted him, and offered to work with him to set up some kind of discussion/debate between the two of us. I was willing to fly to Jackson and have our interaction there. Our phone conversations were very cordial, but he was not interested in a face-to-face debate of that kind. He indicated that a written debate would be a possibility, so I wrote up a proposal and sent to him. That debate would be published in Credenda, and Dr. Waters would have the freedom to publish it in whatever setting he would like.

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Today I heard back from him. He wrote that he had “been advised by [his] presbytery’s study committee on the New Perspectives and Federal Vision that [he] not engage in this debate.” Wishing to respect their counsel, Dr. Waters declined the invitation. Unfortunately, that being the case, I would like to extend the invitation more broadly. I would like to ask any anti-FV pastor or theologian (who would be recognized as a credible spokesman for that position), and who is willing to identify with Dr. Waters’s critique of the FV, to please contact me. And it should be mentioned that the stance of the PCA study committee is curious.

BUCKETS OF BLOG WATER OCTOBER 4, 2006 Some time ago, I posted a note on my invitation to a debate over Auburn Ave- nue issues. I did that here.15 And now, on The Puritan Board, there is an ongoing discussion of that invitation. The consensus appears to be that a debate with me would be a bad idea, with a few folks questioning the wisdom of this approach. Just two comments. The first is that such a debate is not some crazy idea that I cooked up. “A bishop must . . . be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers. For there are many unruly and vain talkers and de- ceivers, specially they of the circumcision: whose mouths must be stopped . . .” (Titus 1:7–11). If my positions actually are what these gentlemen claim, then that means that I qualify as an unruly and vain talker, a deceiver, a Judaizer, and one whose mouth must be stopped. Okay, then. You can’t have it both ways. If I really am that kind of man, where in North America is a recognized champion of orthodoxy who will provide the valuable service of shutting me up? “Ah, but Wil- son is so slippery,” say many on The Puritan Board. Okay. Isn’t that precisely why you have to shut such people up? Their slipperiness subverting whole households and all? “But he contradicts himself, morphing his positions! Hard to pin down!” That’s what they say, anyway, and apparently this is so obvious a failing in me that it should be child’s play to demonstrate in a debate. Right? I would wager that

15 https://dougwils.com/the-church/s16-theology/no-debate.html

194 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | SEPTEMBER–DECEMBER 2006 the first century contained false teachers who were just as much a slippery gus as I appear to be in the eyes of some. St. Paul told Titus to do something about them. St. Paul is telling the TRs, given their premises, to do something about it also. But if they won’t debate, then they have a responsibility to ramp down the rhetoric, and to knock off calling fellow Reformed ministers “unruly and vain talkers.” The second point has to do with an ad hom that was offered on the board, explaining why I am desperate for this debate. Apparently, I have a career to save, networks to preserve, contracts to sandbag, a high-profile reputation to keep from tanking, and so on. Like Mark Twain, who said that reports of his death were greatly exaggerated, I really have to say a similar thing here. Through no merit of ours, and by His grace alone, God continues to bless what we are connected with, and we are most grateful to Him for it. New St. Andrews is bursting at the seams, Canon Press has a stack of new books at the printers now, Credenda is flourishing, our churches here in Moscow have been continuing to steadily grow, and the CREC is prospering. So my “desperation” for a debate needs to be grounded in something else, and if it needs to be nefarious, perhaps someone should suggest that I am being black- mailed. But whatever they say, the real reason for a debate is that I would like to make it plain to the broader Reformed community that Machen’s warrior children don’t really need another civil war. And in the meantime, if this altar is God’s, and the fire is going to fall, it doesn’t matter to me how many buckets of blog water you pour on it.

ACHAIA REFORMED SEMINARY OCTOBER 6, 2006 Scott Clark recently was critical of what we are reportedly trying to do here in Moscow.

The culture reacted to the early Christians in official and unofficial ways. 1 Peter 4 reflects this. The apostolic Christians suffered social stig- ma not for trying to “take back” or “take over” the Roman empire (or small towns in Asia Minor) but for simply living quiet, godly lives. They

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suffered shame for worshiping a crucified Jew. They were misunderstood for eating “the body” of Christ. They were mocked for changing their lifestyles, for not getting drunk and attending orgies any more.16

Two quick comments. I am afraid that this is a little simplistic, on two fronts. The first is that there were many political undercurrents to the clash between Rome and the Christians. What was a religious issue for the Chris- tians was a political issue for Rome. And those who had it in for the Christians knew exactly what buttons to push. “Whom Jason hath received: and these all do contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus” (Acts 17:7). But what they were accused of doing and what they were actually doing were two distinct things. Which leads to the next point. Clark is quite right about 1 Peter 4. The Christians were attacked for living pious and orderly lives. But the reason for the attack and the content of the attack were different. They were accused of cannibalism and incest so on. So what would we say to the Christians in Achaia who were mistakenly critical of their brothers in Asia Minor? What should we say to a theological professor at Achaia Reformed Seminary who posted a stern warning to the slandered Christians of Asia Minor? “We should be persecuted for the sake of Christ, and not for practicing cannibalism or incest, for pity’s sake!” Perhaps a letter suggesting that perhaps such charges are, to use an old-fashioned word, false? Yes, I bet a letter would fix everything. The price of doing exactly what the apostles required of us is that unbelievers will slander us and speak of things that “we know not” (Ps. 35:11). Another cost is that fellow believers, who ought to know better than to believe this kind of stuff, will (for reasons of their own) accept it anyway.

JUST CALL ME TREVOR OCTOBER 14, 2006 In the history of the Church, Christians have certainly divided over incon- sequential matters before. Should you make the sign of the cross with two

16 Posted here.

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fingers or three? They have also divided over momentous issues, where the gospel itself was at stake. The magisterial Reformation was an example of this. Sometimes issues arise where it is hard to categorize. There is enough confusion over theological terminology and usage to make the discussions themselves difficult, and if you throw in personal suspicions and ecclesiastical turf issues, you have yourself a perfect storm. Might the gospel itself be at stake? Maybe. Might the gospel itself be at stake either way you go? Maybe. The FV controversy provides a very good example of this. How many issues are connected to it? There are quite a few, and they are all of them weighty. The relationship of faith and works, justification by faith alone, hermeneutics, sacramental theology, paedocommunion, the centrality of liturgy and worship, the exile of the Church in the Babylon of modernity, and lots more than that. So for people on both sides this is not a simple “do we baptize with heads upstream or downstream” issue. As a bona fide guy on the FV side of things, I definitely have sharp differences with those who are on the warpath against us. But as a confessional Reformed minister who has honestly subscribed to the Westminster Confession of Faith, I am also convinced that many of the “distinctives” I am accused of promulgating are not distinctives at all, but are in fact the teaching and doctrine of the Confession. And so this means I believe our adversaries are actually out of conformity with the teaching of the Confession at a number of points. At the same time, I believe that at the heart of the TR concerns are some issues that they are quite right to be concerned about, and which they have the right and responsibility to defend and make a big deal out of. On these concerns, they do represent the teaching of the Reformers. The systematics course in Greyfriars Hall, our ministerial training program, is a course through the Westminster Confession, and there are a number of central issues there where I believe FV advocates have a responsibility to emphasize their whole-hearted agreement. As I told my students recently, there are many ways in which I consider myself a TR. Or make that a TRFVer. Just call me Trevor. But here is the problem. I have found that for many on the other side of this fracas, the more I emphasize my agreement with certain evangelical

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essentials (e.g., the absolute necessity of the new birth), the more it convinces my adversaries that I am a disingenuous sneak. I have resolved to affirm any FV truths that are grounded in Scripture and the honored traditions of the Reformed faith (and there are many). In fact, sola Scriptura is one of our central traditions, but that is a subject for another day. But I have refused to take this stand in a glib either/or way. Why rush to divide? I have approached the whole deal in as catholic a both/and way as possible. But far from establishing my orthodoxy in some quarters, it has merely served as an clinching argument for my theological dishonesty. And this is why I think it is necessary to turn the charge around. Cath- olicity in this discussion does not require that we refrain from vigorous debate. Given the state of the church, and the turmoil this whole controversy has engendered, focused debate is most necessary. To continue the accusations without being willing to debate is the real intellectual dishonesty. The broader Reformed church coming to consensus and like-mindedness on this complex set of issues will not be accomplished by all of us preaching to our respective choirs. And so, again, I would like to reissue the invitation to the debate that Guy Waters declined. I would be more than willing to meet in charitable Christian debate with any credible representative of and spokesman for the mainstream anti-FV position. We would arrange a time and place mutually agreeable, conduct the debate, and make the audio and video tapes available for distribution by both sides. In issuing this invitation, I want specifically to invite men like Ligon Dun- can, Scott Clark, Cal Beisner, or Joe Morecraft. If any of you are willing, please contact us. The invitation is also open to any young,capable Elihu who is embarrassed by the silence of his elders.

TABLE TALK OCTOBER 19, 2006 I have been asked to comment on the following statement, taken from the October edition of Table Talk.

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Other revisions or rejections of orthodox covenant theology include the so-called Federal Vision movement that not only rejects the covenant of redemption; it rejects the distinction between law and gospel and the distinction between the covenants of works and grace. According to them, every baptized person is elect and united to Christ through baptism, but this election and union can be forfeited through faithlessness.

Speaking for myself, I don’t reject the covenant of redemption. I see a marked difference between law and gospel, but I find that this difference is fundamentally located in the heart of the one reading the Scriptures. Law and gospel are terrifying soteriological and eschatological realties, not hermeneutical principles. I affirm the distinction between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace, but I also affirm that the covenant of works is gracious because God is gracious. In the foregoing list, there is clearly confusion, but I think it is an understandable confusion. But the last statement—”According to them, every baptized person is elect . . .” is an appalling example of misdirection. I am sorry to see Table Talk taking this direction.

LIKE A CANOE FULL OF BRICKS OCTOBER 20, 2006 Let me recommend a post over at TeamPyro, and let me do this for a couple reasons. The first is that I want to commend Frank Turk’s post there. He is a genuine non-FV guy, a baptist, and he is the only one I have encountered (thus far) that is really capable of stating my position in terms that I would generally recognize and own. He then goes on to reject it, but I believe he has a good grasp of what is actually happening in all this. The second reason for heading over there is that Michael Metzler showed up in the comments section of the blog to do his typical thing. In his interactions with him, Frank Turk found out what it is like trying to give a tar baby a bath in vegetable oil. But I bring it up for this reason. In the course of his in interaction with Frank, Michael said this:

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You here seem to imply that I am some kind of anonymous troll. But this is entirely not true. I always give my real name and often give even my cell phone and email address . . ..sometimes even my PO box address. This is information advertised on my website too. As Stacey recently argued on Wilson’s blog however, if Steve was Michael Metzler it is clear what the only intentions would be in using an alias; it would simply be for the purpose of being able to participate in the discussion at all. That seems like a pretty simple issue. So I’m not sure why you would make me out to have this kind of problem when I am in fact one of the most non-anonymous guys on the internet.

“Entirely not true.” “Always give my real name.” “One of the most non-anonymous guys.” So this constitutes a categorical denial of internet anonymity on Michael’s part. The problem with this statement is that it is entirely and demonstrably false. Michael has been repeatedly banned from this blog because of his posting under anonymous names, and this is not just a bare assertion. I am in possession of weighty proof—like a canoe full of bricks—that this is what he has been doing. And in the quote above, Mi- chael treats Stacey and Steve as two other individuals, with photos on their very own driver’s licenses. But Michael = Stacey = Steve. In other words, I know Michael posts anonymously, and can prove it, and I am using “proof” here in a sense not in vogue with postmodernists. This means that Michael has repeatedly violated the ninth commandment on my blog, and he just now violated it on TeamPyro’s blog. And for all the differences we have over FV stuff, we agree that violating the ninth commandment is not to be done. Michael really needs to remember that Pooh was an honest bear.

THE ONE AND THE MANY DECEMBER 2, 2006 In this space I have often referred to the various controversies that blew up over the last three or four years. The controversies, in alphabetical order, were:

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baptism, boarders, elder qualifications, Federal Vision, new perspective on Paul, perjury allegations, plagiarism allegations, postmodernism, satiric bite, slavery, tax apportionment and assessment, and, of course last, zoning. I have mentioned before that these fraci (is that the plural?) are really only one controversy. The many are actually one, and the one is the many. My reason for saying this is not that they all have the common denomi- nator of me being in them, but rather because I think they are really all about the same thing. That “one thing” is the full authority and sufficiency of Scripture. Different people want the Scripture to stay away from different things, and for the sake of those different things they will frequently band together, cheek by jowl, in order to resist a comprehensive scriptural vision of the good life. Some of them think that the increased influence of Reformed theonomic imams here in Moscow bodes ill for a lesbian foreign policy. The reason this distresses them is that we are not really imams—if we were, they would be appeasing us like crazy, trying to dialogue with us, and building bridges instead of walls. But really, they don’t like imams, unless they are imams. Others don’t want the Scripture messing with their scholastic definitions of certain doctrinal items. As somebody back in the eighties put it, “can’t touch this.” And because of their insistence on sticking with an “under a glass case orthodoxy” they are willing to make common cause with the anti-non- imams-imams, if you can follow me here. Related to this, this means that they are willing to adopt a pragmatic and Machiavellian use of church courts, than which there is no greater form of theological liberalism. What the liberals did to Machen, their liberal heirs are doing to numerous godly Christians around the country. Presbyterians like to point out (and I actually agree with them on this, being a presbyterian), that the first century Jewish system of polity and governance was a representative and presbyterian one. That makes Jesus a presbyterian. But after the warm glow has worn off, we then realize that this means that the Lord was condemned by the General Assembly—moved, seconded, and spanged right into the minutes.

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Then there are the folks who don’t know what is going on, but they know how to boo and hiss based on the kind of music that is being played by the pianist in this Federal Vision melodrama we have going here. This is the kind of movie you throw popcorn in. Slavery? What does the Bible say? Satire? What does the Bible say? Cov- enant faithfulness and obedience? What does the Bible say? Baptism? What does the Bible say? Sexual ethics? What does the Bible say? Elder qualifications? What does the Bible say? And consistently, the answer comes back that—with regard to the “precious,” whatever it is—they don’t care what the Bible says. It is easy for doctrinal conservatives to talk about the sufficiency of Scriptures. But from what I have seen, it is just as hard for them to apply as it is for anyone else.

BUILDING BRIDGES, NOT WALLS DECEMBER 8, 2006 I saw a piece by John Piper17 that Justin Taylor linked to, which I actually thought made quite a few good points. And I even believe he made a number of similar points to what I had argued here. But then I saw Mark Horne’s response to Piper, and Mark didn’t seem that keen on it. He didn’t say a lot (he promises more when he cools down), and because I respect Mark highly, I look forward to what he will say about it. But what he did say reminded me of some points that I made here. So that’s me. A uniter, not a divider.

A “YELLING AT MY WINDSHIELD” REPRISE DECEMBER 7, 2006 Some time ago I listened through a set of conference tapes put out by West- minster West, and blogged on that experience, calling the series something like “Yelling At My Windshield.” That series of posts is in the archives here, located somewhere under Auburn Avenue Stuff. I mention it now because this particular part of my oeuvre was alluded to in a comment to my post on the Westminster Confession’s teaching on baptism. In that comment, Aaron

17 Now here.

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Cummings said, “I listened to one of the Westminster West profs lambaste you, saying, ‘Doug Wilson, if you’re listening to this and pounding the windshield, please, give your comments on Heidelberg #21 and #60.’ Would you be so kind as to fulfill this request?” Sure. So let me say this about HC 21 and 60. First, at Christ Church our liturgy follows the church year, and recitation of the Heidelberg Catechism is part of our worship every Lord’s Day morning. Last Sunday was the first Sunday of Advent, so we have six weeks to go before the entire congregation confesses together the first of these two questions, and twenty-two weeks to go for the second. The entire congregation answers these questions, confessing our faith together. Second, I am teaching the Lordship Colloquium at New St. Andrews this year, and one of the class requirements is to memorize key portions of the Heidelberg Catechism. As it turns out, just last week our freshman class all memorized Q60. In Jerusalem Term, they memorized Q21 (along with a number of others). This morning, before receiving this question, I just finished drafting the written portion of their final, which requires them to write out completely two of the answers that they have memorized this term. I would like to inquire of this professor at Westminster West if his students can stand at the beginning of each class period, as my students do, and recite together the most recent question they have memorized. Third, we do this because we believe it. We are confessing our faith, learning our faith, and deepening in our love for our faith. And fourth, lest this all be dismissed as some kind of nutso classical college parrot-drill—where it is alleged that we might know what the Heidelberg Catechism says, but we don’t really believe it, as opposed to those true souls elsewhere who believe it, but don’t know what it says—let me summarize each of these answers in my own words.

Question 21: What is true faith? Answer: It is not only a certain knowledge by which I accept as true all that God has revealed to us in his Word, but also a wholehearted

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trust which the Holy Spirit creates in me through the gospel, that, not only to others, but to me also God has given the forgiveness of sins, everlasting righteousness and salvation, out of sheer grace solely for the sake of Christ’s saving work.

I take this to mean that true faith is not just a confident knowledge that whatever God has revealed in Scripture has to be true, but also that it is a settled trust and confidence (this also a work of the Holy Spirit in my heart through the gospel) that God has not just saved other people, but that He has bestowed the grace of salvation on me also. This salvation, a sheer gift of nothing but grace, brings with it forgiveness for my sins, everlasting righteousness, and salvation. This is all done through Christ’s work of obedience alone. In the work of salvation, Christ did His part and I did mine. He did the saving, and I got in the way.

Question 60: How are you righteous before God? Answer: Only by a true faith in Jesus Christ. In spite of the fact that my conscience accuses me that I have grievously sinned against all the commandments of God, and have not kept any one of them, and that I am still ever prone to all that is evil, nevertheless, God, without any merit of my own, out of pure grace, grants me the benefits of the perfect expiation fo Christ, imputing to me his righteousness and holiness as if I had never committed a single sin or had ever been sinful, having fulfilled myself all the obedience which Christ has carried out for me, if only I accept such favor with a trusting heart.

I take this to mean that the true faith, described above in #21, is the sole instrument that God uses to declare me righteous before Him. Even though my conscience can accuse me of gross violations of God’s commandments, having broken all of them, with a tendency still to veer off toward evil, nevertheless God, without accepting or regarding any moral or ethical contributions from me, but rather out of unadulterated grace alone, gave and imputed

204 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | SEPTEMBER–DECEMBER 2006 to me all the perfections of Christ. These perfections included the perfect satisfaction of His death, not to mention the righteousness and holiness of His perfect sinless life. The result of this unspeakable grace is that it is as though I had never done anything wrong at all in my entire life, and also as though the perfect life that Christ actually lived had really been lived by me. All this is mine to extent that I accept such benefits with a believing heart, in true faith. And amen. That said, let me make just a couple of concluding remarks. I believe all of this, and I believe it with a whole heart. I am even largely comfortable with the assertion in #21 that true faith accepts everything that God has revealed, meaning that those who deny the infallibility of Scripture are at the very least susceptible to the charge that theirs is not a true faith. Does our Westminster West friend come with me this far? Does he believe that “true faith accepts as true all that God has revealed to us in his Word,” and that if someone holds as false something that God has revealed as true, that such faith is quite likely not a true faith?

AUDIO AUBURN STUFF DECEMBER 15, 2006 The audio of Steve Wilkins’s examination are now available. Session 1 is here, and session 2 is right next to it. Three feet over we have session 3, and then, in the blue binding, we have session 4. I hope to post a few further comments on this whole subject a little bit later.

STEVE WILKINS AND THE PCA DECEMBER 14, 2006 Here is the ecclesiastical situation with Steve Wilkins as I currently understand it. As a result of the Auburn Avenue controversy, Lousiania Presbytery of the PCA was asked to look into Steve’s orthodoxy, which they did by means of a committee. And, given his orthodoxy, it is not surprising that they cleared him. But the controversy has continued apace anyhow, and the Standing Ju- dicial Commission in the PCA was given authority in the matter. They have

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asked the Louisiana Presbytery to look into the matter again. The cynical among us might infer from this the upspoken expectation that “they might want to get the answer right this time.” If the results of the second exam are not satisfactory, my understanding is that the SJC can then assume original jurisdiction, and take matters from there. I am not familiar with the BCO in the PCA so I would invite anyone to please correct me if I have missed something important. Which several of you have done, and I have entered the corrections. Now this second exam by the Louisiana Presbytery took place this last Saturday. Part of it included asking Steve to respond in writing to a number of questions presented to him. His written answers to those questions can be found HERE. You can see from reading through this material that the questions were not softball questions—they addressed all the substantive issues, and Steve answered them clearly, cogently, and well. I understand that in the near future an audio version of the oral exam will be available at this site also. As I read through this material last night I was struck by a number of things. I would like to mention the bottom line first, but then go on to draw out what is really at stake for the PCA. Reading through Steve’s answers was a genuinely bracing experience. His answers were biblical, confessional, orthodox, clear, honest, historical, faithful, and right. I am very grateful to be a friend of his, and proud to be associated with him in this. But a lot is at stake. The need of the hour is this. Every person who has been following this Federal Vision thing at all needs to make a point of following this particular segment of it, and really should read through these answers that Steve has given. Because of how everything has fallen out, it looks as though Steve gets to be the cause celebre of this whole thing, at least within the PCA. But this is what that means. When you look at the claims in the memorial against Steve from the Central Carolina Presbytery, and you look at Steve’s orthodox answers, there are only a few possible explanations for what could happen here. The first (and greatly to be desired) possibility is that honest and conscientious TRs will see that whatever differences they might have with Steve, they do not rise to the level of requiring any kind of censure or discipline. Steve is well within confessional bounds. I pray that

206 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | SEPTEMBER–DECEMBER 2006 this will happen with many honest TRs who love Christ and the Westminster Standards, and who do so in that order. But what if strident opposition continues despite these answers? This creates several possibilities also. One of them, sadly, is that it might be driven by a high level of theological ignorance. Certain men are being asked to follow arguments that they are simply not equipped to follow. Another possibility is simply old-fashioned hostility and malice. The facts don’t matter to them, and they will do whatever they do to Steve simply because they think they can. And yet another possibility is that they have been persuaded somehow that because Steve’s answers are orthodox, they must be dishonest. And so they want to convict him for the heresy they know he must harbor somewhere deep in his heart. So as I see it, the ideal situation would be for ten thousand Reformed believers to read through Steve’s answers now, and then turn and patiently wait for the SJC to make their determination. As I see it, given this clear confession of faith, any negative assessment of Steve is only possible if the judges are 1. clearly in over their heads 2. simply vindictive or 3. prepared to admit spectral evidence. If a conviction of heterodoxy happens through any combination of these three factors, I think it needs to happen in the bright light of day, with all sorts of checked out people looking at them as they do whatever they do. This must not be a back-room deal. It is an examination of a public minister’s public teaching. That teaching is out on the table. We can all read it. And we can witness for ourselves whether or not the SJC is reading the same things we are.

MORE ON STEVE WILKINS DECEMBER 16, 2006 Now, just a few comments on why Steve Wilkins’s answers to his presbytery’s questions satisfactorily address all the basic questions. This will not be long and involved because the issues are not complicated. First, Steve unambiguously affirms the exhaustive sovereignty of God over all things.

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2. Do you at all deny the definition of election as given in the Standards?

Absolutely not, never have, and God willing, never will. I firmly believe in the absolute sovereignty of God over all things, including the salvation of man.

Now from any affirmation of the final and complete sovereignty of God over all things, the five points of Calvinism (as traditionally defined and understood) inexorably and necessarily follow. Steve is aware of this, and affirms the absolute sovereignty of God. He is therefore embracing the consequences of that affirmation. Now the controversy is not over this, but rather over other affirmations which some believe to be inconsistent with this one. But as long as the full system of Westminster soteriology is unambiguously and clearly affirmed, the burden is on those bringing the accusation to demonstrate the inconsistency. They are certainly capable of asserting the inconsistency (so long as it is a friendly crowd, and no one there to debate them), but they actually have to show the inconsistency. This leads to the second point. Steve is clearly not asserting that the benefits enjoyed by all covenant members are identical until the moment of apostasy undergone by some of them. This is not what he says. The emphasis below is mine.

4. How would you distinguish between the benefits enjoyed by a (decretively) elect member of the visible Church and a reprobate member of the visible church who has not yet manifested his apostasy?”

This is not an easy question to answer but it does seem to me that the benefits enjoyed by the ‘decretively elect’ do differ from those received by the non-elect. First, they differ qualitatively. Thus, for example, though the non-elect are brought within the family of the justified and in that sense may be referred to as one of the justified, the elect person’s justification in time is not only a declaration of his present acquittal from the guilt of sin but also an anticipation of his final vindication at the

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last judgment. The non-elect church member’s “justification” is not. His ‘justification’ is not the judgment he will receive from God at the last day. Second, the blessings conferred differ in their duration. The elect person perseveres and remains in a state of grace until the end of his life. The non-elect believer eventually forsakes the faith and falls away from the state of grace. There may also be other experiential differences between the elect and the non-elect, but these differences may not be discernible (to the individuals themselves or to others) until the non-elect person displays his unbelief in some very explicit and concrete ways.

In other words, Steve is not affirming a tautological definition of perseverance (e.g., those who persevere are the ones who persevere). There is a reason for the perseverance of the decretively elect covenant member, and there is a reason for the apostasy of the non-elect covenant member. Part of that reason is qualitative and is seen by God throughout the entire course of their lives. God sees the apostasy coming, and, furthermore, going back to the first point, the whole thing is within His sovereign control. This goes back to my first post on the Steve Wilkins thing. Those who have read through this material and cannot see that Steve embraces the heart and soul of the Calvinistic system are not qualified to be guardians of that system. There may be various reasons why they cannot see it. I mentioned three earlier—ignorance, hostility, or suspicion of personal dishonesty. I would be willing to consider other options if anyone wants to suggest them. I don’t want to seem rude to observers like “Johnny Redeemed,” but it seems to me that his comments betray a real naivete when it comes to historic Reformed theology. I appreciate his caution, and would encourage him to continue, but the basic issues here are really clear. If I were talking to a pastor friend—say a Wesleyan Methodist or a Lutheran—and he affirmed in the course of our lunch discussion that he believed that God sovereignly decreed whatsoever comes to pass, including the salvation (or lack of it) for all individuals, and that he affirmed that God knew His elect from before the foundation of the world, and that He knew His elect throughout the course

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of their lives as they mingled with non-elect covenant members, my eyebrows would go up and I would say, “Friend, you had better be very careful. You’re a Calvinist.”

KICKING THIS PARTICULAR CAN DOWN THE ROAD DECEMBER 18, 2006 All right, then. More on Steve Wilkins. Actually, this is more on the sociology and demographics of the thing. From where I sit, in the Idaho nickel seats, this is what the lay of the land looks like. I have urged every Reformed believer who has had any interest whatever in the Federal Vision controversy to follow this particular chapter of the story very closely. The early indicators show that this is exactly what is happening. Each day, the web traffic for this site averages between three and four thousand visitors (and between 16,000 and 19,000 hits). Last Thursday, when I posted the first of this series on Steve, I had over six thousand visitors that day—in short, a spike unheard of in these parts. There were almost 25,000 hits. Lots of people are following this. On paper, the folks involved with the Standing Judicial Commission can do whatever they want to do with Steve. Their decision would be final; there is no appeal to GA. They don’t have to have their action approved by GA— all they have to do is report what they have done, and the GA would say oh. This is a body that carries the full authority of the entire PCA. Whether that was a good idea is a discussion for another time, but right now that is just the way it is. This being the case I am urging everyone with a dog in the fight to watch these developments very closely, and it is important for the SJC to know that they are being watched closely in this way. And more people have a dog in the fight than you might think. Ministerial candidates who are under the care of various presbyteries need to follow this. Seminarians need to be following this. Ministers in the PCA need to follow this because everything that is happening to Steve could happen to them—with no charges ever having been

210 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | SEPTEMBER–DECEMBER 2006 brought and no appeal possible. Nice set up if you can arrange it. These guys know their onions. This could happen even if a minister jots and tittles his way through the entire Westminster Confession of Faith. If this travesty happens (as it certainly could), it needs to happen with many thousands of informed observers looking straight at it, in the broad light of day. From what I have gathered thus far, thankfully that is what is happening. As I have written earlier, this is not at all inconsistent with what I have urged people to do in other judicial situations (e.g., the RC Jr. situation). When a judicial body is charged with sorting out a host of did-too-did-nots, the last thing that needs to happen is for Internet-land to form a committee of the whole, with the loudest quadrant of that committee being made up of anonymous and scurrilous railers. This is because the nature of the dispute has to do with particular situations and about what happened, or did not happen, at a session meeting last August, say. But this situation with Steve is a public dispute about doctrine, a public dispute about what Steve teaches and has taught in public. What does he affirm? What does he deny? In this situation, Christ’s words to the high priest are far more apropos. “Go ask the Temple crowd about that parable. Theyheard me.” Steve holds to the Westminster Confession of Faith. If we are talking about original intent, he is far more in conformity to the Westminster than are his accusers. Ask any of those who are worked up about his teaching if they believe the two sacraments are effectual means of salvation. They will respond that they believe the sacraments are means of grace, but they are means of sanctifying grace, not saving grace. So then ask them why the Catechism question put it the way it did, instead of asking how the two sacraments are effectual means of sanctification. You will get a reply that amounts to them having an interpretive wand that they wave over certain words to make them mean, a la Lewis Carroll, what they want them to mean. They will perhaps add that this is why nobody wants to debate you. You keep getting off the point, which is that you are a heretic, and keep gravitating to extraneous material, like how the early Reformed fathers made almost all the same points you guys are making. “Like, man, who cares?” This is a postmodern era, and

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the TRs are now going in for advocacy history—the cheap and easy way of being historic and confessional. But they would rather not know about this because they still like believing that they are genuine conservatives. I got distracted. The central point remains this: read Steve’s written responses to the questions put to him by presbytery. Listen to the audio if you need to. Without any judgment on these responses having been made by any judicial body, make up your mind on what Steve is teaching and saying. And then wait for the decision of the Lousiana Presbytery next month. After that wait and see what the SJC does, if anything.

HONESTLY. I ASK YOU. DECEMBER 20, 2006 The problem with the word conservative is that it leaves open the question of what it is you are conserving exactly. It can refer to Kremlin KGB types, Saudi Muslims, polygamous Mormons, and men like J. Gresham Machen. And a conservationist is someone who derives his ideological identity from wanting to conserve other stuff. So different kinds of conservatives want to conserve different kinds of things. Big government conservatives want to conserve the victories of their fathers’ enemies. Small government conservatives want to conserve the memory of a kind of thinking that made its last public appearance during the administration of Grover Cleveland. So different kinds of conservatives want to conserve different things. They differ in the direct object. But they can also differ in the adverb—how do you conserve things? One kind of conservative tries to do this woodenly. He doesn’t want anything to change, period, and so he insists that every candidate at presbytery take a vow to uphold the original Westminster, in exactly the form it came down from Allah in the original Arabic. But the mushy liberals are no better. They want candidates to appear at presbytery like they were guests on Ophrah. “Tell us what the Westminster Confession has meant to you in times of trouble.” But strict subscription does not uphold the Westminster Confession. It is a flagrant denial of it. Synods and councils have erred, and do err, including

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this one, chump. Loose subscription is no help either. What good is a fence around the vegetable garden of truth that makes sure there are holes every ten feet big enough for the average erroneous rabbit? But there is an alternative to strict subscription, which necessarily elevates the Confession to the level of Scripture, and loose subscription, which lowers the Confession to the level of the 9th and 10th amendments to the U.S. Constitution. This alternative is called honest subscription. A confession is a form of doctrinal shorthand. I can communicate a great deal in a short space of time by saying that I hold to the Westminster Confession, with “the following exceptions.” The person taking the exceptions, and the presbyters hearing him, are dealing with the material honestly. If he says that he subscribes to the Confession, but that he doesn’t buy all “that Trinity stuff,” he is a heretic, but at least he is being an honest one. And when the presbytery rejects him, they are doing so because they know exactly where he is coming from. But if he says that he believes the Westminster is overly restrictive in its statement of what is required on the Lord’s Day (as I did when I subscribed to the Westminster Confession), they know that this exception does not strike at the innards of Calvinism. Indeed, many of them would agree that this actually strengthens sabbatarianism; it does not weaken it. But the key is to let the presbytery know that you agree with the whole thing, with the exception of “this, this, and that.” Now when a man subscribes to the Confession and his beliefs are not in conformity with what the Westminster theologians intended when they adopted it, there are two possibilities. One is that he is a dishonest man, saying that he believes things he does not believe. This is the way of liberalism—the same liberalism, incidentally, that prides itself on openness, transparency, and honesty. This is confessional rot, and it is a character issue. It is dishonest subscription. But there is a “conservative” way to do this also. The problem is in the adverb, as I pointed out earlier, and it is usually done through ignorance, not dishonest malice. But ignorance can get you as far away from the original intent of the Westminster Assembly as dishonesty can. If a man gets off the

213 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | SEPTEMBER–DECEMBER 2006 right road and is barreling along in the wrong direction at 75 mph, his speed is not affected by whether the choice to get off the right road was deliberate or accidental. In either case, his car still has eight cylinders. And this brings us to Steve Wilkins. Steve really believes that through a right use of the ordinance of baptism, the grace of that baptism is really exhibited and conferred on those who whom it properly belongs (Westminster 28.6). He subscribes to this portion of the Confession intelligently and honestly. To speak in theological categories, he agrees with it. His opponents say they subscribe to this, but they really do not, and they do not give any kind of reasonable explanation for how they can take these words. They don’t need to give an explanation because we, on the other side of this divide, would like to debate with them, not prosecute them. So why the crisis then? Their problem is that if they don’t prosecute us, they will eventually have to debate, and they don’t have the answers that such a debate would require. They cannot answer the simple confessional questions that would be put to them in a debate. “Dr. Waters, do you believe that in salvation a worthy receiver, one who is such by virtue of the evangelical faith given to him by God, is receiving the salvific grace of his baptism? Or do you take an exception to 28.6?” And this is the conclusion of the matter. Honest subscription is a moral necessity, one that requires diligent, hard work. Of course. liberals need to learn how to be honest with their own hearts, and with us. But there are many “conservatives” who need to learn how to be honest with the text. There is a difference between honest subscription to an oral tradition of American revivalism and honest subscription to the Westminster Confession. And as recent events have indicated, this is not a minor difference.

NO, NO. THE GOOD KIND OF LYNCHING DECEMBER 21, 2006 Scott Clark has called the treatment that Steve Wilkins is getting an ecclesiastical lynching. But before you start scratching your head over this puzzlement, he does say this like its a good thing. HT. Mark Horne

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Land of Goshen! if I may exclaim here with more than my usual vehe- mence. Or looking at it from another angle, hush my puppies! The entire post needs to be read in order to be believed. And so, as you can see, because Dr. Clark’s concerns have apparently not been addressed satisfactorily, I would like (again) to cordially extend an invitation to discuss/debate these matters to:

R. Scott Clark, D.Phil Associate Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology Westminster Seminary California “For Christ, His Gospel, and His Church” Associate Pastor Oceanside URC

But I honestly don’t know why he thinks our theology is lax, with him sharing an office with Dr. Phil like that.

MORE TO BEING REFORMED THAN BELIEVING IN JESUS AND SMOKING CIGARS DECEMBER 23, 2006 Most weeks we have a Friday morning men’s prayer meeting, followed by a breakfast. The discussion at breakfast is frequently rowdy, and this last week it turned to the events surrounding Steve Wilkins—what Scott Clark might want to style as a Westminster necktie party. In the course of the discussion, I made the point that this was nothing more than a simple continuation of the theonomy fracas in the Reformed world a couple decades ago. As a continuation, there are some differences, of course, but there it is. First allow me to point to some points of continuity, seen most clearly in some of the players. Theonomists, because of their emphasis on the continuing validity of God’s law, were frequently accused of undermining justification by faith alone. Norman Shepherd was slated to be one of the original Auburn

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speakers until he was providentially hindered by the tragic death of his wife and was replaced by John Barach. But had he been one of the speakers, the whole thing would have blown up, just like it did, only probably quicker. During the original Shepherd controversy, he had strong support among the theonomists—Greg Bahnsen and Gary North, to mention two. North even devoted an entire book—Westminster’s Confession—defending Shepherd. Other supporters of Shepherd included such notables as Cornelius Van Til. A number of other people who were involved in the theonomy movement are still around and pushing some of the root assumptions into the corners. From the front rank of the original theonomists we have Jim Jordan. From the second tier (of that day), we have men like Wilkins and Leithart. An exception would be someone like Joe Morecraft, who decided to bail. In short, when you look at the scorecard, and take in the names of the players, you see a lot of the same names. In addition, one of the central disputes (over justification) is the same, then and now. This is not a straight up debate over whether sola fideis true, but rather a debate over whether other assertions are consistent with sola fide. Now, just as then, confusion has caused certain Reformed believers to be accused of denying sola fide, when they claim they have done nothing of the kind. Now, what’s different about this episode and the theonomy episode? I do not mean to claim that the theonomists have learned nothing or have not modified their emphases. They most certainly have, and I actually believe that this is why the conflict has become even more intense. In the first round, the theonomy movement was an ideological movement, fueled largely by book publication. Once in a conversation with Greg Bahnsen, when I had explained to him why I was not theonomist, he made a helpful distinction for me. He said there was a difference between a movement and a school of thought. A movement is ideologically driven, has an explicit agenda, requires a movement leader, and so on. A school of thought encompasses people who share a broad number of assumptions but are not necessarily in the same revolutionary cell group. When we say that Descartes and Spinoza were both rationalists, this doesn’t mean that they put out a newsletter together.

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To apply this distinction, what has happened is this. The hardcore theonomy movement morphed into a broad theonomy-lite school of thought, and from there began to settle into particular communities, with a specific cultural embodiment. So there have been significant changes, but they have been the kind of changes necessarily introduced when you move from abstract idea to concrete application. The concrete application has included scores of classical Christian schools around the country, a college (New St. Andrews), church communities that emphasize parish life together (Mon- roe, Moscow, and numerous others). At the center of all of this is the practice (not just the idea) of the covenant renewal worship model. It is important to note that one of the changes has included turning away from the idea of political lobbying to the idea of cultural transformation through the potent leaven of worship. In short, we have moved from the time when a handful of outrageous men were saying crazy things on paper (the Old Testament is still in the Bible, the gospel will conquer the world, etc.) to a time when a number of thriving communities are being built on the pastoral assumption that all of God’s truths are designed to be lived and lived in community. In our breakfast discussion, it was around this point that Roy Atwood offered a helpful breakdown of the Reformed world, as recalled from an article by Wolterstorff in the mid-seventies. Wolterstorff, talking about the CRC, broke that tradition down into three main streams—the doctrinalists, the pietists, and the Kuyperians. What he said there applies to the whole Re- formed world, in spades. The doctrinalists are rationalistic and are concerned about getting the doctrines right on paper. The faith once delivered is a giant math problem, and they want to get a gold star on the top of their assignment when they turn it in. The pietists are concerned about whether they pray enough, whether they are going to heaven when they die, and whether or not they have witnessed to Uncle George in the right way. The Kuyperians hold that the lordship of Jesus Christ must be affirmed, and the cultural mandate fulfilled by extending the crown rights of Jesus over every last aspect of life. Now, it has to be emphasized here that for the first two options here, these

217 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | SEPTEMBER–DECEMBER 2006 choices present some kind of either/or choice. Either doctrinal purity or an upright life. Either an upright life or political engagement. Either doctrinal purity or But to accept this kind of dichotomy is to reject the Kuyperian option. The third option (of necessity) includes the need for personal piety and the need for doctrinal integrity. The Kuyperian option includes the other two in a way that is not reciprocated. The failure to reciprocate is also the reason why these two truncated positions cannot understand how an embrace of the cultural mandate, driven by covenant renewal worship, is not, at some basic level, a fundamental compromise. This is because they do not recognize doctrinal faithfulness when it is out in the world, getting dirty. Nor can they see faithful Christian love and piety when it is out in the marketplace, sleeves rolled up and working hard. Some people can only recognize the five solas when they are pinned on a poster board, under the basement light of personal soteriology, like so many butterflies, now deceased. Take that thing out in the back yard and look at it in the sunlight. What have you changed? Nothing. There is no heresy here. What have you changed? Everything. There is a reason for the conflict. Put another way, I am not being attacked because I deny sola gratia and sola fide. I affirm them, and with about the same level of enthusiasm as a Cossack dancing. But the backyard sunlight that I am looking at these truths in causes me to affirm also that this salvation, by grace alone, appropriated by evangelical faith alone, is a salvation that will cover the earth, as the waters cover the sea. Included in that salvation will be the Muslim world, Holly- wood, Thailand, the National Academy of Sciences, and, mirabile dictu, the United States Congress. It is not through law that Abraham will INHERIT THE WORLD (Rom. 4:13). So bring this all back to my friend Steve Wilkins. He is being attacked by a certain doctrinalist faction within the PCA. The pietists are not attacking him but are in no position to do anything other than feel bad about the whole thing. He is being defended (and prayed for) by the Kuyperians. To appeal to another set of distinctions (Neibuhr), the Christ-against-culture faction (the doctrinalists) is trying to make the PCA safe for the Christ and

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DEATH IN THE POT DECEMBER 26, 2006 Open Door Community Church is in the Little Rock area, and is pastored by an open homosexual, as you can see.18 If you scroll down on their front page just a bit, you can see the enthusiastic endorsement of that church from Peggy Campolo, wife of Tony Campolo. If you look here, you can see Brian McLaren in the course of his visit to that church. Now if you look in the comments section of the recent post “More to Being Reformed Than Believing in Jesus and Smoking Cigars,” you will see (our good friend) David Bahnsen’s take on when the use of satire is appropriate. He has no problem with it when we are dealing with out-and- out unbelievers and secularists but does not believe it is appropriate when dealing with fellow believers. But this lands us right back in the Auburn Avenue definitional difficulties. Definebeliever . If you believe in the objectivity of the covenant, as I do, then these people are in the covenant. They are covenant-breakers, and they are the kind of people who in the Old Testament would receive fierce visits from prophets bringing a covenant lawsuit against them. And the words used in such a visit—polemic, challenge, rebuke, preaching, and satire—are not banished by the terms of the new covenant. I am no kind of baptist, as my Federal Vision opponents well know. But if there were a corollary to the expansion of the objective boundaries of the covenant, and the corollary was that we had to leave impudent and over-the- top sin like this alone, then no, thanks. Deal me out. I’d rather be a baptist. I’d rather be a faithful sectarian than an unfaithful churchman. But this is a false alternative. It is possible to be a faithful churchman. Being in the new covenant does not mean that you cannot be a high-handed

18 http://www.sherwoodopendoor.org/pastor-randy-and-gary/

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covenant breaker. And it does not mean that covenant-keepers are somehow prevented from pointing out what is going on—with all appropriate adjectives involved. Although one of my critics could not see this in my review of McLaren’s book, it was quite apparent to those who know how to read these signs where he (McLaren) was going. Well, now he is openly there. That being the case, does anyone seriously think that Tony Campolo and Brian McLaren and others like them will suddenly feel that the broader evangelical world is unwilling to identify with them at all? That the book deals will dry up? That the speaking invitations will all go away? To ask the question is to answer it, which is to say, ha. Now this is how it lands us back in the Federal Vision stuff. If you apply David’s rule, you have to apply it as a baptist or as an objective covenant guy. If you do the former, then you can go after McLaren and Campolo on obvious grounds—they are not Christians, and this is why you can have at them. If they were Christians, they would not be endorsing sodomy as somehow “within the pale.” This solves the problem (for conservative baptists) of lesbian Eskimo bishops, but it leaves them with the problems of genuine sectarianism—they successfully excised the skin cancer on the knuckles by cutting off the whole right arm. They get rid of problems like this, but they also cut themselves off from vast numbers within the healthy church. But if you apply the rule as an objective covenant guy, then the whole thing becomes a vehicle of compromise. As the pressure to expand our ecumenical cooking increases, there needs to be an assistant to the prophet (me), looking over the rim of the kettle in which we are cooking our ecumenical stew, whose job it is to cry out, “There is death in the pot!” As the evangelical church continues to disintegrate, it is most necessary that Federal Vision advocates be in the forefront of identifying immoralities, follies, rebellions, stupidities, blasphemies, and monkeyshines. If that does not happen, and happen on a prophetic basis, all the good that the Federal Vision promises will be squandered.

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SCOTT CLARK GEARING UP TO UNCHURCH EVERYBODY JANUARY 2, 2007 Before the final round of bets, Scott Clark is pushingall his chips out into the middle of the table. He has recently gone over the notae of the church, which in itself is not a problem for anyone following the Reformed understanding of the Church. So, okay so far. But then, as one commenter on his blog notes, he is applying these standards so tightly that he is excluding from the Church people that he himself is associated with in the Alliance of Confessing Evangel- icals. His tight definition does enable him to say that the CREC is not a true Belgic church (sniff), but apparently unbeknownst to him, it also requires him to unchurch vast acres of the contemporary Reformed and evangelical world. In particular, if Steve Wilkins is upheld by the Louisiana Presbytery later this month, and if the Standing Judicial Commission realizes that they ought not discipline an orthodox minister in good standing (without charges and without appeal), then Scott Clark will be seen standing in the corner, paint can and brush in hand. The professor of systematics at Westminster West will have unchurched the PCA. And he will have done this while believing that the CREC is sectarian! But sectarian is as sectarian does.

FEDERAL VISION HAIKU POETRY CONTEST JAN 4, 2007 In the spirit of whatever it is, I thought I would offer a short cycle of Federal Vision haiku poems. Anyone who feels similarly inspired can make their

221 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JANUARY 2007 contributions in the comments section. Once it is apparent the creative springs have dried up, or perhaps never got started, as the case may be, I will announce a gold, silver and bronze winner. In the spirit of fair play, and to keep my adversaries from shelling out good money to pay for blogs exposing the haiku-gate Wilson scandal in all its tawdry griminess, I am humbly removing my poetry (see below) from consideration.

Just teaching the word, Surprise from the conference, Whud I say this time?

Long months had gone by Then internet turmoil from Samurai Robbins.

Peach petals floating, Now drift down on the water, Ah, presbytery!

Words from the Bible, And not in the Confession, Caused a commotion.

Big books full of words, Blogs earnestly publishing Their crinkum crankum.

With seasons turning, Presbyterian nobles Lift their steel gaze to

The whole PCA Standing Judicial Commission Report.

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INVISIBLE AND ESCHATOLOGICAL JAN 5, 2007 The Westminster Confession of Faith defines the invisible church as “the whole number of the elect that have been, are, or shall be gathered into one” (XXV.i). Some of you may know that over the last several days, I have been commenting on Scott Clark’s blog, and trying to carry on a discussion there, albeit not very successfully. But one of the matters that came up from some of Clark’s defenders was the idea that the invisible church was made up only of those who are already effectually called. In other words, regeneration was necessary to membership in the invisible church. This definition is obviously out of line with the Westminster definition, which includes the “whole number of the elect.” But this novelty got me hunting around, and one of the things I discovered was that it is not a complete novelty. Berkhof says that citizenship in the invisible church is “determined by regeneration” (Systematic Theology, p. 569). But he earlier says that “good definitions of the visible and invisible church may be found in the West- minster Confession” (p. 567). The first comment is in tension with the second, and part of the reason for this is that timelines keep getting in the way. Election happens outside human history, and regeneration happens within history. In his discussion, Berkhof also gives a list of ways the phrase “invisible church” has been interpreted, the second of which amounts to what I have been calling the eschatological church—“the ideal and completed Church as it will be at the end of the ages” (p. 565). Berkhof prefers to place his emphasis elsewhere, but this definition is consistent with the standard Reformed understanding. For Dabney, the visible church is simply that entity which carries the same name as the invisible church “by accommodation.” For him, the true church is the invisible one: “Let us remember then, that the true Church of Christ is invisible, and consists of the whole body of the effectually called” (Systematic Theology, p. 726). The visible church is an approximation; the action is in the invisible realm. Dabney’s view is representative of a tendency in the American church, in which the visible church consistently receives shorter shrift.

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Turretin, in proving the invisibility of the church, says that it consists “of the elect and believers alone” (Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Vol. III, p. 35). But, as mentioned earlier, the question is when does it consist of the elect? Having said this, I learned a long time ago that no question in theology can arise but those which Turretin has already gone over quite thoroughly. He says this a bit earlier. For him, the invisible church

is taken for the mystical body of Christ constantly and intimately united to him as its head according to eternal election and efficacious calling . . . . This is the catholic church which we acknowledge in the Creed. It may be regarded either universally and all together (kath’ ho- lou) with respect to the whole multitude of believers (of which it is composed of whatever place and time) or particularly and as to its parts (kata meros) (now concerning that which reigns gloriously with Christ in heaven; then concerning this which labors and pursues its journey in the world and inasmuch as it is distributed into various particular churches which are designated by the same name as the whole). (p. 8)

As we saw at the first, the Westminster Confession defines the invisible church in accord with Turretin’s first sense—“the whole number of the elect.” And I think we could allow for Turretin’s second use by synedoche, where you speak of the whole in terms of a part, or vice versa. This is close to what the other commenters on Clark’s blog were saying, if I understand them right. Thus we could speak of the invisible church of this or that generation, speaking of those who are effectually called in that generation. But in order for this to be done with any kind of clarity, however, it has to be done loosely—because it is a rolling definition. At any given moment, in any generation, numerous saints are going to be with the Lord, and numerous unbelievers are coming to true faith. Thus the invisible church of January 5, 2007, is quite a different roster of names from the invisible church of March 5, 2009. Add to this the oddity that Smith, who is elect, but not yet converted, is a member of the invisible church in the Westminster definition, but

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not yet a member of the earthly invisible church. And because of this rolling change, I think it is best to follow Westminster here and define the invisible church in a way that doesn’t keep moving around. This is how A.A. Hodge handles it, following Westminster: “Our Confes- sion teaches in these sections . . . that there is a collective body, comprising all the elect of God of all nations and generations, called the Church invisible” (The Confession of Faith, p. 311). He adds that “this entire body . . . has been constantly present to the mind of God from eternity” (p. 311). This is the sense in which Steve Wilkins affirms the invisible church, as do I. Defining the invisible church this way does not exclude affirming that at any given moment, there are a fixed number of effectually called people alive on the earth. I have always believed there is such a body—but it had never occurred to me to call that body the invisible church. In my mind, the invisible church has always been defined in the Westminsterian sense, the “whole number of the elect” sense. Hodge then makes a statement that shows that what he is calling the invisible church is identical to what I call the eschatological church. “This body, thus seen in its absolute fulness and perfection by God from eternity, will be at last revealed to the universe in all its completeness and glory, so that it will transcend all the other works of God in its visible excellences” (p. 311). Exactly. The entire company of the elect, the whole number of them, invisible now to everyone but God alone, will be made manifest to everyone at the eschaton, and that church will be without spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. And that eschatological church I define as the “whole number of the elect.”

AUBURN AVENUE 2007 IN THE CAN JAN 10, 2007 Sorry for the paucity of posts, and the reason for this is that I have been on the road. More specifically, I have been delighted to have been (once again) a guest speaker at the Auburn Avenue Pastors Conference. Just finished at noon today. As always the singing was stupendous, the hospitality top drawer, and

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the fellowship was the kind you get when you put a bunch of happy people together. The talks by Jeff Meyers, David Field, and Steve Wilkins were really, really good. Not only that, but Auburn Avenue now has a media center where you can download this stuff right away. If you want to take a look, go here.19 They also have various podcasts, interviews, etc. Check it out.

THE POSTMILL CULPRIT? JAN 5, 2007 In a discussion this morning at breakfast, some of the men in our gathering were talking (not surprisingly) about the Federal Vision controversy that has recently heated up again. One of the things that was noted is that there are some issues that are not currently part of the controversy, but which are real indicators of where someone would be in that controversy. I mentioned one of those issues and suggested that I thought it was the real culprit, the issue being postmillennialism. I know there are a handful of exceptions, but it is striking to me that the Federal Vision side of things is overwhelming postmill, and the anti-fv side is overwhelmingly not. Is this just an oddity, or might there be a causal connection? If there is a causal connection, here is how it might work. Postmillenni- al thinking is the type of view that gets into everything. Postmillennialism proper requres us to believe that God is intent on saving the world, all the nations of men. At the end of the process, the world will in fact be saved, and the number of the saved will vastly outnumber those who are lost. This, in its turn, commits the one who believes it to a certain optimistic frame of mind. Peter Leithart’s recent book Deep Comedy goes into this in a wonderful way. What does that optimistic frame of mind do when it encounters other issues? First, what does the alternative do, the pessimistic frame of mind? If your worldview could be summed up with “where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?” the end result will necessarily be a certain wariness, an expectation that Murphy’s Law will govern everything. If something can go wrong, it will—in the sacraments, in admitting young children to the table,

19 http://www.auburnavenue.org/media/mp3.html

226 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JANUARY 2007 in teaching Christians from the law, in having a high view of the church, and so on. A hermeneutic of suspicion gets into everything. Going the other way, the postmillenialist does not approach everything he does with the idea that the wheels are all about to fall off. Having become convinced that God is lovingly engaged with human history in order to ensure that everything will turn out right, this affects how we approach our everyday tasks. It affects how we approach our congregations, our spouses, our children, our studies, our theologies of everything else. This is not a dogmatic belief that nothing can ever go wrong, but it does help set the general orien- tation in a positive way. And everything that does go wrong is doing so in a broader, comedic context. When a nation rejoices because they have just won a war, the grief of the widow whose husband was killed the day before the ar- mistice was signed is a very real grief. But it is grief in a context of broader joy. God is love, and He is demonstrating that love throughout the course of history. His love will not be revealed in a surprise move at the last day; His love is shed abroad in our hearts now. This means we can afford to extend grace more liberally than we used to, without fear of that grace being abused. We now have a more potent view of what God is actually up to with that grace.

A TARGET RICH ENVIRONMENT JAN 11, 2007 Obviously, since I am in Monroe (still) for the now finished Auburn Avenue Pastors Conference, the “situation” in the PCA has been much on my mind. And the guys have talked about it in various ways, and from various angles. As I was reflecting on it this morning, I thought that I should write about one aspect of all this that I do not believe I have mentioned before. Steve Wilkins is accused of some kind of incipient Arminianism in his alleged departure from the Confession. (Incidentally, Steve’s last talk at the conference was on the Westminster Confession, in which Steve clearly demonstrated his fundamental allegiance to the Reformed understanding of the role of creeds and confessions.) Now this confessional “departure” of his has to be pretty

227 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JANUARY 2007 subtle because, for the life of me, I can’t find it. Steve is a straight-up predestinarian, and he acknowledges that this sovereignty on God’s part encompasses all things, including the salvation of individuals coming to faith in Christ. If this is all true, then it has to be said that Arminianism is really different from what it was when I was a kid. Anyhow, this is all happening in a denomination in which there are scads of genuine, bona fideArminians running around in ministry. The PCA does not have any shortage whatever of man-centered contemporary evangelicalism. Happy-clappy goo churches are plentiful, and in many of them, the extent of their acquaintance with Calvinism is that the pastor once read a book about it in seminary, which book he won’t publicly admit to reading. Now, in this setting, a group of predestinarian TRs have set about to get predestinarian Steve. Anybody who believes that there isn’t something personal about all this just isn’t paying attention. Why go after a minister whose “Arminianism” is so implicit as to be non-existent, and leave alone those countless ministers in the PCA whose compromises with contemporary Arminianism are explicit? If that is what you want to do, the PCA should be a target-rich environment. But the PCA pragmatism (that does not take the Bible seriously) is not the target in all this, and the Federal Vision (which takes the Bible and the Reformed faith very seriously) is the target. What is the explanation? Steve has been examined by his presbytery, twice. If later this month, on the basis of the second exam, the presbytery declares him to be A-OK, then the Standing Judicial Commission of the PCA has the option of picking up original jurisdiction on this. Technically, they would be reviewing or evaluating the actions of Louisiana Presbytery, not Steve, but given the procedures they have been willing to violate to get to this point, it seems pretty clear that they could “get Steve” if they so desired. If they do, I believe it is important for them to have to do it in broad daylight, on the fifty-yard line, with the stadium full. Hence these posts. What is happening here is all in Girard. A victim has been selected, and the courts of respectability want to draw a veil of respectability over the process of

228 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JANUARY 2007 dispatching the victim. The more the victim protests that this is all an abuse of the church courts and procedures, the more this enflames those who want the justice they dispense to be self-evidently “righteous.” But it is not—it is nothing of the kind. Imagine a classroom where students are standing on their chairs, throwing spitballs, yelling at one another, and so on. One student is sitting in the back, quietly. He shifts his feet, and accidentally brushes the desk in front of him, moving it two inches. Suppose the teacher ignores all the other students and busts this one. If the teacher really cared about classroom decorum, he has other things to address first. But if he does not, then we are justified in thinking that what is happening is more a matter of settling some personal score, than a matter of protecting the classroom. If the TRs out to get Steve defend themselves by saying that “you have to start somewhere,” and if they succeed in using the SJC to accomplish what they want, then this should strike fear in the hearts of all the other rowdy students. There should be a “chilling effect” across the PCA, where every minister who is running some Finney-inspired seeker service should think to himself, “Oh no! The PCA will deal with us next!” But there will be no chilling effect at all. No one will even slow down. The rowdy students will continue their classroom riot, while the quiet student is cooling his heels in the principal’s office. And this is because everybody involved knows exactly what this is about. We also know what it is not about. Why pretend otherwise?

FAITH IS MEDIATED JAN 12, 2007 When someone says that God foreordained the conversion of Smith, and that the conversion of Smith was therefore made necessary, a denial of this would include the view that the conversion of Smith was contingent, not necessary, and that God’s foreordination took up some percentage of the whole deal that was less than 100%. In other words, if the conversion weighed ten pounds, God carried nine and Smith one, or God eight and Smith two. This kind of thing is a denial of God’s sovereignty in salvation.

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But if someone says that God does it all, and that His foreordination does not need the cooperation of any other agent in order to make it effective, but that it is also true that Smith is not a puppet, and that God uses various instruments in layered hierarchies, all subordinate to the sovereign use of God, who is directing it all, this does not amount to a denial of God’s sovereignty in salvation. Now a fundamentalist Calvinist, if we may postulate such a one, could say that all this theologizing makes his head hurt, and that as soon as we starting saying things “how will they preach unless they are sent?” we are threatening to undermine pure Calvinism, as he understands it. But by pure Calvinism he means invisible lightning bolts from heaven, converting souls in a willy-nilly and inscrutable fashion, and connected in no way to Christian literature, preaching, prayers, Christian nurture, or any of that stuff. But this is not Calvinism—it is a caricature. The same kind of thing is going on with this Auburn Avenue business. If I were to say that we are saved by the instrumentality of faith alone (which I in fact do say), this does not commit me to deny God’s use of secondary instruments. These secondary instruments are subordinate to the sole instrument used by God when a man is justified . . . by faith alone. Where does this faith come from? Faithfulness to sola fidedoes not require us to say that it comes from that invisible lightning bolt. God uses means, and He uses primary means (faith) and secondary means (preaching, baptism, nurture, etc.). Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. St. Paul does not say “faith comes by lightning bolts.” Put another way, faith is mediated to us.

A RESPONSE TO RICK PHILLIPS JAN 13, 2007 As the Wilkins controversy continues to give off fumes, I would like to refer you to three places before we begin our next installment of comments. The first is to reiterate that Steve’s written responses to his presbytery exam can be found here. The second is a response to that, written by Rick Phillips, found

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here. And the third is a first-rate response by Jonathan Barlow to Rick’s piece, found here. I’ll give you a few minutes to work through all that. Okay, here is the problem. In my response here I am simply reworking or amplifying Jon Barlow’s central point, which was outstanding, and hoping all the while that I do not obscure it for anyone. What we have here is a linguistic controversy, which many have mistaken for a substantive doctrinal disagreement. While there is a doctrinal disagreement involved in all this, it is not located where the FV critics want to locate it, and it does not involve a denial of the Westminster Standards. But also, before responding to Rick’s critique of Steve, I want to register a personal note. At various times in this imbroglio, it has been more than a little obvious to me that agendas and motives other than what has been publicly claimed have been driving this whole affair, and I believe that I have noted this on more than one occasion. I bring it up here simply because I want to make it absolutely clear that in my mind Rick is emphatically not in that category. I believe that Rick is honestly interested in preserving and protecting the truth of the Reformed faith, and I do not believe that he is playing ecclesiastical politics. I have solid grounds for saying this, and my respect for his personal integrity is high. Having said this, I believe he is badly misconstruing what Steve is saying, and I hope to be able to show why I say this. First, let me list a battery of quotes from Rick’s article, with my comments marked in bold. Then I would like to conclude this point with a counter-example, and a question.

As TE Wilkins’s answers consistently show, he affirms the teaching of the Westminster Standards and then proceeds to argue that the Bible teaches otherwise. [Wilkins actually says that the Bible teaches the same doctrine as the Standards, but that it does not always use the same words in the same way.] But this is not to affirm the Standards.

It is not sufficient, I would argue, to affirm the scriptural doctrines as taught in the Confession unless one agrees with the meaning of the

231 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JANUARY 2007 terms. [Agreed] TE Wilkins states that his reading of Scripture yields “broader” definitions of doctrinal terminology. [Broader definitions in Scripture are not the same as contradictory definitions. More on this anon.] I will argue that the true effect of these broader definitions is that TE Wilkins teaches different definitions of key terminology that appears in the Confession in such a way that his teaching is out of accord with the Confession’s summary of biblical truth. [This would only follow if Steve were substituting the different definitions found in Scripture into the Confession. But in the Confession, for Steve, elect means decretally elect, the way the Confession means it. And in Scripture, he argues, the word elect is sometimes used in a sense other than this precise meaning. But the more precise meaning remains true.]

But the question pertains to the acceptable consistency of certain of TE Wilkins’s published teachings with the Confession’s doctrine of election. [As mentioned above, the issue is verbal consistency, not substantive consistency.]

But the point of his question is to reconcile the [verbal] difference between the Confessional doctrine and the biblical doctrine—yet the Confession maintains that its doctrine is the biblical doctrine. [Steve maintains that the Confession’s doctrine is the biblical doctrine too. But he also says that it is not the only biblical doctrine, and that the Bible uses some of the same words with greater latitude than a Confession of Faith can or ought to.]

He is, in effect, declaring that the Standards define and use the key doctrinal term “election” in a way that is at odds with the Scripture definition and usage of that term. [Something may be different without being “at odds.”]

His answers to the LA Presbytery’s questions serve primarily to argue that the Standards are out of accord with Scripture. [A better way of

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putting this would be: ‘His answers to the LA Presbytery’s questions serve to argue that the Standards employ a technical theological vocabulary in places where Scripture does not. Which is fine, both places.]

My counterexample is this: There are few theological words that are as important as hypostasis. The three persons of the Trinity are described with this word, and the ancient Standards also teach us that there is a hypostatic union between the divine and human natures of Jesus. For more on the problem of definitional ambiguities surrounding this word, please see at Robert Letham’s wonderful book on the Trinity. I am currently high-centered by an ice storm in an airport, and therefore do not have my Greek stuff. But if you look it up, you will discover that the Bible uses the word hypostasis in a very different way than the later fathers did. This later use, a stipulated, theological meaning does not intend to contradict the scriptural uses, nor does it actually do so in fact. Nevertheless, they still set a precise, theological definition for particular purposes which I applaud, and I wholeheartedly subscribe to Nicene and Chalcedonian orthodoxy. Not only so, but I would take it amiss if someone were to suggest that my statement that there is a “broader” or “different” use of this word found in the Bible was being advanced by me in an attempt to show that Nicene orthodoxy was somehow “unbiblical.” The Bible uses hypostasis in a particular way, and the task of exegesis is to find out what that meaning was in its original context, and then to believe and teach it. The fact that a later creed uses the word hypostasis to describe a different biblical reality, but which reality is not described in the Bible with the word hypostasis creates a minor problem . . . but it is a problem which can be resolved by spending ten minutes with Jon Barlow’s essay. These uses are different, but they are not contradictory. The fact that I believe the Bible to teach that there is a fixed number of people to the decretally elect, which number cannot be augmented or diminished, just like Westminster teaches, does not obligate me to assert that every use of the word elect in the Bible has to carry the same decretal denotations and connotations.

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And so here is my question for Rick. It is a version of a “have you stopped beating your wife yet?” But no need to worry—this is for illustrative purposes only, and I do not intend to accuse Rick of being anti-Trinitarian. But if the reasoning being employed against Steve is legitimate, then I think a series of questions like this would have to lead to such charges. “Do you believe that hypostasis is used in the Bible in the same way it is in the Nicene formulations? If so, could you please demonstrate this lexically? And if not, could you please defend your denial of the Trinity and Incarnation?” One more quick thing. Rick takes Steve to task on the subject of the invisible church because Steve says that except in the mind of God, the invisible church “does not yet exist.” Rick says that this is out of conformity with the Standards, but then astonishingly quotes the Standards where they say that the invisible Church consists of the “whole number” of the elect. But if a goodly portion of that whole number does not yet exist, then how can an entity which requires their presence exist? I can’t make a present omelet with future eggs. Rick skates quickly over this, which is a good thing, because the ice is pretty thin here. He says, “What TE Wilkins sees as an eschatological fulfillment growing out of the visible church, the Confession sees as a past, present, and future reality in overlap with the visible church.” But what do you mean, exactly, by “future reality?” If you mean that it is settled by God’s decrees, and is therefore known to God, then I could go for that, and Steve would too. In fact, in his written answers, he did go for that. The whole number of the elect, by name, does exist in the mind of God. So we affirm that it exists this way, but Rick rejects this formulation. He rejects it while saying that the invisible Church is a “past, present, and future reality,” and so he must mean this in some other sense than that God simply knows who the future elect are. The entire Church invisible has to “exist” in some important sense distinct from existing in the mind of God. Since the invisible Church is made up of the whole number of the elect, which includes members not yet born, this means that the future exists in some sense other than in the mind of God. And this must be a very important doctrine, because to deny it gets this kind of controversy going. So my question to Rick here

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would be this: “What specifically do you mean by the invisible Church existing as a past, present, and future reality? Where? How? When? And most importantly, where does the Bible teach this?” Enough for now. Okay, I read over this before posting, and need to point out one other thing. To subscribe to the Westminster Confession (as I do) does not obligate me to affirm that the Confession represents the doctrine of Scripture exhaustively. The Westminster is not a summary of the entire Bible. It is a summary of the Bible’s teaching on the subjects that it addresses. I affirm that it represents Scripture accurately, as far as it goes, but I deny that the Confession represents the Bible exhaustively, and also deny that it ever intended to. For example, Jon Barlow mentions missiology as a missing subject, to which I would add my beloved postmillenialism. Now that’s enough.

LAYERED DEFINITION JAN 17, 2007 One undercurrent beneath the Federal Vision business is a hidden difference in epistemological assumptions. The Hellenistic method strips accidents away from the thing, looking for essences. The Hebraic way of definition adds layer upon layer, looking at the thing from as many different angles as possible, and in as many situations as possible. Peter Leithart talks about this latter way of knowing in his book The Kingdom and the Power, and there is also a section on it in Angels in the Architecture. This leads to an assumption on the part of the former that once you have a “definition,” it is time to stop, and defend that orthodox definition against all comers. We can see this tendency in the definitions of the visible/invisible Church, or with statements about “outward” Christians and Christians “inwardly.” But I have no trouble with these distinctions, as far as they go. Yes, there are Christians outwardly and Christian inwardly. But I then want to take this matter under discussion and look at it from numerous other directions, trying grasp the whole by means of addition. In contrast, the Hel- lenistic approach to definition (and I am not using this pejoratively; there is

235 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JANUARY 2007 an important place for this kind of definition) seeks to understand by means of subtraction. How much can we take away and still have the thing we are talking about? But the temptation is then to disallow other approaches, approaches that may operate with a different set of descriptive rules. The He- braic way gives us man worshipping, man playing, man eating, man making love, man working, man sleeping, and man writing poems. The Hellenistic way gives us a featherless, bipedal carbon unit. For the Hellenistic approach, a true Christian is one who is one inwardly, period, stop. And this is true. But I also want to say that we have inward Christians and outward Christians, faithful Christians and adulterous Chris- tians, temporary Christians and Christians forever, slaves and sons, wheat and tares, sons of Hagar and sons of Sarah, washed pigs and washed lambs, fruitless branches and fruitful branches, Christians who die in the wilderness and Christians who die in Canaan, and so on. Now if someone of the other party thinks that I am essentially doing the same thing he is doing (that is, picking one and one only out of this list in order to make it the “true” definition), he has every right to be concerned. For example, if we are limited to one, then inward/outward is one of the best metaphors. But it is a metaphor, and needs other metaphors. If I were to isolate “fruitless branches and fruitful branches” to the exclusion of all others, and make it “the definition,” then I have become an Arminian. I think that this is what our critics are worried about. But we are not seeking to substitute; we are seeking to layer.

OUTSIDE GALLIO’S HOUSE JAN 19, 2007 Someone over at Reformation21 thought of a funny, and twisted it like a washcloth until it was dry enough to serve as pulpit supply in some churches that could be mentioned. But in the course of his excursus into humor, the writer developed a new accusation that merits some response, however brief. Speaking in the faux- guise of an advocate of the “foetal vision,” he says this:

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“if it becomes clear that we have a majority in the church courts, I would say to our opponents “Yo, you bunch of spineless apostate losers! Charge us if you think you’re hard enough. And Ligon Duncan—if you’re out there, just bring it on, man, BRING IT ON!!!!!” If, on the other hand, it emerges that we don’t seem to have a majority in the church and might lose our jobs as a result of unconfessional practice and belief, I would plead with our brothers, in the love of Christ, to show forth Christian love in unity, to acknowledge the rich diversity of the Reformed tradition, and to walk together with mutual care and respect, and live at peace for the sake of the kingdom.’ In other words, the Federal Vision folks, who have brought charges against no one, and are currently trying to drive zero opponents from their pulpits, and who are blocking no candidates at all in presbytery exams, are nevertheless to be blamed because that is no doubt what they would do if ever given the chance. Thus we see the doctrine of hypothetical retaliation and justification, which really is a problematic use of that last word. This kind of “justification” sees launching an unprovoked attack as “retaliatory in principle” because, “even though they didn’t do this unto us, they will do it if they ever have the chance.” To the pure all things are pure, and so it makes sense that to the aggressive all things look aggressive. What this kind of thing does is blur the difference between offense and defense, between which team has the ball and which one doesn’t. The suggestion is made here that we in the Federal Vision are only making nice because we don’t have the upper hand, but, when we do, then the TRs will all be hauled off for a little presbyterial bastinado. The problem with this little thesis is what the Federal Vision folks have actually done. The catholicity of the Federal Vi- sion (which is an important and under-reported emphasis in it) is not merely hypothetical; it is no temporary ploy. And, for the record, that catholicity has to include TRs. It makes no sense to try to develop ecumenical bridges to other distant communions while starting fights with your next door neighbor. We understand this. For just one example, the CREC, which is accused by some of being a haven for Federal Vision refugees, is also a denomination of Reformed churches which allows the London Baptist Confession as one of its

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six reformed confessions. For those not following the details of this, baptists are generally un-federal-visionish, if that’s a word. It is one thing for our adversaries to decide that a fight is necessary for the sake of “the truth.” If that what someone’s conscience demands, then that is what he should do. But the fight should be justified on the basis of the facts, examined in the clear light of Scripture, and not on the basis of an imaginary scenario in which is it assumed that the other side wants the fight just as much as you do, and in the same way. This latter approach, far from demonstrating the robust insight of Athanasius dealing with the snaky charm of an Arius, rather indicates the reluctance born of a bad conscience, that of a decent guy maneuvered into beating someone up outside Gallio’s house, and all over “words, and names, and your own law.”

THANKS FOR THE OPPORTUNITY TO RESPOND JAN 22, 2007 Editor, In your last issue of The Confessional Presbyterian, I read an article by R. Scott Clark entitled “Baptism and the Benefits of Christ.” There are many issues here, but I would like for reasons of space to limit myself to two. The first has to do with Dr. Clark’s straw man representation of the position he critiques throughout the course of his article, that of the Federal Vi- sion. You would think that he would be especially careful in stating the views that he ascribes to this position—in that he concludes the article by calling for “confessional Reformed and Presbyterian churches to begin disciplining those pastors, elders, and teachers who teach the Federal Vision doctrine of baptismal benefits” (p. 19). This is no place for “ready, fire, aim!” The focus of his article has to do with Dr. Clark’s claim that the Federal Vi- sion denies the internal/external distinction for members of the covenant of grace, and the closely related issue of the visible/invisible church distinction. He says, “A group of writers, some of whom are ministers in confessional Re- formed and Presbyterian churches, known collectively as the ‘Federal Vision’ are, however, either denying or calling into question the distinction between

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the church visible and church invisible and with that they are proposing that there is no distinction between those who in the covenant of grace externally and internally” (p. 4). I am cited in his footnote nine as one who is “expressing doubts” about the visible/invisible distinction (p. 4). He identifies me as a Federal Vision writer, and later sums up our position this way: “The Federal Vision denial of the internal/external distinction and their doctrine of baptismal union with Christ necessarily conflate the substance of the covenant of grace with its administration (p. 15, emphasis mine). Yes, that would follow, if the premise were correct. But it is radically inaccurate. Not only do I affirm the internal/external distinction between regenerate and unregenerate covenant members, but I have done so repeatedly, in print, and in ways that are pretty hard to miss. I have done so in pieces that Dr. Clark apparently read and in pieces that he ought to have read. In my essay from The Federal Vision that Dr. Clark cites, I say this: “As an historic evangelical, in no way have I altered my conviction that a man must be converted to God in order to see the kingdom of heaven” (p. 263). In that essay, which Dr. Clark describes as a vehicle for “expressing doubts” about the visible/invisible church distinction, I actually said something more nuanced. “At the same time, the historic Reformed terminology can be applied in such a way as to cause some problems of its own. While it was a valuable distinction, it was still not an inspired distinction. I say this while embracing the distinction, as far as it goes” (p. 266, emphasis in the original). In my lexicon, “embracing” and “expressing doubts” are not interchangeable. In that same essay, I show my agreement with the internal/external differences between regenerate and unregenerate covenant members in various ways and places. I referred to “unconverted professing Christians” on p. 268. I refer to “false professors” on p. 269. I refer to “baptized hypocrites” on p. 266. All this in the essay that Dr. Clark actually cited. But there is more. In my book on the Federal Vision controversy (“Reformed” Is Not Enough), I make the same point over and over again. I embrace the internal/external distinction, and this is something that Dr. Clark had a responsibility to know and acknowledge before writing an article like this. For example:

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Circumcision was a sign of the covenant, but Paul points out that the mere possession of the external sign was not sufficient to guarantee a genuine spiritual reality. We can reapply these truths this way: ‘For he is not a Christian who is one outwardly; neither is that baptism, which is outward and external. But he is a Christian who is one inwardly; and baptism is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.” Paul’s statement is blunt—he is not a Christian who has only the externals” (RINE, p. 18)

In short, we can say that God knows those who call themselves Christians and who take upon themselves the marks of discipleship. Their lips are close to God, but their hearts are far from Him” (RINE, p. 19)

Does this mean that anyone so baptized is a Christian in the other sense—one who is born of the Spirit of God? Not at all” (RINE, p. 19)

The lips draw near while the heart is far removed from God. But such snakes within the covenant have the worst lot of all” (RINE, p. 21)

Simply put, the objectivity of the covenant does not mean that a man does not have to be born again” (RINE, p. 33)

First, the new birth is a reality. To be born again separates those who love darkness and those who love the light” (RINE, pp. 35–36, emphasis in the original)

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Lest this become tedious, I will not quote very much from the three whole chapters later in the book that I dedicated to a detailed discussion of different aspects of the internal/external distinction, which I clearly and plainly hold and teach. Chapter 16 is on “Heretics and the Covenant,” Chapter 17 on “Sons of Belial,” and Chapter 18 on “False Brothers.” I close these chapters by quoting, with approval, from Calvin. “. . . we therefore distinguish the true from the spurious children, by the respective marks of faith and of unbelief” (as quoted in RINE, p. 155). But as an announcer on television might say, with regard to the fantastic vegetable steamer he is trying to sell us, “Wait! There’s more!” In a collection of Credos, found in Credenda 15/5, I say this: “I believe that God in His sovereign and secret decree has elected by name a countless number to eternal salvation (Eph. 1:11). Each of these elect are justified individually, and irreversibly, at the point of their conversion, when God imputes to them all the righteousness of Jesus Christ (Rom. 8:29–30)” It sounds like whoever wrote that (to wit, me) holds to a pretty robust view of the internal/external distinction, which view, if it got any more robust, the Evangelical Theological Society would have tested for steroids. In short, to put it mildly, Dr. Clark’s article is not a reliable guide on whether Federal Vision advocates like myself deny the internal/external distinction. Given this problem, it is not surprising that his paradigm blinders cause him to say other inaccurate things in the course of this article as well. This is not intended to be an exhaustive refutation, so let me close with just one example. In his discussion of Romans 9, Dr. Clark says this: “Paul knows nothing of any sort of historically conditioned or contingent election. He views redemptive history as populated by two classes of people, those who are unconditionally elect and those who are reprobated” (p. 13). This is yet another situation where someone’s ship of dogma, under a full sail, runs aground on the shoals of the text. Paul knows nothing of a historically conditioned or contingent election? “As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers’ sakes. For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance” (Rom. 11:28–29,

241 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JANUARY 2007 emphasis mine). Beloved enemies on account of election? Paul’s profound discussion of decretal election in these chapters arises out of the problem created by the historical election of Israel. After Paul’s rhapsody at the end of Romans 8, a natural question would arise. If all this is true of the elect, then why was the elect nation of Israel trying to kill Paul? And that is why Paul goes on to distinguish between different kinds of election, distinguishing between the historical, contingent election of Israel, and His sovereign decretal election than reveals itself in a glorious way throughout human history, culminating at the last day. This is why Paul began chapter nine with a discussion of the status of Israel, who had the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the law, the service of God, the promises, and the fathers. But this historical election, by itself, was insufficient, because they are “not all Israel, which are of Israel” (Rom. 9:6). All Israel was elect in one sense, while those who were of Israel were elect in another. And I cannot fathom how someone who stumbles over equivocal uses of the same word like this can ever hope to interpret faithfully the teaching of someone like the apostle Paul. Calvin did not have this trouble. “Therefore Paul skillfully argues from the passage of Malachi that I have just cited that where God has made a covenant of eternal life and calls any people to himself, a special mode of election is employed for a part of them, so that he does not with indiscriminate grace effectually elect all” (Institutes III.xxi.7, emphasis mine). Peter Lillback has shown convincingly that Calvin distinguished a general election from a secret, special election. “Calvin denies that those who fall from the covenant were never in the covenant in the first place. Rather, they were in the covenant, but only from the vantage point of a corporate election or adoption . . . General election is not automatically efficacious in imparting spiritual benefits because God does not always give to all in the covenant the spirit of regeneration that enables perseverance in the covenant” (Lill- back, The Binding of God, p. 216). Why is this so hard? Cordially in Christ, Douglas Wilson

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MORE ON LOUISIANA PRESBYTERY JAN 25, 2007 I am grateful to be able to announce that Steve Wilkins has been cleared (for a second time) by his presbytery.

Louisiana Presbytery, after thorough examination and investigation of TE Steve Wilkins as per the SJC directives regarding allegations made in the Central Carolina Presbytery Memorial, finds no strong presumption of guilt in any of the charges contained therein and exercises its prerogative not to institute process regarding those allegations. [Clerk’s note: See BCO 31–2.]

My understanding is that according to the process the PCA has set up for this, the Standing Judicial Commission has the automatic authority to review this decision. They are meeting sometime next month, and we shall see what they decide to do. If they take it up, their focus is to review the action of the presbytery, not the views held by Steve. But there is no way for them to do this without bringing into the picture what some are alleging that Steve teaches and holds. So this action by Louisiana Presbytery is an answer to prayer, but there is still something to pray about. In this situation, the more public accountability the better. If the tangle is now resolved, then thank the Lord. But if it continues (through parliamentary chicanery, old-boy-network-pressure, or other means), then at some point there will be a stopping point, a trial. At that point, the accusers will have to make a case that depends on more than just bare assertions. If and when that happens, it would be good to have all eyes focused on the accusers, and for said accusers to have the mike turned on, and the tape running. Perhaps they have not thought this far out, but I don’t see why they are pressing for this. Those hostile to the FV have also been equally hostile to any setting where verbal exchange or cross-examination would be possible—debates, etc. Giv- en what some of them have been writing (e.g., Scott Clark, Guy Waters), this coyness is not surprising.

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Perhaps the goal has just been to “make things hot” for Steve, so that he voluntarily leaves the PCA. Then they could explain the heresy in detail to various bought-and-paid-for crowds, with no theological debate necessary, and no robust interchanges in the Q&A. The problem is that Steve is a churchman and has no plans to make it easy for them by acting the part of a radical individu- alist. He is going to make them prove what they are saying, and this will prove awkward for them because they can’t. If they could, they would be the ones eager for debate, right? And I hereby extend my offer yet again . . .

OPENING PLAY OF THE END GAME JAN 29, 2007 Scott Clark, big surprise, has written some more about the Federal Vision here. But in the course of his litany of ecclesiastical entities that have in various ways rejected the Federal Vision, he then goes on to say something very important—something that gives the end game away, incidentally. This, I predict, will be the basic content of their two-minute drill. At the conclusion of his post, Dr. Clark says this: “I’ll tell you what I don’t understand is why these folk don’t align themselves with CREC where they will be ‘understood’?” Look for this question that Dr. Clark raises to become a constant drum- beat in the weeks to come. “Why are you disrupting the PCA? Why don’t you just go where you’re wanted?” “Why are you making all this trouble? Don’t you care about the peace and purity of the church? Why don’t you just join the CREC and make everybody happy?” “Why do you have to be so disruptive? Why won’t you just leave quietly?” “If you just left voluntarily, we could avoid a lot of trouble, Wilkins.” Now the accusation that Steve Wilkins is making trouble in the PCA is a little bit like Ahab calling Elijah the one who troubled Israel (1 Kings 18:17). Steve has brought charges against no one, he is attacking no one, he is blocking the ordinations of no one, and so on. But that does not keep him from

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being the bad guy in the story that some are industriously trying to tell. He is simply the one that some TRs in the PCA have dubbed the designated villain. He is to be blamed for all kinds of things, and these pressing problems would all be solved if he would just agree with their negative assessments, and put himself into exile. Not only must he be at fault for all the current troubles, but he is being intransigent by refusing to do their dirty sentencing work for them. If he really had the peace and purity of the PCA in mind, he would just slip away quietly and allow his opponents time for a little touchdown dance. But he isn’t going anywhere, and by remaining it is beginning to appear that his opponents may soon have to start proving what they are saying, and that is an outrage upon their dignity. The ones attacking always feel victimized by the one they attack. It’s all in Girard, man. So this is the drill. The last thing in the world that the anti-FV people want is any kind of open forum where questions get to be asked in both directions. They don’t want this in a voluntary set-up, as in a debate. They don’t want it in a judicial setting, as in an open trial. They don’t want it in a box; they don’t want it on the floor. Not in the closet either. We piped but ye would not mourn; we played the bass line from “Play That Funky Music, White Boy,” and ye would not dance. They want to chase Steve Wilkins from the PCA into the CREC, and they then will return to their home churches, still breathing hard, and will wonder aloud where he went. And however sheepish they will be over a move so transparent, that sheepishness would be nothing compared to what they would have to deal with if they are ever required to prove these assertions with all the Reformed folk in the English-speaking world looking on.

AH, THE BITTER, BITTER WORMWOODS! JAN 30, 2007 Scott Clark has posted a form letter, here, for repentant FVers to sign off on. As has been my wont in times past, I would like to repost that letter here, with some editorial comments sprinkled throughout. I have put my comments in brackets and in bold, so that you can tell where it is exactly that I am

245 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JANUARY 2007 speaking. The bold also helps to signify the blackness of my Federal Vision heart. Some of this is tongue in cheek, but some of it is as serious as it gets.

To all whom this these presents do come [eh?],

I hereby declare that I really and heartily believe in form and substance what the Reformed churches confess, that God declares sinners righteous sola gratia, sola fide, only on the ground of the imputation of the whole and perfect obedience of Christ. [Amen. Preach it. This might not be so bad.]

I also confess that being caught up in the fever of the moment, I was attracted to the anti-revivalist rhetoric of the Federal Vision movement and my enthusiasm for their anti-revivalism and anti-subjectivism lead me to embrace doctrines and practices I now recognize to have been mistaken. [Oh, here it comes. Okay. I further confess that I was se- duced by the trinkets and other shiny objects they gave me.]

I confess now that I embraced the movement without fully understanding the implications of their theology and practice. [In fact, I confess that I do not fully understand much of anything. I am slow of wit, and dim-witted of bulb. Ah, the bitter, bitter wormwoods!]

I hereby repent of failing to distinguish the law and the gospel as Reformed folk have done for four-hundred years, [But I do distinguish them. Not for four hundred years, certainly, but for quite some time now. Year after year of distinguishing them.]

of denying the covenant of works, [Did I do that? When did I do that? I am not saying this has to be wrong, but I have always tried to affirm this, preferring to call it the covenant of creation . . . Okay. If you say so. Okay.]

246 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JANUARY 2007 of confusing it with the covenant of grace, [But . . . but . . . but . . .] of teaching viz. the ordo salutis, a temporary, conditional election alongside the eternal unconditional election [But didn’t Calvin teach this in his Institutes, referring to a general election, and . . . no, no, not the thumbscrews! Sorry for teaching a temporary, general election. Sorry.] and of sometimes conflating the two, [Whatever you say. Sorry.] of teaching temporary possession of baptismal benefits such as union with Christ, adoption, and justification that are said to be conditioned upon my faithfulness and thereby implicitly denying the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. [Okay. I just want to get this straight so’s I don’t mess up again. I don’t want to deny perseverance of the saints, no way. So when did I say that anything was conditioned on my faithfulness? That would be really bad if I had done it. Can you cite a place where I did?]

I hereby repent of denying the visible/invisible distinction, [But I don’t deny it! I qualify it! Whatsa matter witchoo? Michael Horton made the same point . . . John Murray . . . Banner of Truth Collected Works . . . look, I’m sorry. I love you guys. I am trying to see your point. I think I kinda do. I think the Stockholm thing might be starting to kick in. About time.] of denying that there are two ways of being in the one covenant of grace, [But I affirm there are two ways of being in the one covenant of grace. Are you sure you got the right guy? Yeah, that’s my picture. But I never signed that statement. That’s not my signature. Is my lawyer here yet? What do you mean “you are interrogating him in the next room”?] of attempting to revise the definition of faith in the act of justification to include Spirit-wrought sanctity. [I see it all now, and I do

247 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JANUARY 2007 repudiate my former errors with enthusiasm. I now agree with you that saving faith must be unholy and rebellious. I don’t know why I didn’t see this before. Irony? What makes you say that?]

I repent of trying to smuggle into the doctrine of justification the doctrine of condign merit whereby God reckons me righteous partly on the basis of Spirit-wrought sanctity, [I don’t remember thinking this thought anywhere in my natural born head. I hotly deny it. Now what do we do?] and of trying to smuggle into the doctrine of justification the doctrine of congruent merit whereby God is said to approve graciously of my best efforts to cooperate with grace toward justification.[I hotly deny this one too. Not that anybody listens.]

I repent of equivocating about justification as present and future in the same sense. [How can you equivocate about something in the same sense? Isn’t equivocation using different senses? Not trying to be difficult here. Just trying to understand.]

I admit that all believers are fully justified now and shall be vindicated as such at the judgment. [I actually agree with this! Without the iron boot!]

I repent of trying to enlarge faith in the act of justification to be more than simply “receiving and resting” on Christ and his finished work, of trying to include fruit and sanctity in the act of justification in either faith or the ground of justification rather than simply allowing them to be fruit and evidence of justification. [But if repentance and faith are the fruit of regeneration, which is not justification, that coming later, and regeneration is a type of sanctification (something wrought in me), then aren’t we all saying that faith is the fruit of a change of

248 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JANUARY 2007 heart in me? Leastways, all of us who hold to the traditional ordo salutis? You do hold to the ordo salutis, don’t you? Since regnera- tion is first, and justification later, we all agree that something is wrought in me before anything is imputed to me. Right?]

I repent of confusing baptism and the Lord’s Supper as signs and seals of initiation and renewal and thereby trying to commune infants and others before their catechizing and credible profession of faith. [In all seriousness, if you really want to keep your kids away from Christ until they have passed one of your blinkered ordination exams, then why don’t you just say so? You don’t want your kids to tolerate condign merit or congruent merit for a second, but you demand cognitive merit from them. Now kids, when you score 100 percent on this comprehensive exam covering the tota gratia portion of the syllabus, then you will have earned the right to participate in God’s free grace. Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking that God’s free grace is just lying around for anybody. Gotta ace the test. Gotta clear the bar. Gotta convince the session. Grace is only for those who understand, as we understand, which is to say, perfectly.]

I repent of troubling the churches before bothering to learn the rudiments of Reformed theology, [Hey, now you are getting a little personal.] before learning the basic distinctions of the Reformed confession, [This appears to be as good a time as any for me to re-extend my invitation to a debate. Since I don’t know the rudiments of Reformed theology, and don’t know the basic distinctions of the Reformed confession, it will be the work of mere moments for you to pull my shirt over my head and roll my socks down. The crowd will go wild, and orthodoxy will rest comfortably that night, for the first time in years.]

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of wasting the time of the church courts and assemblies, [I like that! Let’s make this guy buy the rope before we lynch him. That way we won’t be wasting our hard-earned money.]

in forcing them to teach me in committee reports what I should have learned in seminary had I paid attention. [Didn’t go to seminary. All I got is these committee reports.]

Most heartily of all I repent of being confusing about the one thing about which a minister should never ever be confusing, about which our confessions are completely and utterly unambiguous, about which the entire Protestant Reformation agreed: how sinners are right before God. [And that should be obvious by this portion of the letter of confession, shouldn’t it? According to what this letter asks us to affirm, sinners are right before God by means of their theological prowess. Sinners are right before God by intellectual achievement. Sinners are right because they aced the exam and had the teacher put the gold star of grace on the top of their paper. We have to use the word grace lest any should boast, but we still do.]

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. [Isn’t this a Latin thingy that papists say? This isn’t a trick, is it?]

EVEN WARRIORS FOR TRUTH HAVE TO FUDGE THE FACTS A LITTLE JAN 31, 2007 In the “Bitter Wormwoods” post below20, I appreciated a comment by David Gadbois, an FV critic, and thought I should respond to it here. He said, “I think Dr. Clark is right in his statement about the FV in general, although I think only 2 of the points would apply to Wilson at all (paedocommunion and the nature of justifying faith).”

20 The previous entry, January 30, 2007.

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And there are three responses, two of them brief qualifications, and one that I think is really central in the continuing controversy. The first is that I obviously would differ with Mr. Gadbois over whether Dr. Clark is accurately representing my friends in FV circles. At the same time, it is fair to say that I have gone out of my way—for the sake of ecumenism, believe it or not—to state my convictions in ways that I believe an honest TR could immediately accept. I know my FV friends are telling the truth when they clearly state that they are not denying the system of doctrine taught in the Westminster Confession. But I have sought to go one better, and actively and openly teach the doctrines of the Westminster Confession. It is this, in my view, that accounts for the difference in perception between Fed- eral Vision lagers and Federal Vision amber ales. But for anyone who doubts our substantive agreement, Canon Press has a recorded discussion between me and Rich Lusk that should be helpful. Second, my difference on the “nature of justifying faith” is clearly a difference I have with Dr. Clark, but I would deny that it is a difference that I have with the Westminster divines at all. By “obedient faith” I mean nothing more or less than “living faith.” I do not mean in any way, shape or form, some kind of merit found in the creature that would ingratiate him with the Almighty. Obedient faith is the only kind that God ever gives, and when He gives it, this justifying faith obeys the gospel, obeys the truth, obeys His salvation. Faith that does not obey the gospel is not justifying faith. This faith is qualitatively different than the “yeah-uh-huh” kind of faith that even devils can have. This qualitative difference (if you wish, its sanctity) arises from the fact that, in the traditional ordo which Dr. Clark is apparently denying, living repentance and living faith are the fruit of regeneration. Regeneration is prior. This regenerate heart is (in the traditional ordo, if measured with a stop watch) an unjustified heart. The order is effectual call, regeneration, repentance, faith, justification. Now the obedience of Christ is imputed to me at the end of this process (if you must call it a chronological process), but something is done in me at the beginning of it. Because my heart was changed from hostility to submission, the repentance and faith that arise out of this new heart share this new

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quality of submission. Faith cannot but partake of the qualities of its source. Dr. Clark is free to deny this traditional ordo if he wants, but he is not free to accuse people of heterodoxy for no other reason than that they hold to it. The last point is the one that I was glad was obvious to Mr. Gadbois, a critic of the Federal Vision generally, and that is the fact that I gladly hold, teach, embrace and love the vast majority of Dr. Clark’s doctrinal affirmations (to be distinguished from his slanderous assertions about what other people are supposed to believe). And I am glad that this is obvious to men like Mr. Gadbois. But here is the problem. Over the years of this controversy (five years now), it has been apparent to a number of my Federal Vision friends that my extra efforts have in this regard have done minimal good. How can I answer them? If one were to say to me, “Wilson, why do you do all that extra work? I agree with everything you have said, but I haven’t done the work of saying it. But, at the end of the day, you aren’t believed any more than I am. Why don’t you save your breath for cooling your porridge?” And this is because this is a battle of ecclesiastical politics, and not, as has been ostensibly claimed, a battle for the truth. If it were a battle for truth, then people would be willing to acknowledge plain truth, even if it seemed contrary to their current political advantage. But they are not at all willing for this. I have heard, through back channels, that there are leaders in the anti-FV movement who would acknowledge privately what Mr. Gadbois says here about me. But they will not say anything like that publicly because warriors for truth have to fudge the facts a little if they are to keep up the political pressure. The ninth commandment requires us to speak the truth. We are prohibited in Colossians from lying to one another—we have put off the old man, with its practices. We serve and worship the one who is the Truth. But in defiance of this obvious scriptural requirement, we have gotten to that point in this controversy where pressure, politics, more pressure, fear, and selfish ambition make it all but impossible for anyone to say something obvious, if it goes contrary to his party’s interest. So let us talk for a moment about the tenet of Dr. Clark’s that I agreed with, the one without the iron boot. “I admit that all believers are fully

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justified now and shall be vindicated as such at the judgment.” I agree, Dr. Clark, and one of the things I will be vindicated from in that day will be your false charges. “For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and living. But why dost thou judge thy brother? or why dost thou set at nought thy brother? for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ . . . So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God” (Rom. 14:9–10, 12) We, all of us, will stand before Christ. You, me, Norman Shepherd, Rich Lusk, Peter Leithart, Cal Beisner, John Robbins, Ligon Duncan, all of us. We are (all of us) going to give an account of ourselves, down to every idle word, every motion at presbytery, and certainly down to every blog post. Because you have been justified by the free grace of God in Christ, this means that your misrepresentations of my position have been as forgiven as it gets. The judgment seat we will all stand before will not be that kind of judgment seat—we will (all of us) have to walk past the altar where Christ sprinkled His blood before we get to this seat of evaluation, where Christ sorts out our tangles. But when He sorts out our tangles, as He promises He will, you will shake hands with me, brother, and we will be able to chat in true fellowship while the angels are passing out the sheet music.

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THE KIND OF EYEBALL THAT SEES FEB 2, 2007 Scott Clark is at it again. He misrepresents my views (again) by saying this: “Mr Wilson’s doctrine of justification through ‘living’ or ‘obedient’ faith is the very doctrine that we rejected in the Reformation. He makes faith efficacious, not because it looks to Christ alone, but because it looks to Christ and is obedient.” The only problem with this is that he doesn’t cite any place where I say that faith is efficacious on account of its sanctity. I didn’t say that because I don’t believe it, and not only do I not believe it, I stoutly deny it. I teach the opposite. To say that God looks at the holy quality of my faith and pronounces me justified on account of it would be a distortion of and denial of the Protestant doctrine of sola fide. The problem for Dr. Clark’s fixed notion is that I reject it, and I do so clearly. The thing that makes this misrepresentation mind-boggling is that Dr. Clark began this post by quoting this from me: “By ‘obedient faith’ I mean nothing more or less than ‘living faith.’ I do not mean in any way, shape or form, some kind of merit found in the creature that would ingratiate him with the Almighty.” I deny that God looks at my faith and says, “Whoa, look at that holiness! Better justify him.” The faith that is the instrument of justification is holy, and is alive, and it is necessary for it to be holy and alive. But those qualities are not the reason or the ground that God has for justifying me. The ground is the obedience of Jesus Christ. I have not taught or said anything contrary to

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this, and since Dr. Clark is confident that I do in fact deny it, I would appreciate it if he would produce some evidence to this effect. If he cannot produce an example of me saying that God reckons the good qualities of my faith to me as righteousness, then I believe he owes me an apology. The fact that my faith is alive makes it possible to see Christ, the sole basis or reason for anyone’s justification. If my faith were dead, it would be blind also, and incapable of looking to Christ as the sole ground of justification. So, Dr. Clark, let me spell it out for you. Do I believe that God justifies me through the instrumentality of a living and holy faith? Yes. Do I believe that God in any manner whatever reckons that sanctity as part of His reason or ground for justifying me. As God is my witness, no. What is the ground for my justification? The living obedience of the Lord Jesus, plus nothing. True faith is an eyeball and cannot look to itself. True faith sees Christ alone. But unless it is is a living eyeball, it cannot see. Dead eyeballs have no vision. So this life is necessary but is in no fashion meritorious. God does not give living faith so that it might admire itself in the mirror. If Dr. Clark would like me to say this any more clearly—I don’t know, throw in some more adjectives or something—I will be happy to do it. As I as said in my post, we do have disagreements, but whether God reckons any of my virtues into His calculations as He justifies me is not one of them.

MORE STUFF ON CLARK FEB 2, 2007 I just posted this as a comment on Scott Clark’s blog. Dr. Clark, Late Wednesday night, you posted this on your blog. “Mr Wilson’s doctrine of justification through “living” or “obedient” faith is the very doctrine that we rejected in the Reformation” (emphasis mine). After saying I follow the Romanist ordo, you also say, “Mr Wilson agrees in principle with Rome. I don’t mean to say that he intends to agree with Rome, but I do mean to say that he can’t help it. He, like the rest of the Federal Vi- sionists, has set up a system of justification that is (they think) guaranteed to

256 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | FEBRUARY 2007 produce the desired result, sanctity.” So here you say I unwittingly follow the Tridentine ordo. After this was challenged by a number of individuals commenting on your blog, some of whom asked you to produce any citation where I had said anything of the kind, and after I again denied holding to this in any manner whatever, yesterday you said, “Mr Wilson is on the fence. He wants to fiddle with orthodoxy without being tagged for doing it.” Earlier I was denying, and now I am just fiddling. Are you able to produce a quote where I am doing either? And does this statement from you that I am on the fence amount to a retraction of your earlier statements of my position?

SOUP TO NUTS FEB 2, 2007 My conversation with Dr. Clark goes on. I asked him to cite some examples of where I have said that God considers the moral quality of my faith (as having been formed by love) as the basis or foundation for justifying me. I deny teaching this. To his credit, Dr. Clark acknowledges that I am at least trying to deny it, but that I am haplessly falling into error on this subject anyway. At any rate, when I requested a “for instance,” Dr. Clark replied this way:

I did, in fact, quote Mr Wilson and I’ll do it again: “Faith cannot but partake of the qualities of its source.” To be sure, this statement would be true if it were referring to the function of faith in sanctification, but because Mr Wilson does not make this distinction and because it is the role of faith in the act of justification that is in question, I understand him to be referring to the role of faith in the act of justification. Nothing he has said since, by way of complaining gives me any reason to change my opinion.

Now it is quite true that I was talking about faith at the moment of justification. But I was talking about the nature of this faith when I said that it partook of the qualities of its source (the regenerate heart). I was not talking about the role of faith in the eyes of God when He justifies me. Dr. Clark quotes this

257 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | FEBRUARY 2007 sentence, points out things that I failed to include in that sentence, and assumes certain things about the reasons I must have had for failing to include them. This is not quotation.It is not responsible. It doesn’t establish anything. I also used the example of the eyeball, and I thought Dr. Clark’s response to this was very telling. I had said,

True faith is an eyeball and cannot look to itself. True faith sees Christ alone. But unless it is a living eyeball, it cannot see. Dead eyeballs have no vision. So this life is necessary but is in no fashion meritorious. God does not give living faith so that it might admire itself in the mirror. If you would like me to say this any more clearly—I don’t know, throw in some more adjectives or something—I will be happy to do it. As I as said in my post, we do have disagreements, but whether God reckons any of my virtues into His calculations as He justifies me is not one of them.

Dr. Clark responded to this:

All analogies break down and in this context, the analogy has the same problems as the language above. The analogy fails, because, in this case, the one should have to say that it is the object of vision that makes the eye function as it does, but I think an eye is an eye and it’s alive or not whether it has an object of vision or not.

The object of vision creates the eyeball first, which means that the object of vision is active in this before it is seen. God gives us eyes and then we see. He, being gracious, gives us eyes that function, that are alive. That is the first thing. Then the living eyeball blinks a couple times (repentance) and secondly it sees (faith). What does it see? The object out there, which in this case is Christ. This should not be difficult. Let me explain what I think is going on here. “About time!” somebody cries. Dr. Clark has made a big point out of the uses of words like because and is. And I keep trying to agree with him, at least on this point. Our justifying

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faith is alive. God does not reward with justification because we have an alive faith. Okay? Amen. But there are different uses of the word because. If a mother said to her son, “I am going to give you ice cream because you were a good boy today,” this is a merit system. He could have been otherwise, but he wasn’t, and so he got the ice cream. Some people want to go to heaven this way but they can’t. But what about this? “I saw Christ in His glory because God gave me a faith that could see Him.” Now what? If someone thinks this means he was justified “on account of what a fine boy he was for having living faith,” then he deserves whatever the Reformed confetti-counters do to him. But if he simply means that had God given him any kind of faith other than the living faith that He did give, and that he was justified because he had been given that kind of faith (instead of the other kind), this is simply Reformed orthodoxy. This is the difference between necessity and merit. It is necessary for me to have living faith, for if I do not, I will be blind to Christ, the sole ground of my justification. But there is no merit in my faith that God uses as a reason for justifying me. Now notice how thinly Dr. Clark has to slice it here. He admits that faith partakes of the quality of its source when we are talking about sanctification, but he says that to admit that faith partakes of the quality of its source in justification amounts to a denial of the Reformation. But this is like saying that the eyeball is dead and blind when it looks to Christ in justification but mysteriously alive again when it looks to Christ in sanctification. This makes no sense; it is all the same faith. The faith that is the instrument of justification is also the faith that is the instrument of sanctification. I don’t get one kind of disposable faith in order to justified, and then a replacement faith in order to be progressively sanctified. The entire Christian life, soup to nuts, is from faith to faith (Rom. 1:17). The just shall live by faith. But Dr. Clark is insisting that justifying faith has to be considered as ontologically distinct from sanctifying faith. For if you say that it partakes of the nature of its source (while justification is occurring), then you have denied the Reformation. This means that faith at the moment of

259 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | FEBRUARY 2007 justification, according to Dr. Clark (if he were consistent), has to be unholy, blind, and dead. For if it were holy, it would be partaking of the holiness of the new heart which produced it. One other thing. To say that all our sanctity is “evidence only” has a serious problem with the traditional Reformed ordo. What does this do with definitive sanctification? When a man is given the new heart that produces a holy repentance and an (unholy? Dr. Clark?) faith, this happens when he is in an unjustified state. But somewhere in there, love and repentance and holiness are going on, and they are not proceeding from the man’s justification, which according to the traditional ordo, has not happened yet. So all post-justification acts of love are “evidence only” and nothing else. But what are the pre-justification stirrings of love? You can’t deny their existence without denying the reality of regeneration. The new heart hates sin and loves God. That love is not meritorious, and God does not reward it when He justifies a man. But it is sure enough there. Dr. Clark’s dilemma is not resolved by taking Dr. Gaffin’s solution (although I appreciate what Gaffin says on this point) because even if the ordo is not taken as a chronological business (measured with a stop watch), it still represents the logical order of things as the Reformed have historically understood it. The ordo rightly protects monergism in salvation, and, to borrow a phrase, Dr. Clark is “fiddling” around with this.

A WEE BIT MORE FEB 3, 2007 A couple of very reasonable posters have urged me to spend my time on more fruitful endeavors than trying to persuade Dr. Clark of my orthodoxy. While I have no intention of conducting a debate like this ad infinitum, I do believe it is fruitful now. While it would be wonderful to persuade Dr. Clark, the exchange of views can be entirely successful otherwise. If it persuades a significant number of people in the audience of the true state of affairs, it will have been worth it. This is what Luke says about the debating prowess of Apollos. He vigorously refuted the Jews in public debate. And what was the

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result? He was an encouragement to those who through grace had believed. I am convinced that there are many in the Reformed community who are still making up their minds on Federal Vision issues, and this kind of exchange can be very profitable for them. So I don’t intend to debate this issue world without end. But I am going to keep it up for a wee bit more.

SAVING FAITH IS A BUSY BEE FEB. 3, 2007 All right, let’s recap. Dr. Clark says that I have unwittingly denied the Reformation because I hold that saving faith is holy. I say that when God calls us effectually and regenerates us and gives us a new heart, this new heart turns away from sin (in repentance) and turns to Christ (in faith). Because I have said that this faith “partakes” of the qualities of heart that produced it, Dr. Clark says I am therefore necessarily saying that God considers these qualities to be meritorious. But I deny that God considers the merit of these qualities in any manner whatever as He justifies me. But what options are left for Dr. Clark if he wants to avoid denying the Reformation like me? He must either say that the faith that “rests and receives” is an unholy faith (no works here!), or he must say that faith somehow comes in detachable modules, so that it can be holy in this part, but in the part that does all the resting and receiving, no qualities of holiness are to be found anywhere in that module, which is sealed off from the others. For otherwise, if he grants that the faith that does the resting and receiving is also holy, then he has agreed with me, and will not simple souls conclude from all this that prayers to Mary are appropriate? Now, with this said, let us turn to what Dr. Clark says is the definition of what it means to be Reformed—the confessions. We will content ourselves this morning with the Confession that I am in submission to, the Westminster. But the principal acts of saving faith are accepting, receiving, and resting upon Christ alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life, by virtue of the covenant of grace (WCF 14.2).

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A great deal has been said by Dr. Clark about “resting and receiving” alone. But in Westminster, this is all part of a larger sentence. The principal acts of saving faith are accepting, receiving, and resting upon Christ alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life, by virtue of the covenant of grace. No- tice that the accepting, receiving and resting are not isolated. They are directed toward certain defined ends. Three of them are mentioned. Justification is one of the things that saving faith looks toward. Sanctification is the second thing that saving faith looks toward. Get that? Saving faith has something on its mind other than just getting past the moment of justification. And the third thing that saving faith thinks about is eternal life. Saving faith proceeds from a heart that is interested in personal holiness, and it looks forward to the personal holiness that sanctification brings. If Dr. Clark doesn’t like it, he can take it up with Westminster—the Confession, not the seminary. So is this all that saving faith does? No, those were just the principal acts of saving faith. These are the central things that saving faith does, but the West- minster divines do not believe for a moment that saving faith has to be stripped bare of everything around it in order to become a naked assent that would make the Escondido Lutherans happy. No, for them, saving faith is a busy bee. By this faith, a Christian believeth to be true whatsoever is revealed in the Word, for the authority of God Himself speaking therein (John 4:42; 1 Thess. 2:13; 1 John 5:10; Acts 24:14); and acteth differently upon that which each particular passage thereof containeth; yielding obedience to the commands (Rom. 16:26), trembling at the threatenings (Isa. 66:2), and embracing the promises of God for this life, and that which is to come (Heb. 11:13; 1 Tim. 4:8). But the principal acts of saving faith are accepting, receiving, and resting upon Christ alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life, by virtue of the covenant of grace (John 1:12; Acts 16:31; Gal. 2:20; Acts 15:11). So what are some of the other things that saving faith does, misbehaving as it does right here in a Reformed confession? Saving faith believes whatever God has revealed in His Word, and that would include, incidentally, Genesis 1–2. Note that the point is not that saving faith affirms the generic inspiration or inerrancy of the Word, but that it believes as true the content of what

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is revealed there. Saving faith has a sound hermeneutic, acting differently according to the nature of the passage before it. Saving faith yields obedience to the commands of God. The problem here for Dr. Clark is that the Westmin- ster was written in English, and so in a crisis like this we can’t resort to Greek word studies. Saving faith yields obedience to God’s commands, and what Dr. Clark is doing is declaring unconfessional a number of Reformed ministers who have the temerity to believe the confession in places where he doesn’t. Saving faith trembles at the threats. Saving faith embraces promises for this life and the next. But the principal acts of saving faith are to accept, receive and rest upon Christ for three things. Those three things are justification, sanctification, and eternal life. Now, however saving faith does this, it is clear that it does not do it detached from all love, sanctity, and holiness. A new heart is given, one that loves God, and submits to Him. That new heart detests sin now and turns from it in repulsion. We call that motion repentance. This new heart loves Christ and turns to Him, seeking Him out. We call that motion faith. Dr. Clark says that if I allow the motive of love into this motion of turning to Christ then I am somehow diluting it with Romanism. Yikes. It is not Romanism to love Jesus from the first moment of the effectual call. Lest anyone who specializes in taking quotes out of context see this (and I know you’re out there!), and point to it, saying that Wilson is clearly mixing “works” into the moment of justification, let me slice it as thinly as you do. In a thought experiment (I am out of my mind to talk like this), if God were to stop the process of an individual’s salvation just before the moment of justification, but after the effectual call, and if He were to judge that individual on the basis of the loving qualities of the person’s new heart, what does Wilson think would happen to that guy? Is this question esoteric enough for you? I believe that if God were to interrupt the moment of someone’s conversion with judgment this way, the person concerned would go straight to Hell headfirst. If God were to mark iniquities, would could stand? The new heart is different from the old one, but still sinful and fallen. The repentance is genuine, but still imperfect. The faith in Christ, and love for

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Him are not hypocritical, for they are gifts of God, but they still fall short of the glory of God. They have turned away from sin, and have turned to Christ, but they have not done so perfectly—and a holy God requires perfection. Being a loving God, what He requires of us in this respect He also gives to us in the perfections of Jesus Christ. But we are still in our thought experiment. So the individual is not declared righteous, sinless, acceptable, or holy on the basis of how good he was being for that nanosecond before justification. But because his heart was quickened, his eyes opened, his faith stirred into life, the one thing that this person can do is see Jesus Christ. To argue against this is unscriptural, unconfessional, and incoherent. To push Dr. Clark’s logic out to the end requires us to say that a blind and dead eye sees Christ and can rest in Him, receiving Him. But wait . . . is it not obedient, and holy, to rest in Him? Maybe saving faith has to do this while snarling and sullen. No popery here. To refute all this from the Scriptures would be easy, but we have come to the point in this controversy where if I were to do that, the response would be something like, “Yeah, well, Jehovah’s Witnesses have Bibles too, and they appeal to them too. We need the confessions.” You have appealed to the confessions, and so to the confessions we have gone. Saving faith yields obedience to the commands of God. Among many other activities, saving faith trusts in Christ alone for sanctification.

LIKE A FEATHER BOA FEB. 5, 2007 A shrewd observer of my exchanges with Dr. Clark contacted me privately and made a point that I think is well worth repeating here. I would urge anyone who needs the refresher to read through our respective posts, along with the comments. You can look through the Auburn Av- enue Stuff on this blog for the last week, and look at Dr. Clark’s blog21 for the last week. Prior to our exchanges, one of the things that Dr. Clark was very adamant about was just how clear the issues were. The Federal Vision is plainly heretical, this was obviously headed to Rome, and so on.

21 https://www.heidelblog.net

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When Dr. Clark agreed to our indirect debate, one of the things it did was put two representatives of these positions side by side, talking about the same issues. And all of a sudden the only thing that was clear was that the Federal Vision is not clearly heresy. This point does not depend on the FV being right. Let’s suppose for the sake of this illustration that FV is just one more mainstream Reformed mistake, like amillennialism—erroneous, but no way heretical. Dr. Clark was maintaining that FV is slam-dunk heretical. Our reply was that if this is the case, a debate should make the clear even clearer. But we just had our debate, after a fashion, and in the aftermath of this debate everybody could plainly see that I hold to a Westminsterian soteriology, and that I wear the traditional Reformed ordo around my neck like it was a feather boa. Where did all the plain heresy go? Further, by the end of the exchanges some of Dr. Clark’s supporters were calling on me to lighten up. To which I reply, please remember that every word I have written in this controversy has been on defense. We are responding to charges, we are not making them. We are defending our callings and vocations in ministry; we are not trying to challenge the ministry of our fellow ministers in the Reformed faith. This is the season when another slate of books attacking us have been, are being, or will be released. I was asked to remember that Dr. Clark has a doctorate from Oxford. Given his credentials, which I do respect, it seems to me that one of the things that Dr. Clark should know how to do is represent his opponents in a polemical exchange accurately and clearly. Read through our exchanges again. Has Dr. Clark represented my views fairly? The exchange has made certain things very clear. But they were not the things that Dr. Clark maintained beforehand as plain and clear.

MR. SANDEMAN, BRING ME A DREAM FEB. 8, 2007 Here 22is a short audio snippet from John Piper’s talk on Fuller. This is the section where he references my recent discussion with Scott Clark on

22 The whole lecture is available here.

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Heidelblog.23 I think Piper is exactly right about the relevance of this discussion. As he points out, the handles are in slightly different places than they were in the 18th century, but we are trying to pick up the same thing.

INTERESTING FEB. 7, 2007 In his talk on Andrew Fuller at the 2007 Desiring God pastors conference, John Piper had this to say: “I just tuned into the debate between R. Scott Clark and Doug Wilson over at Scott’s blog, Heidelblog, and there were elements of it that relate directly to Fuller’s response to Sandemanianism (though no one there would be in the category of a Sandemanian).” I would be interested to hear from anyone who listens to the audio whether or not John Piper amplifies this comment at all.

OH FEB. 10, 2007 Well, I have listened to an interview with Guy Waters on the Federal Vision (HT: Mark Horne). In a nutshell, I agree with Mark’s response here. How is it possible for the same teaching to create false assurance and no assurance? How is our preaching and teaching putting them to complacent sleep in their covenantal pew and at the same time dangling terrified parishioners over the abyss? This is a theological problem with his critique. What exactly is the bad thing we are doing to the people of God? Are we taking assurance away or trucking in great amounts of undesired surplus assurance? That is the theological critique. Here is the ethical critique. In this interview, Guy Waters did the same thing that he did in his book, and which I have already refuted section by section. He says we don’t say things we very clearly say, he says that we obscure things we don’t obscure,and in short he grossly misrepresents us (to an unsuspecting Christian audience). I would refer him to the Larger Catechism’s treatment of the ninth commandment, and ask him to adopt an attitude of strict subscription.

23 https://heidelblog.net/

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Here is one glaring example from the interview. Dr. Waters said that assurance is simply not to be found in FV preaching and teaching. Not to be found. Okay, what about the whole chapter on assurance in my book “Re- formed” Is Not Enough? And this was not a chapter on how assurance is bad, but rather a standard, straightforward pastoral treatment of assurance, in line with our confessions, and in complete harmony with what I was arguing in the rest of the book. We know we have passed from death to life because of our love for the brethren. We know we are God’s children because He chastiz- es every son whom He receives, and so on. John the apostle wrote 1 John so that we might know that we have eternal life. But if I were a member of that unsuspecting Christian audience, listening to this stuff, I would be alarmed. If I were alarmed enough to form an opinion, but not so alarmed that I actually went and got a book by an FV author, or listened to a downloaded sermon from one of them, I would walk away from hearing this interview with a false opinion of Christian brothers, and I would have gotten that false opinion directly from Guy Waters. Given the line that is being spun about us, it is plain as day why there will not be any debates anytime soon. Hypothetically, we could find ourselves hearing something like this. Dr. Waters: “Nowhere in FV preaching and teaching will you find anything on assurance.” Wilson: “I just finished a short series of sermons on the important subject of assurance, which can be obtained from Canon Press.” Dr. Waters: “Oh.”

YOU HAVE TOUCHED THE THING WITH A NEEDLE FEB. 12, 2007 I would like to pass on to all of you some questions posed by a correspondent in Australia. He has been observing us toiling away here in our FV swamps and sent on some questions that I thought were just grand, going right to the heart of the matter. If I were speaking to this correspondent right now, I might resort to a felicitous Latin phrase (the kind I learned from Wodehouse, not Wheelock), which is to say, rem acu tetigisti—you have touched the thing with a needle.

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Here they are:

1. Are the children of believers in covenant with God? 2. If so, which covenant are they in? (Are they in the covenant of works, grace, new, privilege, other?) 3. Are they fully in that covenant? 4. Were such children who have grown up to final unbelief ever really in that covenant to begin with?

Because this is not a gotcha game, but a sincere set of questions, I think that I should answer them too. So here goes.

1. Are the children of believers in covenant with God? Yes. 2. If so, which covenant are they in? (Are they in the covenant of works, grace, new, privilege, other?) The covenant of grace. 3. Are they fully in that covenant? With regard to membership and the attendant obligation to live by faith alone, yes. With regard to enjoyment of all the blessings of the covenant, that depends on whether or not they are elect. 4. Were such children who have grown up to final unbelief ever really in that covenant to begin with? Yes, they were.

Now since it should be obvious that these questions cut right to the heart of the issue, it would seem to follow that FV critics would have to answer these questions differently somewhere. But where? My money is on #3, but they have to be careful. If they answer too robustly, they will find themselves out of accord with the Westminster Confession.

THE JOHN CALVIN MEMORIAL ARCHIVE AND BOOK STACKS FEB. 14, 2007 Mark Horne has posted a quotation from Calvin on Deuteronomy. I reproduce the quote below, but the comments on Mark’s blog are worth reading also.

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For, since the fall of Adam had brought disgrace upon all his posterity, God restores those, whom He separates as His own, so that their condition may be better than that of all other nations. At the same time it must be remarked, that this grace of renewal is effaced in many who have afterwards profaned it. Consequently the Church is called God’s work and creation, in two senses, i.e., generally with respect to its outward calling, and specially with respect to spiritual regeneration, as far as regards the elect; for the covenant of grace is common to hypocrites and true believers. On this ground all whom God gathers into His Church, are indiscriminately said to be renewed and regenerated: but the internal renovation belongs to believers only; whom Paul, therefore, calls God’s “workmanship, created unto good works, which God hath prepared, etc.” (Ephesians 2:10.). Calvin, Deut 32:6

I want to draw attention to a number of things here, and then follow up with an observation on the authority of Calvin for Calvinists. Notice first that Calvin says that the grace of renewal is effaced in some. It is effaced in those who have afterwards profaned that grace of renewal. In order to profane something you have to come into some sort of contact with it. As a result of this profanation of renewing grace, it is proper to speak of the Church as God’s work and creation in two different ways. The first is general, and has to do with outward calling. The second is special, and has regard to spiritual regeneration of the elect. Calvin goes on to say that the covenant of grace is common to hypocrites and true believers, and both kinds of people in the covenant are appropriately said to be renewed and regenerated. Internal renovation, however, belongs only to genuine believers. In case anybody missed this, Calvin says here:

1. The grace of renewal can be effaced; 2. It is effaced by those who profane it; 3. God’s work and creation in the Church can properly be spoken of two ways: general and special;

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4. The general work is the outward call; 5. The special work is the spiritual rebirth of the elect; 6. The covenant of grace is common to hypocrites and true believers both; 7. Both hypocrites and true believers can be said to be renewed and regenerated; 8. And heart renovation belongs only to genuine believers.

Now this is all straight from Calvin, and I guess we all know who will not be speaking at Westminster West conferences any time soon. In fact, Calvin hasn’t been invited to speak there in years. We shouldn’t make too much out of that though—I think it is an internal faculty/politics thing. Now a comment on the authority of Calvin for Calvinists. The fact that Calvin said it doesn’t make it right, and I think it is fair to say that a man could be a conscientious Calvinist and think that Calvin got a lot of things wrong. But that is not the point. I think it should be safe to say that for Re- formed, Presbyterian, and Reformed Baptist believers, Calvin’s errors, whatever they were (take paedocommunion, for example) were not the kind of errors that should get him labeled as a flaming heretic at RTS Jackson. But here is the kick in the teeth. The sentiments above, run through a syn- tax scrubber to hide the 16th century origins, and advanced to Waters, Clark, Duncan, et al. in the name of Lusk or Leithart would get labeled that way. There is no better way to illustrate how out of touch with the reformational tradition these men have become. Note, the point is not that Calvin is right and these men are wrong. Their revivalistic version of the Reformed faith might be the Reformed faith come into its own. They could be right on all points, but if they want to consider themselves Reformed, they can’t be saying that they are “Calvinists except for those parts where Calvin is always denying the gospel.” Calvin might be talking through his hat on this point. But if he is talking through his hat, he is obviously saying the same kind of thing that the FV people are saying. And that means we are talking through our hats as well.

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The fact that “Calvin said it” should not be followed with “I believe it, that settles it.” If Calvin was silly for saying it, so are we. But it is a bit thick for the “heirs of the Reformation” to be drumming John Calvin out of the corps of the orthodox like this. If this is an error, it is an error within the Reformed pale—we share the error with no less than ol’ Jean himself. If it not an error, then certain schoolmarm librarians at the John Calvin Memorial Archives and Book Stacks need to do a little less shushing and a little more reading. The ancient pagans had their myths of the gods coming down incognito, and finding out how everybody treated them that way. The Messiah of Israel did something similar to the custodians of the Torah, and found out what they actually thought of Moses, who had warned them that this would be happening. This leads to an edifying thought experiment. Bring Calvin back, shave his beard, get rid of that kamikaze hat, make him a young man in his twenties, and send him before classis (or presbytery would do just as well) to get his little French hinder parts examined.

RSC: What do you understand by regeneration? JC: The word can be used differently . . . [Whispering on the panel] RSC: What do you mean “differently?” JC: Well, in one sense both the hypocrite and the true believer can be properly said to be renewed and regenerated, but . . . excuse me? RSC: I said what? JC: The covenant of grace encompasses both kinds of covenant members, but regeneration can only be used in a special sense if we are talking about the internal grace that belongs only to the elect. RSC: Where did you go to seminary? JC: Well, actually I went to law school. RSC: Have you ever been to Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church? JC: No, sir. RSC: Have you listened to the CDs? JC: What’s a CD?

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MH: Mr. Chairman, I think we are getting off the point . . . RSC: Quite right. You say that the covenant of grace includes the reprobate? JC: Yes, with regard to the outward call. So they are truly members of that which they profane, and the renewing grace that comes to them is something they really efface. But there is a qualitative difference between them and the . . . RSC: Do you really want us to vote on you? JC: I really wish you would. I was warned what would happen, but I had to come see for myself.

Enough fun. I am on the road right now, but just before leaving I got my copy of Covenant, Justification, and Pastoral Ministry, edited by Scott Clark. I have only had a chance to look it over and haven’t gotten grace or time enough to read it yet. But to show you what we are dealing with, the somewhat breathless copy written on the cover says that the gospel today is “under assault.” Heavy word, assault, especially if you are talking about language like what Calvin uses above. All modern and educated Calvinists know various places where they take issue with Calvin. But leave it to Westminster West to develop the line of thought that makes Calvin a heretic, assaulting the gospel. Land of Goshen.

PERSONAL LOYALTY FEBRUARY 19, 2007 A few weeks ago, I made the point that leaders among the anti-FVers have been extremely reluctant to admit the obvious, which is that I hold to the historic Reformed view of justification and so on. The reason for this, I suggested, was political. In other words, to admit publicly that I had a clean bill of health would do damage to the political campaign against FV now under way. It would do damage to their cause in two ways. First, it would undercut those on their side of the fence who have already gone on the record about

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me—e.g., someone like Guy Waters. To recognize my orthodoxy would make these guys out front to be the anti-FV equivalent of guys on the beach at the Bay of Pigs—“Where’s the air support, man?” The second way it would undercut the current crusade is by making people make distinctions when they are in no mood to make distinctions. If they start doing that, it might set an unedifying chain of thought in motion. “If Wilson is okay,” someone might muse, “after years of hearing that he isn’t, maybe some of these other guys are okay too.” So I made this point about the politics of the thing, and one poster here raised the question of whether I was “playing politics” also. Can the tables of this argument be turned? I don’t believe so, but here is how the argument would go. If I am as orthodox as all that, then why haven’t I denounced my friends and ecclesiastical homies whose language makes people more nervous than my language does? Am I not circling the wagons for political reasons, just like I say the folks on the other side are doing? No, and here is why. There is a difference between partisan loyalty and personal loyalty. Personal loyalty obviously has limits, but the biblical principles of justice define what those limits are. Here is how it works. The first thing to remember is that ministers in good standing should be considered (especially by their friends) to have done nothing wrong unless someone establishes that they have done something wrong. Second, when accusations are raised against a group of men, it is reasonable and prudent to judge the reliability of the accusers by holding their charges up against the positions you know best, which in this case would be my own positions. I am not an expert in everything my friends have written or said. I am an expert in what I have written and said, and if people are saying outrageous things about my views, what motivation do I have to tunnel through everything Rich Lusk has written in order to “prove him innocent”? Rich can do that better than I, and I already know his accusers are out to lunch. Remember, they came over to my house first, and said some crazy things. Third, when trouble arises the first reaction of a friend ought not to be that of backing away and coming back sheepishly later when things look safer for his sorry idea of a friend. And fourth, using

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theological language that is not typical for provincial presbyterians is not the same thing as heresy. I know enough about how my friends express themselves to know that they don’t always put things the same way I would. So why, when someone starts trying to whoop up a heresy trial, don’t I join in the general frenzy and acknowledge publicly that “some of this language is troubling”? The reason is that there is a difference between operating outside the well-worn grooves of theological clichés and heresy. Yes, some of my friends speak differently than I do. So does Calvin. So does Turretin. So do a bunch of other Reformed fathers. This has been the point of the various Calvin citations I have used. The point is not that I would put things the same way that Calvin would. For example, I do not use the word regeneration the same way Calvin does. That is no reason for me to douse my hair with lighter fluid, set it off, and run around in tight, little circles. Men can use different theological vocabulary without disagreeing in substance. If it appears that this is what is happening (as it does to me in this situation), then cooler heads ought to prevail until the thing is sorted out. Different terminology is a standard tech- nique used by damnable heretics to conceal their pernicious errors, but it is affirming the consequent to say that the presence of different terminology is equivalent to heresy. All dogs have four legs, but that does not turn cows into dogs. Heretics use different terminology for their unrighteous purposes, but James and Paul used different terminology for their righteous purposes. So then,

1. Innocent until proven guilty; 2. Evaluate the unknown in terms of the known; 3. A brother is born for adversity; 4. And the Reformed faith should be big enough to encompass different streams or traditions within it. But at the very least, it should be big enough to include those who established it.

Put all this together and you can see why I felt no pressure whatever to ditch my friends just because someone started yelling. This refusal to budge is not an example of me playing politics on this issue; it is actually an example of me declining

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to do so. In contexts like this one, personal loyalty—to men like Wilkins, Lusk, Leithart, Horne, Schlissel, or Barach—is simply what Christ calls for.

LIKE A MAN DRAGGING A ROPE FEBRUARY 21, 2007 I am afraid that Westminster West is disgracing itself. I finally had a chance to begin reading Covenant, Justification, and Pastoral Ministry, edited by R. Scott Clark, and released by Presbyterian and Reformed, proud publishers of Norman Shepherd’s Call of Grace. The first essay in this new bucket of fruit is by Clark, and is set up to answer the question “how we got here?” “Here” would be that controversial point where we have two sides within the Reformed camp, each claiming to be orthodox. Here is Scott Clark’s summary of the points at issue.

One side tends to argue that genuinely Reformed doctrine teaches one covenant before and after the fall, the imputation of Jesus’s passive obedience only, and faith that justifies because it obeys. The other side in contrast holds that the Reformed doctrine denies those very things. Without equivocating, both sides cannot be correct. (p. 5)

Here it is in a slightly different form.

To conclude that in justification faith justifies because it obeys or that Christ did not perform vicarious active obedience or that Paul’s doctrine of justification was not primarily about right standing before God has the most serious implications for the historic (and confessional) doctrine of justification. (p 4) A slight difficulty arises because, as readers of this blog know full well, I hold that there are two covenants, one before the fall and one after. I hold to the imputation of the active obedience of Christ, and I do so with robust gesticu- lations. And I deny that faith justifies because of any boy scout qualities it may have. Strike three. At this point, Clark needs to hand his bat to the bat boy and respectfully take his seat in the dugout. But he does nothing of the kind. He just assumes the stance again and looks at the pitcher with a steely gaze. “That all

275 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | FEBRUARY 2007 you got? Three pitches? I’ll hit one eventually. C’mon.” Okay. I also affirm that justification is primarily about right standing before God. Strike four. Observers of this debacle, who are sympathetic to the concerns of Westmin- ster West, but who are clear-headed enough to see what’s going on, will no doubt say, “Yeah, but you’re an anomaly, Wilson. Shepherd does deny the imputation of the active obedience of Christ, and rumor has it that some of your friends are squishy on the other two.” But denying the active obedience of Christ wouldn’t have prevented Shepherd from being a delegate to the Westminster Assembly, would it? And neither would the “squishiness” of insisting that God’s dealings with man are always gracious, or the view that faith has to be living and not dead. And faith is living because it obeys the command to rise and walk. All these positions were found participating in the work at Westminster. But in my case, that dodge won’t work anyway. Here is how I fit into this scheme, according to this book. I show up, for starters in a footnote in the second essay (p.52).

For a summary of the convictions of the Federal Vision by one of its most vocal advocates, see Douglas Wilson, “Union with Christ: An Overview of the Federal Vision,” in The Auburn Avenue Theology, Pros and Cons: Debating the Federal Vision (ed. E. Calvin Beisner; Ft. Lauderdale, FL: Knox Theological Seminary, 2004), 1–8.

I am one of the most vocal advocates of the Federal Vision, and I deny all four of the characteristics of that vision as kinda assigned by Clark. These are strange doings. Somebody doesn’t know what he is talking about. Either I am not in the Federal Vision at all, or the Federal Vision is not what its opponents claim, or it is not monolithic as its opponents claim. In any case, this book is out of line. One of the criticisms that I have had to field is that we have an innovating spirit about us, fiddling around with the Reformed heritage that our fathers bequeathed to us. “Why mess with the fathers?” the cry goes up. “We must hold mindlessly to the tradition of rejecting mindless papist traditions.” But that is a subject for another time.

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We are considered impudent movers of ancient landmarks. But I learned a bunch of this stuff from these fathers. I became a Calvinist in 1988 and began reading stacks of books published by Banner of Truth, P&R, Soli Deo Gloria, and so on. And a bunch of the current controversy was already in print, in those books, and circulating peacefully in Reformed circles—almost as though these issues were an intramural set of differences within the bounds of Reformed orthodoxy. But now, becoming aware of this problem, Clark is preparing himself for a purge of the history books. He appears to be preparing us to say that John Murray was at the headwaters of this mischief (p. 6). Cornelius Van Til, despite his stalwart support for Norman Shepherd, is still considered a good guy (p. 7), but we can put this down as another manifestation of the tombs-of-the-prophets phenomenon. It would be impolitic to touch Van Til just yet, or Richard Gaffin for that matter—for blurbing Shepherd’s book. But Clark is ready to throw Melanchthon under the bus because at least for a time he thought that good works were necessary for justification (p. 13). And we also have to rid ourselves of Richard Baxter because he “taught quite clearly that faith justifies because it obeys” (p. 15). So when is Banner of Truth going to repent of publishing The Reformed Pastor? The intent is apparently to bury the truth under a rock pile of footnotes.

These essays are not intended to be popular. The faculty held a conference in 2003 in which we presented some of this material in a way that is accessible to Christian laity. Those lectures are available from the Westminster Seminary California. Some of the essays in this collection do arise from that conference, but they have been significantly revised to speak to a more academic audience. (p. 23)

You betcher. This is the kind of book that has footnotes like this in it:

Seeberg, History of Doctrines, 2.364. See also Robert Kolb, “Georg Major as Controversialist: Polemics in the Late Reformation,” Church History 45 (1976): 455–68; idem, Nikolaus von Amsdorf (1483–1565):

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Popular Polemics in the Preservation of Luther’s Legacy (Nieuwkoop: DeGraaf, 1978), 123–71.

I for one find myself almost persuaded. You would think that with all this firepower they would be able to get the basic facts of the case right. But they have not. I responded to the Westminster West conference referred to above, and I did so back at the time. This means there isno excuse for not getting the basic positions right. Robert E. Lee was not a Yankee. The Dutch have not conquered Holland. Maybe referring to a series of blog posts entitled “Yelling at my Windshield” would not have enough of a scholarly patina to be included in these footnotes. One last thing for now. Clark objects that the “word Reformed has come to mean predestinarian” (p. 11). The problem here is that if you believe in heaven and hell, as all of us in the Federal Vision do, and if you are predestinarian, as all of us are, and as Clark acknowledges, then all five points of Calvinism follow from this, inexorably, like a man dragging a rope. Not only so, but sola gratia and sola fidealso follow, like a second rope. This is something we all know, acknowledge, and affirm. He who says A must say B. We know that. So, Dr. Clark, for the record, again, “B.”

KIND OF TACKY TO POINT OUT FEBRUARY 22, 2007 In Chapter Two of Covenant, Justification, and Pastoral Ministry, David Van- Drunen continues to sound the alarm. The doctrine of justification is “under fire” (p. 25), being attacked (p. 25), there are “three distinct lines of attack” (p. 26), and he concludes that “justification is indeed under attack” (p. 57). He desires to describe the views of the attackers “accurately and fairly” (p. 26), and in some cases, he may have done so. The three lines of attack he mentions are modern ecumenical movements, the New Perspective on Paul, and Federal Vision stuff. I don’t have a lot to say about his treatment of the first two, but I do need to say something about the third. He categorized those of us in this third “line of attack” as “self-styled Re- formed church leaders” (p. 26), and we are leaders of the “self-styled Federal

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Vision” (p. 52). I am not sure what this means, but it sounds like we got our theological education in night school after teaching ourselves to read off of milk cartons. Kind of tacky to point out, even if it is true. When he gets to our line of attack, he starts with Norman Shepherd. My point is not so much Shepherd’s position here as it is VanDrunen’s idea of refutation. Watch closely.

First, Shepherd’s teaching denies, or at least redefines, the idea that justification is by faith alone. (p. 49, emphasis his)

And how is that? How does Shepherd deny this?

In his book, Shepherd repeatedly stresses that justifying faith is an active, living, obedient faith. Given the context of debates over justification, such language is inherently ambiguous. (p. 49)

Then apparently the only way to get through ambiguous justification debates is to insist that we are justified by an inert, dead, and disobedient faith. That way all the glory goes to Christ, and nobody gets the wrong idea. In short, whereas Reformed theology teaches that faith alone, defined as an extraspective trust in Christ and his atoning work, justifies and that obedience, which is never to be confused with faith itself, inevita- bly flows from justifying faith. (p. 49)

Okay, let’s talk for a moment about this “flows from” business. The Bible teaches in multiple places that the nature of the source determines the nature of that which comes from the source. You don’t get pineapples off bramble bushes. Fresh springs don’t produce brackish water. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks, and so on. If obedience flows from justifying faith, then obedience has to have had something to do with that justifying faith. Like begets like. God does not intrude the obedience a nanosecond later in a work of special creation. No—God establishes life with regeneration, and that life continues to manifest itself through the entire life of the believer in question, including in his

279 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | FEBRUARY 2007 justifying faith. God does not justify anyone because of what a fine job they are doing with their life, but He never used a dead faith to justify anybody. VanDrunen continues to represent Shepherd this way:

Furthermore, “a living and active faith is the fruit of the regenerating and sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit.” Whereas the Reformation doctrine has always taught that sanctification is a fruit of justifying faith, here Shepherd says just the opposite—that faith is the fruit of sanctification. (p. 50)

Two responses. The first is to just quote Calvin. Work through what Cal- vin says here, and see if you can find in it what VanDrunen says the Reforma- tion doctrine “has always taught.” The emphasis in bold is mine.

Why, then, are we justified by faith? Because by faith we grasp Christ’s righteousness, by which alone we are reconciled to God. Yet you could not grasp this without at the same time grasping sanctification also. For he ‘is given unto us for righteousness, wisdom, sanctification, and redemption’ (1 Cor. 1:30). Therefore Christ justifies no one whom he does not at the same time sanctify. These benefits are joined together by an everlasting and indissoluble bond, so that those whom he illu- mines by his wisdom, he redeems; those whom he redeems, he justifies; those whom he justifies, he sanctifies. But, since the question concerns only righteousness and sanctification, let us dwell upon these. Although we may distinguish them, Christ contains both of them inseparably in himself. Do you wish, then, to attain righteousness in Christ? You must first possess Christ; but you cannot possess him without made partaker in his sanctification, because he cannot be divided into pieces (1 Cor. 1:13). Since, therefore, it is solely by expending himself that the Lord gives us these benefits to enjoy, he bestows both of them at the same time, the one never without the other. Thus it is clear how true it is that we are justified not without works yet not through works, since in our sharing in Christ, which justifies us, sanctification is just as much included as righteousness. (Calvin, Institutes, III.xvi.1)

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Calvin is dealing with this topic in a sensible, pastoral, Christocentric way. He is doing so in a way that avoids the stopwatch problems with the traditional Reformed ordo salutis, if that ordo is conceived of in a clunky way. Calvin’s approach here harmonizes nicely, in my view, with Richard Gaffin’s treatment of the ordo in his book on the subject. (Have I mentioned that Gaffin blurbed Shepherd’s book, and that P&R published it?) The ordo is an illustration, a metaphor, meant to preserve a right understanding of God’s sovereignty in salvation. It is like a paper-mache model of an atom, hanging above a fifth-grade classroom. There is a point to the illustration, which must be grasped, but, once it is grasped, you ought to stop thinking of the atom as a teeny solar system. That said, those who insist on living by the ordo will die by the ordo.

For example, Shepherd reasons that because regeneration is the beginning of sanctification, hence saving faith (which is subsequent to regeneration) is produced by sanctification and, therefore, sanctification begins prior to justification. (p. 50)

VanDrunen mentions this argument which, given the ordo, is actually unanswerable. Regeneration (a change of heart) is prior to justification. The initial change of heart (definitive sanctification) is prior to the on-going change of heart (progressive sanctification), and justification is the meat in this sanctification sandwich. First comes a form of sanctification, a change of heart, which enables me to repent and believe. Because I have been changed in my heart, I repent and believe, and God imputes the righteousness of Christ to me (justification). Now, given the constraints of the ordo, how is it that all subsequent sanctification must flow from justification only? Why can’t it flow from the earlier sanctification? And why are you not willing to say that the faith that is the instrument of justification in some sense flows from definitive sanctification? The only response VanDrunen gives to Shepherd’s question is that of a twofold denial. First, he says that Shepherd clearly denies that good works are “entirely” the fruits of justifying faith. And second, he says that Shepherd

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clearly affirms that “sanctification actuallyprecedes justification.” No. Shep- herd is not saying this. Shepherd is simply pointing out that the traditional Reformed ordo says this. And it does, in kind of an undeniable way. It is simply astonishing to me that in a book like this, a writer could mention a potent argument like this, presented by his opponent, and then proceed blithely on without answering it, or even attempting to answer it. If you go with the ordo, the model of the atom, some form of sanctification comes first. If you don’t like that, then don’t yell at Shepherd. Ditch the ordo, and declare that William Perkins, or whoever came up with it, crept into the Reformed camp four centuries ago to spy out our liberty. But if you keep it, don’t get upset with the people who pay close attention to what it says. But if you acknowledge that the ordo has some problems, then that leads to descriptions like Calvin’s above. But notice that Calvin doesn’t have good works flowing from a justification that is made of some completely different stuff. He has sanctification and justification simultaneously coming to the sinner from an undivided Christ. So you need to keep an eye on Calvin, along with that Perkins fellow. One other quick point before I am done with this chapter. As I have said many times, I enthusiastically embrace the doctrine of imputed righteousness, and I affirm that the righteousness that is imputed to the believer is all the righteousness of Christ. What is imputed to me? Everything Jesus said and did, as well as His life of faith that was the spring of everything he said and did. I am justified by Jesus believing, by the faith of Jesus Christ (Gal. 2:18). That faith was the source of His sinless life and His sacrificial death. All of this is ours, imputed to us. His active and passive obedience both are credited to the believer, and to all His people. I trust that is clear enough. But I reject, as enthusiastically as Rich Lusk does (p. 54), the idea of merit. If you want to maintain that Christ’s obedience belongs to His people, and is imputed to His elect, I am right with you. Not only do I agree but would be willing to preach six sermons in a row on it, and I would have plenty of texts and to spare. If you want me to preach on “the Lord our righteousness,” it is the same, and I would gladly do it. Not only is it right, it is the need of the

282 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | FEBRUARY 2007 hour. But if you want me to preach a series of sermons on merit, then you are going to have to help me out. Where are the texts?

JOHNNIE, M’BOY FEBRUARY 22, 2007 The book I have been commenting Covenant,( Justification, and Pastoral Min- istry) on makes it very clear that the imputation of the active obedience of Christ (which I hold) has to be considered a sine qua non of Reformed orthodoxy concerning justification (which I don’t hold). If you would like to read a very short article which shows how John Owen demolishes this assumption, then click here. HT: David Field

NOT EXACTLY JOY UPON JOY FEBRUARY 24, 2007 The third essay in Covenant, Justification, and Pastoral Ministyis by Iain Du- guid, and is entitled “Covenant Nomism and the Exile.” It is really quite good overall, and my critical comments will not be extensive at all. There is one place where he has a superb interaction with N.T. Wright’s confusion about courtroom imputation. In a famous passage in What St. Paul Really Said, Wright says that “righteousness is not an object, a substance or a gas that can be passed across the courtroom” (p. 98). In his treatment of Zechariah 3, Duguid shows that it is an object that can be passed across the courtroom—it is a clean cloak that replaces the filthy cloak that Joshua had been wearing previously. The first 87 pages of this book has not been joy upon joy, but that one argument has made it worthwhile. Everything can go downhill from here, and I am still okay. So, then, my two critical comments. On page 73, Duguid says this:

[The Lord] will sprinkle his defiled people with clean water, making them clean and able to stand in his sight . . . “justified,” to use the language of systematic theology. The subsequent inner transformation, “sanctification,” flows out of that prior act of God as its fruit.

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But the person who is justified is already regenerate. That regeneration is an inner transformation. What need is there for a subsequent inner transformation? There is need for anongoing transformation, but this process does not start immediately after justification—not if we are going to follow the traditional Reformed ordo. And we are going to do that, aren’t we? When Duguid implies that all forms of inner transformation are subsequent to justification, he is departing from the historic Reformed understanding of this business. That doesn’t make him wicked, or a heretic, but it does mean that those among the Reformed who have actually noticed Wil- liam Perkins’s Golden Chaine ought not to be accused by R. Scott Clark of tinkering around with the ancient landmarks. As good old Monergism.com puts it, “In the Reformed camp, the ordo salutis is 1) election, 2) predestination, 3) gospel call 4) inward call 5) regeneration, 6) conversion (faith & repentance), 7) justification, 8) sanctification, and 9) glorification. (Rom 8:29–30)” Notice how “inward call” and “regeneration” (a renovation of the heart) precede justification. And it will not do for those who say that all sanctification is subsequent to justification to try to get off the hook by saying that temporal terms are not strictly accurate and are to be held provisionally. If you are going to follow the chronological, then follow it. If you are not going to follow it, then don’t upbraid us for chronological reasons. And for those who want to pursue this further, a very helpful discussion of some important aspects of this can be found in John Murray’s marvelous article “Definitive Sanctification.” The second point I want to make here is that Duguid is arguing “that human unfaithfulness cannot annul God’s covenant commitment” (p. 81). I think this is good, and an important point to make. But there is an additional qualification that desperately needs to be made. Human unfaithfulness cannot annul God’s covenant commitment for the elect. But since we are dealing with a covenant people which also contains within her ranks members who are not elect, we have to be careful how we navigate between corporate and individual realities. Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the wilderness. Covenant branches are cut out. Bodies are scattered

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across the desert. The old Jerusalem the great harlot that God puts away in divorce but does so in such a way as to marry the New Jerusalem. For the elect, nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. But for non-elect covenant members, it is quite possible to fall from grace.

SOME HEADWAY, MAYBE FEBRUARY 25, 2007 Green Baggins is reviewing a new book on the Federal Vision, and, if you check out the comments section of this entry, you will find that an ecumenical dialogue of sorts has broken out. Well, not exactly, but I think the exchange was more productive than not.

IN WHICH I GIVE MERIT DEMERITS FEBRUARY 26, 2007 I honestly do not see how it can be considered possible to separate Christ from His benefits. So when I speak of the imputation of the active obedience of Christ, this means that I am ultimately speaking of the imputation of Christ Himself, and there is no way to understand this apart from the Pauline idea of union with Christ. We may distinguish Christ and His benefits (as the Bible frequently does), but if we try to separate them, we are guilty of a very serious mistake. We can see this clearly in Ephesians 6, where the apostle tells us to put on the full armor of God. Every piece in that panoply is given a separate name, as though it were a discrete thing. The breastplate is righteousness, the belt is truth, the helmet is salvation, and so on. But Jesus is our righteousness, Jesus is the truth, Jesus is our salvation. Putting on the armor of God is another metaphorical way to speak about putting on the Lord Jesus Himself, which we are told in numerous places to do. This is even clearer when we see the passage in Isaiah (59:16–21) where this image comes from—the Lord Himself is the one who puts on the armor. The Lord saw that there was no man, and so equipped with His own righteousness, He stepped into the breach. Paul then tells us to do the same thing, to put

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on that same righteousness. But it cannot be our own righteousness—the Lord is our righteousness (Jer. 23:6; 33:16). After I wrote last week about the passage in Zechariah where Joshua the priest was clothed in a clean garment that was transferred to him (across the courtroom), I received an email from a friend, a fellow FVer. He said, “I don’t have a major objection to reading Zech. 3 as an ‘imputed righteousness’ passage . . . [but] it seems more fitting to see the rich robes with which Joshua is clothed as Christ himself, per Gal. 3, rather than merely Christ’s righteousness.” And my response to this is, “Well, certainly. Of course it is Christ Himself.” Honestly, it is has never occurred to me that the benefits that flow from Christ could ever be enjoyed outside His presence, or apart from Him. And this leads me right back to the discussion of merit, and why I object to it. But further, lest I create more confusion in an already confused situation, let me say that my following description of merit is what I am objecting to, and if someone doesn’t hold to that which I am describing, but wants to use the word merit anyway, let’s shake and be friends. I don’t want to get into a wrangle over words merely. At the same time, I believe there is a genuine substantive confusion going on here, and having this debate is a reasonable price to pay in order to get this confusion out of our system. I don’t ever want to use the word merit in a way that lends itself to the continuation of that confusion. In the medieval system (which continues down to the present in some quarters), merit was a quanti- fiable substance. In Roman Catholic theology, it is possible to have a reservoir of merit, into which the “merit” of works of supererogation can go. Merit is therefore a stackable, fungible and transferable substance, detachable from the persons who initially generated it. Merit is awarded to any action that is “above and beyond the call of duty.” In Roman Catholic theology, this reservoir can be drawn on by us, and can be contributed to by Mary, the saints, and other volunteers. In the world of good deeds, or so it is thought, it is possible to run a surplus and have a bunch left over—which other people can then use. I imagine there are any number of criticisms that can be brought against this, and the central one of course is that it is not in the Bible. But I would

286 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | FEBRUARY 2007 like to bring a particular criticism that may help shed some light on this internal Protestant debate we are having. Works of supererogation depend upon a particular bookkeeping mentality, one that depersonalizes the whole idea of obedience. My good works are in principle detachable from me and could therefore be eventually put down in someone else’s account. Now we all agree (good Protestants all) that none of us gets any merit from Mary or the saints. But one of the FV concerns is that some Protestants have kept the medieval definition of merit itself, while limiting (in an important biblical direction) the number of people who are allowed to contribute to the pile of surplus merit. In this particular Protestant view, only Jesus generates surplus merit. Now if you must cast the debate this way, I am with them rather than with the other guys. We are saved by Christ alone, solus Christus. But further questions beg to be asked. Can we really detach Jesus from the merit of His obedience like this? I don’t believe so. This view (whether Protestant or Cath- olic) presupposes that merit can somehow be impersonal. If you believe that in the life, death and resurrection of the Lord, God was operating a divine distillery through which He extracted the merit of Christ’s obedience from that obedience, storing it in a separate container in a separate place, then you hold to the view of merit that the FV is rejecting. If you don’t hold that, there is no need to get irate and post a hot comment, because if you don’t hold that, we are not rejecting it. If you hold that every blessing received by us is on the basis of God’s gift to us of Jesus Christ Himself, then you are in sympathy with one of the central FV concerns (whether you are comfortable with that sympathy or not). One other thing. Union with Christ does not exclude the more traditional expressions of imputation. Rather, in my view, it provides a platform from which such expressions of imputation make better sense. This is important when we are talking about the differences between elect and non-elect covenant members. If I hold that non-elect covenant members can have union with Christ (in some sense), then is there a sense in which the elect covenant members receive something of Christ that the non-elect covenant members don’t? The answer that I would give here is an unambiguous yes. This is where

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the language of imputation (found in Westminster) gets pushed into the corners. A regenerate covenant member is justified (personally and individually) in a way that a non-elect covenant member is not, just like the Confession says. But I would also want to say that the justification of the elect covenant member is profoundly connected to his union with Christ. The imputation is personal, forensic, judicial and declaratory—all of that. But the imputation does not occur across an infinite distance. It is for someone, though once far off, who has been brought near. Go back to the Jeremiah passages cited earlier. “The Lord our righteousness.” The prophet doesn’t say “The Lord has righteousness, better get some from Him.” The Lord, the Lord Himself is our righteousness. And in Him, we find all is ours (1 Cor. 3:21–23).

A REGULAR GUN SHOW FEBRUARY 28, 2007 The next essay in Covenant, Justification, and Pastoral Ministryis by Bryan Estelle, and is entitled “The Covenant of Works in Moses and Paul.” Estelle is plainly acquainted with a vast amount of theological and biblical studies literature, and his close handling of that literature is obviously competent. If footnotes were biceps, this thing would be a regular gun show. Even so, I am not going to respond in point-by-point detail for one basic reason. Like many scholars, Estelle tends, frankly, to miss the point. He spends a great deal of time establishing and proving things that no one in this controversy would dispute. One of the things that ancient rhetoricians taught well was the ability in a polemical exchange to identify the stasis— the issues that were actually in dispute, and upon which the whole debate turned. As it is, this article argues up and down the waterfront and never actually engages with the central arguments that have been raised against the traditional concept of the covenant of works. I certainly don’t dispute that Adam was in a probationary state in the Garden, that he was being tested, that his fall was entailed upon all his descendants, and that the last Adam’s obedience brought about the great reversal of this disaster. We all

288 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | FEBRUARY 2007 agree, so why couldn’t we just start there and go on to discuss whether or not the covenant of works was gracious, whether the covenant of works was recapitulated at Sinai, and whether the Bible teaches that the merit of obedience can be extracted from obedience? That would have been a genuine advance in the discussion. That said, there are a couple things I do want to point out. One was a place where the scholarly persona rubbed a little thin, and something else peeped out. “Lusk reaches the pinnacle of his vitriolic criticism of the covenant of works when he says: ‘In short, the doctrine of a meritorious covenant of works has a dangerous Gnosticizing tendency on theology as a whole’” (p. 92). I know . . . I hate it when Rich flies off the handle like that. The second thing is this. Estelle says that he does not plan to get into a discussion of the recapitulation of the covenant of works at Sinai, but then he devotes a major part of his argument to Galatians 3:10, applying it (without missing a beat) to the covenant of works. But Paul is quoting Deuteronomy 27:26, the culmination of the words of self-malediction spoken from Mt. Ebal by Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali. Deuteronomy 27:26 was not spoken by Adam in the Garden. This covenant [of grace] was differently administered in the time of the law, and in the time of the gospel: under the law it was administered by promises, prophecies, sacrifices, circumcision, the paschal lamb, and other types and ordinances delivered to the people of the Jews, all foresignifying Christ to come; which were, for that time, sufficient and efficacious, through the operation of the Spirit, to instruct and build up the elect in faith in the promised Messiah, by whom they had full remission of sins, and eternal salvation; and is called the old Testament (WCF 7.5). The book of Deuteronomy is all about this aforementioned adminstration of the covenant of grace, and the people of Israel bound themselves to the covenant of grace on Mt. Ebal with a series of curses. Huh, says you. As well you might. This is probably the central complaint I have about the prelapsarian covenant of works. I believe there was such a covenant but why call it by that

289 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | FEBRUARY 2007 name? The name throws just about everybody off, including Estelle. In the Pauline vocabulary works and grace are antithetical. So when you say works, you don’t think Adamic probation, you think of your standard issue Phari- sees. And when you think of them, you think of their distortions of the Old Testament grace into their Ishmaelite system of works. And then you read their distortions of Sinaitic grace back into the Old Testament, and then you read that back into the Garden. How else could Galatians 3:10 get applied so easily to the pre-fall Adam? Put another way, if the warp of the Old Testament law is the covenant of grace, and the woof is the recapitulated covenant of works, may I make a humble request? May I ask anyone who believes that to swear off (for the rest of their natural lives) any accusations they might want to make against others for blurring the important distinction between the covenant of grace and the covenant of works? Thanks. Estelle concludes:

This essay demonstrates, however, that the innovators and innovations suggesting revision to the covenant of works have been weighed in the scales of classic Reformed orthodoxy, modern biblical scholarship, and modern linguistics and have been found wanting. (p. 135)

But I conclude differently—it does nothing of the kind.

UPHILL FROM HERE FEBRUARY 28, 2007 I thoroughly enjoyed the next chapter in Covenant, Justification, and Pas- toral Ministry. This was the chapter by S.M. Baugh, and was entitled “The New Perspective, Mediation, and Justification.” In it he tackled the central confusion of E.P. Sanders, along with some of the resultant muddles, and does an effective job with it. One particular thing worth noting is that in his discussion of pistis Chris- tou in Galatians 2:16, he correctly sees that to identify this as the fidelity of

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Jesus Christ Himself (as I do, if allowed to see it also as fidelity proceeding from His faith) is simply another argument for the imputation of the active obedience of Christ. Baugh prefers another rendering for exegetical reasons but says that to render it as the fidelity of Jesus is not a revolutionary concept for the Reformed at all. This is exactly right. I bet this essay means we have turned the corner. All uphill from here.

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MERIT ISN’T ONE OF THOSE WORDS MARCH 2, 2007 The next chapter inCovenant, Justification, and Pastoral Ministryis entitled “The Covenant Before the Covenants,” and is written by Scott Clark and David VanDrunen. In the course of reviewing it, I intend to quote Ambrose Bierce not once, but twice. The first citation is of a more general nature. The topic of this chapter is the pactum salutis, the intra-trinitarian covenant between the Father and the Son before the creation of the world, and whenever theologians get into such rari- fied atmosphere I am always afraid that someone will have forgotten their ox- ygen mask. But then it turns out that at least half of them did. While there are sound scriptural grounds for holding to such a covenant, there are also grounds for being concerned that arcane speculations about the internal workings of the triune mind might intrude themselves unhappily into the discussion. If they do, then the whole thing begins to resemble the debate between infralapsarians and supralapsarians, which Bierce summarized as a debate over whether Adam fell down or Adam slipped up. In this kind of debate, unless everybody involved watches his step closely, things can get pretty stupid—like a couple of dogs, neither of them very smart, debating quantum physics. “No! Arf, arf.” That said, two observations. The first is that that pest merit keeps showing up. This is another chapter that misses the statis, the basic point at issue. Merit is the thing that needs to be talked about, that needs to be established, and yet it is the thing that is always getting assumed.

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The pactum salutis is “the eternal covenant of redemption” (p. 167).

In Reformed theology, the pactum salutis has been defined as a pretem- poral, intratrinitarian agreement between the Father and the Son in which the Father promises to redeem an elect people. In turn, the Son volunteers to earn the salvation of his people by becoming incarnate (the Spirit having prepared a body for him), by acting as the surety . . . of the covenant of grace for and acting as a mediator of the covenant of grace to the elect. In his active and passive obedience, Christ fulfills the conditions of the pactum salutis and fulfills his guarantee . . . ratifying the Father’s promise, because of which the Father rewards the Son’s obedience with the salvation of the elect. (p. 168)

The issue for me is not the word merit, but the medieval conception of it. And my point is that someone can reject the idea of merit, root and branch, and yet hold to the definition above. If we conceive of the Father and Son conducting a raw, legal transaction, akin to the sale of a mule, then there are some fundamental problems with this scheme. But if we see it as promise and promised blessing, more like a king promising his daughter’s hand in marriage to any knight who slays the dragon, I am good with it. Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, and with His blood He purchased men from every nation. That purchase price was settled before the creation of the world, and it was settled within God’s eternal counsels. It was not settled by two adversaries in the marketplace, but rather by the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, all of whom indwell one another everlastingly in love. God is love, and the context of this pactum salutis has to be this love. This is what God is necessarily like, in all that He does. As I said, I don’t want to quibble over words, but I think that more than words is involved. According to this chapter, this eternal covenant is a straight, legal business. God is acknowledged to be gracious, but that is off to the side, and doesn’t enter into the definitional nature of this transaction. “For the Son, the pactum salutis is a legal/work covenant of obligation, merit and reward” (p. 168). To parse the

294 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | MARCH 2007 legalese like this, in my view, obscures the graciousness of all that God does. It makes me think of someone at a car rental counter, with a long line behind him, trying to read and grasp every word of the 4 pt. font contract he is signing. When Christ came into the world, He came to do the will of His Father. He obeyed. He was promised the nations of men, and He gloriously fulfilled the conditions attached to that promise. So in discussing this, words like promise, blessing, obedience, submission are straight out of the Bible, and we should stick to them. Merit isn’t one of those words, and the sooner we get this gum off our Reformed shoe the better. My second criticism of this chapter is of another nature entirely. The first one had to do with the nature of the theological claims; the second has to do with what I take to be a serious scholarly lapse. And here is my second Bierce citation. In his definition of valor, Bierce tells this anecdote. “Why have you halted?” roared the commander of a division at Chickam- auga, who had ordered a charge; “move forward, sir, at once.” “General,” said the command of the delinquent brigade, “I am persuaded that any further display of valor by my troops will bring them into collision with the enemy.” This volume is offered to the Christian public because the gospel is pur- portedly under attack. The historic Reformed faith is being frittered away, and it is time for someone to take a stand. Okay, take a stand then. Elsewhere in this volume, specific threats are mentioned and, after a fashion, dealt with. But here, in a chapter dedicated to a discussion of the pactum salutis, in the context, remember, of Federal Vision threats, there is no interaction with Ralph Smith’s book Eternal Covenant. The book was published in 2003 by Canon Press, and, given the subject, it would be hard to imagine a more relevant book to interact with than this one. But no, nothing.

LIKE SCARSDALE MARCH 5, 2007 So here I sit in the Chicago airport, exercising the patience of Job, or at any rate thinking that I ought to be exercising the patience of Job. No, nothing to

295 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | MARCH 2007 do with the flights. I just finished reading Michael Horton’s contribution to Covenant, Justification, and Pastoral Ministry. I was seriously disappointed—I think because I really was expecting more. This was a significant and atrocious misrepresentation. Horton sets out to show that Sanders, Wright, Shepherd, and the Federal Vision advocates are all advocates of “covenantal nomism.”

Not only Second Temple Judaism but all of these somewhat diverse challenges to the evangelical doctrine of justification may be accurately described as ‘covenantal nomism.’ This pattern of religion is united by three principal theses: [1] our personal obedience is a condition of justification, but but that this does not mean that justification is strictly merited; [2] there is no qualitative distinction between law and gospel or a covenant of works and a covenant of grace; and [3] we ‘get in by grace, but stay in by obedience’ [Sanders]—that is, a final justification by works. (p. 198, emphasis mine)

You know, I don’t know why I bother anymore, but here it is again. [1] When it comes to conditions of personal and individual justification, our personal obedience, all forms of merit, whether condign, congruent, purple or green, and all individual strivings to be shiny, clean and good, can all go to Hell. I capitalize Hell because, as Fulton Sheen once said, it’s a place, like Scarsdale. [2] There is a qualitative difference between the covenant of life with Adam and the covenant of grace with his fallen heirs. There are two covenants, not one. [3] The view that we get in by grace and stay in by obedience really is a form of semi-Pelagianism. This means that everyone tagged in this essay for believing it is a semi-Pelagian, except for me, of course, because I don’t believe it. But then that means that this essay might not be a reliable guide to who is and who is not a semi-Pelagian. In his conclusion, Horton says this: “If we are to recover a genuinely Re- formed covenant theology, it will require patient exegesis, not reactionary and dismissive polemics that derive from false dilemmas, reductionism, and

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caricature” (p. 227). These words, at the conclusion of this essay, were right out of a Twilight Zone episode. No false dilemmas, no reductionism, no caricature? Okay, you guys go first. Show us how it is done. Please note that this is not a Federal Vision whine about being misunderstood in some nebulous and generic way. Horton has said that Federal Vision types think the sky is green, and here I am, maintaining that it is blue, just like I always did. This chapter was really unfortunate. Two theological comments. A lot of the confusion about faith and works in this debate depends upon the idea that the Fall did not radically distort the relationship between the two. But it was the introduction of sin that introduced all the tension. In this chapter, Horton rightly points out that Christ was exalted because of His obedience. But as the perfect man, Jesus did not divide what God had first joined together in the creation. Put it this way. Did Jesus live His perfect sinless life (which, remember, people, was imputed to us) by faith in God? Or by works? Which was it? When His life and His death are imputed to us, was the foundation of this life faith in His Father or not? Was Christ’s obedience faithless or not? Now I agree that Christ’s obedience was imputed to us, but where did this obedience come from? Did Jesus gut it out for us on a works principle, or was His obedience grounded in His absolute trust in His Father? The answer is simple. It was perfect obedience, right? That meant that it was not grounded in the actions of the first successful Pelagian. Secondly, Horton makes plain his rejection of the Westminster Confes- sion’s identification of the Mosaic covenant as an administration of the covenant of grace (e.g., p. 212). He tries to justify this by some kind of discussion of Galatians, but I don’t know why he is messing around with that when we have the Standards.

CHRIST AND THE LIFE OF FAITH MARCH 7, 2007 In my previous post on the Auburn Avenue business, I said something that I think requires a bit more amplification.

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I believe that the unfallen Adam was under a covenant that obligated him to obey God completely and entirely. He broke that covenant, and God promised him a redeemer through another kind of covenant, a covenant of grace and forgiveness. The entire remainder of the Scriptures is about the outworking of that covenant of grace—this second covenant is not a recapitulation of the broken covenant of Eden, except in the hearts and minds of the sons of Hagar, who deliberately misread the Mosaic covenant of grace as though it were according to the principle of works. That misreading continues down to the present. I have objected to the use of words like works and merit to describe all this because such usage tends to obscure and confuse the gracious nature of all God’s dealings with man, whatever covenant we may be talking about. As with the first Adam, so with the second. But the reason some of our critics get so worked up over this is that if all consideration of merit is excluded from the obligations of the first Adam and the achievements of the second Adam, it is assumed that the merit (which is thought to be inescapable) must be coming from somewhere. And if we are denying that we are justified by Christ’s merit, we must be affirming (somehow, someway) that we are justified by our own merit. But none of this follows—we simply deny that merit can be extracted from a virtuous act and stored on shelves. Christ’s obedience is ours because He is the father of the new humanity, and His obedience is ours through covenantal imputation. The division between grace and works is a post-Fall division. It is the result of sin. Sin and rebellion introduced all such fragmentations, and the perfect Man, Jesus Christ did not come into our world in order to participate in our fragmentations, but rather to overcome them. When we confess that Jesus was without sin, this does not merely mean that He never stole, or lusted, or worshipped idols. It also means that He never accepted or lived by false categories. He was the perfectly integrated personality. I deny that God dealt with unfallen beings on a raw merit principle, and then, after we demerited His favor, extended it to us on a grace principle. Rather, grace and works were not fragmented or divorced prior to the Fall.

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Adam was expected to obey, certainly, but there is no reason to think that this obedience, had it occurred, would not have been motivated by faith, hope, and love, sustained by the grace of God. As I have pointed out in many places, if Adam had withstood the tempter, it would have been necessary for him to thank God afterwards. This means that this covenant was fundamentally a gracious one. And as with the first Adam, so with the second. When Jesus obeyed the Father perfectly, this was not raw obedience, teeth gritted, with no motivation of love. In John 17, Jesus made it clear that He and the Father were one, and they loved each other perfectly. Now, this love—did it have anything to do with Christ’s obedience? Any relationship to His willingness to trust His Father? We have no scriptural reason, apart from the demands of a particular systematic schema, to picture Jesus gutting out His obedience to the Father for the sake of a pristine merit. In a similar vein, after Jesus successfully completed His life and death of perfect obedience, what did He do? He paid his vows to God (Ps. 22:25). “In the midst of the congregation will I praise thee” (Ps. 22:22). “The pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand” (Isa. 53: 10). But with all this said, there is still good reason for being extremely wary about any admixtures of faith and love together in our justification. But this is not because faith and love don’t go together (they did in Adam, before he fell, and in Christ throughout His life), but because they don’t go together in sinners. When we are presenting the gospel to fragmented sinners, we have to be very careful not to give or allow for any kind of self-righteous “out.” C.S. Lewis says somewhere about good writing that it is like driving sheep down a lane—you have to keep all the gates closed on both sides of the lane, for if there is any way for the sheep to veer off, the sheep will enthusiastically do so. It is the same sort of thing with any allowance at all being made for the reli- giously smug. All grace all the time is the only thing that can possibly restore us. Self-righteousness, earning, and merit are all in our bones—detached, divorced, and separated from love. If we give any opportunity for the sinner to boast in himself, then he will do so. Telling him about how his faith needs

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to work itself out in love is a great way to get inveterate self-saviors to attempt just that. This is not because it is wrong for us to do, but rather because it is impossible for us to do. What is wrong is to kid ourselves after the fact, saying that our faith actually did work its way out in us in love, and that God was tremendously pleased with it, and with us for being so clever as to help out with our justification. Adam could have obeyed, and had he done so it would have been by grace through faith, and it would not have been detached from any other virtue. Christ did obey, trusting His Father, and neither was this obedience detached from any other virtue. Sin destroyed the possibility of any such integration for us, and sola fideis the only safe way back. But even here we have to be careful—believing in sola fidethe wrong way can be a soul threatening error. In this sense, not only is it a work, but it is a tiny and impudent work—considered as a work. But we are forgiven, not because we believe in justification by faith alone, but rather because justification by faith alone is true. Much more can be said about all this. And I am convinced it needs to be, because in this understanding we can find a full harmonization of the currently discordant elements of the TR and FV visions. But I can find no reason why this should necessarily be so.

TAKE THE GRILLED CHEESE SANDWICH AWAY MARCH 9, 2007 The next chapter in Covenant, Justification, and Pastoral Ministry is by Scott Clark, and is entitled “Do This and Live.” In it he argues for the active obedience of Christ as (an essential part of) the ground of our justification. Okay, I agree with that. So how hard could this be? But alas. On p. 234, Clark says this in a footnote.

Since the proponents of the so-called Federal Vision seem to affirm both an eternal, unconditional election and a historical, conditional election that can be lost without perseverance, it is difficult to see how they escape the strictures of the Synod of Dort on at least half their position.

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Now this is a fine way of doing theology! If we only get credit for half our theology, or we get blamed for the unbalanced half, which is unbalanced precisely because that half (in isolation) is condemned by some council or other, what shall we then do? The half position was condemned because the initial bad guys had not affirmed the balancing portion, but now along comes these new fellows who do affirm what they need to. What now? One time Scott Clark walked into a diner and ordered a grilled ham and cheese. When it came to his table, he complained to the waiter because he didn’t want a grilled cheese. The waiter (helpfully, he thought) pointed out the ham that was in there, big as life. But Clark had a riposte at the ready. “I am not counting the ham. And I would like a ham and cheese.” The waiter hadn’t been to seminary, so he was a little bit disoriented. “You are not counting the ham?” “No,” said Clark. “And if we don’t count the ham, this is clearly a grilled cheese sandwich. Grilled cheese alone was clearly condemned at the Synod of Dort. The ham is really necessary.” “But the ham is right there,” the waiter said. “I mentioned this before,” Clark replied stiffly. “I am not counting the ham.” Let’s use a theological example. The Calvinist position is to affirm the exhaustive sovereignty of God over all things as well as human responsibility. Both and. God freely and unalterably ordains whatsoever comes to pass and He gives free agency to His creatures. Clearly each half of this by itself is a grievous error, and so this must mean that balanced Calvinism which affirms both must be unbalanced both ways by denying each, provided we don’t count their affirmations of each. We are not counting the ham, and we want the grilled cheese sandwich taken away. It displeases us. This is simply astonishing. Clark would have a point if Federal Vision types affirmed eternal unconditional election and historical conditional election as applying to the same people in the same way. That would be an attempt at A/ not A, and in such circumstances to highlight one of the contradictory principles is fair game. But we do nothing of the kind. Decretal election applies to the elect, and only the decretally elect. Historical election applies to the Church in history, all the baptized. Where on earth can Clark find any kind

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of A/not A business in there? The Federal Vision affirms two positions, each affirmation being necessary to the orthodoxy of the other. Clark detaches one of them, carries it off, and then says, “Huh. Looks heretical to me. Where’s the necessary context?” We are not very far into this chapter, and things are looking pretty grim.

Despite his discomfort with the traditional and confessional doctrine of the covenant of works, John Murray (1898–1975) affirmed the imputation of active obedience repeatedly. (p. 237)

I am glad that Clark recognizes that someone can differ with the traditional language of the covenant of works, and yet affirm repeatedly the imputation of the active obedience of Christ and be cited positively by Clark. This being the case, I have to wonder why Clark has been unable to publicly recognize that I too have repeatedly affirmed the imputation of the active obedience of Christ. My personal goal is to make it into one of Clark’s footnotes, clutching a position I actually hold. In this chapter, the closest he comes is this. Clark says “some federal-vision proponents also reject the imputation of active obedience. Rich Lusk argues . . . .” (p. 241, emphasis mine). Now leaving aside for the moment whether Clark understands Rich Lusk’s argument, even on his own terms, this formulation means that some Federal Vision proponents affirm the imputation of active obedience. But how does this fit with Clark’s larger criticisms of Federal Vision theology as a whole? Why wouldn’t it have been helpful for Clark to list the Federal Vision proponents who affirm the imputation of Christ’s active obedience? He appears to know that they are out there. Might it be that this would sort of make the current campaign against us a little bit more difficult? This leads to another curious point in this chapter. And by curious, I mean really curious. Clark, to his credit, acknowledges that there were delegates to the West- minster Assembly who denied the imputation of the active obedience of

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Christ. This would place them in disagreement with ME, be it noted. I place ME in all caps here so that scholars in future generations can pick up on this particular nuance, to wit, that I AFFIRM the imputation of the active obedience of Christ. But my position is similar to the majority of the Westmin- ster theologians in two respects here, not just one. Not only do I affirm the imputation of the active obedience of Christ, but I also affirm that it would be okay to include (as fellow Reformed colleagues) men who denied it. The roof of that deliberative chamber did not fall in when the assembly allowed the 17th century equivalent of Norman Shepherd to join with them in their important ministry. What Clark does not really note about the behavior of the Westminster Assembly is how they tolerated this minority view within their ranks. Actual- ly, Clark does note it, but inadvertently. He notes it, but he doesn’t notice it.

Reformed resolve would be tested by the opponents of the imputation of active obedience, eventually forcing a verbal compromise at the Westminster Assembly, but the center held, and the language of the confession remained sufficiently strong. (p. 235)

And again, he says

I agree and am suggesting here that the Westminster Divines removed the more explicit language (i.e., ‘the whole obedience of Christ’) regarding active obedience to allow the opponents of the imputation of active obedience (Twisse, Vines, and Gattaker) to subscribe the confession while providing language sufficient for the preservation of the doctrine. (p. 235)

And then, near the conclusion of his chapter, he says this.

That the Westminster Divines graciously formed the confession to allow a small minority who denied the imputation of active obedience to

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affirm it should not blind us to the external evidence (from the minutes) that the majority held and understood the Westminster Standards to teach the imputation of active obedience. (p. 264)

This is a big deal, and so let us discuss what it means. In the first quote above, Clark says that a verbal compromise was “forced” by the opponents of the imputation of the active obedience of Christ. But in the last quote above, he says that these opponents were a “small minority.” How does that work? The small minority was actually accommodated because the vast majority at Westminster was far more conciliatory on this point than Clark is currently being. They held to the doctrine, as do I, and yet they deliberately framed the language to accommodate men who denied the doctrine. Clark says that they kept the substance of the doctrine, but note that he also says that the verbal formulation was intended to accommodate men like Norman Shepherd, who denies the imputation of the active obedience of Christ. So, if Twisse, Vines, and Gattaker subscribed the Confession would it be appropriate to then call them liars? Did the majority frame the language in such a way as to be able to give Twisse the right hand of fellowship afterwards? Clark says yes, and he says further that if we imitate them in this then we are compromising the gospel. But the men who showed us how to compromise the gospel in this way were not guilty of compromising the gospel themselves, because they, after all is said and done, were Westminster divines. Speaking of the law/word of God in the Garden, Clark says:

In this case, the formal “doing” required by the law was abstinence, but the material obedience was loving God and obeying him completely. Those who lived under the Mosaic system will be judged accordingly (2:12–13), and those who did not (2:15) shall face judgment on the basis of the “law written on their hearts” . . . but they are substantially identical. All human beings live under the same law: “do.” (p. 244)

Now yikes, as the apostle Paul might say. Again, I say yikes.

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First, notice that Clark is again confounding the Mosaic covenant with the covenant of works, despite the fact that the Westminster Confession clearly says that the Mosaic covenant was an administration of the covenant of grace. And notice another way that Clark is sailing a little close to the wind here. By saying that our first parents were to fulfill the material obedience of “loving God and obeying him completely,” he is allowing us to mix a little love in with the merit. And what kind of merit is that? At Westminster West, they take their merit raw. In the past, when we have said, as many Reformed theologians before us have said, that the covenant of life in the Garden was essentially gracious, we are accused of all kinds of horrendous things. But Clark says something like the above, and then says (in a footnote, to be sure, but still) that this is an opinion upon which the Reformed tradition has been divided.

After Dort, the Reformed orthodox spoke of God’s grace in making the covenant of works, and some (e.g., William Bucanus, John Ball, Anthony Burgess) said grace was necessary for Adam to complete it, but others (e.g., Caspar Olevianus, Robert Rollock, Johannes Wollebius, Amandus Polanus, James Ussher, John Owen, Johannes Cocceius, J.H. Heidegger, H. Witsius, W. a Brakel) said that Adam, by virtue of his creation, had natural ability to meet its terms. (pp. 257–258)

This is the second time in this chapter that Clark has established and shown the existence of a Reformed catholicity that he himself is refusing to imitate. Look again at what he just said. Some said that God was gracious in making the covenant, others that grace was necessary for the fulfillment of it, and others say that Adam had natural ability (from God via the creation) to fulfill the covenant. I call that last option grace, by the way, but my point here is not to debate with the third option. Back then if you took the second option, you could be a father in the Reformed faith and be in print down the present day, thanks to Banner of Truth. But if you take the second option today, then the folks at Westminster West hold conferences and publish books about you, saying that you are attacking the gospel.

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One last point. I am beginning to think that Clark has a particular kind of tunnel vision that afflicts some scholars. He can nuance the heck out of a particular position, provided the problematic position needing the nuanced massage was held by a man who has been dead and deep, lo, these three and a half centuries. But if the person in question is alive today, has an email address and a phone on his desk, and is willing to talk about it at any time, there is a curious inability to get even the simplest things straight. Here is an example, and then I am done for the evening.

The federal-vision advocates suggest that we are justified so long as we are united to Christ, but we retain that union partly by cooperating with grace. (p. 262)

This is simply a screwy and irresponsible misrepresentation. Our position is NOT that we are justified by our cooperation with grace. I don’t maintain my union with Christ. How could I possibly do that? I am fond of a Spurgeon story, where his suspicions were aroused one day when a man said something like “in my salvation, Christ did His part and I did mine.” “What do you mean?” was the obvious question. And the suspicions were eliminated when the man replied, “Christ’s part was to do the saving, and I got in the way.” When Clark says some like “federal-vision advocates suggest,” and then follows it up with some fruity and heretical comment, he really ought to cite some examples. For my part, I flat deny it. Don’t believe anything of the kind, and never have. Scott Clark needs to learn how to be as careful with living authors as he appears to be with some dead ones.

THE SCREAMING MORALISTIC FANTODS MARCH 10, 2007 Taking one thing with another, Robert Godfrey’s contribution to Covenant, Justification, and Pastoral Ministrywas really quite good. Entitled “Faith Formed by Love or Faith Alone?” Godfrey summarizes the original Reformed response to the medieval definition of faith (made complete and salvific when

306 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | MARCH 2007 formed by love) and discusses the grounding of the Protestant response in the teaching of the apostle Paul. With just a few blemishes, the chapter was outstanding, and I had no problem signing off on virtually everything he wrote. But first a quibble, and then a quibble with larger aspect. The first quibble is that in reproducing an argument from Calvin, Godfrey points out that Abraham was a follower of God before Genesis 15 but makes the point that until he was justified by faith alone in chapter 15, he was considered to be a “wicked” man by the apostle Paul. This wickedness is meant to emphasize just how imperfect the works of even the best of men are. The problem with this is that we are told in Hebrews 11:8 that Abraham’s life of faith began when he first left Ur of the Chaldees. In short, it is too simplistic to say that Abraham lived by “inadequate good works” until Genesis 15, when he was finally converted. The author of Hebrews describes his responses of faith before and after Genesis 15 in exactly the same terms. But of course, I do not raise this point in order to dispute the theological point being made by Calvin and Godfrey. This is simply an exegetical point. The larger quibble is this. Godfrey doesn’t really get into the current fracas, only referring to it a few times. In these three places Godfrey registers his disagreement, but unlike some of his colleagues, he never moves into high slander mode. Here is the first statement. “Calvin anticipates the great error of many contemporary critics of the Reformation doctrine” (p. 276). That’s not so bad, and, depending on who he is talking about (he doesn’t say), it is actually quite accurate. Calvin does anticipate the error of many contemporary critics of the Reformation doctrine. The second place shows that Godfrey believes that what he is writing is relevant to the current debates and belongs in this volume. He is more specific here:

This misunderstanding of Paul suggests a crucial question for some of his interpreters. Would anyone ever read the federal-vision writers or Norman Shepherd or the new perspective on Paul or Thomas Aquinas or the Council of Trent and come with the question to them: Should

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we sin that grace may abound? That question would never, could never, arise for anyone who has read these teachers. (p. 280)

First, actually reading what we write has not thus far appeared to be a pre- requisite to any number of critics. The accusation of teaching “sin that grace may abound” is not an accusation that would have arisen for anyone who had read the apostle Paul either—but he generated the accusation anyhow. In these situations, something else is always going on. Our circumstance is no different. And second, this kind of accusation is raised in the current debates, particularly when we are talking about the objectivity of the covenant, the sacraments, and so on. What is the accusation of tending to nominalism (an accusation we have fielded numerous times) but a variant of this? “If you buy what Wilson is saying, what is to prevent an ‘I’m baptized, I’m good’ attitude?” And anyone who reads through my homilies on the Lord’s Supper will know that I emphasize free grace well past the point that would have given Paul’s unknown interlocutors the screaming moralistic fantods. And third, not only have I been accused of antinomianism, I have been accused of being a hell-bound graceless sociopath. Shoot, in other settings, having to do with Westminster West, I have been accused by Scott Clark of being, ahem, the opposite of a prim Pelagian moralist—leader in a cult-like organization, sectarian, advocate of slavery, and so on. So I don’t really think that the “these-guys-inexplicably-fail-to-generate-slander” argument is one that Godfrey really wants to mount at this point in the discussion. The third statement is this:

The new perspective on Paul and the Federal Vision are not really new, but a reiteration of medieval theological errors. (p. 284)

Since he doesn’t give particulars, I can only say that, as concerns myself, and a bunch of people I know, I don’t think so. And since I agreed with so much of this chapter, I can only conclude that talking past each other at

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this point of the controversy is now politically mandatory. Doesn’t make it healthy, but there it is.

RECAPITULATION DRIVES OUT GRACE MARCH 12, 2007 The next two essays in Covenant, Justification, and Pastoral Ministryare by Hywel Jones, and are tightly related, and so I will treat them together. As with Robert Godfrey’s contribution, there is not a lot to disagree with here. The bulk of what is written here is good, sturdy Reformed stuff. At the same time, there are some minor problems, and there are also some larger questions generated. In the category of the former, for example, Jones apparently misidentifies John Armstrong as a Baptist (p. 286), which he was at the time of the 1996 footnote, but not now. And his occasional interactions with Norman Shepherd appear to me to be based on differing definitions of the same terms. Does obedience (in the context of justifying faith) mean works, or does it mean life? If the former, then mixing it into justifying faith is death warmed over. If the latter, then leaving it out is death stone cold. But at the same time, I am not really an expert in The Call of Grace, a 2000 publication of Presbyterian & Reformed, a respected publisher of material that is always genuinely Reformed. Perhaps questions could be referred to Richard Gaffin? For the rest of Jones’s writing, I would like to content myself with addressing certain questions that he raises, either directly or indirectly. Jones makes a very good point with regard to James and Paul, noting that these two men were not strangers to one another. He says that those who confound their messages have done so in such an insistent manner “that anyone who is not familiar with the New Testament might well be pardoned for thinking that those men never had the opportunity of talking to each other” (p. 289). Even though their stipulated definitions of certain terms are clearly not the same, they agree in substance nonetheless. “What is clear is that they did not disagree with each other” (p. 290). I think this is very true, and it highlights the need that certain parties in the current conflict have to visit

309 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | MARCH 2007 with their adversaries. Perhaps men who have talked with each other in person can come out of it agreeing—even though their usage of certain terms is varied. Verbal differences do not necessitate substantive disagreement, as Paul and James show. On another point, I want to emphasize again that the Westminster Con- fession describes the Mosaic economy as an administration of the covenant of grace. I do so because Jones (on p. 298) brings that economy up in a way that demonstrates what might be called the Pauline corollary to Gresham’s Law. Gresham’s Law is an economic principle that says bad money drives out good. Those who want the Mosaic law to recapitulate the covenant of works from the Garden need to be aware that works will always drive out grace. To mix the covenant of works into the Mosaic administration of grace will ensure that the grace of the law will be entirely supplanted. It is astonishing that, throughout this book, the recapitulated sense of law and condemnation has almost entirely effaced the Westminsterian understanding of the graciousness manifested at Sinai. For a sampling, consider this:

Up to the coming of Christ, Jews had been ‘held captive under the law’ (3:23 esv) or under its disciplinary function (3:23). Something similar was also true of Gentiles because they were ‘enslaved to the elementary principles of the world (4:3 esv) and to ‘those that were by nature no gods,’ that is, to idols (4:8). Life before Christ was therefore life ‘under law’ for Gentile as well as Jew. There was a universal obligation to obey however much of God’s law that had been made known, by whatever means it had been disclosed, and on pain of awful penalty if it was not fully kept (Rom. 1:18–32; 2:14–16; 3:9–20).24

God had brought the Jews out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, but apparently the hosts of recapitulation had not been drowned like Pharaoh, but chased them out into the wilderness, caught up with them, and

24 Whoops. We don’t have an exact page number on this one, but we guess it’d be 298 or thereabouts.

310 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | MARCH 2007 subjected them again to a yoke of slavery. A very striking thing in this book so far is that the writers never speak of Moses the way that Westminster does. In his second essay, on the preaching of sola fide, Jones says many good things. But he brings up several issues that (I believe) reveals the hidden engines of our controversy. The first has to do with pastoral ministry directly. Speaking of “a local Christian congregation,” Jones addresses how we are to preach to them.

Those who have not yet believed are to be regarded as “under the law” and “outside of Christ” thought they have a promise that God will be gracious to them if they turn to him. They are covenant children by birth and holy (1 Cor. 7:14), and baptism incorporates them into the covenant community (visible church)—but not necessarily into Christ. (pp. 325–326)

This is the heart of all the troublesome business. Note that baptized members who have not yet believed are outside of Christ, and under the law. What are they inside then? They are inside the covenant community or visible church. Put these two things together and what do you get? This means, at the very least, that (potentially very large) portions of the visible church or covenant community are outside of Christ. What kind of ecclesiology is this? Far better to say that the entire visible church is joined to Christ covenantally. The entire congregation is in Him in that objective sense. But there is a subset within the first group that is joined to Him with fruit to eternal life. As John 15 and Romans 11 plainly state there are two classes of branches. One kind of branch is in Christ temporarily and the other permanently. What distinguishes them is how long they are in the trunk. They arenot distinguished by one being in the trunk and the other not. Another interesting point is raised by Jones. Speaking of those who die in infancy or those who cannot understand the gospel because of mental inca- pacity, he says (wonderfully) that they . . .

will be admitted to heaven because they are “regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who worketh when, and where, and how he

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pleaseth.” Two things, however, need to be remembered at this point. The first, by way of necessary implication, is that such persons were born in sin and were destitute of spiritual life. Another way of salvation is not therefore being taught, but sola gratia is being reinforced in that the one group cannot properly be said to act and the other cannot be said to understand. Here, perhaps, lies the rub of the debate over sola fide in every age—no capable and knowledgeable adult likes to have to admit being as helpless in spiritual things as those described. (pp. 326–327)

Now I agree with Jones completely that such infants are saved, but I need to point out that he has completely confounded sola fideand sola gratia here. He begins well by saying that the salvation of dying infants or those otherwise impaired is “one exception” to the “connection between Christ’s worth and human faith” (p. 326). Okay, so then we have an exception to sola fidein a large category of saved individuals. How then is it faith alone? Faith alone for whom? At the day of judgment, could we ask for a show of hands? “How many of you were saved by grace through faith alone?” All who had come to years of discretion would raise their hands. “How many were saved by grace alone through some other instrumentality of God’s sovereign devising?” Many millions of hands would go up. So what do we mean by faith alone? We have been told elsewhere in this volume that our emphatic agreement with sola gratia is insufficient for us to keep our Reformed credentials up. But now we have an acknowledged exception to sola fidefound in a book edited by R. Scott Clark. Either somebody was asleep at the switch editorially speaking, or Clark needs to be brought up on charges for denying sola fide . . . or the question is perhaps more complex than the current sloganeering might allow. Why are they allowed to say there is “one exception” to sola fidewhile we must sign all the talking points blindfolded, no questions permitted? One last thing. Speaking of Paul’s use of the phrase the obedience of faith, Jones says this:

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The apostle is using the termobedience to describe faith as submission to what Christ did (by way of his obedience) and not to refer to anything the sinner is to do by way of contribution to Christ’s work or even by way of appreciation of it. (p. 328)

I am amening my way along here, but then am suddenly arrested by that last phrase. The obedience of faith is simply submission to the gospel. Okay, I buy that. It does not refer to anything a miserable sinner might do to improve upon Christ’s work. Okay, I buy that too. But then comes this—“or even by way of appreciation of it.” I confess myself nonplussed. I can understand how obedience is used in Scripture as a synonym for faith. We not only believe the gospel, but we also obey the gospel. And this belief or obedience is knowing, assenting, and trusting. But how can someone obey the gospel in this sense without appreciating it? All the other verbs are stronger—why would appreciation of the gospel introduce a works principle where trusting, obeying, and believing did not? Just curious. Enough for now. Only three more chapters. Stand fast.

DO THIS AND LIVE, OR LIVE AND DO THIS MARCH 13, 2007 The next chapter by Scott Clark begins oddly, but the latter part is just a standard discussion of the law/gospel issues. First the oddity. We have heard a great deal about how the gospel itself is under attack in this controversy. This is because certain settled Reformed shibboleths have been pronounced funny, and anyone who has been paying attention knows that the sibbole- thians have been represented as a grave threat to the gospel as it is in Christ Jesus. But what then shall we do with all those Christians who lived before these formulations came to be? Guys like Augustine? And this is where Scott Clark says some truly odd things.

The fathers in the postapostolic church spoke frequently about the gospel, but there is disagreement over the degree to which one can find

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a clear, developed expression of what confessional Protestants would recognize as the gospel. (p. 333)

I dare say. Clark tends to side with Torrance, who says “that what one tends to find in the fathers is confusion of law and gospel” (p. 334). All this is to be expected, and follows necessarily from Clark’s premises. But here comes the odd part. In an inexplicable lurch into catholicity, Clark says this:

This is not an indictment of the fathers. To criticize the fathers for failing to use Luther’s (or Calvin’s) language is rather like criticizing Aquinas for not using Einstein’s physics. (p. 334)

Putting all this together, to confound law and gospel is to confound the issues of salvation and damnation itself, with the eternal destiny of eternal millions at stake. But if you do this before 1517, that’s really okay because it is simply a theological development that has not yet happened, like the discovery of relativity theory. But if you do it after 2002, then you are a threat to the gospel. Paul could understand the gospel, but we don’t have that expectation for anyone else until we get to the first Protestants. Huh. I didn’t know that faithfulness to the gospel could be anachronistic. And now to the issues themselves. Having read Clark’s summary of the theological development of this idea of law and gospel, I want to say that I have no reason to doubt what he says. But then I remember how he has in the past represented my views, and so I will reserve to myself a little wiggle room. But assuming his representation of the pre-Reformation fathers is correct, not to mention his take on the Reformed fathers themselves, I can happily say that, once again, I turn up as a robust Protestant, cheerfully grinning. Thereis a difference between how I talk about law and gospel and some of the quotations that Clark assembles here. But this difference does not touch any issue of substance, as I hope to show in a moment. Clark speaks of a law/gospel hermeneutic, and some of the men he quotes speak the same way. In other words, the categories of law and gospel represent

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different sections of Scripture, which must be identified. They are not to be equated with Old and New Testaments respectively, because, as Clark points out, the quintessential law statement, “Do this and live,” comes from the lips of the Lord Jesus, and the preamble of the Ten Commandments can be seen as gospel. So the Old Testament has both law and gospel in it, and the New Testament has both law and gospel in it. Thus a law/gospel hermeneutic is necessary for the one who comes to the Bible, hoping to understand it. Instead of this, I prefer to speak of a law/gospel use, rather than hermeneutic. Just as the law is one, but there are three uses of the law, so with this. Instead of assuming that the Scriptures come in two categories, I prefer to speak of the human race coming in two categories—the regenerate and unregenerate. For the regenerate, the entire Bible is gospel, good news. The gospel is obviously gospel, and the law falls under the third use of the law. The regenerate believer looks to Scripture and finds Christ everywhere. Christ in the manna, Christ in the water, Christ in the sacrifices, Christ in the law. He finds Christ in the promises and Christ in the law. To the unregenerate, the law is simply condemnation. For the elect who are unregenerate, this condemnation drives them to Christ and therefore functions as servant to the gospel. For the unregenerate who are not elect, this condemnation drives them away. All this is simply standard for Re- formed believers. But we have to note that for the unregenerate who are not elect, the gospel does exactly the same thing that the law does—it is the aroma of death.

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (1 Cor. 1:18) Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every place. For we are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish: To the one we are the savour of death unto death; and to the other the savour of life unto life. And who is sufficient for these things? (2 Cor. 2:14–16)

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In other words, to the unregenerate soul, law and gospel are repulsive in exactly the same way—they both smell like the holiness of God. To the one whose heart has been transformed, he sees and understands the intent of the law, and he sees and understands the intent of the gospel, and it is all the same intent. If the law drives me to Christ, then how is the law not servant to the gospel and part of it? And if the gospel repels a sinner with the aroma of death, then how is it not part of the law? I don’t want to say that law is gospel or that gospel is law, but rather that they are used as such. What the law is, and how the law is used are two separate issues. What the gospel is, and how the gospel is used are two separate issues. One other point is important to mention here. It is plain to me that anticipation of this division among men is clear in Scripture itself. Put another way, the Bible knows that some men will run away from the law and the gospel, declaring their hatred of God openly. Some men will take just the law and try to use it as a ladder to climb into heaven with. These men Paul identifies as Ishmaelites, sons of Hagar, men who have bound themselves in a covenant to break covenant. Then there are others, unfortunately not rare, who take just the gospel and try to turn that into a ladder which they can use to climb to heaven. This Marcionite approach is also to be rejected. God is not at odds with Himself. If we personify law (as Bunyan wonderfully does in Pilgrim’s Progress), we have a Moses who really knows how to beat us up. But a man under conviction of sin can be just as worked over by the Sermon on the Mount as by the Ten Commandments. That doesn’t make it appropriate to state as a hermeneutical principle that Christ now has to be Moses. This is why I prefer to speak of use, rather than hermeneutic. Now I can understand how there would be room to discuss or debate this kind of thing. But for the life of me, I cannot see how any essential feature of the standard law/gospel distinction is lost. But if it is lost, then lost it must be. And if that is the case, then I would just ask Clark to imagine my position surfacing, oh, circa 1300, in the writings of some monkish scribbler somewhere. Then he could praise it as a remarkable instance of prescience with regard to the coming orthodoxy, instead of the heresy it is currently being.

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STUFF I HEARD IN THE HALLWAYS MARCH 14, 2007 The next chapter in CJ&PM (should’ve done that before) is by Julius Kim and is entitled “The Rise of Moralism in Seventeenth-Century Anglican Preach- ing.” What might this have to do with the current Federal Vision controversy? Well, nothing, but that doesn’t keep it from being a fine and instructive article. A very good article, in fact, marred only by a few comments in passing that tie it in with the current hyperventilations. The article outlined a history of the “metaphysical” preachers and the “plain” preachers of the 16th century and described the reactionary rise of Latitudinarianism as a school of preaching in the 17th century. All very good, and quite applicable today. I enjoyed the article very much. But alas, the contemporary applications are made only briefly, and without any documentation. In a footnote, Kim refers to a certain temporizer back then who had an

optimistic view of man’s rational faculties as an alternative to the Reformation’s emphasis on sovereign grace and trust in Christ’s extrin- sic righteousness is different that the alternative to views proposed by Norman Shepherd and those who advocate the Federal Vision . . . .” (p. 379, garble in the original, but you get the drift)

Again, Tillotson’s view here that one remains in favor with God through holy living has striking parallels with those who advocate the views of the Federal Vision. (p. 387)

This seventeenth-century distrust and disposal of the doctrine of sola fideparallels those in the twenty-first century caught in the midst of the current justification controversy. (p. 396)

The problem is that there has been a clear oversight. None of these particular claims, which is the point of the book after all, are given the dignity of

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any kind of citation. Everything else in the chapter is documented front to back, not to mention sideways. But when we get to the point at issue, the loci of the dispute, the thing we are debating . . . nada, zilch. I think this is must be because there isn’t really a theological journal called Stuff I Heard in the Hallways at Escondido, Vol. VI, No. 3.

ONE LAST THINGS MARCH 14, 2007 Not a lot of complaints about the last essay in this volume, a chapter on justification and pastoral counseling by Dennis Johnson. Like some of the others, this chapter was just great also, with a sub-standard Federal-Visiony footnote jury-rigged into the argument. Like I said, not a lot of complaints about the text proper. Go, team, go. But the footnote can’t be allowed to pass without some comment. It provides an outstanding example of the kind of problems that have afflicted us throughout this whole imbroglio.

Some Federal Vision advocates draw a distinction between God’s ‘strict’ justice, which only Christ’s perfection can satisfy, and God’s ‘fatherly’ assessment, which accepts our less-than-perfect obedience, calling it ‘pleasing’ and ‘good.’ Rich Lusk, for example, asserts . . . . (p. 411)

The rest of this footnote goes on to critique Lusk for this second sense, apparently for messing around with congruent merit and such, but leaves the acknowledged sense (involving what only Christ can do) out of the discussion. But how come? One last comment, and this book goes back on the shelf. Back when West- minster West first did their conference on this controversy (out of which this book grew), they issued “Our Testimony on Justification.” Most of it is wonderful, consisting of quotations from the Reformed confessions. But the preamble tells us why they are doing this, and shows that they haven’t learned anything about this issue in the last few years. And frankly, given the amount that has been written on it, this is just inexcusable.

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Such critics, called neonomians in the seventeenth century, today are perhaps better labeled covenant moralists. Our testimony is directed primarily to this third group, who claim to be genuinely Reformed. These covenant moralists teach, contrary to the Reformed confessions and/or historic Reformed conviction, some or all of the following . . . .” (p. 432)

A series of gross misrepresentations follow, which I addressed when this statement first came out. For one fruity example, consider this claim about our beliefs—“that justification is not by faith alone, but by faithfulness, that is, trust in Christ and obedience” (p. 432). Westminster West, as a seminary, has put their reputation on the line in this book. They issued the statement initially, held a conference, developed this book out of that conference, and they have published this testimony again. This means that their testimony is false testimony. Where does this falsehood come from? The temptation is to resort to the standard two alternatives in cases like this—this is being done because they are stupid, or because they are malicious. Incompetent or hateful? But I don’t think either alternative explains what is going on here. Tight dogma held in the wrong way can make good people do bad things. In this case, the irony is particularly thick, because the dispute is about how the free justification that is given to us all in Christ is the fount of all practical godliness. This volume has stated, more times than I can remember, how the Reformed doctrine insists that the faith alone which justifies is not a faith which is alone, but rather is accompanied by other gifts and graces. This is the Reformed doctrine, and I agree with it. So, when are we going to do it? Does the free justification in Christ alone, appropriated by faith alone, naturally lead Christ’s followers to state the obvious truth about one’s doctrinal adversaries, regardless of the ‘political’ cost? Does it require men who hold to the historic Reformed doctrine on justification to pick up the phone and call a brother on the other side of the line whom they know to have been misrepresented? Does free grace allow one to

319 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | MARCH 2007 refuse to “break ranks,” even though he knows that an injustice is occurring? Does an orthodox understanding of sola fideallow justified believers to continue to publish inaccurate books, and refuse to meet the brothers mentioned in those books to thrash out the issues? And does it allow those leading the charge to refuse to debate when repeatedly invited to do so? You say you have faith? Show me your faith by your works. And if this book was an example of those works, you need to try another one.

THE BUBBLE BATH OF ORTHODOXY MARCH 19, 2007 Scott Clark is at it again on his blog, and since he disabled the comments feature there, it is not possible for me to comment in that venue. So I will comment in this one. My comments are bold.

“How I am redeemed from all my sins and misery.” The Heidelberg Catechism was written not just to those who profess the Christian faith but to those who actually believe the Christian faith. The writers of the catechism had to assume, for the purposes of writing the catechism, that the hearers/readers of the catechism are united to Christ by true faith (HC 21) and a vital union with Christ.

Why did they have to assume that? Didn’t they know that many children in the visible church would not have true faith and that the church, in making them memorize all this glorious stuff in the first person singular, was turning them into rank hypocrites? Why did they “have” to assume true faith?

According to the catechism, and the Reformed faith generally, there is a great difference between profession of faith and true faith. This is a distinction of the greatest importance and one which some seem bent on blurring.

I think this is quite true.

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Some folk (who call themselves “the Federal Vision”)

Uh oh . . .

who are concerned about the ill effects of revivalism and religious subjectivism (as I am) in contemporary Christianity seek to redress the problem by turning to what they call the “objectivity of the covenant.” In their scheme, all baptized persons are said to be in the covenant of grace in very same way. They speak of a “covenantal” election, union with Christ, justification etc. By “covenantal” they mean conditional and temporary.

They also speak, in numerous places, of a decretal election, settled and sealed before all worlds, in which the elect of God are named and numbered, and with a number that cannot be increased or diminished. But there is no sense bringing that up here—it would only serve to confuse people who have settled into the warm bubble bath of orthodoxy and wish to have no pounding on the bathroom door.

They argue from the example of the temporary national covenant with Israel. Just as God chose the Israelites to be his temporary national people so he “elects” individuals today to a temporary conditional status as Christians which status is said to be retained by faithfulness (trust and obedience). “If,” they say, “we keep our part of the covenant we will be ultimately righteous before God.”

This would be really, really bad if anybody held to it.

Faith is now said to have two parts: trusting and obeying. This, they say, is what God asked of Adam before the fall; what God asked of Abraham after the fall, what God asked of his Son Jesus, and what God asks of us.

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Jumping Jehoshaphat and Land of Goshen!

Please note how they move

Or rather, how Clark moves on our behalf. And I have never seen some of these moves before, not even during the disco years.

from Israel’s status as a national covenantal people with Israel to the baptized person today. Does Scripture do this? Not exactly. Both Paul and the writer to the Hebrews to appeal the example of Israel as the old covenant visible church.

They sure do.

There is a distinction to be made here. Israel fulfilled a couple of roles in the history of redemption at the same time, that’s because there have always been two covenants operating in history: works and grace.

I thought it was bad to blur these two things. And now Israel is doing both at the same time? Or is it like watering your lawn in a drought? Works on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and grace on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and (bonus day!) Sunday?

By making a national covenant with Israel, our Lord re-instituted a picture of the covenant of works that he had made with Adam. Just as Adam was called to obey the law and enter into glory, so national Israel was called to obey and remain the national people of God. As we all learned in catechism class, Israel failed miserably and lost her status as the national people of God. So this re-institution of the covenant of works on a national basis served to direct national Israel to the true Israel of God who would keep the covenant of works perfectly for all the elect.

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Where was this recapitulation stuff in the Westminster Confession again?

The covenant of grace, first announced after the fall (Gen 3:14–16) was also re-published during Israel’s national covenant because Israel also served as the visible church under Moses and David. The covenant of grace was unconditional. It was temporarily administered through the national covenant but which, before the national covenant, during the national covenant, and after the fulfillment of the national covenant, included folk from every nation, tribe, and tongue (Rev 5:9). This covenant is a free promise of righteousness by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

So God publishes two covenants at once to Israel, operating on antithetical principles, and then He blasted them for getting confused.

These are two distinct covenants operating on two distinct principles.

So which one were they supposed to do? No man can serve two masters.

The proposed revisions of the Reformed faith, however, blur the distinction between these two covenants and between these two principles.

We blur this distinction? Compared to some in this discussion, we are but pikers and posers.

With just a moment’s reflection, you can see right away how different this proposed revision of the Reformed faith is from what the Heidelberg Catechism actually says. The catechism says “How I am redeemed from all my sins and misery.” The catechism does not say that “how I am placed in a temporary relation to Christ and his salvation conditioned upon grace and my cooperation with grace.”

Right. The catechism doesn’t say that. Neither do I.

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It does not say, “How I could be redeemed from my all my sins and misery.” The catechism speaks of our redemption as present reality. According to the catechism I am now presently redeemed.

You don’t say?

In the history of the Christian church there was a covenant theology that did place Christians by baptism into a state of grace conditioned upon grace and cooperation with grace that described faith as trusting and obeying and righteousness as a future possibility but never a present reality. The medieval church taught this system for a millennium and the whole Protestant church rejected that system as one man.

The medieval church taught what we teach about decretal election? Really? About how the decretally elect are saved by grace alone through faith alone on the basis of the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ alone? Limited atonement and the whole deal? They did? That’s amazing. So what was the Reformation about then?

Remember the question: “How many things are necessary for you to know that in this comfort you may live and die happily?”

I sure do.

It is not possible to live happily in a conditional temporary covenant wherein my righteousness is contingent upon my performance of the terms of the covenant.

Amen.

It is impossible because of our sin and misery.

Amen again. Because of sin we’re not able or even willing to keep the terms of the covenant.

That’s right. Because of our sin and misery, we can’t even represent the positions of fellow Reformed ministers fairly or accurately. That’s why Christ

324 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | MARCH 2007 had to die as a perfect substitute. If our justification depended upon our actions, or even our actions limited to the course of this Federal Vision controversy, all of us (on both sides) would be condemned to Hell.

That’s why we have a perfectly obedient and wholly trustworthy Savior who performed all the conditions of the covenant of works and Israel’s national for us.

Our free justification is in no way dependent on our progress in our sanctification. But precisely because of this glorious grace, we are set free to pursue a life of holiness (and all who are truly justified will do so). This liberates us so that we can diligently work on representing the views of fellow Reformed ministers fairly and accurately.

That’s why faith, in justification, is not “trusting and obeying” but “a certain knowledge and a hearty trust.”

Were we told to have this certain knowledge? Were we commanded to have this hearty trust? If not, then why are we doing it? And if so, then how can we obey without adding obedience to the mix, thereby incurring the wrath of Escondido?

Works and grace are two different systems (1 Cor 11:5).

Except in Old Testament Israel, where some of us at Westminster West decided it would be pedagogically helpful to smush them together. Let’s recapitulate both covenants at once! And then attack other people for getting them confused!

They are two different religions operating on two different principles.

Two different religions? God bound Israel to two different religions?

The Heidelberg Catechism doesn’t confuse them and it premises our assurance on Jesus’s fulfillment of the covenant of works for us.

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The Heidelberg Catechism didn’t confuse them because it was written centuries before this business erupted.

FUTURE PLANS MARCH 21, 2007 The next critical book on Federal Vision, due out soon, is By Faith Alone, 25edited by Gary Johnson and Guy Waters. I have it on order, but there has apparently been some delay according to the good folks at Amazon. The current plan is to review it thoroughly in this space. By “review it” I mean that I intend to take it apart brick by brick, and if the past is any indicator of the future, I intend to snap any flawed brick in two, and throw at least one half of that brick at the moon.

VANTAGE THEOLOGY MARCH 21, 2007 For creatures, there is no such thing as a “view from everywhere,” and this is especially true in theology. One of the problems that happens with people who do decretal theology all the time is that this can be forgotten, and we begin to assume that we do have the ultimate vantage point for our theological perspective. And so when someone says that it would be edifying to look at election through the lens of the covenant, and not just to look at the covenant through the lens of election, this is taken as an incipient denial of both election and the covenant. But when something is much bigger than we are, we have to look at it from different angles. And when I walk around to the back of the mansion to have a look at the gardens there, I am not denying what I saw when I was looking at the front. Decretal Calvinism is true, and its towers are imposing. But the truths of Scripture can be looked at from other angles, without forgetting or denying or contradicting what we saw when considering the decrees. The same issue of “vantage point” can help us when considering the issues of recapitulation. The apostle Paul was fond of the reductio, stepping into the

25 https://www.crossway.org/books/by-faith-alone-tpb/

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assumptions of his opponents and reasoning from there. “Come now, you who depend on the law . . .” This is what I believe he is doing when he is talking about the two covenants, one with Hagar and one with Sarah. We most emphatically have two covenants, which is what the recapitulationists are arguing for. But this covenant of Hagar’s, was it something we ought to look at from the vantage of a divine offer, or from the vantage of inevitable human self-righteousness? I opt for the latter. I don’t believe that God made a serious “covenant of works” with Hagar, knowing that she and her descendants would not be able to keep it. But if He didn’t make a covenant of works with Hagar, then how did she wind up in a covenant of works? I do agree that her spiritual descendants were in a covenant of works. How did they get there? I would argue that the works principle is the only alternative to the grace principle, and when people break the covenant of grace, their only option to is function, somehow and someway, on a works basis. There is nowhere else to go. No one has to teach this—it is just the way it is. God made a covenant of grace with His people (and that is all it was), and yet the covenant of grace can be rejected and broken by the non-elect within that covenant. When descendants of Sarah rejected the covenant of grace (taking pride in their own “achievments”), this made them covenantal Ishmaelites. Put this another way. The covenant of grace was made with visible Israel in the Old Testament, and the covenant of grace is with the visible Church in the New. Because the covenant is not limited to the decretally elect, it is possible for the covenant of grace to be broken by those in the midst of the covenant people who are not elect. (Special reminder for theological scholars: for the elect, everything the Westminster Confession says about them, and five pounds extra to be sure, is true.) But the non-elect reject God’s grace. That is the distinguishing mark of the non-elect; they cannot live by grace through faith. But they are surrounded with the apparatus of grace—Word, sacraments, promises, fellowship, and so on. Grace is everywhere—except in their hearts. So what they do (and they always do it) is construct a covenant of works out of the materials around them. This

327 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | MARCH 2007 is the high rebellion of reverse engineering. This is why people can come to the Lord’s Table as though they were doing a good work, or they sign a card at the revival, or they memorize the Shorter Catechism. They can take pride in a confession of unworthiness. Who among us has not known a Calvinist who was proud of his knowledge that creatures cannot take pride in anything? All this is contrary to the design of the covenant of grace, but the works- heart can turn absolutely anything into a work. I was talking to someone once about the famous question posed at the Pearly Gates, “Why should I let you into heaven?” And I said the answer was something like, “Because of the death of Jesus Christ on the cross, plus nothing.” The person confessed to me that her first reaction was, “Gee, I hope I remember to say that.”

WHIFFING ANOTHER SLAP SHOT MARCH 22, 2007 Someone needs to tell Scott Clark that when you are in the penalty box for a three-hour penalty, you don’t get to keep skating around on the ice. He says:

There have been numerous attempts to resurrect the old “grace and cooperation” with grace scheme. The Arminians tried it in the late 16th and early 17th centuries and it has persisted since. Richard Baxter tried it in the 17th century. The neo-nomians tried it during the Marrow Controversy (18th century) and moralists have tried it repeatedly since and they [are] trying it again today (in the Federal Vision). Some folk even say that “grace and cooperation with grace” toward eventual righteousness is Reformed theology. Well, it isn’t, not according to the Reformed confessions.

So, according to this representation, if we may use our terms loosely, the Federal Vision consists of moralists who are advancing that old-timey semi-Pelagian foolishness. According to this view, God offers us grace, and then we go on to make that grace effective by cooperating with it. Just so everybody knows, this would be something that we would deny. I italicize the word deny there in the hopes that Scott Clark would eventually be

328 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | MARCH 2007 able to pick up on it. We are rapidly approaching the time when everyone in the country will be in possession of this theological datum with the exception of the Escondido faculty, and I am trying to head off this particular embarrassment. Any cooperation with grace that we offer, such as it is, is itself a grace or gift from God lest any man boast. Our salvation, all of it, including our responses during the course of our salvation, is from grace, in grace, to grace, on grace, under grace, and with grace. If I left out any preposition that makes good orthodox sense when combined with the word grace, then let us affirm that one too. I not only affirm sola gratia, but tota gratia as well. God does not do 90% and we do 10%. God does not do 99% and we do 1%. God does it all, and all that we do after the fact is entirely dependent upon what He has already done. Jesus gave the command, and then Lazarus came out of the tomb. This was not an instance where Jesus pulled and Lazarus pushed. Jesus did not give the command to rise from the dead so that Lazarus could then think about whether to make that particular command efficacious by cooperating with it. I mean, good grief. After Jesus gave the command to rise, all the essential life-giving work was already done, and so when Lazarus did walk around after that, his steps were not intended to be a walking embodiment of semi-Pelagianism. And it would not have helped his Calvinistic bona fidesif he were to lie down and hold his breath. God can bring good out of anything, and there has been a fun side benefit to this controversy. As I interact with Arminian friends (who really do hold to some form of “grace and cooperation with grace” scheme described above), it pleases me no end to know that they have to figure out how my brand of high-octane Calvinism has been identified by a paid theologian at Westmin- ster West as being the same thing as what they teach. Heh. Hey, bro. How about that Finney, eh?

US DWARFS MARCH 27, 2007 Full disclosure right at the outset. The Foreword to Faith Alone was written by David Wells, and if that man’s books were orange juice concentrate, I could

329 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | MARCH 2007 still eat them right out of the can with a spoon. When he is on his message (which is the exposition of the soul-destroying nature of relativistic mush), there is no one better. Thankfully, this foreword continues my opportunity to cheer and applaud, and to remain a staunch Wells man, because Wells basically tackles something other than the subject of the book. The subject of the book was summarized on the back cover in the blurb by Robert Godfrey.

But the recent assault on justification by the New Perspective on Paul and by the Federal Vision is particularly pernicious, cloaked as it is in apparent scholarship and piety. This important book defends the historic Reformation doctrine with better scholarship and more profound piety.

Okay. I was oriented, and I knew who the bad guys were supposed to be. Then I read the foreword. Wells divides the evangelical world into three basic groups.

What I suggest is that there are currently three main constituencies in evangelicalism. There is one in which the historical doctrines of evangelical believing are still maintained and even treasured. There is one that is oblivious to these doctrines and considers them an impediment to church growth. Finally, there is one that is thumbing its nose at both of these first two constituencies, in the one case because its orthodoxy is too confining and in the other because its church life, glitzy as it may be, is too empty. (p. 15)

Now given the fact that I got the right book with the right title. I thought I knew right away who these constituencies were. There were the historic Prot- estant lovers of the Reformed standards, there were the happy-clappy seeker sensitive pragmatists, and then there were the Federal Vision troops giving both of the first two groups the raspberry. But I only got two out of three. I was right about the first group. “The reformational doctrines, part and parcel of which is sola fide, are still preserved among churches and by

330 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | MARCH 2007 individuals in the first major church constituency” (p. 15). Okay, check. And I got the second one right too. The second constituency is “made up of a generation of pragmatists” (p. 16).

And so it was the the seeker sensitive church emerged, reconfigured around the consumer, edges softened by marketing wisdom, pastors driven by business savvy, selling, always selling, but selling softly, al- luringly, selling the benefits of the gospel while most, if not all, of the costs were hidden. (p. 16)

Then we got to the third constituency, which I missed completely. Since we are what the book is about, I thought the third group had to be us Dwarfs, duly chastised for shooting at Calormenes and horses indiscriminately. But no, the third group is the Emergent church, of the Brian McLaren stripe. “The Emergent church, the third of these church constituencies in evangelicalism, is a reaction which, in effect, is saying to the other two constituencies, ‘a pox on both your houses!’” (p. 17). Huh. Again I say, huh. Maybe there was a mix-up at Crossway. Maybe this is the foreword to another book. But probably not. Wells concludes by saying he is grateful for the book because of what the authors believe and declare. He does not appear to know if their adversaries believe what is attributed to them and doesn’t really get into that. But the Emergent church is bad.

I am grateful for this book because I am grateful for any clarity, any light, that can be brought to bear on our situation in the evangelical world, and this particular book brings a lot. This desire for doctrinal clarity that I share with all of these authors, this yearning for biblical truth, makes me hopelessly “modern” as it does them. (p. 19) Yeah, I yearn for clarity too. I long for the day when our adversaries will be able to write a book in which they quote us accurately and extensively, demonstrate clearly that they understand what we teach and what we do not teach, and interact with it in a way that is actually informative. Shooting

331 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | MARCH 2007 reformational solas into the air is not the same thing as defending the faith. But Robert Godfrey promises more. He says in the blurb that the New Per- spective on Paul and the Federal Vision are going to get their comeuppance in this book at the hands of “better scholarship and more profound piety.” How much better? All this made me wonder exactly how much interaction with the Federal Vision there was going to be. So, going back to the index of subjects and names, I discovered that Jim Jordan is mentioned three (3) times, Peter Leithart one (1) time, Rich Lusk an avalanche of five (5) times, Norman Shepherd tying him at five (5) times, Steve Wilkins getting one (1) mention, and me getting one (1) favorable mention—I am quoted critiquing N.T. Wright. And the Leithart and Wilkins references are on the same page, simply identifying them as paedocommunionists along with Robert Rayburn.

THE HELL YOU SAY MARCH 28, 2007 The original Auburn Avenue conference, the font of all the trouble, occurred in 2002. The ruckus proper began the following summer, and since then, we have had another Auburn Avenue conference, a Fort Lauderdale colloquium, a book that resulted from that, a book published by Athanasius Press (The Federal Vision), a book by me (“Reformed” Is Not Enough), a conference at Westminster West, a conference at Greenville Theological Seminary, a presbyterial exam of me in the CREC, several presbyterial exams of Steve Wilkins in the PCA, and a recent flurry of critical books from the opposition. The most recent of these, By Faith Alone, is edited by Gary Johnson and Guy Waters. I just finished reading the Introduction to this modest volume, written by Guy Waters, entitled “Whatever Happened to Sola Fide?” During the course of this controversy, extending lo, these last five years, I have been a sweet Christian boy. I haven’t lost my temper once, and I haven’t sent any jalapeño emails. I have not punched any holes in the sheetrock, whether at the office or at home. As the apostle Paul would say, I am out of my mind to talk like this, and he never sent any letter bombs either, just like me. I have sought to clarify my position in any way that I could do so, and I have gone

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the second, third, and fourth miles in offering to meet, discuss or debate. I have yelled at my windshield, but that was just a fun metaphor. I didn’t really. All this to say, I think I am entitled to a rant. A “rant” is, in blogospheric terms, a bit of prose written in the style of an Elizabethan pamphleteer, with color, and bite, and dash. A rant is a full-throated expression of . . . exuberant dismay. Watched carefully, a rant can occur with a rare-jewel-of-contentment smile on the face, and not break any of the Ten Commandments, or cause any of the fruit of the Spirit to rot in the bowl. But it has to be done with self-control—you can’t be seeing red. Light pink at the most. At the same time, the tactical point is to come off the top ropes. The tactical point is to uncork. I think I am entitled to that kind of rant at least. Just a short one. Hold on. Let me shake it first. * * * The need of the hour is not to defend the solas of the Reformation the same way F Troop defended the American frontier. We don’t need any more conservatives who don’t conserve anything except their own sense of self-importance. Here we conservatives are in Fort Hapless, and we are surrounded by hordes of seeker-sensitive CEOs, fully credentialed entertainment engineers, and they have recently been reinforced by a bunch of postmodern hoo- ey-mongers from France. Things are looking pretty grim for us, and so, at this critical point in the movie, when the music is really tense, some of our guys decide to start a fight along the ramparts over whether the sole instrument of justification is a living faith or a faith that is living. Sincerity is not the issue. There may be some who are doing this for cagey political reasons, but I prefer to think that the problem is naivete. For some that naivete is a function of having decided thirty years ago to translate all discussions of theology into the metric system, just to keep life simple. If ten won’t divide into it, then it can’t be a part of the dikai- word group. For others the reason for the naivete is more obvious—graduate school is still a fresh memory. They are just out of the egg with bits of shell on their heads. We don’t need any more male cheerleaders for the Reformation, chest-bumping in front of the stands. We don’t any more cardboard megaphones of truth,

333 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | MARCH 2007 and we don’t need any more slogans instead of argument. We don’t need any more attempts to rouse a bewildered crowd that is proving hard to whip up. “So-LAH, so-LAH, so-LAH!” The need of the hour is not to try to establish the Reformed faith in Amer- ica through apostolic signs and blunders. What in the foggy blue morning is this? I feel like somebody locked me up in a Walker Percy novel. Suppose the apostle Paul had been unable to make the confrontation at Antioch and had sent some of his seminarians instead. So off they went to confront Peter and Barnabas because they were compromising the truth as it is in Jesus. Suppose they walked up to a group at lunch to rebuke them for withdrawing table fellowship from Gentiles. That group responded with, “Nope. That’s actually a false report, about us at any rate. We have some Gentiles right here at the table—here, meet Nicholas, and Stephen, and Demetrius, and Bob.” The seminarians’ eyes narrow. The confrontation had been going so well, and the idea that they may have gotten the wrong table is beyond their ken. “And so now you compound your corruption of the gospel with dishonesty?” I am a high Calvinist. For almost twenty years, I have been standing here well past the tree line, up amongst the boulders. I am prepared to be rebuked for lots of things but living in a semi-Pelagian swamp is not one of them. Try something else. Try something plausible. But never mind. This is all being done because “the truth” is under attack. The foundations of “the truth” are being undermined. The “truth” is precious and is to be defended at all costs. “Truth” is not relative, elastic, or dependent upon how we wish things were. The “truth” recovered at the Reformation must be preached with power and defended with courage today. The “truth” cannot be reduced to mere slogans. The hell you say.

OH, NEVER MIND MARCH 28, 2007 Guy Waters’s Introduction has three main sections. In the first, he summarizes the doctrine of sola fide. That section was quite good in many respects,

334 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | MARCH 2007 actually. I can say this because I affirm, believe, and teach the doctrine of sola fide. The only place I would quibble with Waters here is that I would want to talk about the imputation of Christ’s obedience, as distinct from the imputation of Christ’s merits. Other than that, I was good with everything he said, with the exception of why he was saying it. “Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?” There was a major problem with this section in that he begins by asking how the “New Perspective on Paul and the Federal Vision” have “challenged sola fide?” (p. 22). Notice how things are already getting mushed together. In the second section, he takes on the New Perspective on Paul— Stendahl, Sanders, Dunn, and Wright in four pages. It is not trying to provide an in-depth treatment, and he makes some solid points. In fact, Credenda/ Agenda, what Waters would consider a Federal Vision magazine, made many similar points in its Pauline Take on the New Perspective. But mentioning this would interfere with the next point, which was to try to show how the NPP runs into the FV. As he is discussing Dunn, he summarizes Dunn’s position by saying, “Jus- tification, then, includes the inward transformation of the sinner” (p. 27). Remember that. He then turns to the Federal Vision and begins by noting that we (unlike the NPP) are trying to call the Reformed world, at least according to our lights, to “a more thoroughgoing commitment to the Reformed tradition” (p. 28). But then he says:

Neverthless, Federal Vision proponents have often been supportive of Reformed efforts to embrace Wright’s and Dunn’s insights on matters related to justification, particularly in their efforts to recast the doctrine as primarily ecclesiological . . . One federal Vision writer has expressed appreciation for certain New Perspective(s) definitions of the ‘righteousness of God’ as covenantal faithfulness(rather than the righteousness of Christ imputed to the believer for his justification) at key points in the letters of Paul. (p. 28)

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The footnoted one is Peter Leithart, and the reference is to Peter’s essay in The Federal Vision. Because he is not named in the text, but only in the footnote, this particular interaction does not show up in the index of By Faith Alone. Waters goes on to say this about Leithart:

This proponent consequently defines justification in terms of non-forensic, transformational categories. To put it simply, he conflates justification and sanctification. In so doing, his definition of justification cannot sustain the doctrine of sola fide. (p. 29)

After reading Waters, I went back and read Peter’s essay again. It is quite clear that he wants to say more about how the Bible uses the words relating to justification and righteousness than some Protestants have said, but it is equally clear that he insists that we must not say less. Reread what Waters just said above, and then consider these quotes from Peter’s essay.

Though justification terminology has a number of different nuances in Scripture, it does not refer to an act of ‘making just.’ (The Federal Vision, p. 206)

The Protestant confessions reflect the biblical teaching when they claim that justification is an ‘act of God’s free grace’ by which God pardons and forgives and counts us as righteous. (p. 206)

As far as it goes, the Protestant doctrine is correct; if the scene of a sinner in the dock before the Judge is put before us, and we are asked, ‘What does justification mean?’ or ‘On what grounds is a person justified?’ then the proper answer is the Reformation answer: Justification is an act of God’s free grace whereby He pardons all our sins and accepts us as righteous in His sight, only for the righteousness of Christ reckoned to us and received by faith alone. (p. 209)

First, the Protestant doctrine of justification has mainly been concerned with the question of applying the redemption of Christ to individual

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believers. While that is certainly a central part of the gospel and the apostolic doctrine of justification . . . . (p. 211)

And then Waters concludes with this turnip:

As different as the New Perspective(s) on Paul and the Federal Vision are, they converge in this respect: they deny the doctrine of sola fide: justification by faith alone. rather than calling men and women to rest on the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ alone for their justification, the New Perspective on Paul and the Federal Vision give us a modified covenant of works. They tell us ‘do this (with God’s help) and you will live.’ (p. 31)

And I have to sit down and fan myself. When I have recovered sufficiently, I will say (again) that salvation is of the Lord, from first to last. The Lord is our only righteousness, and He is the only one who can impute that righteousness. We are saved by grace alone through faith alone and . . . oh, never mind.

WRITE THAT SPOT DOWN MARCH 29, 2007 Chapter one of By Faith Alone is a critique by Cornelis Venema of N.T. Wright’s views on justification. This chapter was very good and was admirable on a number of levels. Readers of this blog know that I have learned a lot from Wright, and I appreciate much of what he has to offer. In this, I am in agreement with T. David Gordon, who starts chapter two of this same book by pointing out that he finds Wright’s work “utterly lucid, and profoundly stimulating” (p. 61). Okay, that’s me too. But at the same time, Wright misses some important things. Sometimes he misses them (I think) because of the Anglican zeitgeist (women’s ordination), and other times because he has accepted as axiomatic some scholarly settlement that ought not to be regarded as settled yet (Sand- ers on Palestinian Judaism).

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Anyhow, my appreciation for Venema’s critique here ought not to be taken as a change of overall attitude. On many issues, I believe that Wright is top drawer. But there are places where he just plain whiffs it. For some reason it reminds me of a Far Side cartoon, where a wooly mammoth is on its back, all four feet to the sky, with a little teeny arrow stuck in its belly. Two cavemen are standing by him with their bows, and one of them says, “We really ought to write that spot down.” Venema’s chapter was good in the first place because he under-promises and over-delivers. When he summarizes what he finds problematic with Wright’s views on justification, his statements are measured and judicious. The most strident comment in the chapter was, “The carelessness with which Wright and other writers of the New Perspective speak of a final justification on the basis of works threatens a central point of Paul’s gospel” (p. 58). For the rest, Venema says that the “New Perspective ought to be carefully evalu- ated before it is too quickly embraced” (p. 59), or “critical elements of Paul’s teaching about the law are either downplayed or left largely unacknowledged in Wright’s view” (p. 53), or “I am convinced that the older Reformation perspective more faithfully and comprehensively represents the Scriptures’ teaching” (p. 51). When it comes to his rhetoric, Venema does not come into this with a flame-thrower. At the same time, in my view some of his criticisms are devastating. This is the part where he over-delivers. His evidence far surpasses his stated conclusions. This is in sharp contrast, for example, to Waters’s introduction, where his evidence was running for home plate like crazy but started its slide twenty feet early, with predictable results. Venema takes great care (almost twenty pages) to set forth and describe the position that he is going to critique, and I believe that advocates of that position would be able to sign off on his description. He states that position dispassionately and fairly. The last nine pages are his assessment. One criticism is worth mentioning here. Venema shows that Sander’s views on Second Temple Judaism do not really overthrow the older Reforma- tion view of Paul, but rather, rightly interpreted, lend credence to it. In short,

338 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | MARCH 2007 how is covenantal nomism not semi-Pelagian (p. 51)? Getting in by grace and staying in by obedience is something that could work in the first century for some Jews and in the thirteenth for some Christians.

However the obvious weakness of Wright’s insistence that this requires a new view of Paul’s teaching on justification is that he (and other New Perspective writers) does not seriously consider whether covenantal nomism could accommodate a form of religious teaching that regards acceptance with God to be based upon grace plus good works. (p. 52)

Agree or disagree with it, this was a chapter of argument and judicious conclusions—not sloganeering and random quotation.

FEDERAL VISION EARTHQUAKE MARCH 30, 2007 The next chapter in By Faith Alone is by T. David Gordon, and it too is a critique of N.T. Wright. The bulk of the chapter is just fine. Gordon, like Venema, is not hyperventilating over this, and he brings Wright’s approach to biblical theology under scrutiny and does so in a moderate and fair way. He does this as one who has reviewed Wright’s work favorably in the past (p. 61), and who is not automatically freaked out by him. Gordon mentions the Auburn theology in passing, and that is what I would like to briefly comment on.

This explains why some associate the New Perspective with the Auburn theology—neither explicates its biblical theology with reference to the Adamic administration. (p. 62) A bit later, he says:

Much of the present debate in some circles is not merely, or primarily, about the relation of faith and works in justification, though it has ramifications for that discussion. The present debate is about whether

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we can properly handle the doctrine of justification apart from juridical categories, apart from God’s right judgment of his creation in terms of its obedience or disobedience to his rule. (p. 62)

The phrasein some circles is footnoted, and Gordon says, “Regarding not only N.T. Wright, but also the so-called New Perspective on Paul, the views of Norman Shepherd, and the views of the so-called Auburn theology” (p. 62). First, I think the comment that this is being driven by something deeper than the simple relation of faith to works is an astute one. The dirt clods on the surface aren’t causing the earthquake; the tectonic plates are. But past that intial point of agreement, I think the observation needs serious modification. Put another way, what are those tectonic plates? It is not so much that downstream TR theology is explicated in terms of Adam, and downstream FV is explicated in terms of Abraham. It would be better to say that we relate Adam to the last Adam differently, but everything I have heard in FV circles is a Gen. 1:1 to Rev. 21: theology. Here is one example. In Back to Basics26, my colleague Doug Jones sets the stage of covenant theology this way.

The most prominent distinction that appears in God’s covenant workis that between God’s covenant before the Fall and His covenant thereafter. Before the Fall, the Lord graciously condescends to covenant with Adam (and humanity) in his condition of genuine righteousness. But after the Fall, the Lord establishes a covenant to redeem rebels alienated by their sin. These two distinct covenantshave gone by many names in the history of Christian thought, but we will call them the Covenant of Creation and the Covenant of Redemption. These labels highlight the different conditions of humanity with respect to each covenant. Regardless of the names we apply to these two covenants, the more interesting point is that the distinction between them is prior to, and

26 David Hagopian, ed., Back to Basics: Rediscovering the Richness of the Reformed Faith (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1996).

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more foundational than, the distinction between the Old and New Covenants, which sometimes receives undue emphasis. The important distinction between the Old and New Covenants is really between anticipation (the Old Covenant) and fulfillment (the New Covenant) within the Covenant of Redemption. The intricate covenantal chain of redemption runs unbroken through both Old and New Covenants. (Back to Basics, p. 76, emphasis mine)

And amen. In FV circles, you will get various responses to the covenant of works. Some, like the above, insist on the language of covenants, but also insist that the Covenant of Creation was essentially gracious in character. Others, following John Murray, might want to say that there is an Adamic administration, but not an Adamic covenant. Others, like Jim Jordan, speak of two “stages” of intended human existence. Adam rebelled before getting to the second stage, and so the last Adam came to bring us into the maturity of that second stage. Now clearly something is going on here, and despite all the intramural differences in how we put things, it is distinct from a strict merit system which sees Adam as the first failed Pelagian. And here, I would suggest, is the fundamental difference between our camps. It is not how many covenants there are, or how many administrations. This is a debate over what constitutes the necessary nature of the relationship between God and any one of His obedient servants. One side says that it is always (necessarily) a relationship of favor and gratitude. The other says that the archetypical relationship is one of requirement and obedience. This is not to say that the terms of each side are excluded from the other. The debate is over primacy. One side gives primacy to requirement and obedience, and within that context finds room for favor and gratitude. The other gives primacy to favor and gratitude, and within that context finds room for requirement and obedience. But there it is. In my view, these are the tectonic plates.

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A MOUSETRAP GOSPEL APRIL 1, 2007 I’ll explain the title shortly. Promise. The next chapter in By Faith Alone is by Rick Phillips, and in it he tackles two different challenges to the Reformed doctrine of imputation. The first is on the part of contemporary Arminians, who say that God accepts our faith in lieu of righteousness, and the second is on the part of N.T. Wright, who says that that the ‘righteousness of God” has to refer to the righteousness of God Him- self, and not ‘a righteousness that comes from/avails with god’ (p. 84). Wright denies that Paul teaches that the righteousness of Jesus Christ is imputed to or is reckoned to the believer. Rick does a good job in defending the doctrine of imputation on both fronts, and I commend the chapter to you. Those who have followed this “Auburn Avenue” business on this blog for any length of time know that I have a great deal of respect for Rick. We have been on opposite sides of this thing, but I have a number of compelling reasons for concluding that he has not been motivated by “political” issues in this at all. One of those reasons is the fact that when I speak to an issue clearly and unambiguously, he is one of the few who is willing to acknowledge publicly that I have done so. He does that again in this chapter, where he quotes me arguing a point about imputation against N.T. Wright. He understood my point perfectly, and quoted me accurately, and I appreciate it a great deal. That said, before I take up a few differences I have with Rick, I want to say that I agree completely with the position on imputation that he takes, over

343 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APRIL 2007 against the Arminians, and over against Wright. There will be a difference of opinion, that I will argue shortly, but the difference is not on the importance of the imputation of Christ’s obedience (in His life and on the cross) to a robust and Pauline doctrine of justification. We agree on that point. And let me point to some other areas of agreement before we get to the differences. Rick sees and acknowledges that N.T. Wright has a doctrine of imputation, one that follows from his larger theology. It is just not the doctrine of imputation. “We should acknowledge that Wright does see a righteous status being applied to those who have faith in Christ. For this reason, it is often argued that Wright does not deny imputed righteousness. Clearly, however, Wright pointedly refutes and denies that Christ’s righteousness is imputed to believers” (p. 86). Rick also quotes Wright as saying that justification is not so much about “soteriology as about ecclesiology; not so much about salvation as about the church” (p. 86). Rick doesn’t follow this up, but I honestly cannot make any sense out of it. Soteriology and ecclesiology may be different departments in a large seminary, or different chapters in a work of systematics, but how can we possibly separate the two? They can be distinguished, certainly, but outside the church there is no ordinary possibility of salvation. I put the word ordinary in so that people would know that I am being Westminsterian, and not a superstitious papist from the middle ages. Rick also points to a misunderstanding that Wright has about the nature of a “righteousness transfer.” According to Wright, “Righteousness is not a quality or substance that can thus be passed or transferred from the judge to the defendant” (p. 86). It is here that Rick quotes an argument that I posted here at Blog and Mablog (p. 90). No one that I ever heard of in Reformed circles has described imputation as a substantive infusion or transfer. In another place, Wright talks about this kind of transaction as a “cold bit of business.” This is another misunderstanding, and I believe it is of a similar nature to the first one. I was the foreman of a jury once, in a murder trial, and I can assure you that when the time came for the reading of our verdict,

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no one in that courtroom was bored or dozing off. The reading of the verdict, especially for the one on trial, is one of the most riveting things that a man can ever experience. We even have an entertainment term for it—courtroom drama. And for a man who is as guilty as sin, who comes to the bar of justice, and who hears the sentence of “not guilty” read out loud (by the God who will by no means clear the guilty, no less) . . . well, words to describe what this feels like should fail us. It certainly is not a cold bit of business. Now, to a few differences that I would ask Rick to consider. The first has to do with what happened to Abraham, our father in the faith.

Furthermore, note that in Romans 4:5 Paul adds the statement that faith “trusts him who justifies the ungodly.” This can only be a reference to God justifying Abraham. If Abraham was ungodly when he was credited with righteousness, it cannot be because he did something that God considers righteous. (p. 82)

The difficulty with this argument is the time line. In order for Abraham to be ungodly just prior to the declaration of righteousness in Gen. 15, he would have had to be ungodly in Genesis 12, when he left Ur of the Chaldees. But . . . “So Abram departed, as the Lord had spoken unto him . . .” (v. 4). And in Hebrews 11, this action is explicitly described as an action of faith. “By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed, and he went out, not knowing whither he went” (Heb. 11:8). My second disagreement with Rick is more substantive, but I have to qualify it, because I am not sure if Rick would disagree. One of the things that plagues our discussion of this issue of justification is that the language tends to shift back and forth between justification as it is in the plan of God and justification as it is in the heart and mind of the person being justified. When we say that something or other is “necessary to justification” (p. 77), we have to be absolutely clear what we are meaning. Do we mean “that which is revealed in the Bible concerning justification,” or do we mean “that which a

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sinner has to understand in order to be justified”? If we affirm the latter, then we are denying the Pauline doctrine of justification apart from works of the law. As N.T. Wright has wonderfully pointed out, justification by faith alone is not by faith in justification by faith alone. Justification—apart from our works, theological or otherwise—is the sheer, gracious gift of God. An understanding of this is most helpful in keeping debates over justification from getting ramped up unnecessarily. I have already agreed with Rick, over against Wright, on the doctrine of imputation. I think Rick is right and Tom is wrong. Now, if Wright is wrong on something as critical as this, doesn’t that make him a dangerous heretic? Doesn’t that mean he must not be a Christian? Absolutely not, and it is the confusion I described above that even makes us bring the question up. Here the place where I explain the title of this post. Michael Behe used the helpful example of a mousetrap to illustrate the concept of “irreducible complexity.” The illustration comes from the debate over evolution and whatnot, but I think it is helpful here. Irreducible complexity refers to a system which requires all its parts to be present in order to work at all. With the mousetrap, we need the wood platform, and the spring, and the part that snaps, and so on. All parts must be there, and if you take just one of them away, the whole thing doesn’t work. Now there is a tendency among conservative Christians to want to get down to a very basic gospel, the mousetrap gospel. What is the point past which, if you take anything away, the whole function is lost? Now the Bible rarely refers to the gospel this way, as though it were a simple machine. You could argue that the first verses of 1 Cor. 15 do this, as I believe, but this is not the normal way the word gospel is used in Scripture. The gospel is not a simple little machine, which can be undone by the removal of just one part. It is more like an ancient olive tree, with roots that go everywhere, and branches that have been there forever. It is possible to chop a tree like this down, but it can take a lot more interference than a mousetrap can—and keep on growing. I agree that imputation is an important part of how this tree grows and flourishes, and I agree that N.T. Wright gums up this doctrine. I believe he is

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wrong at this point, and his Reformed critics are right. But this is not enough to get me yelling for his scalp because on other aspects of the gospel, he is right and many of his Reformed critics are wrong. We make a great deal (as we should) about how Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. But what was it, exactly, that Abraham believed? It was that his seed would be like the stars in their multitudinous glory, and Paul interprets this as meaning Abraham was going to inherit the world—not through the law but through the righteousness of faith (Rom. 4:13). N.T. Wright believes this to be true, just like Abraham did, and (I really hesitate to say this, honestly) his amillennial Reformed critics do not believe it. This proclamation to Abraham was a proclamation of the gospel, and many within the Reformed camp do not believe it. Now does this make them heretics, or unregenerate men? Of course not. The gospel is not a simple little mousetrap that we can disable that easily. Perverse men, who intend to disable the gospel, do have the capacity to twist it beyond recognition, to the point where it becomes an anti-gospel. But that takes a lot of work, and a twisted heart. This is not true of a Christian gentleman like N.T. Wright, who gets imputation wrong, and a Christian gentleman like Kim Riddlebarger, who wrote a very capable book on amillennialism, getting (according to my lights) the Rom. 4:13 part of the gospel wrong. If our justification were to be lost if we scored less than 100 percent on the justification test (administered by St. Peter at the Pearlies), every last one of us, yours truly included, would be headed for the bad place. We don’t take the justification test for our justification. Jesus took that test. And no, this should not make us want to sin that grace may abound. One last comment. Rick took a great risk in quoting me favorably, but then he went out on the limb even further, and quoted John Murray favorably also (p. 96). I point this out because a few chapters later, T. David Gor- don describes John Murray as the “drunk uncle” of Reformed theology (p. 118) and wonders why nobody is willing to talk about it. Two or three more quotations like this, and Rick might find that he is falling under suspicion as well.

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WHAT ABRAHAM SAW APRIL 2, 2007 Frank Turk has made a reasonable request in the comments section of the previous post. He has asked for 200 words on why I believe that Abraham believed the expansive promises, and whether this is in tension with Christ’s statement that Abraham rejoiced to see His day. So here it is, in brief compass. Remember this is just the skeletal argument. It certainly needs to be fleshed out a good deal. First, look at the content of the promises themselves in Genesis. In Gene- sis 12:3, Abraham is told, among a number of other glorious things, that “in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.” In Genesis 15, he is told that his seed will be beyond numbering (Gen. 15:5.). This is precisely what Abraham believed (in the text) when his faith was credited to him as righteousness. Second, this faith of Abraham’s in the promise is expressly called faith in the gospel, and Paul does this as he repeats the content of the promise. “Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, ‘In thee shall all nations be blessed’” (Gal. 3:6–8, emphasis mine). What comes out of God’s mouth when God preaches the gospel to Abra- ham? An expansive promise concerning the salvation of the world. And, as mentioned before, Paul settles this as talking about Abraham’s inheritance of the world (Rom. 4:13). When Abraham believed this, he was looking for, among other things, a city with foundations, “whose maker and builder is God” (Heb. 11:10). And this is why Abraham when he saw the day of Christ, rejoiced to see it and was glad. He did not look forward to the first coming of Christ as the final fulfillment of the promise, but rather as the groundbreaking for the fulfillment of the promise. The cornerstone was laid, and this indicated that construction on the city had commenced. In a similar way, Abraham saw his Seed in the advent of Christ, and he rejoiced. But he will not see all his seed (who are

348 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APRIL 2007 what they are by virtue of their place in the Seed) until the last generation rolls in. So, may our gracious God not only impute the righteousness of Christ to us because we receive His word the way that Abraham did (which we should certainly do), but also may He give us the faith to believe what Abraham did.

STILL NO DEBATE APRIL 6, 2007 Green Baggins recently posted a call for repentance for those in the FV camp. Not surprisingly, this elicted quite a few comments (279 to be exact), and among them I noticed the following comment by Gary Johnson. Gary is one of the editors of the book I am currently reviewing (By Faith Alone), and because he occupies a position of leadership in this controversy, I need to respond to several things he said here. So that you can follow, I will put in bold the comments I will respond to. For the rest, I think I have already responded . . . multiple times.

Wilson admitted to Mike Horton on the White Horse Inn that he was aware that there were a number of different positions amongst the Federal Visionists themselves. He also said that his take on NT Wright was not necessarily the same as that of Rich Lusk, who has written high praise for Wright’s position on justification and the ‘pesty’ issue of imputation. Contra Wilson public statements, Lusk, like Shepherd, dismisses the WCF on the Covenant of Works and not only throws out the doctrine of active obedience, but speaks of not even needing any kind of imputation. Like Shepherd and Wright, a number of the FVers hold to a two-fold justification with the final justification being determined by works with an appeal to Romans 2:13. These representatives of the FV likewise define saving faith as ‘covenantal faithfulness’ and come up with a category they call ‘non-elect covenant member’ or ‘the believing non-elect’ who, according to Lusk and Wilkins are by virtue of their baptism, grafted into Christ ,and for a period of time

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temporarily possess all the redemptive blessings (including the forgiveness of sins) the elect have—save for the grace of perseverance. When these positions are given their due comeuppance by the FV critics, Wilson goes into a rage accusing us of distortion, misrepresentation, slander and the like. In Wilson’s eyes NONE of the criticisms of ANY of the representatives of the FV has any merit (pun intended). It does not matter who it is, or what kind of credentials they might have, be Guy Waters, the members of the OPC study report (which include Dick Gaffin), Scott Clark, Mike Horton, Bob Godfrey and the entire faculty of Westminster Calif along with the faculties of Greenville Presbyterian, and Knox seminaries or Lig Duncan and the study committee of the PCA - in Wilson’ eyes we are all lack the ability to either understand or appreciate the insights of the FV. Furthermore, since we do not recognize the value of these innovations, and actually have the audacity to charge these men with error, Wilson carries on a scathing personal vendetta against anyone who dares question ANYTHING related to the views of the FV.

This is a textbook case of trying to stand and sit at the same time. In the first portion, Johnson helpfully outlines an instance (and there are many others), where I have made distinctions between what I believe, hold and teach, and what is believed, held and taught by other friends and acquaintances— whether Norman Shepherd, N.T. Wright, or Rich Lusk. (Incidentally, this means that, while I believe in a pre-fall covenant with mankind in Adam, and in the imputation of the active obedience of Christ, I do not believe John Murray and Norman Shepherd are heretics for differing with me on these points. Doctrinal disagreements can be held in a spirit of catholicity.) But then, after Johnson cited an example of me admitting the justice of certain doctrinal criticisms that could be made against some of my FV friends, he then goes on to make an assertion that would not seem to follow from this. “In Wilson’s eyes NONE of the criticisms of ANY of the representatives of the FV has any merit.” Except for the ones he just mentioned a few seconds

350 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APRIL 2007 before. So the real problem here is not that I have not made my position clear, as contrasted with other positions on the table. The problem is that I am part of the Reformed faith, and not a Reformed sect. The Reformed faith is the Mississippi, anywhere south of Vicksburg. A Reformed sect has a flow of water also, but it runs through a green garden hose, and we closed the valve three quarters of the way because things in the garden were getting too wet and were starting to grow. The second thing is Johnson’s gratuitous assertion that when any FVish positions, anywhere in the world, “are given their due comeuppance,” my response is that of flying “into a rage.” Whereas that is pretty much the only thing I haven’t tried. I have argued, debated, conceded points, reasoned, made distinctions, offered to debate publicly, made jokes, and hired three necro- mancers to cast a spell on the Mississippi Valley Presbytery. Actually, that last one is just an example of the next to last one. And third, what Johnson calls a “scathing personal vendetta” is actually something else entirely. I have no personal vendetta whatever, although I do understand how some of my responses would be experienced by some of the more irresponsible brethren as scathing. I am reminded of the old political anecdote about Harry Truman who responded to a cry, “Give ’em hell, Harry!” with the comment that he just tells the truth, and they think it’s hell. So let me take that last statement, and edit it to something more to my liking. Compare:

1. Wilson carries on a scathing personal vendetta against anyone who dares question ANYTHING related to the views of the FV 2. Wilson carries on an effective rhetorical campaign against those who dare question anything related to the views of the FV, while refusing to allow any public and accountable cross-examination of their charges, such as would be provided in an arranged debate.

Why no willingness to debate? Still? Guy Waters, Gary Johnson, Scott Clark, Ligon Duncan, Cal Beisner . . . what about it?

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THE TRUE CHURCH WITHIN THE CHURCH APRIL 6, 2007 This must be national Green Baggins Day. I want to post just a few comments about an article posted at that blog by the Rev. Wes White. In this article, he critiqued what he thought to be my take on the visible/invisible church distinction. My position on the visible/invisible church distinction is represented thusly:

We shall deal first with the error of Rome, which is repeated in Douglas Wilson . . . that the word Church in the present time should only refer to what we call the visible Church. That is, those who are baptized and members of the Church are in the Church, and we cannot apply any other sense of Church to say that unbelieving baptized members who remain in the external communion are not in the Church at this point in history. (p. 2)

A bit later, in answering a point I raise, he says that I deny the visible/invisible church distinction. “The answer to these problems is not a denial of the invisible/visible church distinction” (pp. 5–6). The problem with all this is that I don’t deny it. I affirmit and seek to add qualifications to head off errors of application at the popular level. For example, here is one thing I said in my short essay on the subject in The Federal Vision: “At the same time, the historic Reformed terminology can be applied in such a way as to cause some problems of its own. While it was a valuable distinction, it was still not an inspired distinction. I say this while embracing the distinction, as far as it goes” (p. 266, emphasis original). There’s a robust denial for you. I do not take an exception to Westminster’s definition of the invisible church as consisting of the entire number of the elect throughout all history. That same roster of names, incidentally, head for head, will be gathered around Jesus Christ at the eschaton, on the day when the invisible church will be made fully visible. My phrase eschatological church is nothing other

352 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APRIL 2007 than the invisible church on the day she is made visible. Neither do I take an exception to Westminster’s definition of the visible church as consisting of those who profess the true religion, together with their children. That church corresponds perfectly to what I call the historical church—same definition. I call it the historical church, and Augustine called it the pilgrim church. The only thing that my terms seek to do is ensure that we work with these two (unchanged) definitions within the flow of history and time. If someone like Pastor White wants to take Westminster’s definition (all the elect) and reapply it as a stipulated definition to those who are currently regenerate, I am happy to go along with the stipulated changes to Westminster’s definition. Honest. But I do so knowing that this will cause some dislocations that we will have to iron out, and there might be confusion in the meantime. For example, election and regeneration are two different things, and if we bring a portion of the invisible church down into history (say, on April 6, 2007), we have to recognize that to limit it to those who are already effectually called excludes those among the elect who are alive on this day, but not yet converted. On another point, White argues that true faith is not seen by us because it is an internal heart thing. True enough. But that is not the only reason why the true faith of invisible church members might not be seen. In some cases, it is because unconverted individuals who are elect don’t have any faith yet. In other cases, most cases actually, it is because their true faith is in the distant future. They aren’t born yet. But Pastor White says that I don’t allow the word Church to be used in the present in any other way than the visible/historical church. This is glaringly, demonstrably false, and is yet another good example of how our positions are not being accurately stated before our opponents undertake to refute them. Invisible and visible? I affirm “the same doctrine” (RINE, p. 73). Invisible and visible? I “embrace that distinction” (RINE, p. 78). God knows His elect, and He knows them today. He knows the true Church within His Church. He knows which branches will still be on the tree at the last day, and which branches will not be. A true Jew is not one who is one outwardly. A true Christian is not one who is one outwardly. A

353 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APRIL 2007 true church member is not one who is one outwardly. I would apologize for not having made this clear before, but there are at least five chapters on it in “Reformed” Is Not Enough.

THE VISIBLE PART OF THE INVISIBLE VISIBLE CHURCH APRIL 7, 2007 On an earlier post, Green Baggins posted a link to his blog, marking a place where Andy Gilman had responded to something I had written on Scott Clark’s blog. Andy had responded to it on yet another blog, and then sent a copy of it over to Green Baggins, and so GB came over here and asked me what I thought of it. Isn’t the Internet great? So here’s Andy27:

Doug Wilson posted something on Scott Clark’s blog back in early January regarding the visible/invisible church distinction. Here’s something I wrote to another forum after that exchange:

Doug Wilson: [begin quote]. . . if you want to have the invisible church existing “in history,” in a way that is distinct from the visible church, then you are out of accord with the Confession. That is because the invisible church “consists of the whole number of the elect.” A partial number of the elect is not the invisible church because it is not the whole number of them. It would make sense to speak of the whole number of the truly regenerate at this moment of 2007, but this is just a partial congregation within the invisible church. It is a subset of the invisible church, not the invisible church itself—just as Christ Church here in Moscow is a congregation within the visible church; we are a subset.

If the invisible church includes the whole number of the elect, then it exists right now in the mind of God. I affirm this, as does Wilkins. If

27 Direct link to comment.

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you want it to exist right now in history, then you have to do something about the “whole number of the elect,” which includes current atheists who will be converted tomorrow and saints yet unborn. In short, you cannot have the invisible church, as the WCF defines it, in history. You can have a invisible congregation of the invisible church, but how helpful is that? January 4, 2007 [end quote]

Back to Andy:

According to the WCF definition, says Doug Wilson, the invisible church is an abstraction which exists only in the mind of God. “A partial number of the elect is not the invisible church because it is not the whole number of them.” To speak of anything less than “the whole number of the elect” as the invisible church is contrary to the WCF definition of the invisible church. Yet when the WCF defines the visible church as consisting of “all those throughout the world that profess the true religion,” or when the LC says the visible church is “made up of all such as IN ALL AGES and places of the world do profess the true religion,” Doug seems to have no problem allowing the visible church to exist in history, and to be subdivided. He seems to have no qualms about referring to Christ Church in Moscow (which I’m sure he will allow is not “all those throughout the world that profess the true religion”), as a partial expression of the visible church, without doing injury to Westminster’s definition of “visible church.”

My point is that the “visible church” according to the WCF definition is no less an abstraction than is the “invisible church.” If Doug is going to be consistent he will have to limit himself to talking only about “particular churches,” like Christ Church in Moscow.

But if he takes that logical step, then he should be careful not to talk about the members of his “particular church” enjoying “union

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and communion” with Christ, because, according to LC 65, “union and communion” with Christ is reserved to those who are members of the invisible church, an entity which doesn’t exist in history according to Doug’s reading of Westminster. It would follow then that “union and communion” with Christ is occurring only in the mind of God, where also the invisible church actually exists. LC 82 and 83 speak of the “communion in glory which members of the invisible church have with Christ,” IN THIS LIFE. So by Doug’s reading of Westminster, we would have members of the invisible church, a thing which doesn’t exist in history, somehow enjoying communion with Christ “in this life.”

And now, back to me: To review some of the essential issues here, let me just assert a couple things at the outset. I could cite numerous places where I have said these things in my published writing on this subject, but I have done this enough now that I think the average reader will just let me say them again. 1. I agree with the substance of visible/invisible distinction. That is, I agree that there is a “whole number of the elect” and that the word Church is an appropriate way to speak of these people. I agree that there are professors of the true religion, together with their children, not necessarily elect, scattered throughout all ages, who also should be called by the name Church. 2. In agreeing with the doctrine set forth in the Westminster Confession, I have said that the terms visible/invisible are susceptible to misunderstanding at the popular level, and that I believe the terms historical/eschatological captures the same substantive meaning and are not susceptible to the same misunderstandings. That is my point. Okay so far? Now, having said this, I agree with Andy’s point about the definition of the visible church in the Westminster Confession. It is an abstraction. But this does not hurt my point at all—it reinforces it. If my point is that the language of visible church and invisible church is clunky, how does it undermine my point to show another area where it clunks?

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Andy said this, “My point is that the ‘visible church’ according to the WCF definition is no less an abstraction than is the ‘invisible church.’” But Andy, Lane . . . anybody! Doesn’t this reveal that according to this definition the visible church is just as invisible as the invisible church is? When we use a descriptive adjective like visible, it naturally raises the questions, “Visible to whom? From what vantage? When is it visible? Who can see it?” If the answer is that only God can see the visible church, and this is what we have set up by definition, wouldn’t it be good to find a phrase that points to the same group of people, but does not mislead in this way? To define it in a way that combines the limited perspective of human eyes, but then extend it way past the point where human eyes can take it in, is, it seems to me, clunky. I say this while agreeing that the elect deserve the name of the true Church, the ultimate Church, the real Church . . . dare I say it? the eschatological Church. I say this while agreeing that there are people who do not have a connection to this ultimate Church, but who have professed the true religion and are attached to the Church in time and in history. Let’s call them the historical church. It seems to me the problem should be obvious. We could illustrate this problem, if we wanted, by speaking of the audible church and the inaudible church. Only God hears the inaudible and genuine cry of the heart, and hypocrites can join themselves to the church, and offer up their lengthy (and very audible) prayers. We are not accustomed to this kind of language, and we have to think about it. Isn’t it obvious that it creates the problem of vantage point? Audible to whom? When? Now if someone wants to work with the terms visible/invisible church distinction, and bring it down into history by means of stipulated definitions, that is absolutely fine with me. On these issues, I am not trying to grab anybody where the pants hang loose and frog-march them out of the Reformed faith. What I am saying is that these stipulated applications of the Westmin- ster definitions have to be carefully applied because the application is not nearly as easy as it looks. If the confessional definition of invisible church is “the whole number of the elect” and you bring it down to April 7, 2007, are

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you staying with the elect, or are you shifting to the regenerate? This is not a simple move, and missteps are common. That said, I agree with Andy that the visible church in 2007 is a subset of the visible church as Westminster defines it. But I would prefer to use words to describe this that won’t collapse when we put pressure on them. If I say the historical church in 2007 is a subset of the historical church generally, I don’t have to change definitions of historical in mid-discussion. It means the same thing throughout. But the visible church in 2007 is a subset of the visible church throughout all ages, which is invisible to everyone except God. The visible church now is the visible part of the invisible visible church, because most of the visible church doesn’t exist to be visible yet. But when I say historical church, it does not create these questions and situations, and, brethren, please believe me, I am referring to the same people. I just believe it is a more effective way to make the same distinction, and it is not subject to the same objections.

ADVANCED STAGES OF ENDUSTMENT APRIL 10, 2007 I don’t have a lot to say about the next chapter of By Faith Alone, other than that I enjoyed it. It was written by C. Fitzsimmons Allison, who also wrote a very good book that I also enjoyed entitled The Cruelty of Heresy. Allison is the retired Episcopal bishop of South Carolina, and so he knows a good deal about heresy—having studied it up close and in its native habitat. Kind of like those guys who live with wolves in National Geographic specials. Part of the reason I enjoyed it is that it didn’t really have anything to do with the current dust-up through which we are all in advanced stages of endustment. Allison proves that the historic standards of the Anglican church are entirely unambiguous on the question of justification, despite a great deal of learned and ecumenical mumbling to the contrary these days. And he also does a good job showing that “ancient pastoral wisdom and contemporary depth psychology testify to the reality that many intractable patterns and compulsions are symptoms of unconscious roots” (p. 105).

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This in turn creates a real problem with Romanist definitions of mortal sin—because bringing the root issues out into the open where a pastor can help a parishioner is to jeopardize that parishioner’s immortal soul by making that sin realized and conscious. Anyway, I refer you to that discussion, which was interesting. But the only way this chapter contributes anything to the Federal Vision controversy is by means of a hidden premise. That hidden premise (hitherto unproven, unestablished, but not unasserted) is that FV guys deny justification by faith alone. If that is assumed, then historical discussions of other bad guys who did the same thing become relevant. But of course, if we affirm sola fide, as we do, then the hidden premise has disappeared, leaving us with less of an enthymeme and more of a gap in the argument. But you can’t have everything. One thing that Allison commented on made me think of a separate principle that needs to be mentioned, and so I might as well do it here. This is not really an interaction with Allison’s point, but he provides me with a good excuse to talk about it.

Bishop N.T. Wright, another who wishes to give up on imputation, was interviewed in The Christian Century and stated that his studies had undermined his earlier views, and that ‘the big question about justification for Paul was not, ‘How do I find a gracious God?’ but ‘How do Jews and Gentiles who believe in Christ share table fellowship?.’ (p. 109)

One of the things that I have found exasperating in this whole debate is the practice of setting up dichotomies that are not really dichotomies. One of the points I made in Angels in the Architecture is that the medieval mind had a harmonizing tendency. This can obviously be overdone, and they overdid it, but there are times when you wish for that harmonizing spirit. For example, when I look at the statement above from Wright, the first thing I want to do is see them together. Why on earth would we have to choose?

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Consider the two questions: How do I find a gracious God? How do Jews and Gentiles who believe in Christ share table fellowship? The answer to the second is the answer to the first. The way Jews and Gentiles share table fellowship is by finding a gracious God. In fact, the first is included in the second. We can rephrase the second question this way: How do Jews and Gentiles who have found a gracious God share table fellowship? The answer is contained in the statement, and the two are intertwined. Unless we hear the gospel message of how to find a gracious God, we will have no interest whatever in finding gracious table fellowship with anybody else. In short, they are not detached questions, any more than the two great commandments—love God and love your neighbor—are detached commandments.

AND THE WINNER IS . . . APRIL 10, 2007 You should recall that some time ago, I invited contributions to a Federal Vision haiku contest. Rather than apologize for my tardiness in announcing the winners, let me just say that we all know that time is one of the tests of a classic. First prize is 15 clams off any purchase at Canon Press, which goes to Chris Witmer for the following two submissions. Second prize is ten dollars off at the same establishment and goes to Joost Nixon. Honorable mention isn’t worth anything substantive, which is good, because that one goes to Nate Wilson’s entry. Chris Witmer

You don’t resemble My caricature of you Because you’re lying.

SJC judgment The sound of two hands clapping Unanimously

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Joost Nixon

RC is aging who will assume his mantle? Bombasticity

Nate Wilson Cherry blossom spins dropping charges, elusive, brave debate partner

GERONIMO! APRIL 11, 2007 The next chapter, “Reflections on Auburn Theology,” is by T. David Gordon, and I would like to return a compliment in the same words he uses. My father used to quote this poem when I was a kid, and Gordon applies it to us. I, not surprisingly, think that it is more apropos when swiveled around and pointed the other way. “It is like the girl who had a curl right in the middle of her forehead: When it was good she was very very good, and when she was bad she was horrid” (p. 114). But in the version I learned, it was the little girl, not the curl, who was good or otherwise. Anyhow, Gordon has more polemical voltage directed at the FV than many of the others, but he contextualizes it in a way that I really appreciated. This is one of the places where he was very good. He attacks the FV through the theologian he considers to be the grandfather of the movement, John Murray. And he has some strong things to say about Murray, about which there will be more shortly. But when it comes to “actions that must be performed,” Gordon is positively judicious.

Rather, I would like to indicate that I think his view ought to be given due and serious consideration because of Murray’s stature within the Reformed tradition, and because of his otherwise orthodox views on

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most matters . . . I think we should discuss his views for a few generations. (pp. 120–121)

I also think we should always be open-minded about our tradition, and when an individual of Murray’s ability and stature suggests a recasting of our tradition, we should consider that challenge seriously for at least a generation or two. (p. 121)

And then, a few pages later, talking about the FV, he says this, and I think it is probably the most significant contribution coming from this book.

Again, I do not wish us to remove advocates of Murray’s view from Reformed church courts; in this I deliberately distinguish myself from those who views are identical to mine, but who feel the Murrayans must go. But I do wish us to be candid about his own candid disagreement with the historic covenant theology, and I wish us to stop regarding Professor Murray’s recasting of covenant theology as we do the drunk uncle, as something we cannot discuss openly. And further, I’d like to retain the right, after a generation or two of discussion, to remove Murrayism if we discover that his views are genuinely fatal to consistent federalism. (p. 123)

We need a lot more of this demeanor. I believe that Gordon gets some things really wrong, but he is not doing it in a lynch mob. And it is because of this that his polemical voltage is appreciated, at least by me. I can answer it, perhaps in kind, but neither of us is getting ready to slap the horse’s rear. Consistent with this judicious temperament, Gordon objects to the role of the Internet in advancing these discussions at breakneck speed (p. 124, 125). We can take his point without necessarily seeing the history of the dispute the way he does. He says “the Auburn men must accept responsibility for the controversy that has ensued” (p. 125). This overlooks the little matter of a “may God have mercy on their souls” judicial statement by the RPCUS, unimpeded by any discussion with the men concerned, which was then heaved by John

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Robbins, via the Internet, into the middle of the Reformed world, in much the same manner that a couple twelve-year-old boys might heave a dead cat over the fence into the middle of a ladies afternoon luncheon. Nevertheless, however he applies it, he is right that abuse of the Internet has played a role in this. I want to spend a little bit of time on a short list of claims that Gordon makes, and then lay me down and rest a while.

Generally, those who think they are working within a new paradigm have a tendency to dismiss counterarguments without engaging them or refuting them. (pp. 114–115)

Okay, where do I go to start engaging? I am resolved to do better on this. Maybe we could set up a debate or something. Gordon says that we insist on using biblical language only (p. 115), and then points out that our widespread use of the phrase the covenant violates this rule. The Bible speaks of covenants in the plural (p. 116). The problem is that we do not object to historic terminology, or systematic terminology. We do not insist on using biblical language only. We are fine with theological language. We object, however, to the language of systematics when it disallows the use of biblical language at any time. We are not strict biblicists; we don’t believe that we have to talk in biblical language all the time. But, and here is the rub, can we speak in biblical language some of the time? Gordon quotes Cal Beisner’s observation of our “anachronism of perceiv- ing the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries as influenced by the Enlightenment” (p. 116). That would be anachronism aplenty, were it true. But there is a stark difference between maintaining, as we do not, that the Enlightenment influenced the writing of the Westminster Confession, and maintaining, as we do, that Cal Beisner’s reading of the Westminster Confession is influenced by the Enlightenment. The former is silly. The latter is self-evident.

Calvin Beisner has additionally (if pointedly) criticized the Auburn objection to logic or careful definitions. (p. 116)

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Right. This is why I am the co-author of a logic textbook? This is why I sit on the board of Logos School, which teaches a year of formal logic to our eighth graders? This is why I am working with the Association of Classical and Chris- tian Schools, which requires all member schools to follow the curriculum of the Trivium—grammar, dialectic (logic), and rhetoric? And, to seal the point, I wish that Cal would carefully definewhat it means to object to logic. Gordon believes that Murray jettisoned the wrong things from covenant theology, and one of the innovations that he accused Murray of is the idea that all covenantal relations are gracious (p. 119). This is just breathtaking. The idea that all God’s covenantal relations are fundamentally gracious is, in the Reformed landscape, as old as the Reformed hills. In an interaction with an unobjectionable comment by Rich Lusk, Gor- don says something remarkable. Rich said, “the Mosaic law was simply the Gospel in pre-Christian form” (p. 119). To this Gordon responds by saying it is analogous to saying “early 1944 Hiroshima was simply a Japanese city in pre-nuclear form.” This is funny, but those who live by the analogy die by the analogy. For the bombardier apostle Paul, when he was about to drop the big one, was asked by a comrade, “Do we then destroy the pre-nuclear Japanese city?” replied, “Nay, but we uphold the pre-nuclear Japanese city. Geronimo!” Just one more. He attacks John Murray’s monocovenantalism with an appeal to Galatians 3 and 4. But please note. In responding to Gordon here, I do not share Murray’s view that there was no covenant with Adam in the garden.

Paul contrasts the Abrahamic and Sinai covenants and illustrates them at the end with the figure of Sarah and Hagar, saying, “These are two covenants.” (p. 120)

They are two covenants all right, but which two? There is the Abrahamic and the Sinaitic, clearly, but what was the form of the covenant from Si- nai here? Was it the covenant at Sinai as God actually made it, or was it the covenant of Sinai as construed by those who desired to be under the law (Gal. 4:21)? The Judaizers, by their self-righteousness, transformed an

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historic manifestation of the covenant of grace into a contemporary covenant of works. This is why they were condemned. Elswhere, Gordon tells us his rule of thumb for identifying Auburnites—anyone who speaks generally of “the covenant” (p. 116). The problem is that this would include the West- minster Confession, which plainly identifies the Sinaitic covenant as a manifestation of the covenant of grace. So, my questions at this point for Gordon would be these: did the Westminster theologians misread Galatians 3 and 4? Do you take an exception to the Westminster Confession when they identify the Sinaitic covenant as an outworking of the covenant of grace? Be all that as it may, in conclusion, let me say that this chapter was a good one in the context of this controversy. Gordon displayed a real judiciousness, mentioned earlier, and even where he got a bunch of things wrong, he was actually seeking to interact with FV stuff, and was not content with the kind of oblique critiques employed in the other chapters. If we have a couple generations, this kind of interaction could make real headway.

PICKING UP FEATHERS APRIL 14, 2007 Gene Veith comments on Worldmagblog here. A friend drew my attention to this post of a few days ago. I have included below a comment which I posted at his site, but I also need to say something here. Given the climate in the Reformed world today, and given how many people go to Worldmagblog, it is not possible to set the record straight completely. But something is better than nothing, and maybe the people who are feeding Gene bogus information will eventually regain some sense of shame. I wish that everyone who is so hot for Westminster would carefully review what the Larger Catechism says about the ninth commandment. Here is my comment from his blog:

Well, it appears that the damage is already done, but I might as well say something for the record. I hold to the idea of penal substitution as being at the heart of the gospel, I subscribe to the Westminster Confession and

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its views on the atonement, I drafted the NSA statement of faith which includes a statement which I will include below, and I helped to name the building where our church offices are housed—Anselm House. “Because all sons of Adam are spiritually dead, they are consequently incapable of saving themselves. But out of His sovereign mercy, God the Father elected a countless number to eternal salvation, leaving the remainder to their sinful desires. When the time was right, the Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross and was raised to life as an efficacious redemption for the elect. Thus He secured the salvation of His church, for which He laid down His life. And at the point of each individual’s conversion, the Holy Spirit brings resurrecting grace, effectually calling him by His power, with the result of repentance and faith.” It is a grief to me that Christians can be so careless about the reputations of others. It is not appropriate to walk up to the top of a hill and empty a feather pillow into a brisk wind. With the feathers all over everywhere, it is not adequate to anticipate problems with, “Someone correct me if I am wrong.” Okay, now I am doing that a few days later, when I first heard of it. Who are we going to ask to pick up the feathers?

CELL BLOCK E APRIL 14, 2007 I do have a couple of things to say about David VanDrunen’s contribution to By Faith Alone. First, he is guilty of continued misrepresentation of those he is debating with.

Although recent criticism of the traditional Reformed doctrine of justification has taken many forms, nearly all critics seem to concur in dismissing the idea of active obedience. This is true of figures associated with the New Perspective on Paul and the Federal Vision. (p. 127)

Second, when he gets into particulars, he interacts with Rich Lusk and Jim Jordan in such a way as to reveal that he does not really understand the

366 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APRIL 2007 ground of their objections. For example, when he quotes Jim Jordan, he se- lects a quote that affirms double imputation and rejects the idea of merit (p. 132). The issue is not imputation; the issue is merit. And you cannot prove that the merits of Christ’s obedience are imputed to us by proving that all of Christ’s life and death and life again are reckoned to His people. I affirm the latter, and deny the former. Those who want to argue that those who deny the former must of necessity deny the latter need to do something more than assume it to be true. Something like that needs to be shown. I maintain that it is possible to hold to the doctrine of imputed obedience (both active and passive) while rejecting the idea of accumulating merit. Third, I would like to raise the question of the relationship between imputation and union with Christ. This is not a particular point in VanDrunen’s chapter; what he was writing just made me think of it. Does God impute the righteousness of Jesus Christ to us as a consequence of uniting us to Christ, or does He unite us to Christ as a consequence of imputing the righteousness of Jesus Christ to us? Or a third option like neither—both happening together? And last, I would like to comment on a typical misunderstanding of the relationship of the new covenant to the law of Moses. Speaking of Galatians, VanDrunen says this:

In context, the yoke of bondage clearly in mind here is life under the Mosaic law. Remarkably, Paul has just associated life under the Mosaic Law with life under paganism, referring to them by similar terms (4:3 and 4:8–9). (p. 138)

At best, this is confusing. It makes sense to say that Israel corporately in the time of the first century was in this condition, and it makes sense to say that Caiphas was. But Zecharias and Elizabeth? Mary and Joseph? David and Jonathan? Isaiah and Jeremiah? Indistinguishible from pagans? And it makes sense to say that if any of the Galatians returned to this old Judaism, they would find it impossible to be an Isaiah, or David, or Mary. That time had passed, and to return to it was indistinguishable from

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paganism—that was what was behind Paul’s equation of circumcision to pagan self-mutilation. This is what the Galatian temptation was, and this is what Paul was writing about. But we also have to take into account (full account) the fact that Hebrews 11 is filled with a list of names who lived by faith, and who therefore lived in the liberty of faith. God did not deliver Israel out of the bondage of Egypt into a different kind of bondage. The Exodus was not a transfer from Cell Block D to Cell Block E.

WHY NOT NOW? APRIL 15, 2007 The next chapter in By Faith Alone is entitled “Covenant, Inheritance, and Typology,” and is co-authored by R. Fowler White and Cal Beisner. Their argument is ingenious, intricate, and, I believe, entirely unsatisfactory. What they are seeking to do is understand the covenant of redemption, the covenant of works, and the covenant of grace in their archetypal, typical, and antitypical relations. The end result is very complicated, but some of their basic assumptions are easy to identify and answer. And because this is an ar- chitectonic project, when those foundational assumptions are addressed, the larger argument is addressed also. The first is that they insist that grace must be defined as demerited favor. This, in contrast to the preferred understanding in FV circles, where grace is understood as unmerited favor. White and Beisner say this:

The term grace presupposes the state of sin and demerit brought about by the fall . . . Grace is favor in the presence of demerit of negative desert, that is, in the presence of the transgression of righteous requirements. Thus, to teach that the Adamic covenant did not differ in substance or principle from the covenant of grace is to compromise the Scriptural doctrine of grace. (p. 164)

There are a couple responses to this that are necessary. The first is that the scriptural doctrine of grace would have to include scriptural uses of the word

368 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APRIL 2007 grace (charis), would it not? “And the child [Jesus] grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom,and the grace of God was upon him” (Luke 2:40). This does not eliminate the legitimate possibility of using the word grace in certain theological circles to refer to demerited favor only. Fine. But surely it should be recognized by those doing this that other theological circles might have reasonable scriptural grounds for seeing it as unearned or unmerited favor? Without being told that they are compromising the scriptural doctrine of grace because they give it the same lexical range that Luke did? The second is that White and Beisner need to acknowledge here (which they do not) that the idea that God’s graciousness was foundational to the covenant with Adam in the garden is a common, historic view among the Reformed. Since they are writing to defend the Reformed faith against “redefinition” (p. 147), it would seem particularly important for them to note that their insistence on raw merit as a settled consensus among the Reformed is itself a fine example of redefinition. Numerous Reformed theologians, from the Reforma- tion down to the present, have seen God’s covenantal dealings with Adam as essentially gracious. It would be tedious to list them all, but I can if I need to. Next, White and Beisner argue this:

The Mosaic covenant was a republication of the covenant of works modified to be compatible with the covenant of grace. Specifically, the covenant of works was modified in the Mosaic covenant by limiting the application of the principle of personal merit to the retention (vis- a-vis reception) of earthly and temporal (i.e., typological) blessings by Israel and their king. (p. 167)

This is actually a strange amalgam of covenant theology and dispensationalism. In dispensationalism, the Jews are God’s earthly people, and the Church is made up of God’s heavenly people. White and Beisner have a more layered and nuanced view, and to do this they argue that the Mosaic covenant (as type) is part of the covenant of grace, but also that it was a recapitulation (as antitype) of the broken covenant with Adam in the garden.

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But to see the move from old covenant to new as a move from earth to heaven is problematic on a number of levels. At the same time, there are many issues and as many texts to work through. Whatever it is, the relationship between Israel and the Church is not a simple one. The pull of dispensationalism is powerful for a reason. In my view, the Lutheran take on this is similar to the dispensational one, and again, this is not intended as a slam. There are reasons for it. White and Beisner want to see limited earthly blessings in the Old Testament, apportioned on a principle of works. But they want all matters of salvation, however, in both Old and New Testaments, to be by faith alone. This desire to maintain the perimeter around our enclave of all salvific grace motivates Lutherans and dispensationalists as well. Whether it is seen as special pleading, or as what happens when you are painted into a theological corner, it is still understandable. Given that the subject is difficult enough, it is unfortunate that White and Beisner ramp up the stakes in their conclusion, by saying that their opponents hold to “no gospel at all” (p. 170). Now, how can that be helpful? I do not see works as the principle whereby Jews maintained their earthly privileges. I see salvation (in the heavenly sense) as being appropriated by evangelical faith alone, plus nothing. At the same time, I also see a faithful Jew appropriating earthly blessings by that same kind of evangelical faith alone, plus nothing. Without living and real faith, God hates everything we do. The first commandment with a promise was given to the Jews at Sinai, that it might go well with them in the land the Lord their God was giving them. Earthly blessing, right? But Paul takes that same promise and applies it to a bunch of Gentile kids in Ephesus. How were they to appropriate the promise, that it might go well with them in the earth? In chapter six of Ephe- sians they were called upon to remember chapter two of Ephesians. They were to appropriate this blessing the same way the Jews in the Older Testament were to appropriate all their blessings—by grace through faith, lest anyone should boast. How am I put right with God? By grace through faith. How do I earn money to feed my family? By grace through faith. How do I keep the weeds

370 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APRIL 2007 down on my three acres? By grace through faith. How do I see answered prayers? By grace through faith. There is nothing whatever that any obedient creature can ever do, in this world or in any other, in this generation or any other, in this covenant or any other, that is not done by efficacious grace appropriated by living faith. Ever. Period. For this doctrine of mine, I am sometimes accused of trying to undermine the doctrine of sola fide, which I don’t quite understand either. And last, to see the covenant with Adam as essentially gracious does not require us to then say that the Adamic covenant does “not differ in substance or principle from the covenant of grace.” This is a non sequitur. The latter does not follow from the former. Let me pick on my colleague Doug Jones, who is a swell guy. If, in his swell-guyness, he offers a book contract to someone who sends in a manuscript to Canon Press, and also, equally in his swell-guyness, he resolves a dispute with a neighbor over that neighbor’s dog barking endlessly at midnight, it does not follow from this that the manuscipt was written by the guy with the barking dog. God’s graciousness to His creatures is a given. This does not drive or predetermine the stipulated requirements of any covenant He might make with those creatures. It does not require that all His covenants must amount to the same covenant. It just means that any of the covenants He makes must be consistent with that gracious character. In this chapter, White and Beisner argue that the covenant of redemption (as they explain it, between Father, Son, and Spirit) is archetypal of the covenant of works between God and Adam.

This covenant of redemption, being pre-creational, preceded and was archetypal of the covenant of works between God and Adam. (p. 150)

This (broken) covenant of works was then a type of the coming (unbroken) covenant of grace. This is the pattern they are following: archetype, type, antitype. The way they are arguing here is almost a mirror image of the way Ralph Smith argues in his book The Eternal Covenant. The ultimate reality (for both sides) is the intra-Trinitarian covenant before all worlds. But Smith

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sees that relation as being one of covenantal love. White and Beisner see it in terms of strict covenantal merit.

The Father and the Son being equally God, it is proper to posit strict merit between them, and that is the case in the covenant of redemption . . . The similarity between the two is that God (in the covenant of redemption, the Father toward the Son; in the covenant of works, the Trinity toward Adam) binds himself by his justice to reward a certain performance. (p. 150)

There is no way to argue this point without making it personal, but I do not intend it to be personal here in any kind of ad hom sense. I take it as a fixed biblical reality that you become more and more like the God you worship. Idolaters become like the idols they worship (Ps. 115), and Christians who behold the glory of God in the face of Christ become more and more like Him. We are being transformed from one degree of glory to another. When we finally see Him, we will become like Him because we are going to see Him as He is. Now the good news is that all of us—White, Beisner, Clark, Waters, Lusk, Leithart, and even me—are worshipping the same God. When we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to laugh about this particular tangle we’ve gotten ourselves into. We will also laugh about how much better Heaven is than Ft. Lauderdale. At the same time, our conceptions of God still matter now. For example, many Arminians know and love the Lord, but their doctrinal formulations of what He is like still affects what they do here and now. If a doctrine is false, then true Christians can find themselves pursuing false ideals of sanctification in the name of the true God. All this to say, the idea of strict book-keeping transactions of merit at the ultimate level between the persons of the Trinity is an idea that is sure to affect how we deal with one another down here, and not positively. Ironically, the template of raw justice being applied by some to fellow ministers in the Reformed faith has led to a great deal of raw injustice.

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And lest this point be seen as a self-serving observation, let me apply it this way. Let me urge all my brothers on the FV side of things to layer grace upon grace in our dealings with those who allege we are denying, undermining and attacking the gospel that we would actually die for. Well, if that is the case, here’s the opportunity. Let’s die for it now.

I KNOW MY BAPTISTS APRIL 16, 2007 Well, I am done with By Faith Alone—done with the book, that is, not the doctrine. I want to deal with the last three entries in one post all together because I don’t really have a great deal to say about each one. John Bolt, a professor of systematic theology at Calvin Theological Semi- nary, defends the covenant of works as a necessary doctrine. The vast majority of the article was just fine, a perfectly orthodox piece of academic writing. In the chapter, he interacts with Anthony Hoekema and John Stek, two men for whom he has a great deal of respect. He also deals with some of John Mur- ray’s views, and he does this with a great deal of respect also. All of these men reject the phrase covenant of works in various ways, and Bolt is unpersuaded by them—and in this chapter he indicates his “own reasons for rejecting the challenge” (p. 172). I really only have two objections here, and they are closely related. The first is that in a footnote he says this:

While considerations of space and potential accessibility to their works by readers, along with my personal relationship with and respect for my teachers, led me to focus on Hoekema and Stek, their challenges, thankfully, are also free from the various tendentious theological agendas characterizing much of the contemporary discussion about covenant of works. (p. 172)

Tendentious means partisan or controversial. Since those who are guilty of such an attitude are left unnamed, we can only guess at their nefarious

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identity. But, given the theme of this book, I think we could probably guess right. But this is the oddity. In the previous chapter (also on the covenant of works), the concluding words warned us that to misstep on this subject lands us in another gospel entirely (p. 170). This is clearly bad in chapter seven, but here in chapter eight, it is okay to mess around with these ancient landmarks, so long as you do it in an academic manner and are not tendentious. So, if you are going to deny the gospel, be sure to be sweet about it. The second question is this: Bolt teaches at Calvin Theological Seminary and he doesn’t have other fish to fry? Now I don’t have any problem with sound conservative men going into questionable places and fighting the good fight there. Go, fight, winis my take on all such valor. But I do wonder about men who go off to live in the Louisiana swamps to fight alligators and whose published articles are directed against Montana mosquitos. The last chapter in this book was by Gary Johnson, one of the editors of this volume. And it may surprise you to learn that I thought this chapter was fantastic. My only complaint would be that the editors included it in the wrong book. The chapter title was “The Reformation, Today’s Evangelicals, and Mormons.” The chapter was directed at the current gooey definitions of evangelical in today’s theological climate, and how it has led (in the fevered imaginations of some) to the inclusion of Mormons among the ranks of evangelicals. My sentiments in response are summed up by ptooey, which pretty much encompasses Johnson’s conclusions also. Johnson’s problem here was the reverse of Bolt’s. By its placement in this book I was expecting a fight with the Montana mosquitos, but he wound up killing and skinning several gators. Well, okay. I am all for that. But what is it doing in this book? This is the mosquito book, not the gator book. The only substantive criticism I would offer is that on the last page of the chapter, Johnson included Wesley in a list of “our evangelical forefathers” (p. 204). But you can’t have everything. Even though he was probably referring to the historical development of evangelicalism, and not to the semi-Pelagianism as such, still. But maybe I am just a little jumpy. At the same time, if I were the editor of a volume on the deterioration of confessional evangelicalism,

374 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APRIL 2007 and if Johnson were to submit this chapter for consideration, I would be happy to include it. Good stuff. The Afterword was written by Albert Mohler, and I am just sorry about it. He takes the contributions of the writers of this book at face value, and says that FV represents “a repudiation of the tradition received from the Reform- ers” (p. 205).

The Federal Vision is gaining influence among Reformed evangelicals who should be least likely to move in the direction of Trent rather than Geneva and Wittenberg. (p. 207)

There is not really any pleasant way to respond to this, so let me just preface it this way. I think Al Mohler is a great man, and I believe he has done wonderful things for the church today. I really like him, and I like the way he goes about his business. I thank God for him. That said, let me present my credentials for what I am about to say. I was brought up in a Southern Baptist church. I was baptized in a Christmas Eve service as a ten-year-old at my home church, College Avenue Baptist in An- napolis, Maryland. I was surrounded throughout my childhood and most of my adult life by conscientious and godly Baptists. I was steeped in the baptistic worldview, and it wasn’t a dopey or hypocritical version of it either. Some of the people I still respect most in this world are Baptists. And despite great initial reluctance on my part, I became a paedobaptist around the age of forty. I am fifty-four now. All this to say, I know my Baptists. The dominant form of Christian faith in North America is baptistic. The thought-forms are baptistic. The cultural expectations are baptistic. And the influence on paedobaptist denominations has been baptistic. A large number of Presbyterians do not have infant baptisms anymore so much as they have wet dedications. So when someone like Mohler encounters a paedobaptist who has not been domesticated by the prevailing set of expectations for all evangelicals, his natural reaction is to think of someone who is Trent-ward bound. As I once said in another setting, I set out for Geneva (and have been

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settling in here for almost twenty years now), but a bunch of my American friends think that I moved to Rome. They can’t tell the difference between Rome and Geneva because both of them are across a lot of water and are way east of Kentucky. Mohler is further excused because a lot of the people telling him that FV is bad whiskey are confessional Presbyterians. Why should we expect him to sort out this paedobaptist squabble, and why would we expect him to side with the group farther away from his own baptistic convictions? I sure don’t. But we do need to notice how odd this is. Now I don’t want to say that these Presbyterians attacking us have apostatized—not a bit of it. But they have baptisticized. This can be easily shown—for the contributors to this volume, the differences they have with a Baptist like Mohler are minor. Who did they ask to write the Afterword? I can think of a multitude of subjects that I would ask Al Mohler to contribute a summary statement for . . . but this subject is not one of them.

REFORMED OR “REFORMED”? APRIL 21, 2007 Green Baggins is a website critical of the FV. While some of the standard issue misunderstandings are on display there, and the language of heresy is unfortunately employed too quickly for my taste, nevertheless there is an obvious personal and theological integrity, displayed in a willingness to correct things once they have been worked through. Lane (the man behind Green Baggins) has begun a series of posts on “Re- formed” Is Not Enough, and I will try to keep a discussion going as he does so. I would like to keep this more like a discussion than a debate, and maybe we can all learn something. He doesn’t like the title of my book, even when the scare quotes around “Reformed” are noted. And he caught a typo in the book—an instance where the scare quotes were omitted, which they certainly should not have been. Let me first make a comment on what the title was intended to mean, and then a statement on the context of its use. The title means that it is not

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enough to call yourself Reformed; for those in our confessional tradition, it is necessary to actually be Reformed. Now a central part of the FV critique of the broader Reformed world is that we have accommodated ourselves too much with the American baptistic tradition, and this has affected how we read our confessional standards (which do not represent such an accommodation). For example, a number of our critics think they have put distance between themselves and the baptists (as they have, some) by saying that the sacraments are means of grace. But they hasten to add that this is always sanctifying grace. The language of salvation is inappropriate here. The problem with this is that the Westminster Catechisms both ask how is it that the two sacraments are effectual means of salvation. And so, I say in this title that you are not necessarily in the confessional tradition just because you call yourself “Reformed.” That is what it meant. Was it a provocative title? Well, I don’t think you could call it provocative, but it was combative. I reject the charge of provocation because it was not an attempt on our part to start anything—the controversy was already in full swing. And remember how all this started. We had a pastors conference, of the ordinary kind, and we had absolutely no idea of starting anything. It was just the theme of that conference that year. About six months later, we were blindsided by the pronouncement of the RPCUS, and it was a jumbled theological hash of a pronouncement too. But one thing was clear—the bottom line was a “may God have mercy on their souls” kind of dismissal. John Robbins then assiduously made sure that the news was spread all over Reformed tarnation. We were in the middle of a firestorm created by some ignorant and envious men, and so, yeah, the title of my book was a challenge. I had just been consigned to hell for affirming a bunch of things I actually don’t affirm, by men who had never talked to me about it, and I knew for a fact that John Calvin’s twin brother would be run out of Joe Morecraft’s church for sacerdotalism. This was all being done in the name of being Reformed, and so I answered the “Reformed.” At the same time, the issue was not their doctrine. It was their narrow sectarianism. I know that the “TR” position has been an honorable part of

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the Reformed faith from the beginning, and I have no difficulty in fellow- shipping with such men, up to and including baptists. From our side, these are not heresy issues at all. But men who think that their little blinkered corner of Toad Flatts, Alabama represents the variegated richness of the Reformed faith need to drive to the nearest big city and check a book out of the library. So then, the strict TR position is not “Reformed.” The position of the sacramental Calvinists is not “Reformed.” The Kuyperian position is not “Re- formed.” But any subset of of the historic Reformed world, taking itself for the whole, is “Reformed.” The problem is not holding to certain convictions within the Reformed context. The problem is Reformed sectarianism, and when that happens, I call it “Reformed.” It looks as though, from the initial comments that Lane made, a good portion of this discussion will revolve around the question of sacramentalism, touched on above, so I will hold on that for the time being. The one thing I will say here is that my views on sacramental union in the Lord’s Supper are basically the same as Calvin’s (and as rejected by Dabney), and as articulated by Keith Mathison in Given for You.

JUDAS THE CHRISTIAN APRIL 25, 2007 In his treatment of my chapter on whether or not Judas was a Christian, Green Baggins does a good job catching the distinctions I was seeking to make. He hears my qualifications, and is willing to believe them. He says that he has no real problem with the chapter and had just a few quibbles/questions. One of them had to do with the passage in Acts 26 where Agrippa says something obscure to Paul (as represented by all the different translations). Was he saying that Paul had almost made him a Christian, or that he was astonished at Paul’s impudence in even thinking about it? I don’t really have a dog in that translation fight (which is a fancy way of saying I don’t know). What matters for my argument is that the word Christian is used by Agrippa, not by Paul.

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This issue came up in the comments section of Lane’s post, and it illustrates well the nature of this discussion. Even if my argument in this chapter fails (with regard to the use of the word Christian), we still do not have any distinctive New Testament use of the word Christian with regard to regeneration. For many modern evangelicals, the phrase becoming a Christian (in the effectual call sense) has sacramental status. You cannot mess with that phrase without getting in trouble—and that phrase is not required by any usage in the New Testament. I argued that all the uses in the New Testament were from a pagan perspective, or at least from the vantage of an outsider looking in. Even if that is not the case, there is nothing there that warrants a scriptural insistence that this is is what “becoming a Christian” means. In other words, I think our modern use of it is lawful and reasonable—but it is not exegetically self-evident. The other question Lane raises is about the distinction of benefits. I have two definitions of Christian in this chapter—someone who is born again by the Spirit of God, and someone who is baptized in the triune name. Suppose we have someone who is a Christian in both senses, and the guy right next to him is a Christian in the latter sense only. Do I believe in a distinction of benefits between the two? Yes, I hold to a radical distinction of benefits. As Lane pointed out, I use the analogy of marriage often. Suppose two married men, one faithful and the other adulterous. Given the fact that marriage (generally) is a blessed estate, is there a distinction of benefits in what the two men receive from their marriages? Yes, there is a radical distinction of benefits. And any “benefit” that the adulterer believes himself to have with this arrangement will be a benefit that comes back later to haunt him in the judgment.

SOME STANDARD MISUNDERSTANDINGS APRIL 29, 2007 I have been on the road, and have only now had the opportunity to read the recently released PCA report28 on the Federal Vision. This is just an initial response; more will probably be forthcoming.

28 May currently be found here.

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First, I appreciated the response of the Bayly brothers, which can be found here. And, like Mark Horne, I greatly appreciated the fact that we were identified as brothers in Christ. In line with this, the timbre of the report was judicious, and it looked to me as though the committee members did labor to understand us. But I also agree with the observation that the committee was stacked with critics, and I believe that this resulted in some of the standard misunderstandings. Here is a sample of a standard misunderstanding

Moreover, to affirm the Standards, and then redefine the terms used in the Standards, is not to affirm the Standards. For example, to affirm the decretal view of election, and then to say that the Bible teaches that the elect may fall from their election, is to set the Bible over against the Standards.

Well, sure. But this is not the case if you do not redefine the terms, but rather suggest an additional stipulated use of the same term, while not denying the first stipulated. If I say that I believe in the Westminster Confession’s red use of the world election, but that I also believe that the Bible in various places uses election in the blue sense, I am not maintaining that blue is red. This is not redefinition; it is an additional definition.

The Committee would suggest that the FV proponents have in effect provided an alternative hermeneutic for interpreting Scripture. They have done so 1) by concentrating their efforts on the “objectivity” of the covenant, 2) by stressing the “covenantal” efficacy of baptism, 3) by focusing on the undifferentiated membership of the visible church, 4) by holding the view that the “elect” are covenant members who may one day fall from their elect status, and 5) by highlighting the need for persevering faithfulness in order to secure final election.

This reveals, again, some of the standard misunderstandings (and yes, I know, another misunderstanding is that FV advocates constantly complain

380 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APRIL 2007 about imaginary misunderstandings. Nothing imaginary about it.) First, these five things are not a hermeneutic we bring to Scripture. They are, to the extent that we hold them, doctrines we believe are derived from Scripture. My views on the efficacy of baptism, for example, are not a hermeneutic. But notice that I also said, “to the extent that we hold them.” 1. We do emphasize the objectivity of the covenant, but not as a hermeneutic. 2. We do stress the covenantal efficacy of baptism, but again, not as a hermeneutic. 3. We do not believe in an undifferentiated membership of the visible church. For example, I believe the visible church can be differentiated into two categories, converted to God and unconverted to God—i.e., those headed for heaven and those headed for hell. 4. We believe that the covenantally elect (blue) can fall from their elect status; we deny that the decretally elect (red) can do so. 5. We deny that there is anything we can do to “secure” decretal election. This means that 3 out of the 5 representations here are just flat wrong, and the other two are fuzzed over with that hermeneutic business. Here is a more striking example. The report says:

Doug Wilson has implied that all baptized covenant members are participants in Christ in the same “strong sense,” writing that “the person who did not persevere was not given less of Christ.”

I read that and thought something like, “Huh, that doesn’t sound like me.” So I went to the footnote and found a thread on this blog cited, a thread called “Life in the Regeneration.” Here is the section they footnoted.

In order to take all baptized covenant members as participants in Christ in the “strong sense,” we would have to distinguish what is objectively given in Christ, and not what is subjectively done with those objective benefits. Perseverance would, on this reading, be what was subjectively done with what God has objectively given. In this view, the person who did not persevere was not given less of Christ. But this necessarily means that persevering grace is not an objective gift or grace. God’s

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willingness to continue “the wrestling” would depend upon what kind of fight we put up, or cooperation we provide, and because no one’s fundamental nature has been changed, those natures remain at “enmity with God.” In this view, whatever total depravity means, it is not ontologically changed, just knocked down and sat upon. The Spirit pins one snarling dog, but not another. But this in turn leads to another thought—eventually at some time in the process we stop snarling and start cooperating (if we are bound to heaven), and what do we call this change or transformation. The historic name for this change has been regeneration, and I see no reason to change it.

In this section, I am arguing for the traditional use of the word regeneration, I am arguing against a particular view (“on this reading,” “in this view”), and the PCA report here represented me as arguing 180 degrees from what I was in fact arguing. This is upside down and backwards. If they read that entire thread of posts, they would know that I believe it is incoherent to say that anyone receives “all of Christ” in the strong sense without receiving perseverance. This was simply sloppy. There will be more later, particularly on the nine declarations at the end of the report.

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A CLARIFICATION MAY 1, 2007 Green Baggins has come to the chapter of RINE where I seek to establish my Calvinistic bona fides. Some have interpreted the FV as though it were some form of Arminianism or semi-Pelagianism. So early in the book, I set aside a chapter to demonstrate that I wish that the Synod of Dort had promulgated a couple extra points so I could believe them too. The review of this chapter is fair, with Green Baggins mostly wanting to have a few questions clarified. So here I go. The first is whether I am a compatibilist when it comes to questions of free will. The answer is yes, if we are talking about creaturely choices, like whether to go left or right, or whether to pick this flavor or that one at the ice cream store. But when it comes to moral choices, I believe that unregenerate men are not free unless and until God creates that freedom in them by granting them a new heart. Second, when I said that God ordained us making free choices, one of the commenters at Lane’s blog was correct in assuming that I was referring to the teaching of the Westminster Confession at that point—that God’s ordination is the foundation and establishment of our creaturely freedom, not the annihilation of it. But I want to keep categories distinct. Lane appealed to the “coercive” nature of Saul’s conversion. And okay, I would agree that the new birth is “coercive” in the same way my first birth was. Nobody consulted me in 1951 about whether I wanted to be born in 1953. But we don’t normally

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describe that kind of thing as coercive, but it is clearly monergistic. And I affirm that as well. And last, Lane points to a place where I say that I am not denying the Re- formed faith—the objectivity of the covenant is the Reformed faith. He is right to catch me here; this was an unfortunate overstatement. I have said in other places that there are those in the Reformed stream who do not emphasize the objectivity of the covenant, and yet should be recognized as Reformed (Reformed Baptists). I should have said that here. I do believe that this understanding is the best understanding of the Reformed faith (which is why I hold it), and that this part of the stream in which I am floating goes all the way back. But I did not mean to say that there were not disagreements over these issues all the way back.

ED VEITH AND ME MAY 4, 2007 A week or two ago, you may recall we had some discussion here about a question Ed Veith had raised on his blog about my views on the penal nature of the substitutionary atonement. Well, he was doing some traveling, as was I, but we finally connected a couple days ago. We had a good chat on the phone, and Ed posted this on his blog as a result. And since I had commented on the affair in this space, I wanted to publicly note that everything is square between us, and that I consider Ed to be a fine example of a godly Christian scholar and gentleman.

NO REAL DISAGREEMENT YET MAY 4, 2007 Green Baggins is continuing his review of my book “Reformed” Is Not Enough, and he continues to do a fine job. In his review of the next chapter where I seek to establish my evangelical bona fides, he basically has one question that he wants clarified, and it has to do with my views on the “detectability” of regeneration. If you believe, as I do, that baptized covenant members can be either converted or unconverted, this sets up a very practical problem for pastors. If

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our task is, as St. Paul put it, “warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus” (Col. 1:28), then this means that pastors have to know how to watch for warning signs that a baptized someone is headed in the opposite direction. That’s what shepherds do. I don’t believe that any of us can prove the internal spiritual condition of other people with any kind of absolute certainty, and I have seen some pretty arrogant attempts. But at the same time, over the course of people’s lives, we can have evidences of their spirtual condition. Jesus says that the nature of the tree determines the nature of the fruit, and so long as we are not running our spiritual evaluations of other people’s hearts out to the tenth decimal point, I have no problem with prudent judgments in terms of those evidences. Paul says that the works of the flesh are manifest, and those who live that way won’t inherit the kingdom of God. In a similar way, godly fruit is manifest over time as well. My central problem with how many contemporary evangelicals handle this problem is not that they look for fruit to determine the nature of the tree. That is biblical enough. My problem is that the “fruit” that they look for is often radically unbiblical. “He’s a Christian because he threw a pine cone in the fire on the last night of youth camp.” “He’s not a Christian because I saw him order a beer in a restaurant last week.” Lane wonders if he has come to our first substantive disagreement in this chapter. I do not believe that he has.

MORE FV CLARIFICATIONS MAY 9, 2007 My apologies to Green Baggins for taking so long to answer his questions. I have been up to my neck in discussions with atheists. For the same reason, my answers here will be brief, and may come across like a laundry list, but I hope they will still be able to do the work of clarification. I affirm the traditional three uses of the law. One of those uses, that of convicting sinners and making them aware of their need for a savior is the

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use of the word law in the law/gospel distinction. The only quirk I bring to this is that I believe that the law is not found in one part of the Bible and the gospel in another. The whole thing is law and the whole thing is gospel. So I reject a law/gospel hermeneutic, but I do not reject a law/gospel application in the lives of men by the Holy Spirit. For a man in rebellion, everything about the Bible convicts, including the gospel. The message of the cross is the stench of death to those who are perishing. For a man forgiven, the whole thing is good news—even the preamble of the Ten Commandments is a promise of gospel. God is the one who brought us up out of the land of bondage. My beef with merit is grounded in its medieval use, as though it were a fungible currency. But if someone poetically says (or one of our hymns say) that we are saved by the merit of Christ plus nothing, I have no problem with it. I prefer to say that the (entirely praiseworthy) obedience of Christ is imputed to us, rather than that the merit of the obedience of Christ is imputed to us. This is not because I want to take anything away from Christ, for I do not. And I prefer to stay away (if I can) from distinctions like condign, congruent, and pactum merit. I don’t think it is a biblical way of speaking. At the same time, if you persisted, you could probably get something out of me on it, just as you could get me to come down on the infralapsarian/supralapsar- ian debate if you held a gun to my head. “Okey,” as a character in Chandler would say. “Infra. I’m an infra.” The next question is this:

Would Wilson be willing to affirm that Christ’s perfect obedience and full satisfaction gives us pardon of sins and the acceptance of our persons as righteous?

This is a simple one. Absolutely. The last question concerns of the “aliveness” of justifying faith. Lane and I agree that the sole instrument of justification is faith, and we both agree that this faith is alive, and not dead. But we do have a disagreement after this, although I do not believe it is insurmountable.

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Lane says:

My position is that it is not its aliveness which makes it fit for justification, although justifying faith is always alive. . . . However, it is not because it is alive that it is the instrument of justification, but because it receives and rests on Christ that it justifies. . . . By saying “because of aliveness” one has introduced a ground that is different from Christ’s righteousness. This is not sound.

Here’s the difficulty. I have no problem granting that the aliveness of the faith is not the ground of our justification, just as the faith itself is not. God does not look at the aliveness of the faith and say, “Good job there, Wilson!” He does not accept me on the ground of anything in me, including my faith or the aliveness thereof. But He does justify me through the instrumentality of my faith and the aliveness thereof. Lane appears to worry that people might get the wrong idea from this aliveness and set themselves up to boast. This is a mistake, I grant, but our ability to screw the theology up does not even slow God down. Far more people have made this same mistake with regard to faith than they have with faith and aliveness. But God established faith as the instrument anyway. When Lane says, “This is not sound,” I would urge him to defer judgment until after he has asked a few more questions. “Do you believe that the faith which is the instrument of justification is always alive?” Yes. “Do you believe that God looks on this aliveness as part of His ground in justifying?” Not at all. “Do you believe that a living faith is a ground of justification or an instrument of justification?” An instrument only. And I cannot for the life of me see how such answers even begin to threaten the doctrine of sola fide.

FVS, TRS AT PCA GA, ASAP, SHOULD READ . . . MAY 10, 2007 I have a suggestion. FVs and TRs headed for the PCA GA, should read, as soon as possible, the subject of this post. They should do this so that we

387 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | MAY 2007 don’t wind up with any new denominations with too many Cs, Rs, and Ps in the name. There is an old blues song that starts out “Twenty-nine ways to make it to my baby’s door . . .” Well, my friend Jeff Meyers has gone one better in writing a response to the PCA study committee’s report on the Federal Vision. It is entitled, in good, sturdy Puritan fashion, “30 Reasons Why It Would be Unwise for the PCA General Assembly to Adopt the Federal Vision Study Report and Its Recommendations.” In my view, you could summarily throw any fifteen of his reasons out the window before you start reading, and his response is still devastating. Anyone who is going to Gen- eral Assembly this year should have a copy of this report, and I would urge any such individuals to make a few extra copies so that they could have some to give away. One the “two birds with one stone” front, I recently became aware of a new Reformed news site. My link to Jeff’s response goes through that site, so take a look as you pass through.

ALL PASSAGES WORK TOGETHER FOR GOOD MAY 12, 2007 Before Green Baggins goes on to my next chapter, he had some follow-up questions to my last response. First, law and gospel. As I said, I affirm the three uses of the law. My position is this: when the law reveals to me my need for a savior, and prepares me for the gospel proper, that is part of the story of how God undertook to save me. The law that condemns, indeed, the very passage that pierced me to the heart, is now understood by me in a framework of grace. I don’t deny that Scripture contains many imperatives, and I acknowledge that such imperatives condemn those who are in rebellion and remain oblig- atory for those who have been forgiven. But if I am elect, regenerate, and forgiven, all things work together for good. If all things work together for good, then this means that all passages work together for good for those who love God and are the called according to his purpose.

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Flip it around. What could be more gracious than John 3:16? And yet, for those who are perishing, this grace is to them the stench of death. I therefore conclude that the law and gospel application is not a matter of different kinds of texts as it is a matter of different kinds of human hearts—law hearts and grace hearts. In order to be transformed into a grace heart, a law heart must be convicted. But that conviction can come from “law texts” or “grace texts.” And once the person is converted, the “law texts” that terrified take on a completely different appearance. In the comments, Chris Hutchinson asked when I was going to call Steve Schlissel and Rich Lusk on the carpet for their explicit rejection of the law/ gospel distinction. First, the fact that they have been accused of doing this in this controversy is not even slightly compelling to me. As I pointed out recently, in their report the PCA study committee quoted me as arguing for something that I was actually arguing against. I have corrected this mother of citation errors, and I will be very interested to see if that egregious error still shows up in the copy that will be distributed to all the delegates attending the PCA’s General Assembly. In this controversy, multiple accusations have been entirely unreliable. I know this to be the case with regard to many aspects of my own teaching. Why should I drop everything and condemn my friends simply because they have been accused by the same unreliable people? And secondly, my formulation of the law/gospel distinction seems to be a little strange to you, but it is kind of okay, you guess. And I guess I don’t believe that Steve or Rich would have any problem with what I have argued for here. With regard to the Larger Catechism 55, I have no problem affirming it if the language is taken in a straightforward, ordinary way. I am justified by Christ’s good work, and not in any way by my good works. But if someone said that this question requires that merit be understood in its technical, theological, covenant of works sense, then I would want to take an exception there. Lane says, “One must also deny the errors that attack such truth. This is an equally binding and equally important aspect of orthodoxy.” I do believe this is true. But is it possible to deny Nestorianism (which I do) while doubting if Nestorius was one? And it sometimes seems to me that Barth is not the best

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representative of Barthianism, not that I agree with either. If you want me to deny as a soul-destroying error the doctrine that sinful men can in any way contribute to their own salvation, I am happy to do so. If you want me to condemn Wilkins or Lusk for teaching that, you will have to first convince me of two things—that you got your facts right, and that you are above petty politics. I am currently settled in the conviction that with certain notable exceptions (you, Lane, being one of them) the response to both of these criteria of mine is negative. Your GA delegates are going to be rolling into a vote on this inaccurate report of your study committee without having been given time even to read, let alone digest, the report. This is why we have clichés like “the smell test.” For Lane’s last question, I believe that there is a practical distinction between faith and virtue, not only an abstract distinction. I am saying we can distinguish, but never separate. What is easier to distinguish than height and breadth? But if I remove the height of an object, I am simultaneously removing the breadth. I cannot separate them. To use the example offered by St. James, it is like the body and spirit, which are two entirely different things. But if we separate them, that is the condition that we call death.

A STACKED COMMITTEE? MAY 15, 2007 Sean Lucas has apologized to me for the tone of something he wrote about me a few years ago. He did this publicly on his blog (here), and given the widespread attention this whole thing has received, I thought it would be good to extend forgiveness in a public way as well, which I am happy to do. I am happy to accept his apology and am grateful for the way in which he extended it. I understand that he is not retracting the substance of his criticisms, but rather for the tone of them. Nevertheless, I honestly appreciate him coming this far, and am happy to respond as far as I am able. In the same spirit, I continue to express concern about the stacked nature of the FV study committee that Sean Lucas served on. If every member of

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that committee had publicly rejected the FV in a gentlemanly way, it would still be a procedural problem of the first order to assign nothing but gentlemanly critics to the committee. A committee can be stacked without being snarky, and at the end of the day, injustice is still done. And so that remains a central concern of mine.

MANGLE TANGLE MAY 17, 2007 I recently accepted an apology from Sean Lucas over a review he had written of “Reformed” Is Not Enough a few years ago. He did not apologize for what he had written, but rather for the way in which he had written—he apologized for the tone. I am not taking any of my response back, but I hunted down the review in question, and just now finished reading it. My problem now is that, considered in isolation, I didn’t see anything wrong with his tone. I thought that in terms of manner he was well within bounds. The content, for which he did not apologize, was a typical mangle-tangle of misunderstandings, and that created a tone of its own, one dependent on content. It was perfectly fine if he was right, and it was patronizing if he was wrong. Those misunderstandings were a good representation of the kind of prejudiced thinking that you don’t want to put on a study committee. Or, if you do, you certainly don’t want to put “nothing but” that perspective on a study committee. Be that as it may, I am still grateful for the apology and I still accept it. I did need to state for the record, though, that I don’t think an apology for tone detached from content was necessary. At the same time, anything that helps ramp down the level of indignation—on both sides—going into the PCA’s General Assembly is a good thing in my book.

THEOLOGIANS ARE FROM MARS MAY 18, 2007 I just now finished looking over a statement from Mid-America Reformed Seminary—“Doctrinal Testimony Regarding Recent Errors.” What a dog’s breakfast.

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The testimony is suitably coy and nebulous about exactly who the particular error-mongers might be, but they do refer darkly to “the present controversies,” “contemporary discussion,” “current climate,” “theological errors,” and whatnot. The most specific statement is this:

With no animosity toward persons, and recognizing that we all see as “through a glass darkly” (1 Cor. 13:12), we humbly but resolutely stand against the theological errors now current, propagated by certain teachings of what has become known as the Federal Vision, by certain teachings of what has become known as the New Perspective on Paul, and by certain teachings of other individuals and theological movements. (p. 6)

We all see through a glass darkly, but some more darkly than others. Here is the problem, and it is a glaring and grotesque one. Their testimony includes a “Digest of Errors” (pp. 17–20). This is a list of 45 errors taught by “the various proponents of the current set of errors.” I am an FV guy, right? I should be able to find myself in there, right? But out of their list of 45 errors, I find that I could be able to join them in rejecting 43, and maybe 44 of them. The “error” I recognize as a reasonable expression of my own position is #36, that of paedocommunion. The others on the list participate in overt misrepresentation, with varying degrees of high-handedness. The degrees of misrepresentation range from mild to jaw-dropping. This was an unbeliev- ably shoddy bit of scholarship. This was atrocious. This was violation of the ninth commandment with a chainsaw. I would offer to debate someone from MARS over this, but what’s the use? Does anyone really believe that any member of the faculty there would allow himself to be put in a position where he would have to answer specific questions about this “testimony”? I think I’ll save my breath for cooling my porridge. John Frame wrote a famous essay on Machen’s Warrior Children, and his central point about the travesty of Reformed fractiousness and bloodletting was certainly well taken. But I am having doubts about whether the word

392 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | MAY 2007 warrior is the word we are looking for. We aren’t dealing with warriors anymore; we have lever-pullers, agenda-setters, drive-by report-makers, schmooz- ers, politicians, non-argument-followers, and hide-behind-deskers.

TESTIMONY ON THE MARS TESTIMONY MAY 21, 2007 The official testimony of the Mid-America Reformed Seminary has a digest of errors. I stated in an earlier post that I could join with them in rejecting about 43 of their list of 45. But the reasons for this vary. In some cases, it was because I agreed with them in rejecting the errors of actual people. But in many other instances, I can only agree with them in rejecting the views of someone who would be in error if he ever were actually born. But I don’t just want to state this generally, and so I decided to offer a brief comment on each of their 45 points. My comments are in bold. Here is the MARS Digest of Errors:

By way of summary, the various proponents of the current set of errors, which find their focus in an erroneous and moralistic doctrine of justification, teach some or all of the following errors:

1. that a doctrine of a covenant of works is unbiblical;

I hold that God made a covenant with Adam in the garden, and Adam by his rebellion broke the terms of that covenant.

2. that gospel precedes law in the divine/human relationship before the fall;

I hold that the gospel presupposes disobedience. Gospel is good news in response to the bad news of our condemnation. But graciousness is not the same thing as gospel. I do believe that the standards of law are a manifestation of God’s gracious character. Adam enjoyed that graciousness before the fall,

393 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | MAY 2007 and the standard that God’s graciousness required of him had been made very clear to him.

3. that, before the fall, grace circumvents God’s law in this relationship; or that, prior to the fall, for God to demand obedience and righteousness from humans in order to enjoy fellowship with him is works righteousness;

I hold that grace cannot circumvent God’s law under any circumstance. I do believe that grace is the context of God’s law, but that is hardly a circum- vention. Obedience was required of Adam, but it was required in the context of grace. For a groom to turn to his bride right after the “you may kiss the bride” part, jab his palm with his forefinger and demand fidelity from her now would be grotesque. But to say this, as I do, doesn’t mean that I believe that her fidelity is somehow optional.

4. that God required only faith, not works of obedience, from Adam in paradise;

I hold that faith was required, and it has always been the characteristic of true faith that it obeys. The only route to the work of obedience required in the garden (staying away from the tree) was to trust God, believing Him. True faith and works of obedience are never in opposition.

5. that there was no probationary period or test of man’s obedience in paradise;

I hold that God permitted the serpent to test Adam’s faith and faithfulness in the garden. This would not have continued indefinitely, so it was a probationary period.

6. that the pre-fall covenant in paradise contained or implied no eschatological promise;

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I hold that the covenant in paradise did imply an eschatological promise—what Jim Jordan has described as an eschatological maturity.

7. that the stipulations and restipulations in the pre-fall covenant are identical to the stipulations and restipulations in the covenant of grace—namely, man lives under God’s grace, must trust or have faith in him, and enjoys blessing so long as he keeps covenant;

I hold that the means of keeping covenant (faith in God who supplies the grace to obey) are not to be confused with the stipulations of the covenant (e.g., stay away from that tree). The grace of covenant-keeping is not to be confounded with the terms or stipulations of the covenant. A man whose wife dies is free to marry another, and he is to exhibit the same fidelityto each wife. That doesn’t make the two women into one woman.

8. that the covenant of grace is not primarily about God’s provision of Christ as the Savior of his people but about each party of the covenant meeting their obligations, so that God’s grace and human responsibility are correlated: God must give Christ for salvation, and the human party of the covenant must meet his or her covenant obligations in order for the covenant to come to fruition;

I hold that God has provided an efficacious Savior for His people, and that salvation will come to encompass the world. This salvation is in no way contingent on our making it work. We will in fact meet our obligations, but this flows from God’s monergistic work, and does not contribute to a synergistic work.

9. that the covenant of grace is as breakable and precarious as the covenant in paradise, since its promises and threatenings are objective realities that await the human party of the covenant to determine which reality is subjectively appropriated;

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I hold that the covenant of grace can only be broken by those members of it who were not determined by God before the foundation of the world to inherit eternal life. For those who were so determined to that eternal salvation, the covenant of grace is a slab of titanium fifty feet thick.

10. that the covenant of grace is basically a divine proposal in which God offers salvation on the condition that the human party of the covenant repent, believe, and continue in obedience to the demands of the covenant;

I hold that this only true if we remember that God then gives to the “human party,” provided he is elect, the needed repentance, faith, and perseverance to the end.

11. that the covenant of grace is not a testamentary covenant or a covenant by testament;

I hold that there is no such thing as a non-testamentary covenant.

12. that the covenant of grace may not be defined as being made with those ordained to eternal life or with the elect in Christ, or with Christ, the second Adam, and the elect in him;

I hold that the covenant of grace may be defined as being made with those ordained to eternal life. I deny that we can say that it is made only with those. The Westminster Confession (7.5–6) requires us to believe that the covenant of grace is not an ethereal covenant, but rather a covenant made on the ground with sinners, including reprobate sinners. The administration of the covenant of grace includes activities that made certain reprobate individuals like Caiphas ministers of that covenant. But these individuals missed the point of the covenant, which is always Christ.

13. that it is wrong to speak of a dual aspect of this covenant;

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I hold that this doesn’t mean anything to me. Dual in what respect? Is this talking about the Mosaic covenant being a recapitulation of the covenant of works? Then it would be accurate. But if it is talking about the covenant of grace having two aspects in the sense that some members of the covenant were decretally elect and others were not, then this dual aspect is something that I insist on.

14. that the distinction between law and gospel is erroneous;

I hold that the distinction between law and gospel is healthy and good. But we have to locate it in the right place so that we do not divide the Word of God.

15. that the law is gospel and the gospel is law;

I do hold that law is gospel for those who are forgiven. The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. And I hold that the gospel of the cross is law for those who are perishing. But this just refers to the attitudes of love or hatred that the converted and the unconverted have respectively. It does not turn indicatives into imperatives, or vice versa.

16. that the use of the idea of merit involves a paradigm of works righteousness contrary to God’s covenant relationship of love for or friendship with man both before the fall and after the fall;

I hold that this could be true, depending on how the word merit was being used. But it is not necessarily true.

17. that justification entails only the forgiveness of sins, not the righteousness of Christ imputed to the believer as the complete fulfillment of the law of God;

I hold that in justification God imputes to the sinner all the good things that Jesus ever said or did, and that this is an important part of justification.

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And then I hold that God does the same thing over again, just to make sure. I would subscribe to the imputation of the active obedience of Christ three times if I thought it would convince somebody.

18. that the Reformation doctrine of justification by faith alone is false;

I hold that . . . jeepers, what?

19. that justification primarily means to belong to the people of God, rather than to be forgiven and accepted by God through Christ’s imputed righteousness to believing sinners;

I hold that this is a false dichotomy. I would drop the word primarily, and say as well as instead of rather than.

20. that justification is not to be defined by the idea of imputation;

I hold that justification is applied by means of imputation, which is the result of God’s legal and forensic declaration.

21. that not all so-called good works of believers are excluded from their justification before God, and so some of the believer’s good works are included in their justification before God;

I hold that if any of my good works attempted to contribute to my justification before God, then they should be slathered with bacon grease and thrown into hell.

22. that justification is by faith through its works of love or faith in its working or doing good works;

I hold that justification is by faith alone, but not by a faith that is alone.

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23. that the (non-meritorious) good works of believers are the basis for or determinative of one’s final destination;

I hold that this is just the snout of Pelagius, peeping out from under the wooly white sheepskin that he bought somewhere.

24. that justification is not by faith alone but by faithfulness, that is, by works of human obedience which qualify faith as the instrument for receiving Christ;

I hold that this sounds a lot like #23.

25. that Jesus Christ’s active obedience serves to qualify him to be Savior and Mediator, but this fulfillment of righteousness is not imputed to believers as part of the ground of their righteousness before God;

I hold that Jesus Christ is a federal head, and consequently, it is not possible for anything He said or did to be withheld from His people. All that He did, whether positive obedience or obedient suffering, is imputed to us.

26. that good works, or what are termed non-meritorious good works, are not simply the fruit of faith and justification but (partly) constitute the ground or the means or the instrument of justification;

I hold that good works do not constitute the ground or means or the instrument of justification.

27. that the good works believers perform are necessary for being accepted by God;

I hold that there is a difference between necessity and causation. Good works are necessary, but they are not necessary as part of the ground of justification. It is necessary for them to be necessary somewhere else.

28. that justification is incomplete, and that there will be a final or second justification on judgment day;

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I hold that the justification that occurs in the life of a person truly converted never has to be repeated or improved upon. But I do believe that there will be a final vindication of all God’s people. This second justification is not to be thought of as an improvement upon the first. But there will be an eschatological vindication, when the sons of God are revealed and the creation rejoices.

29. that the distinction between ‘the sign’ (such as the water of baptism or the bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper) and ‘the thing signified’ (Christ’s redemptive work) is false, since they are one and the same;

I hold that the sign and the thing signified are not one and the same thing.

30. that the sign of the sacraments is in itself the reality;

I hold that through a faithful use of the sacramental signs we are privileged to meet with the reality.

31. that the sacraments offer a different grace than the Word of God, such that unless infants and small children receive the Lord’s Supper they are being starved of grace;

I hold that all God’s grace is the same grace, routed through different means. And this means I only believe that infants and small children are being starved from grace when they are held back—as they frequently are— from all offers of God’s grace to His people.

32. that the efficacy of baptism is tied to the moment of baptism—that is, baptismal regeneration is true and right doctrine;

I hold that the covenantal efficacy of baptism is tied to that moment. But the regenerative efficacy of baptism isnot tied to the moment of baptism, as the Westminster Confession plainly teaches (28.6). Baptism, together with

400 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | MAY 2007 the Lord’s Supper, are effectual means of salvation to worthy receivers only (WSC #91).

33. that God’s grace is conveyed through the sacraments ex opere operato (by the act performed);

I hold that God’s covenantal authority is conveyed through the sacraments ex opere operato, saving some and condemning others. But God’s grace is never conveyed by any instrument ex opere operato.

34. that all the baptized, head for head, are united to Christ and saved;

I hold that this, taken as an isolated statement, should be considered a false one.

35. that some of those who are baptized and saved can (and do) lose their salvation;

I hold that, if by saved here they mean decretally saved, then this is incoherent. But if “saved” means united to Christ in a John 15 sense, then it makes good sense of at least that text. The only thing that is sure here is that you cannot have one kind of salvation, and then go and lose the other kind that you don’t have. That kind of impossibility cannot be accomplished, even if it would make the donors happy.

36. that small children and infants should be admitted to the Lord’s Table prior to a responsible profession of faith;

I hold that this is the only one on this list that reasonably represents my position.

37. that, unless covenant children partake of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, they are being spiritually starved;

I hold that children are being starved when they are cut off from all means of grace, or, when the one contact with grace they have been allowed (e.g.,

401 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | MAY 2007 infant baptism), is in effect negated or insulted by other devices intended to supplant the Word of God for the sake of some tradition.

38. that the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper imparts to its recipients a grace or blessing distinct and different from the grace of the Word of God and the sacrament of baptism;

I hold that grace is grace is grace.

39. that divine grace is resistible unto eternal damnation on the part of those who are elect, saved, forgiven, and united to Christ;

I hold that this is just crazy talk.

40. that the blood of Christ is not sufficient and efficacious in all for whom it was shed and applied, inasmuch as among those who enjoy forgiveness, justification, and reconciliation through Christ’s blood, some lose these blessings since they break the covenant and subsequently perish eternally;

I hold that the blood of Christ is absolutely efficacious, accomplishing everything that God intended for it to accomplish, including the securing of the salvation of those who are the decretally elect.

41. that there are two kinds of election—one unto temporary salvation, another unto eternal salvation;

I hold that this should have been #39. And I would have agreed with this one, just like Calvin did, except that the surrounding statements showed that this one was completely skewed.

42. that eternal election is conditional—namely only those are elect unto eternal salvation who continue in the way of covenant obedience and faithfulness, whereas those who are counted under the covenant and do not meet this condition enjoy genuinely saving but not eternally saving election;

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I hold that the MARS faculty are representing us exactly backwards. The decretally elect are beneficiaries of an unconditional decree on the part of God, which is the only reason why they are saved.

43. that being saved and united to Christ does not necessarily or in- evitably mean that one will persevere in that salvation by God’s grace, for his grace can be resisted unto the loss of salvation and a permanent falling away;

I hold that God’s grace can only be resisted by those who are not decretally elect. And they can do nothing but resist it.

44. that the distinction between the visible and invisible church is invalid, since each and every member of the visible church is said to be elect and saved;

I hold that the distinction between the visible and invisible church is just fine, just so long as it is not made to be the only distinction within the church. Every member of the visible church is said to be united to Christ in some sense, but this is not the same thing as saying that every member of the visible church is “in.”

45. that the invisible church refers to the church in eschatological glory.

I hold that the invisible church refers to the same group of people as are referred to under the heading of the eschatological church. But this does not mean that they mean the same thing. The church in eschatological glory will be anything but invisible.

MORE ON MARS MAY 22, 2007 Just so that you all know, I had a phone conversation this morning with Alan Strange, Nelson Kloosterman and Mark Vander Hart, all faculty members at MARS. While we did not come to any agreement, we began and closed

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with prayer, had a cordial and frank exchange of views, and intend to do it again. The only disruption occurred when my youngest daughter and son- in-law came into my office during the phone conference and handed me an ultrasound photo that revealed she is carrying twins. That threw me off my game for a minute, but the other guys were understanding and didn’t take any unfair advantage. Paul tells us that we are to be “endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:3). This means that hard work is frequently involved, and I believe that we should be eager to undertake that work with anyone who is willing for it. I have no intention of just slapping a happy face sticker on all this—the MARS testimony and my response to it reveal that we have an awful lot of work to do. But still, my thanks to these three gentlemen for a God-honoring conversation.

CHASING MONKEYS MAY 22, 2007 The fact that I am talking with our brothers from Mid-America does not mean that we should not continue to pursue the issues before us. And because this thing continues to erupt in public, we have to deal with it in public. As God gives opportunity we can have some “behind-closed-doors” discussions with the zookeeper. But the fact remains that the monkeys are all out of the cage, and so we have to spend at least some of our time chasing monkeys. So let me chase a particularly lively one for just a moment. Let me illustrate the ninth commandment problem another way. This remains the center of my concern about the MARS testimony, and why I think it is such a problem.

We affirm that the covenant of works and the covenant of grace are distinct covenants, and should not be confused or amalgamated, for the first covenant deals with man in a state of integrity, whereas the second covenant finds man corrupted, wholly depraved, and under the penalty of death . . . . (MARS Doctrinal Testimony, p. 22)

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Here is the difficulty. This is clearly applicable to Westminster West, and their tolerance of the recapitulation view. But MARS has not only said that the covenant of works and the covenant of grace are distinct, they have said they are necessarily distinct because of the spiritual condition of those with whom they were made. This makes it impossible for the covenant of works to be re-given at Sinai in any sense—how could the covenant of works be made with man “corrupted, wholly depraved, and under the penalty of death”? But this is what the recapitulationists do. So then, the doctrinal testimony of MARS is general enough to apply to NPP, FV, WW, and nameless others (NO). If the bugle blows indistinctly, then how is this a help in preparing for battle—if battle indeed is called for? When your adversary is not named, then there are only two things that the average pew sitter can do. He can conclude that it must not be important for him to know (but then why do it?), or he can guess. When he guesses, as many will do, he will frequently guess wrong because the MARS testimony names the FV, and then describes the FV position in ways that all FV men that I know would repudiate (to varying degrees). And that is a ninth commandment issue.

IS NORMAN SHEPHERD FROM MARS? MAY 23, 2007 Let us assume for a moment, for the sake of discussion, that the criticisms contained in the MARS testimony are right on target. This will help us set up something that will reveal (with a great deal of clarity) why the testimony is a plain violation of the ninth commandment. Let us also take the naming of names on page six in the most broad and charitable sense, which is that NPP and FV are not coterminous with these errors, but rather that they are “carriers” of these errors. Here is the problem, and it boils down to the relationship of Mid-Amer- ica to Norman Shepherd. Norman Shepherd has visited there to lecture, his works have been assigned in class (and not in the way New St. Andrews assigns Darwin), and he (most significantly) served for a number of years on their board. John Barach is one of the original Auburn four, and a graduate of

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MARS. He has Norman Shepherd’s signature on his diploma, and he graduated in 1997. It seems to have been recognized by all previous lumpers-together that this stew needs to have Norman Shepherd in it, and not just N.T. Wright and Steve Wilkins. It is remarkable therefore that MARS did not identify Norman Shepherd by name. Neither did they identify their own seminary as carriers of these errors as well. Shepherd’s previous connection to Westminster is not comparable, because he was forced out of Westminster as a result of a previous incarnation of this same controversy. But one of the places that “gave refuge” to Shepherd after that controversy was MARS. This was after his views became known, and became known in controversy. This is just another way of saying that MARS is in the process of changing sides and is trying to do so in such a way that no one notices. This kind of inconsistency has been seen before, and it is one of the central reasons for seeing this whole imbroglio as ecclesiastical politics instead of ecclesiastical reformation. Norman Shepherd has been used as a scarecrow in all this, but those who were previously associated with him in ministry have been pressured to simply back away. If they just drop their support quietly, then nothing so messy as public repentance will be required of them. Presby- terian & Reformed is now publishing attacks on the FV, but they previously published Norman Shepherd’s Call of Grace. And Richard Gaffin blurbed it. Clearly, MARS is no longer willing to stand with Shepherd, as they were once willing to do. But in this testimony of theirs, they did not even mention Shepherd. If this were a matter of biblical principle, and not politics, MARS would have started with themselves. This is Biblical Ethics 101. Instead they lumped a bunch of disparate groups together, excluding only the one citation that would have involved them in it. In their defense, if it can be called that, at least they did not cast the firststone. In that famous story of the woman caught in adultery, Jesus famously tells the accusers that the one without sin should cast the first stone. I take this as the Lord saying that whoever is without the sin of adultery, the sin in

406 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | MAY 2007 question, should cast the first stone. And they all, beginning with the oldest, slowly went away. So I have a very simple question for Alan Strange—and let me say again that I do appreciate his willingness to interact with me on these things. Here it is: consider this set of errors that you are attacking, and of which the NPP and FV are carriers. Was MARS in the 1990’s a carrier of these same errors also? If not, why not? In what ways are other critics of NPP/FV/NS mistaken? If so, then why was an expression of institutional repentance not included in the testimony? Why attack others publicly for doing something that your own institution did privately for many years? The accusation made against us is that we are messing around with justification by faith alone. This is not true, but suppose for a moment that it were true. If the anti-FV critics were right and correct in lumping all the carriers together as well, then this would include Norman Shepherd along with the rest of us. But MARS cannot afford to name him, because that would be too glaring. Too many people would say, “Hey!” all at once, and go off to look at their diplomas, and there would be Norman Shepherd’s signature, staring back at them in silent rebuke. They would then haul out their old class notes and say, “Huh. He didn’t used to be a bad guy.” We have no textual basis for asserting that this happened, but let me expand the story of the woman caught in adultery. I am not making a historical claim here, but rather trying to illustrate something about human nature. I do believe that Jesus was referring to the sin of adultery when He says that the one without sin should cast the first stone. I believe that is implicit in the text. But here is the expansion. Human nature being what it is, I do not find it incredible to believe it possible that one of the men with a rock in his hand had himself slept with that condemned woman before. And I also believe that he could feel terrible about it, feeling the pangs of conscience terribly. But that doesn’t mean that he would have the backbone to drop the rock and stand up to the vigilante mob around him. If the testimony of MARS is to be believed as a statement of principle, then I think that they must publicly repent of their own connivance with

407 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | MAY 2007 these errors, as well as repent of trying to sidle away from those errors instead of repudiating with them openly. If they are not willing to do this, then at a bare minimum, they need to withdraw their testimony as it now stands. The way they have grouped the offenders together is not just too confusing, it is too convenient.

SOME REASONABLE QUESTIONS MAY 30, 2007 A group of ten PCA pastors have written an open letter about the PCA Study Committee on the “Federal Vision, New Perspective and Auburn Avenue Theology.” In the second paragraph of this letter, these men say, “We are not FV men.” Nevertheless, they have a number of very reasonable questions about the report, and good reasons for saying “it would be premature for us to ratify their report.” You can find out more about these menhere , along with a link to their letter.

CHILDREN OF ABRAHAM MAY 29, 2007 In a battle, foot solders focus rightly on the conflict right in front of them. Generals don’t have the luxury of that simplicity, and so they also have to think constantly about the larger strategic issues. Great generals do not just think of tactics on the field, but also of the larger strategic issues, up to and including the geo-political ones. When doctrinal controversy erupts in the Church, the same realities are present. There are local church members and local pastors who find themselves swept up into a particular conflict that is a small part of a larger battle. They are required to be faithful in that conflict, and part of that faithfulness includes recognizing that the conflict includes their issues but is not “about” their issues. An infantryman in WWII France is trying to take a particular farmhouse, but he does not believe that the war is over that farmhouse. We have been praying for reformation in the Church for many years now, and I believe there are reasons to believe it is beginning to arrive. One of the

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reasons for believing this is the explosion of chaos and confusion. In The Last Lion, William Manchester described Winston Churchill’s participation in one of the last cavalry charges of the modern world. Before the forces col- lided, everything was distinct and in its place. The flags were snapping briskly. The sides were clear, and everything was magnificent. Once the armies met, there was complete pandemonium. Only a wise general could keep his head in that situation and remember what was actually supposed to be occurring. As I said, we have been praying for reformation in the Church for many years now. But what on earth made us think that any reformation ever came without making a glorious mess? When did new wine in old wineskins not result in wine all over the floor? The problem is this: when men build the tombs of the prophets there is a large measure of self-deception going on. They tell themselves that they are the true heirs of the prophets when their actions betray them (to the wise) as heirs of those who opposed the prophets. Christ took just one glance and told them what they were doing. The curators of the Reformation Museum want everyone to stay behind the velvet ropes, to leave the old books on their shelves, and coo over the wax reproduction of John Knox confronting Mary Queen of Scots. Then everyone is given a brochure reminding everyone to not try this at home. People just do this, and they don’t know that they do. This is a deep socio- logical reality, and all the wishing in the world can’t make it unfold differently. In this reformation, just like the last one, there will be the old guard, refusing to budge. There will be the defenders of the old, those who are willing to re- trench somewhat, introducing some reforms under pressure. There will be the magisterial reformers, with significant differences between them, outlining a vision for the future. There will be the sane anabaptists, trying to stay out of trouble. There will be the opportunistic lunatics, who set up some kind of Federal Vision wife-swapping deal. One of the earmarks of shrewd insight is the ability to see what corresponds to what. Who is like this person? Who is like that one? Who are the reformers, speaking the language of Scripture afresh? Who are the heretics,

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flaming with the rhetoric of reformation, but denying the substance? Who are the curators and librarians, custodians of treasures they cannot understand anymore? When the massive confusion of real reformation breaks out, how do you decide what to do? Simple. The children of Abraham will do the works of Abraham.

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GOOD STUFF JUNE 7, 2007 For those who are following the Auburn Avenue fracas, and especially those who are going to be attending the General Assembly for the PCA, I heartily commend to you Joel Garver’s interaction with the PCA study committee report. You can find that here.29

GETTING THE RIGHT LID FOR THE JIGSAW PUZZLE BOX JUNE 4, 2007 Now that my schedule has recovered some of its equilibrium, perhaps I can catch up on answering some of Green Baggins’s questions. On the law/gospel distinction, Lane says of me that “if there is any distinction, it is in the person, and not in the text, whereas I hold that there is a distinction in the text.” He doesn’t really want to argue this point, but I think there is still room for clarification. I am not rejecting a distinction between law and gospel, or between demand and promise. What I am rejecting is the use of these two categories as a hermeneutic. In short, the abstract categories of law and gospel are not to be used as an aid in exegesis. But I do not reject the application of Scripture in these categories, with due notice of what the text says and the spiritual condition of the one to whom it is applied.

29 Dr. Garver’s seven-part series can, as of September 2018, still be found in the May and June 2007 archives of his blog by those who are patient enough to wait for the pages to load.

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In the discussions about this I have not seen any attempt to answer the examples I have given, examples that show that the function or use of “law” can be performed by any passage and that the function or use of “gospel” can be performed by any passage. The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. The message of the cross is a stench to those who are perishing. If we have a law/gospel hermeneutic then we must categorize these passages as one or the other, but then we find God applying them in the other category. The way I am handling the categories allows us to see Christ’s words follow me as being either law or gospel, depending (Matt. 4:19; 19:21). So I affirm the three uses of the law, but I deny that the law should be used as a hermeneutical principle, whether conjoined with the gospel or not. What the text is saying can be determined apart from a law/gospel hermeneutic. What the text means for me cannot be determined apart from law/gospel considerations. I completely agree with Lane that the Church can enter into periods of declension (we are in a big one now), and that progress is not automatic. So just because something is “new” doesn’t make it good. I also concur with him that openness theism is just warmed-over Socinianism. Lane raises the question of what my point was in talking about nebulous tradition—was it directed at those who encounter sacramental Calvinism and assume (because of the sacramental efficacy) that it has to be the teaching of Trent. I don’t have my copy of RINE with me, and so I can only say I think that was my point on that page. I certainly believe this to be the case. It happens a lot. He also raises the question of the relationship between systematic theology and the exegesis of a particular passage. Lane says that it is dangerous to “engage in exegesis with no reference to ST at all.” I couldn’t agree with this more. For any Christian who believes the Bible to be inspired by God, and therefore coherent throughout, systematic theology is nothing more or less than remembering what the Bible says everywhere else when you come to study what it is saying here. Various forms of systematic theology are found in the Apostles’ Creed, Nicea, Chalcedon, Westminster, Hodge, Turretin, and N.T. Wright. No one systematic theology covers everything, and many of

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them get key features positively wrong—like a guy putting a jigsaw puzzle of a sailboat together, when he is working from the wrong box top, a picture of a lighthouse. By the end, he will be putting pieces in with a mallet. I would even go so far as to deny any antithesis between systematic theology and biblical theology. What is called biblical theology is simply a more refined systematics—a system with many more features, subtleties and workarounds. And I agree with Lane that all exegesis must be conducted with faithfulness to the teaching of the entire Scriptures in the forefront of the mind. When I say that a man is not defined by his internal essence, I do not mean to exclude the state of his heart from a summary of who he is. I simply do not want it limited to that. His family matters, his story matters, his baptism matters, his relationships matter, and so on. But of course, whether his heart belongs to God in truth also matters. My last comment concerns Lane’s question about my egg and omelet analogy. In this illustration, what do we do with the rotten eggs, the reprobate eggs in the omelet of the historical church? Doesn’t this give us a “scrambled mash”? Yes, it would, and this is where I would appeal to the scriptural pattern of multiple analogies, because, as we know, at some point, any given analogy will break down. Mine does at this point. The egg/emelet illustration is simply meant to show that there is an individual component to this, as well as a corporate component. The question arises as to whether there is any differentiation between elect eggs and reprobate eggs. Yes, there is, and my illustration (not being about that) tends to blur that distinction. At the eschatological breakfast, the best cook in the world can’t take the rotten eggs out of the omelet before serving. The best gardener can prune the fruitless branches. I would apologize for this deficiency in my illustration, but I think that it is how illustrations are supposed to work, so long as we use a lot of them. The scriptural illustrations sometimes really accent this differentiation (wheat and tares), sometimes get the two kinds of believers too close for comfort (fruitful and fruitless branches in Christ), and sometimes pay no regard to that differentiation (because a different point of the illustration is in view).

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For an example of this latter, in the parable of the sower, there is no difference at all in what kind of plant is trying to grow. Going back to my point about systematic theology, we have to remember all of our illustrations whenever we are using one of them.

LIVE IN THE HOUSE, NOT ON THE MANTEL JUNE 7, 2007 I am continuing to interact with Green Baggins’s review of my book, “Re- formed” Is Not Enough. When I draw a distinction between a law/gospel hermeneutic (which I reject) and a law/gospel application (which I accept), this is what I mean. With a law/gospel hermeneutic, each text is either demand or promise, and it is the job of the interpreter to find out which one it is, and then apply it according to its nature. Certain verses are the carrot and the other verses are the stick. Misapplication would be to use the carrot as a stick, or the stick as a carrot. Law/gospel application depends upon the hearer. To a “law-hearer,” the Bible is all demand. Do this, do that, do the other thing. Believe in Jesus. Get baptized. Tithe. Go to church. Be faithful to your wife. All that. The law-hearer receives all this as law. The legalist thinks he can do it. The rebel doesn’t care to do it, and rejects it all. But they both hear it as demand. Do this and live. The gospel-hearer listens to Christ say, “Follow me,” and it strikes him as a glorious privilege and invitation. It is good news. The ten commandments are heard as further grace from the one who brought us out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. And when someone is converted, they are being converted from a law-hearer to a grace-hearer. There is a transition from the one condition to the other. Now, to the point of Lane’s disagreement, now that a person is converted, can we make distinctions in the text? Certainly we can distinguish imperatives from indicatives, laws from promises, and so on. But now that I am saved, everything is contextualized within that grace. That grace surrounds everything, making it lovely. It is in that grace that we now stand. I can tell

414 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JUNE 2007 grammatically when God issues a requirement for His people. This is the vase of demand, on the mantlepiece of law, situated in the middle of the house of grace. And I live in the house, not on the mantle. And when we are doing evangelism, we will encounter people who don’t have the context of that “house of grace.” For them, everything is a stench. Law condemns. He would not have known what sin was if the law had not said, “Do not covet.” But equally, the glories of grace strike him the same way. The name Jesus gives him the creeps just as much as no drunkenness or no fornication do. The next thing is my egg/omelet analogy. Lane says this:

If Doug is willing to say that in terms of the invisible church, reprobate eggs are not part of the omelette, then I am just fine with the illustration. The corporate omelette, considered in terms of the visible church, has good eggs and bad eggs. The corporate omelette, considered in terms of the invisible church, has only good eggs in it.

Now this is where analogies get really helpful, as well as silly. First, I agree with Lane here, and I know what he is getting at, but would point out that this analogy doesn’t work as well as we might like. There is no such thing as an invisible omelette. But suppose we tried historical omelette and eschatological omelette? The cook is a master cook. In the historical omelette, we have some reprobate, stinky eggs in there. But this cook is so good that by the time of the eschatological breakfast, He will have snaked all of those eggs out of there. I trust this makes the point, but it is not a good analogy because ordinary cooks never get rotten eggs out of the omelette after the cooking starts. But that is not true of the scriptural analogy for this. Gardeners do prune fruitless branches. And the historical vine really has fruitless branches which the eschatological vine will not have. And the gardener knew the entire time which branches were going to go, and which were going to stay. On the point about Post-Reformation scholasticism, I went back and looked at my quotations from Joel Garver in chapter five. I am not sure where

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he has changed his views since then, but those quotations still represent my views. I do believe that the Reformed scholastics had to fight off a lot of bad stuff, and that they used a certain rationalistic approach to do so. This was necessary, but cautions are always in order. As I put it there, “Such lawful interpretations can require technical and high flown language. This is not necessarily bad, so long as we remember what we are doing” (RINE, p. 55, emphasis added). My concern is not so much with them, as with some of their curators.

A DOUBLE ORDER OF GOLDEN-BROWN BUTTERMILKS JUNE 9, 2007 A reply to some of the (very deserved) criticisms of the PCA study committee on the Federal Vision can be found here.30 The PCA will be addressing this issue at their GA in the coming days, and so I would urge everyone to pray that God would protect that denomination from an act of theological folly and high-handedness. I am not going to interact with the “humble answers” seriatim, but I do want to say one thing about how they answered the most glaring problem with the study committee—that being the stacked nature of the committee. To put it in terms that the average layman can follow, that committee was as stacked as a double order of golden-brown buttermilks. Read the answer to this charge and try to read it out loud without laugh- ing. Here you go.

First, it has been suggested that the composition of the Committee was unfairly weighted. On the contrary, the Committee represents a broad range of thought within the PCA, bringing together many who have in the past disagreed on less essential (though important) issues. These seven elders are from seven different presbyteries and have between them served faithfully in at least 20 different churches across the PCA. One is a former moderator of the PCA, another is the Vice President for Academics of our denominational seminary, and a third, the chairman,

30 Thisblog was closed after the GA.

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was an active member of the Presbyterian Pastoral Leadership Network (PPLN) that spearheaded the passing of the “Good Faith Subscription” amendment. Three others are faithful and active ruling elders that have served the PCA in a variety of capacities. This broad composition highlights the tremendous opportunity for different “camps” across the PCA to join together at the 35th General Assembly to reaffirm what unites us most as a church: the centrality of God’s grace in all of salvation. Further, such accusations reveal a mistrust of the motives of the Committee and the denomination’s moderator, who has faithfully served our church, beginning in the RPCES, for over 35 years, including service as the editor of the PCA’s news website. This is a form of ad hominem and does not address the substance of the report itself, nor the report’s nine clear declarations which represent straightforward readings of the Westminster Standards with which few could disagree.

Here, allow me to translate. Charge: the committee assigned to investi- gate the issue of the Federal Vision was stacked so that there would be no one representing FV concerns on committee, and hence there would be no minority report. Reply: on the contrary, the seven men on that committee are a walking embodiment of diversity. They live in different towns, they order different entrees at restaurants, and, after checking, we discovered that none of them have the same make of automobile. Thus, the ad hominem charge that this committee was stacked against the Federal Vision is a charge that stands both confounded and abashed. We hope, dear reader, that we can get past this nonsense. Well, it is kind of hard to get past it so long as you continue to roll around in it.

THAT HE’D BEEN IN HIS BUNK BELOW JUNE 11, 2007 I read on Reformed News that Sam Duncan, former moderator of the PCA, has provided a summary of the FV in preparation for the big doings at the

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General Assembly of the PCA this week. But before I start in on my war dance, let me just say that you ought to check out Reformed News far more often than you do. Anyhow, Sam Duncan’s summary can be found here. Let me just record and interact with a handful sample quotations. But before I do, let me just say, as a general point, that this is just freaking unbelievable.

The business that comes before the Assembly will be highlighted by discussions of the Federal Vision, New Perspectives (on Paul), and Auburn Avenue theologies (the “Federal Vision”).

Three problematic positions are listed here, the FV, the NPP, and the AA theologies, or, lumping them all together, “Federal Vision” for short. Never mind that FV and AA can’t be anything but lumped together, being synonymous and all. And then another set of issues entirely, the NPP, is thrown in to add a little stickiness to this doctrinal taffy pull that we have going on here.

For the layman, who is not familiar with this topic, the Federal Vision basically teaches that membership in a local church makes one elect; once one is elect, his salvation may be lost; baptism results in regeneration; and justification is achieved through both faith and good works.

Let me just say that there is a difference between holding to the five points of historic Calvinism, which I do, and holding to the five talking points of Calvinism. For a representative sample of latter, just check out the quotation we just retrieved our left rubber boot from. There are four substantive claims being made here about the FV, and all of them, one hundred percent of them, are, as the French say, le wrong. According to us’ns, decretal election is dependent in no way on membership in a local church. We are talking about decretal election, right? Decretal election cannot be lost, period. Baptism does not result ex opere quasimodo in personal regeneration. And our justification is not

418 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JUNE 2007 in any way “achieved” by any personal characteristics, ethical decisions, moral contributions, or boyish smiles we might try to come up with. We have gotten to the point in this controversy where this kind of summary leaves us with only two options for understanding what is being said. Either we are dealing with (as the papists would put it) invincible ignorance, or we are dealing with a willful determination to shatter the ninth commandment. If this is the kind of reasoning that is going to be the guide for the men at the PCA helm, it will soon become apparent to the world that they are steering by the mast in front of them, and not by the North Star at all.

The Federal Vision, many believe, takes election out of the hands of the Lord and places it on man’s shoulders.

“Many believe” this, do they? I have what might appear to be an imperti- nent question, but it seems to me to be relevant. The “many” who believe this, and I hesitate to make such a gauche appeal to an old-fashioned concept like this, but, are they right?

This is to be contrasted with the Federal Vision’s teachings that an individual’s good works and his faith are required for one to be justified.

I scarcely know how to start. I am not going to refute this. I will describe it. Breath-taking. High-handed. Pole-axing. Serpentine. Devious. Wrong. “Who is at the helm of the PCA?” This was a question tellingly raised on a listserv I am on, and the good folks who raised it set a train of thought in motion that made me remember a song I learned as a child.

A capital ship for an ocean trip was the Walloping Window Blind. No wind that blew dismayed her crew or troubled the captain’s mind. The man at the wheel was made to feel contempt for the wildest blow, Though it oft appeared when the gale had cleared That he’d been in his bunk below.

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There was one other item that I thought needed a comment.

Other business that will come before the Assembly will be in the form of Overtures to change our Book of Church Order or requests to take other actions. This year, the Assembly will consider requests to . . . recognize the 500th anniversary of John Calvin’s birth in 2009.

I suggest that on this last item there needs to be a rider that says something like, “honoring a worthy man of God, while eschewing his sacramentalism, his views on regeneration, the Church, and temporary election, all of which have helped create the FV mess that we have just now cleaned up. Calvin, however worthy he might be of receiving a shiny prophet’s tomb, is, at least according to some, at the heart of all this trouble.”

A CAREER MOVE? JUNE 11, 2007 I just got an email from my son-in-law Ben, to whom the credit for this insight belongs. He was responding to the current PCA embarrassment and, here . . . let him talk:

I was thinking about how for the last generation the thing that has always been presbyterianism’s real strength has been its intellectualism. Liberals could be intellectuals but unorthodox, and evangelicals could be orthodox but were always goofy. The Reformed always managed to be orthodox and intellectually engaging. But with the death of Falwell and the retirement of that generation of evangelicalism, it seems like our presbyterians, with their willful ignorance on the FV issue, are shifting over to take the place of orthodox shallow thinkers. If that happens it is going to leave a real vacuum for orthodox believers looking for challenging thinkers . . .

This is a new angle for me. Perhaps these men are doing all this because they are applying for another job opening entirely. What Jim Jordan refers to

420 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JUNE 2007 as the closing of the Calvinistic mind may not be theological Alzheimer’s. It might be a career move.

PCA AT THE CROSSROADS JUNE 13, 2007 Please be praying for the PCA. This afternoon they will be considering the Federal Vision issue. Or, more accurately, they will be considering what some people deem to be the Federal Vision issue. Unfortunately, depending on the outcome, there are accurate names connected to inaccurate summaries of doctrine, and so this really is a crossroads for the PCA. There are enough genuine doctrinal issues involved in this controversy that it could have been a doctrinal choice. But because the choice has come to this point in the way it has, the choice is actually between nativism and catholicity. There are (at least) two ways to get rid of heretics from a denomination. One is to study the issues, grasp them, determine if your opponents are actually teaching them, and then make the decision. The other is generate some slogans, doggedly persevere with those slogans (“that’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it”), pull some levers, stack some committees, and then ban anyone who has read a book by N.T. Wright without glowering the entire time. There may not be fireworks this afternoon, but this is a really big deal. Pray that God would protect the PCA from nativism.

GOLD IS HEAVY AND HARD TO CARRY JUNE 13, 2007 By now all those who have been following the Federal Vision situation in the PCA will have heard that the General Assembly of the PCA approved the report by the study committee. That was not what we were praying for, and so I thought I needed to make just a couple of brief comments here. First, I would encourage everyone associated with the FV to take care that they not speak publicly about this out of frustration, exasperation, fear or anger. The situation will still be here in a couple days, and calm heads will be better at figuring out what to do then than hot heads will be now. As I

421 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JUNE 2007 sometimes tell people in counseling situations, there is no situation so bad but that you can’t make it worse. Second, I think it would be spiritually healthy for us on our side of the line to ask for God’s particular blessing to fall on some of the men who were instrumental in getting this report accepted—R.C. Sproul, Lig Duncan, et al. As my father has taught me, God requires us to love our neighbors, our wives, all men, and our enemies. The chances are excellent that anyone we can think of is covered by at least one of those categories. If Christ can tell us to bless those who despitefully use us, then how much more should we be able to see our way to bless brothers in Christ who thought they were doing nothing more than affirming sola fide? And last, Jesus the Lord is not only sovereign over the details of each of our individual lives, He is also sovereign over the course of all history. He is the Head of the Church, and so this includes church history, which in its turn includes denominational histories. If we are His servants, and we are, then we can trust Him with what He is doing here. Someone once said that the advancement of the kingdom of God is a long series of spectacular victories cleverly disguised as disasters. In our local church, here at Christ Church, when I became a paedobaptist in the early nineties, some of the things that happened in that mess were among the most difficult events of my life. But looking back at them, I can see now that I did not have the eyes to see exactly how much God was blessing our congregation. In other words, the greatest trials were the greatest blessings. Gold is heavy and hard to carry. This is God’s way, and He loves to do it this way. We do not know what the future holds, as the hymn says, but we know who holds the future.

CONTRA MUNDUM? JUNE 18, 2007 Contra mundum is a nice slogan if you can get it. I have been watching some of the internet discussion in the aftermath of the PCA decision at GA, and I decided I needed to say a little something about the following argument: “All these venerable alphabet combinations have condemned the Federal

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Vision—URC, OPC, RPCNA, PCA, GM, NATO, and countless others— and still you guys whine and complain. What makes you think that the entire world has failed to comprehend what you guys are saying? Hey?” The use of this argument, with virtually no self-awareness at all, is actually an argument in favor of another observation I have made about all this. Those who go by the nickname TR are actually curators of the Reformed mausoleum, and not scholars in the Reformed tradition. The way we can tell this is that—in defense of keeping the marble floors of their mausoleum polished and shiny—they deploy Eck’s argument against Luther. Their blood stirs when they hear the story about Athanasius saying that he was contra mundum because they really like that kind of thing when is it behind glass in the museum of church history. But when someone actually stands up against the living and breathing ecclesiastical Mitred Ones, they haul this argument out as shamelessly as a theologian who thinks he is supposed to have an infallible magisterium. And they do this against people who they say are trying to “lead them to down the road Rome.” But how can you lead people to Rome when they are already there?

NO APPEAL TO SCRIPTURE JUNE 19, 2007 My (hopefully helpful) interactions with Green Baggins continue apace. This segment includes his response to a recent post of mine (on Eck’s argument against Luther), as well as our continued interaction as he works his way through my book, “Reformed” Is Not Enough. This should not have to be too long a post because I think I can answer the questions he has posed without a lot of explanation. The question raised by my Eck argument was this: am I seriously saying that tight-shoed Calvinists are on a doctrinal par with Roman Catholics? Was I talking about the content of the Establishment’s doctrine, that which always motivates them to clamp-down down on the courageous dissidents? Now, there is always the possibility of rhetorical overstatement with Wil- son, and I hope he will clarify this point. Maybe he is only claiming that

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the method of argumentation tends towards ossification, and not the actual doctrinal content. Whaddaya mean, “rhetorical overstatement?” Most of the time I am holding back. And, all kidding aside, Lane is starting to read me pretty well. I was talking about the method of argumentation, and not the actual content. This does not mean that this is unrelated to content, but that was not my point there. But the relationship to content is this: when a church begins defending itself by means other than the assigned scriptural means, then in my book the content is not really being defended. The Roman Catholic church still teaches a great deal of truth (Trinity, Incarnation, etc.), but the methods they allow in arriving at some of their errors are a standing threat in principle to the truths that remain. The same thing is true about ossified Reformed denominations. The apostasy from the central content may still be centuries off—but when an ecclesiastical culture defends its traditions by raw authority, minimal debate, one-sided investigations, no appeal to Scripture, and so on, all the godly content that remains in their confessions is certainly vulnerable and exposed. I say this as someone who subscribes, in good faith, to the Westminster Confes- sion, holding to it with rowdy enthusiasm. But Lane is correct. I was not saying that those Reformed folk who did this thing deny the truth of the Confessions, or that they have embraced heretical doctrines. I am saying that they have adopted a means of defending their Confession that is at odds with the content of the Confession itself, and hence they will not be able sustain a defense of the Confession over any extended period of time. If there are any leading lights in the PCA who are able to defend the truths of the Reformation against those who contradict it (as it is claimed we in the FV do) by means of open debate, relevant interaction, and appeal to Scripture, this controversy has not revealed their names to us. A stacked committee, followed by time for debate on the floor of GA that could be measured in minutes. What a joke. I am on the road, and don’t have my copy of RINE with me, so I don’t think I can answer as specifically as Lane might like (with page numbers and everything), but I think I can answer his questions about this section of the book.

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First, I do believe in a continued “first use” of the law for Christians. We are constantly in need of re-learning why we need a Savior. Lane goes on to anticipate a disagreement here, because he is right that I do believe that, for believers, everything is contextualized in ultimate grace. I don’t buy the “equal ultimacy” of grace and law. But I do believe that law is grounded in the character of God, and am not trying to denigrate it in any way. Grace has a backbone, and that backbone is law. I agree (partly) with Lane that grace and law “are both equally ultimate . . .in Christ, the Law-Keeper and Grace-Giv- er.” Of course, Christ is the Law-Keeper, and of course, He is the Grace-Giv- er. That is where we agree. We differ because I think they are obviously not equally ultimate. Christ giving grace is grace. And Christ keeping the law is also grace—He didn’t have to do that, and He gave it to us anyway. His grace is grace, and His obedience is grace. There is nothing in the life of a believer that cannot be reduced to grace, within two or three steps. We then come to Lane raising the question about my views of Reformed scholasticism. I went back and looked, and this is what I previously said. On the point about Post-Reformation scholasticism, I went back and looked at my quotations from Joel Garver in chapter five. I am not sure where he has changed his views since then, but those quotations still represent my views. I do believe that the Reformed scholastics had to fight off a lot of bad stuff, and that they used a certain rationalistic approach to do so. This was necessary, but cautions are always in order. As I put it there, “Such lawful interpretations can require technical and high-flown language. This is not necessarily bad, so long as we remember what we are doing” (RINE, p. 55, emphasis added). My concern is not so much with them, as with some of their curators. Lane responds to this by asking (quite respectfully) if I have read and interacted with Muller on this. The answer there is (with equal respect) that I have not. I have Muller’s big monga-set but haven’t read it yet. I have read and appreciated his work elsewhere, and I guess I am not quite sure how the sentiments I expressed above would differ with how Lane is representing him here. I don’t believe that the Reformed scholastics were rationalists, but I also believe that the apostle Paul would have been quite amused with any

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detailed displays of Ramian logic. But I don’t even believe that it is bad to use that kind of logic, just so long (as I noted above) as you remember where you are and what you are doing. And that Ephesians and Second Kings weren’t written that way. Lane stated the principle this way: “No one can state a position with authority on this question unless he has read Muller and interacted with his arguments.” I think this would be reasonable to apply to someone who was setting up challenge someone of Muller’s stature. But I don’t see myself as doing that. And so my question to Lane would be—does this same high threshold apply to critics of the FV? Should those hundreds of men who were simply voting on something that many of them had barely heard of, and were doing so because RC Sproul said that sola fideshouldn’t be up for grabs, did they meet this threshold of yours? The last issue is where it would be nice to be able to point to page numbers in RINE, but oh, well. From the quotations that Lane supplied, it looks as though I may have unwittingly caused some confusion. I am not a monocovenantalist. I believe that God made a covenant with Adam in the garden, which Adam then broke. God then made a second covenant, distinct from the first, but not unrelated to it. It was not unrelated because one of the blessings of the second covenant was to reverse the curses that had fallen on our race because of our disobedience to the first covenant. In a very limited way, they are like the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution—not the same at all, but not unrelated. When I said that there was only one covenant throughout covenantal history, I was assuming the Fall as having already happened. In all history, two covenants. Since the fall, only one, contra the dispensationalists. As I use the word bond in my definition of a covenant, I mean a relationship and everything that goes with a true and godly relationship (which would include love, agreements, standards, and parties of the first part). And last, when I reject morbid introspection, I am rejecting the morbidity, and not godly self-examination. My problem with morbid introspectionists is not that they examine their hearts, but rather that they absolutely refuse to examine their hearts. I wish that they would learn how to examine their hearts.

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LIKE SOME BLONDE IN A TIGHT DRESS JUNE 21, 2007 Three quick responses to the latest at Green Baggins. The first is that when I denied the equal ultimacy of gospel and law, Lane responded with this:

One important point here is the relationship of law and grace in the mind of God. Wilson says that he doesn’t buy the equal ultimacy of law and grace. I would answer: is God more gracious than He is holy? Is the righteousness of God more or less important than the love of God?

The problem here is that law and holiness are not synonyms. I have no problem at all in declaring the ultimacy of God’s holiness. He was thrice holy before any creature was made, and I see the holiness of God as the sum total of all His perfections. But holiness is not the same as law. Law derives from His holiness, and is dependent on it, but it is not the same thing. For example, God gives law to His creatures, and He forgives sinful creatures. This is what His mercy, and justice, and grace, and law do when He is interacting with fallen creatures. But these unmanifested attributes (a readiness to forgive, say) were not operative at all in the timeless aeons before the first creature was spoken into existence. Second, Lane asks (with regard to my affirmation of two covenants), “Was eternal life for Adam conditioned upon perfect and personal obedience?” I wouldn’t put it that way. I would rather say that avoidance of eternal death was conditioned upon not disobeying. The gift that Adam was receiving could be forfeited by disobedience but did not need to be earned by continued obedience. Disobedience would wreck it, and did, but obedience wouldn’t earn it. And last, the treatment of the FV position was a political move, and really slick, but transparently obvious. Part of the elegance of the thing lies in how obvious it is, and how the people running the play don’t care. It reminds of a baseball player who, when my dad was a boy, and there was only one umpire on the field, would do the following whenever he got on first. If a ball was hit

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to the outfield, the ump had to run out to see how it was handled because he was the only guy there. Our man on first would take the opportunity to run behind the ump, skipping second base, and running straight to third. Every- body in the stands saw it, of course, but the ump didn’t. And what mattered (at least to him) was the fact that he got what he wanted. He was on third after all. Large assemblies in part must rely on their committees to do the spade work, and I am not faulting the GA for that. You can’t have high level of theological discourse within the limits that a big assembly necessarily has. That is why it is so important to get the fairness thing right before the GA—in the committee. So I am faulting those who stacked that committee like it some blonde in a tight dress, and who then try to brazen it out after the fact. “What’s this? What do you mean? Perfectly modest attire.”

THE REV. RICK JAMES JUNE 22, 2007 Just so you know . . . In any controversy, it is always easy to move on to the next thing. And the next thing can be the next argument, the next bone of contention, the next chapter, the next dust up, the next round, and so on. When this happens, all the participants move on and the controversy continues. It is often the case that key moments in the early stage of the controversy are almost completely forgotten by the participants. But until that happens, as long as Asahel is dead in the road, people stop and look, and it slows the battle down. This principle is why people do things that they are willing to brazen out. People brazen it out because brazening it out works. And this is why I intend to bring up the stacked nature of the PCA committee every chance I get, for as long as I can remember to do so. Not only will I do this, but I intend to memorialize it with as many metaphors as I can manage to come up with. That committee was as stacked as a double order of buttermilks, as stacked as some blonde in a tight dress, and as stacked as a brick house. The PCA, she’s mighty, mighty.

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GREASING THE SKIDS WITH A HOLY UNCTION JUNE 22, 2007 Green Baggins has raised the spilt milk issue and is wondering whether my repeated raising of the stacked committee issue is worthwhile, now that the vote has gone down. But before I answer this, now that we are on the subject again, let me just say that the committee was as stacked as a Campbell soup display in the front aisle of Safeway. But my metaphors aren’t getting through to Lane, and he now argues that for me to keep returning to this issue betrays a lack of confidence in God’s sovereignty.

And yet, look at Wilson’s last post. What good will it do to continue to state that the deck was stacked? Is he going to convince anyone of it? Question to Wilson: was the composition of the study committee somehow outside the providence of God?

There are two issues here. First, I do not believe that the fact that God has decreed something is in any way inconsistent with the free agency and responsibility of man. This is because He decrees everything, and we remain responsible for our little portion of that everything. If I sinned yesterday, I know as a good Calvinist that this was part of the decretal will of God, settled before all worlds. But I also know that His decrees do not annihilate my responsibility to confess my sin heartily and honestly. So of course God decreed that the PCA General Assembly would do exactly what they did. And that does not in any way remove the moral responsibility of the men who greased the parliamentary skids with an holy unction. The second part of Lane’s question is this. “Is he going to convince anyone of it?” Well, yes, actually. I intend to convince quite a few people of it, and I don’t have to do a lot of talking. This is not a hard sell. It is, to use a theological phrase, stinking obvious. All I have to do is continue to point out that the committee had no minority report, and the fact that it was not going to have a minority report was assured and settled from the very beginning, from the moment the committee assignments were first given.

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I have said for a number of years that this is a battle over the second-year seminarians. There are any number of young men who do not yet have a dog in the fight. They are in the “reading up on it” stage. They do not have a job yet (meaning that they don’t have a job that can be threatened), and these young bucks are just sitting there watching this whole thing. Their heads are going back and forth, like the crowd at Wimbledon watching a really hot tennis match. Huh, they think. Look at that. Whoa, they think. Look at that. Does Lane really think that the rigged nature of this charade is not obvious to any disinterested observer? Does he really think I would have any trouble persuading people that a stacked committee was a stacked committee? There are some who are suspicious of the Federal Vision who are men of integrity, and they don’t like the way this thing is being done. Lane should join them. I have a good friend, deeply skeptical of FV, who is consistently embarrassed by the behavior of the anti-FV national leaders. And David Bayly, no friend of the FV, said this:

Tim and I believe the Ad Interim Report would have been stronger if the committee had contained representatives of Federal Vision views. Our experience both in authoring and in taking part in such committees leads us to believe that the inclusion of foes uniformly sharpens the thinking—and ultimately the reporting—of such committees.31

This is exactly correct, and the fact that this was not done is the standing legacy of that hand-picked committee. You know, the committee that was as stacked as all the Miles Davis LPs in an FM radio station basement. Lane would be well-advised to give up the vain task of defending men who ought to be able to defend themselves, but who, in the political world they live in, won’t need to at all. They don’t need Lane to carry water for them because they are going to just brazen it out. This was a parliamentary power move—“because we can”—and we on the receiving end are all grown-ups. We understand what is being done to us. And we trust the sovereignty of God

31 Why I voted against the Novenson procedural motion...

430 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JUNE 2007 in the midst of it. But the sovereignty of God over sin sanctifies no sin. Only the blood of Jesus Christ does that.

AS STACKED AS . . . JUNE 23, 2007 Since a volunteer competition is breaking out already, let’s put them all in one place. I may have missed some in the gathering, and so if I did just add them again in the comments section. And if any new ones occur to you, please add them as well. I think we could have at least as much fun as the haiku contest. As stacked as:

1. A double order of buttermilks; 2. Some blonde in a tight dress; 3. A brick house; 4. As Rick James on his way to detox; 5. As a deck of cards at a Magician’s Convention; 6. As the Library of Congress; 7. As a new-mown hayfield; 8. As a deck of cards at a casino; 9. As a lottery ticket; 10. As cordwood in November; 11. As a Harry Potter display, July 20, 11:59 p.m; 12. As Bay Bridge traffic on Memorial Day weekend; 13. As the odds against me winning the lottery; 14. As little brown pellets under a neglected rabbit cage; 15. As the assumptions required to support a claim for atheistic moral objectivity; 16. As a polygamist’s honey-do list; 17. As a dozen rocks in the middle of the Jordan; 18. As the odds against a productive study actually being accomplished by a stacked committee; 19. As the ballot box in a Mexican election (but I repeat myself);

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20. As a double-decker bus with Japanese tourists; 21. As a Nigel Tufnel Marshall rig at the amusement park gig; 22. As the national debt; 23. As the strata in the Grand Canyon; 24. As plywood at Home Depot; 25. As a Campbell soup display in the front aisle of Safeway; 26. As all the Miles Davis LPs in an FM radio station basement;

A couple different verbs:

1. As stuffed as Derek Small’s spandex at the airport checkpoint; 2. As choreographed as a WWF match.

IN SEARCH OF A REAL EXAM JUNE 23, 2007 Bob Mattes, one of the members of the PCA committee, has written his only Wilson post. He is limiting himself to just one because I am not in the PCA. In his post he makes four basic points. One is that I created the CREC in my own theonomic image rather than join a denomination that would hold me accountable for my teaching. The second is that I have a lot of nerve, accusing the PCA of stacking their committee—when I my own self was examined at a CREC presbytery meeting concerning my views on the Federal Vision. I was examined by a committee that I “handpicked.” Third, if I want a real exam I should go out to Westminster West and Scott Clark and Michael Horton would show me what a real examination was supposed to be like. And last, it appears that within the last few weeks he has discovered that I believe a number of icky things about slavery. Okay, this won’t take long. The first accusation would at least have had some surface plausibility when we established the CREC a little over a decade ago with just three churches. The church I pastor being one of the three, someone at that time could have made the big frog/small pond accusation. I think some did. But with the way God has blessed us, it is not plausible at

432 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JUNE 2007 all any more. With the varying circumstances of the churches kept in mind (mission, candidate, member), there are around sixty congregations now. We are extremely grateful to God for His continued kindness to us. If you want to know more about the CREC, you can check it out here. Second, of course my examination did not involve any real risk. It wasn’t supposed to. I wasn’t on trial. I requested a detailed examination so that others outside our circles could see clearly what I taught on these subjects, and so that this teaching would be “on the record” and available. I didn’t request to be brought up on charges. I requested that my friends and colleagues within the CREC ask me the questions that my adversaries outside the CREC should have been asking me, but were refusing to. The exam was recorded and both it and a written portion of it are available. And that exam has been, um, underutilized by those who pretend in public and in their judicial settings to know what I think. Third, I would be happy to go out to Westminster West to be examined by Scott Clark and Michael Horton. But I will have to ask Bob to set it up for me, because I have requested face to face interaction/debates/discussion multiple times. Scott Clark turned off the comments section of his blog because his assertions always have a way of squirting sideways on him. His examinations always go much better when there is no one there to answer the questions. So, here it is again. I would be delighted to be examined by Clark and Horton. Bob, please, set this one up. And last, the slavery thing. He quotes me saying, “Our humanistic and democratic culture regards slavery in itself as a monstrous evil, and it acts as though this were self-evidently true. The Bible permits Christians to own slaves, provided they are treated well. You are a Christian. Whom do you believe?” He doesn’t engage with this, but just offers it up as ludicrous on the face of it. Nothing necessary here but a horse laugh, right? His plausibility structure clearly comes from our surrounding secularism, and not from the Bible. What I would like to do is provide Bob with a couple of quotations, one from the Bible and the other from the Westminster Confession, and then ask a small cluster of questions.

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Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honour, that the name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed. And they that have believing masters, let them not despise them, because they are brethren; but rather do them service, because they are faithful and beloved, partakers of the benefit. These things teach and exhort. (1 Tim. 6:1–2, emphasis added).

And from Westminster:

By this faith [saving faith], a Christian believes to be true whatsoever is revealed in the Word, for the authority of God Himself speaking therein” (WCF 14.2, emphasis added).

And here’s my small set of questions: In the first century, where slavery existed, would you have taught and exhorted these things? And do you have saving faith? For those who are interested in what the Bible actually teaches about slavery, and want to read more about my views on the subject, with those views presented in context, they can get this book.32

FAR WORSE THAN A STACKED STUDY COMMITTEE JUNE 24, 2007 I did not see the video feed on the floor debate at the PCA General Assembly, but I understand that R.C. Sproul Sr. argued there that putting FV guys on the study commission would be akin to putting the defendant on the jury. Okay, so let’s take that as our model of what the proceedings were supposed to be like. If it were simply a study committee, then you would expect to get the various perspectives, a majority report and minority report and so on. If it were a judicial proceeding, then you would not expect that—in that context, R.C.’s comment makes sense. But of course, in order for a judicial proceeding

32 Black & Tan.

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to make to the floor of GA, other things would have had to have happened first—little things like charges, proof, trials at presbytery, that kind of thing. But let’s leave that aside for the nonce. Now I believe that it was the former, a study committee, and so I advance the argument that the committee was as stacked as . . . as . . . as, I don’t know, stacked things. But what happens if it is the latter? A jury, not a study committee? That presents me with another argument, and this one is actually far more potent than the argument I ought to have. Study committees sit around in the library. Juries handle the lives and reputations of others. And so of course, you exclude the accused from the jury. You also exclude men who are hostile to the accused, and who are out to get them. You exclude the personal friends of the accused, and—because Almighty God inhabits the highest heaven and considers the ways of men—you also exclude the professional adversaries of the accused. The point of a jury is to find disinterested parties, who will listen to both sides, and make a determination. Instead, what do we have? So the committee was a jury. Did it meet the biblical standards of justice for the composition of juries? Ha. As a study committee, the PCA Ad Interim committee was stacked and risible. But if you want it to be a jury, it was far worse than that.

REFORMED CATHOLICITY JUNE 24, 2007 In the thread of a recent post, the question of sectarianism and the CREC was raised, and I thought I needed to make just a few comments about it. This is one of those issues where context matters a great deal. I became a paedobaptist in 1993, and this happened in a church with some staunch baptists in it. Without going into the details, some of the baptists left unhappy, but the vast majority of the church, and the vast majority of the baptists in the church, did not want to divide over such an issue. So we didn’t. We worked out a baptismal cooperation agreement, one that we still honor and use. As a friend and a pastor to some of these godly and charitable baptists, I was not about to conduct a purge of them from the church. These

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were people who had stood by me in a very difficult time. Now, with this mutt of a credobaptist/paedobaptist congregation, what Reformed denomination would you have us go join? We had absolutely nowhere to go. At the same time, we had become convinced of presbyterian polity—the difficulty of sorting out the baptism question had revealed some pretty sorry gaps in our polity as well. And so we joined together with two other congregations here in the Northwest, congregations that had had a historic connection with us—lots of friendship and common ministry together. That is how the CREC formed—not as a schismatic attempt to increase fissures in the Reformed world, but rather as an attempt to reduce the disunity in our small corner of it. Since that time the Lord has blessed us greatly, and we have seen many congregations come into our confederation. We are very grateful for all of this. But in the discussion of the catholicity (or lack thereof) in the CREC, this comment was made.

Unfortunately, for Wilson, arguably the CREC founder, and others, that is not enough. Additionally, they insist all Presbyterians must tolerate equally these practices equally and there is zero respect for the decision of the presbyters of other (than CREC) denominations, that do not happen to allow for these convictions that landed you in the CREC. By becoming yoked with the CREC, you are yoked with men and woman who enjoy mocking their enemies (in this case presbyters), and have elevated it to an artform. At some point, this recklessness must become indefensible to the real leadership of the CREC, if such a thing exists outside of Moscow.

Just a few things need to be said here. The first is a factual one, and concerns what we demand from others. Take paedocommunion, for example. I believe that paedocommunionists in the PCA have a moral obligation to hon- or the decision of their denomination against that practice. I would believe them to be in sin if they unilaterally rejected the authority of their broader

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church in this. But take it a step further. Could a nonpaedocommunionist church join the CREC? Absolutely. We have room for credobaptists, and so why on earth would we reject credocommunionists? On what principle would we reject them? There is one restriction in this regard, but it applies to everyone—and it is in my mind the “catholicity” requirement. An individual congregation in the CREC can be a credobaptist congregation and allow only credo-baptists on the session. This could be what is taught from the pulpit and settled in their statement of faith. But if a family from a paedobaptist CREC congregation moved to their area, and joined their church, they could not require that the children who had been already baptized be baptized again. They would have to receive those infant baptisms. They would not have toadminister them, but they would have to receive them in all charity. A similar kind of thing could happen the other way. If someone baptized in infancy came to credo-baptist convictions, I could not in good conscience conduct such a baptism myself. But I could help the person find a minister who could do this, and when the deed was done, I should have no problem receiving such a person into fellowship with us. All CREC congregations have to adopt the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Definition of Chalcedon. After that, they have to choose between one of six reformational creeds—the London Baptist, the American Westminster, the original English Westminster, the Three Forms of Unity, the Savoy Declaration, and a modern Reformed Evangelical Confession. There has even been talk about adding the original Augsburg Confession and/or the 39 Articles, but we haven’t gotten very far on that. Christ Church here in Moscow has adopted a Book of Confessions, with the central confession being the original Westminster, but the larger book includes the 39 Articles. All of this represents a very practical attempt at Reformed catholicity. We are very serious about this. So what about the point that we (meaning me) mock our enemies? It should be extremely obvious by this point that we do not treat fellow believers this way simply because they hold different doctrinal convictions than we do.

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We are building a confederation that has fellowship and cooperation between such groups built into it as a design feature. And the credocommunionists in the PCA, were they to visit us here in Moscow, would be welcome at the Table with us any and every Sunday. The same goes for all CREC churches. Their children would be welcome too, but let us not get distracted from the point we are discussing. The credocommunionists who hold their convictions sincerely and honestly have nothing but respect from me. I do feel sad for them, but no mockery. None. What I mock is Pharisaism. What I mock is stacked study committees, and the long, solemn, indignant faces whenever somebody mentions this screamingly obvious fact. What I mock is the bum’s rush for ministers in good standing with no charges filed, no evidence submitted, no proof offered, just raw power from on high—but plenty of that. What I mock is a study committee that gets an important quote from me bass-ackwards, drops it sheepishly when caught, promising to explain it on the floor of GA. By the way, did that happen? What I mock is exactly the same thing that we find mocked in the pages of the New Testament—ecclesiastical stuffed-shirt pretentiousness, and an inability to maintain a sense of godly proportion. You know, camels and gnats, gold and altars, and justice and mercy and tithing from the spice rack. You know, justice and mercy and parsing the covenant of works under a meritscope. What I mock are those who are so concerned for merit in the pages of their systematics, but when it comes to any merit their judicial proceedings might be lacking, they don’t give a rip. What I mock are the traditions of the elders—even though I love, honor, and keep those traditions. But the ones who have those traditions draped over their heads like so many Westminster tablecloths have only obscured their vision and have started bumping into things, knocking them over. When I say something about that peculiar custom, I am upbraided for not honoring the tablecloth. Not at all. Put it on the Table, and sit down, you and your children. You are supposed to eat the food, people, not argue over the silverware. In short, if you want to know, I am a Puritan. The trouble some are having with understanding this just reveals that they are dutiful curators at the

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Puritan Waxworks (day pass $9.95) and need a night in the museum. You know, where some Elizabethan pamphleteers come to life and show us all that Reformation is more like chopping down the redwood of Self-Righteousness with the ax of the Gospel than it is like threading the needle of Condign Mer- it with the gossamer thread of Supralapsarianism. Whatever that might mean.

OTHODOX JOE JUNE 27, 2007 Green Baggins is continuing our discussion, and this exchange revolves around two basic questions. The first has to do with my examination by the CREC presbytery (in 2004, before we divided into two presbyteries). Lane asks if the CREC has any TRs in it, and if they were invited to participate in the exam. And pressing his point home, he asks if there were no TRs on the examination committee, then how would this do anything to allay the charge that the CREC is nothing more than a “rubber stamp denomination,” the better to enable me to say things like bwah hah hah. Lane goes out of his way to say that he is not saying this but wonders what good the exam did in a world where people are saying that. Several things. First, I actually think the CREC does have some TRs in it, but I don’t know that they would be owned as such by those who are currently wearing the mantle. At least one of the gentlemen I have in mind in this category was on the examination committee. But in addition, I have to point out that I did not form the committee. I requested the examination, and the committee was formed by our moderator. I do know that the goal of the committee was to ask questions that TRs would acknowledge as the questions that needed to be asked, and I believe they did a very good job of this. The committee did decide that I was orthodox, but that was not the real point. I acknowledge it was not exactly a Perry Mason courtroom moment. So Lane’s point is correct as far as it goes—if someone wanted to dismiss the verdict, that would be easy enough for them to do. The verdict was that I was okay, but of course I was judicially okay before I requested the exam. I didn’t need to go through an exam to establish that. The point of the exam was to

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establish a public record, on the record, of how I answer certain controverted questions. And since the time of that exam, we have not trumpeted the results of the verdict—as though the CREC took me behind closed doors, pretended to examine me, and then came out to announce that I was Ortho- dox Joe. No, what we have circulated is the exam itself—the questions and the answers. We have circulated written questions and answers, and we have circulated recordings of the oral exam. This means that if someone says that the verdict was rigged, all we have to do is refer them to the contents of the exam and ask where the problem lies. And, given the content of that exam, there are only three responses that an honest to goodness TR can have. The first is to ignore everything. This has been the path not less traveled. The second is to acknowledge that the questions and answers were really good, and that I might actually be descended from A.A. Hodge. The third is to say I am lying. But whatever happened, we did not think that a verdict by itself would persuade anybody. Honest answers to obviously good questions should be able to do that though. Lane worries a bit that I might go off on a little bit of rhetorical terryhoot- ing in response to his blog post, but I have no intention of doing that. I do that sometimes but never when someone is honestly trying to communicate with me—as Lane obviously is trying to do. I have been known to make light-hearted comments about grand exalted potentates and wizards running freethinkers out of their moose lodge of a church, but this is all in good fun, and not directed at guys who are honestly trying like Lane. The second point resumes his interaction with my book “Reformed” Is Not Enough, and his basic question here concerns my “minimizing” discipline as one of the marks of the Church. The traditional marks of the Church in Reformed theology have been Word, sacrament, and discipline. I tweak this slightly, making discipline the fence that protects the two marks of the Church, Word and sacrament. Lane gets my illustration exactly. A church without discipline has no immune system; it is a church with AIDS. But people with AIDS are very sick people, not dead people. Churches without Word and sacrament are not sick churches, but rather dead churches. One of

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the commenters at Lane’s blog suggested that I was “minimizing” discipline like this because of my supposed baptismal nominalism. But those who know what the church culture in Moscow is like know that this is really wide of the mark. We do practice church discipline. My reduction of discipline to a “semi-mark” of the Church was simply an attempt to answer a theological puzzle, not an attempt to shy away from discipline. A church with no discipline is a church with AIDS. I see Word and sacrament as essential to life, right now—like breathing or the circulation of the blood. I see discipline as essential to the protection of those things which are essential to life, but as not necessarily essential to life right this minute. A man with AIDS can live for years. A man whose heart stops, or whose lungs collapse, dies immediately. I was simply trying to account for this analogous difference. Lane asks if I allow exceptions to the rule that no salvation is to be found outside the Church. Absolutely. I much prefer Westminster’s formulation of this to Cyprian’s—outside the church there is no ordinary possibility of salvation. I grant that the last day will reveal the salvation of many who never had any connection to the visible church. But this is not the way it ordinarily goes, and this is not the way the New Testament usually speaks.

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CHESTERTON DOWN THE HIGHWAY JULY 3, 2007 Green Baggins has reviewed some commentaries here, among them Peter Leithart’s new commentary on Kings. Apart from demonstrating that he is a young man in a hurry—he expresses his disappointment with the commentary without having read it, on the basis of the bibliography alone—he also misses an important aspect of theological development in the Church. This is understandable because Lane is a product of seminary, and modern seminaries are very much in the tradition of measuring theological development in one way, a way that certainly has its place. But when it forgets the other way (which it almost always does), trouble is brewing. Scholars are soon replaced by fussers and there we are. There are two ways to measure a man by his footnotes and bibliography. One is to measure his footnotes and bibliography. The other is to measure how many footnotes and bibliographies he is likely to wind up in. The two usually don’t go together, but occasionally they do—as they do in Leithart. For another rare example, C.S. Lewis was capable of writing scholarly books that showed a mastery of the literature in his field, and these books (like The Allegory of Love, or English Literature in the Sixteenth Century) are still valuable today. But he wrote another way as well, with virtually no footnotes or scholarly apparatus. These are the books by which he is chiefly remembered, and they will show up in footnotes and bibliographies for the next five hundred years or so.

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Chesterton was quotable above virtually all men, and one looks in vain for him to handle the requirements of the footnote-mongers with sufficient gentleness and respect. Chesterton roisters merrily down the highway of thought, with the more precise-minded following after, picking up after him, correcting a citation here or a date there. And yet the footnoters highly respect him (now that he’s dead), and will quote him until the cows find two in the bush, as they say. My point, and there is one around here somewhere, is that Peter Leithart has made, is making, and will make an enormous contribution to theological development in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Disagreeing with him is fine, and he is the kind of gracious Christian gentleman who welcomes that kind of thing. But patronizing him is just embarrassing.

PLUG AND CHUG LEGALISM? JULY 8, 2007 Kevin Johnson quotes from an article in the most recent Credenda, and ad- monishes me for something I didn’t say in it.

Correspondingly, the Reformation was first about our repentance and embracing of Christ something which Wilson never mentions in this article.

This was curious on two counts. First, it should be possible to write an article about liturgy and not incur someone’s displeasure because I didn’t mention something else that I believe equally strongly. You can’t say everything everytime—it’s a time management thing. But the curious nature of the second count was even more odd. That is because, as it happens, I did mention a “genuine love for Christ” in the article, along with how certain kinds of people need “learn something fundamental about God.” I also mentioned, twice as it turns out, the fact that Holy Spirit can be grieved by our behavior in worship. What Johnson dismisses as mere moralism and legalism, checking things off a spiritual to-do list, was actually

444 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JULY 2007 an exhortation to function within the context of triune personalism, never forgetting that God is always present with us in worship and will not be fooled by our mummeries, high or low. Actually, there was a third oddity in Johnson’s response. That was the fact that one of the main thrusts of the article was the point that a simple “liturgical to-do list” won’t cut it. Here is another snippet from that article and, you tell me, is this the kind of “plug and chug” approach that legalists like to take?

To say up front that liturgy is extremely important—that having a defined, biblical structure to the worship service is crucial, and that for- mality does not necessarily drive our genuine love for Christ—does not require us to then embrace any particular practice that some Anglicans might be doing. To follow the covenant renewal pattern of worship [the pattern we follow at Christ Church] not only does not require us to adopt any proposal (provided it is ‘higher’ than what we were all doing ten years ago), it actually requires us to be suspicious of all such tendencies to overshoot the goal.

In other words, there are any number of ways to honor Christ in worship. The next paragraph describes two pastors doing the same thing, one out of obedience to Christ and the other not. The legalist wants everything cut and dried. The wise response to such questions and situations is usually something like “it’s not that simple.” Two men can do the same thing and one be received by God and the other not. Two other men can do very different things and both be received by the same God. Johnson’s critique is comparable to challenging my writing or preaching because I don’t use the King James Version of the Bible. To which I could respond, “But I do use the King James.” Now what do we do? It is apparent that Johnson wants very much to find a crucial area where he and I differ, and I am sure there are plenty of them. But whether or not the Reformation was first brought about by “our repentance and embracing of Christ” is not one of them.

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APROPOS OF NOTHING JULY 20, 2007 In the tension-filled room full of systematic theologians and biblical theologians, it is perilously easy to juxtapose “timeless truths” to “story.” But this is not necessary, and this is another plea to all get along. It should go without saying that I affirm what the Reformed systematicians have distilled out behind their magisterial barn. And when they are serving up Old Turretin (200 proof) I drink it down gladly. Nevertheless, I have great sympathies with the biblical theologians also. But in the current debates, since I am more or less aligned with the latter group, let me just say this as an admonition to our guys. A lot of what goes out as biblical theology, marketed as “Story Theology” is actually “Literary Criticism Theology.” And those are not the same thing at all.

WALK LIKE A NINJA JULY 24, 2007 Green Baggins continues to review my book “Reformed” Is Not Enough, and he does so here. He begins this post by asking where I have been hiding.

I sent an email to Douglas Wilson asking if he is desirous of continuing the debate. I believe that since June 28th, which was the first post on the sacerdotalism chapter, and July 2nd, which was the second post on that chapter, and July 12th, which was my first post on the baptism chapter, Wilson has had adequate time to respond. I think that if those who are benefitting from this exchange between a critic and a proponent of FV are desirous of keeping this a two-way street, some pressure will need to be exerted on Wilson to continue on his side. I plan on finishing the book review. I am not sure why Wilson has not continued the debate. But lack of time can hardly be the reason, especially since he has posted on the Federal Vision here. I do not mean to bully Wilson in any way. If he is not desirous of continuing the debate, then that is certainly his prerogative. At the

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same time, I think it odd that he has been clamoring for debate, and yet now does not seem to want it. Was it because I came down hard on his (mis)take on Warfield? I make no attempt to read his motives. I am somewhat puzzled, I confess. Maybe Wilson will be so good as to clear it up for us.

So let me address that first. What with a book project I was finishing, some pastoral time-munchers, catching up in the office after time on the road, shoveling away at small mountains of email, and having five extra grandchildren back from the UK, I have been up to my neck in plenty of good things to do. During such seasons, priorities shift, some of them downward. But interacting with Green Baggins is still something I intend to finish, and because I have just gotten through this most recent bottleneck, here we are. No pressure necessary. All I need are some extra hours. At the same time, in the spirit of full disclosure, it should be said that my enthusiasm for answering Lane had been dampened by his treatment of Leithart on Kings. That was just the royal limit, but still I soldier on. What I intend to do here is respond briefly to this most recent post, and, as I have opportunity, go back and respond to the ones I missed. I hear rumors that I got my rear end kicked over a Warfield quote and so I really need to go back to that one and check for bruises. One of the reasons I have been willing to interact with Lane is that he has been willing to acknowledge a number of my qualifications and explanations. This is not the case with some of the other FV guys, but, for whatever reason, he does do it with me. This could cut both ways, of course. At the end of this process I might find that I am reluctantly included among the orthodox. The other possibility is that Lane might have to start defending himself against charges that he is denying sola fide. There are some people out there on a hair trigger, and whenever one goes to presbytery one must walk like a ninja. For example, in this last response, he is sailing pretty close to the wind— at least as far as some critics of the FV are concerned.

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In this [on the question of deferred grace from baptism], I would certainly side with Wilson. Indeed, as carefully read and qualified (I don’t at all like the language of baptismal regeneration, as it carries an enormous weight of baggage), Wilson’s position seems to be in accord with the Standards on baptism.

Yikes. Criminy. An implication of this is that Lane is arguing here that FV critics who have accused me of sacerbadthingsism have misunderstood and misrepresented me. This is quite true, and so I’ll take it with grateful thanks. So let me explain my use of the phrase baptismal regeneration. I actually agree with Lane that the phrase carries a lot of baggage that I don’t want to carry. This is why you won’t hear me preaching any sermon series onWhy We Hold to Baptismal Regeneration. What happened was this. I got accused of holding to baptismal regeneration, and a bunch of other unflattering things, by a number of hostile Injuns who had the warpaint on, and who were wearing the Westminster Confession of Faith as a ceremonial headdress, feathers and all. Without me having used this kind of language provocatively (for obvious reasons of prudence), I was accused of holding to the substance of baptismal regeneration by men who did not know the history of their own confession. Because of their compromises with the American baptistic ethos, they had institutionalized a number of “workarounds” to the language of their own confession and baptismal formulae. This they did, se- renely unaware of how much they owed to the Southern Baptist Convention. The point of that section in RINE was to point this glaring problem out. Now I cheerfully admit, acknowledge and say that the Westminster doctrine on this is clearly not the doctrine of the Lutherans, Anglicans, or Roman Catholics. But if you are going to get whipped up into a lather over language, or logical inferences from such language, then why don’t you guys start with your own confessional totem? It is just as clear that Westminster’s is not the doctrine of the bapterian critics of the FV. Lane says that he differs with me over my lack of qualification over sign and thing signified. But I do make this qualification and have made it repeatedly. My

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central point here is that if heresy charges can be leveled on the basis of “ambiguous” language, then the bapterians have only succeeded in indicting the Westminster Confession. It is the Westminster Standards that say both sacraments are effectual means of salvation to worthy receivers. It is the Westminster Confession that says one of the things signified by baptism is regeneration. It is the Westminster Confession that says the things signified by baptism (among which we include regeneration) are really exhibited and conferred by baptism at the time of the effectual call. So fine. Don’t use the language of baptismal regeneration if you don’t want to. I don’t want to either. That is not a problem. But it is a problem when your reluctance to use that language yourself prevents you from reading a seventeenth century document in its historical setting. It is a problem if you cannot discern the undeniable presence of massive Presbyterian compromises with American revivalism in the evangelical world today. Such confusion is not biblical, it is not historical, and it is not confessional.

WESTMINSTER SACERDOTALISM JULY 26, 2007 I said that I was going to try to get caught up with Green Baggins’s review of RINE, and here is the next payment on that particular debt. In his review of my tenth chapter, Lane says that my criticism of Warfield is based on a confusion of sacerdotalism and sacramentalism. “Sacerdotalism,” he says, “has to do with a priesthood caste in the church.” This is different from the idea that the sacraments work ex opere operato, which he calls sacramentalism. He also says that if something works ex opere operato it is tantamount to magic. He then cites Warfield at various places to show that Warfield was objecting to the idea of a “human intruder in the pathway of God’s grace.” Now I take Warfield to be objecting to the idea of a created intruder, not just a human intruder. For Warfield, God’s immediate grace does not need a priest to funnel it, certainly. But neither does it need bread or wine, or water. But let’s work with Lane’s distinction and see what happens—even though, in one sense, the whole discussion is beside the point because Lane acknowledges that Warfield would reject sacramentalism also.

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First, how can there be sacraments without someone to administer them? And if there must be someone to administer them, and they are means of grace, then presto, we have our human intruder getting in between the wor- shipper and the grace of God. The Westminster Standards are very strong on sacraments not showing up by themselves, or in the hands of agents not lawfully ordained to the task.

The Lord Jesus has, in this ordinance, appointed His ministers to declare His word of institution to the people, to pray, and bless the elements of bread and wine, and thereby to set them apart from a common to an holy use; and to take and break the bread, to take the cup, and (they communicating also themselves) to give both to the communicants. (WCF 29.3)

To these officers the keys of the kingdom of heaven are committed; by virtue whereof, they have power, respectively, to retain, and remit sins; to shut that kingdom against the impenitent, both by the Word, and censures; and to open it unto penitent sinners, by the ministry of the Gospel; and by absolution from censures, as occasion shall require. (WCF 30.2)

Lane’s take on Warfield means that Westminster Presbyterians are sacerdo- talists. The fact that we don’t call the “human intruder” a priest is just a matter of terminology. The grace of God is available in the sacraments, and the sacraments are only available through those who are lawfully ordained. This means that the grace of God for God’s people is dependent on human agents. This means that Lane must either change his definition of sacerdotalism or take an exception to Westminster. My second point here has to do with Lane’s take on ex opere operato being necessarily magic. Certainly, when a Roman Catholic priest utters the words of consecration, the results come about ex opere operato. In other words, with the sacraments, a “magic” utterance would be an ex opere operato utterance. But it doesn’t need to go the other way. All cows have four legs, but not all four-legged beasts are cows.

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Peter Leithart does a wonderful job in his most recent book The Baptized Body in showing the potency of ritual. And in his discussion, it is very clear that there is no “magic” at all. A man can lawfully make love to a woman on Monday when it would have been unlawful for him to do so the previous Fri- day. The difference was the wedding ritual on Saturday. A man takes the oath of office as president, and can send troops into battle where before he was powerless to do so. There is an ex opere operato efficacy in this kind of thing which is not magic, but which is no less potent for all that.

SANCTIONS AND THE SACRAMENTS JULY 27, 2007 I believe that this next interaction with Green Baggins promises to be pretty helpful. He is still critiquing the tenth chapter of RINE.33

In other words, for Wilson, the objective nature of baptism means that all people who are baptized come into the same relationship to the covenant, in this sense: that they are all under the same sanctions of the covenant, either for cursing, or for blessing. In fact, he identifies the sacrament with the blessings and curses of the covenant (p. 90). What I would ask is this: what kind of union does he mean? Saving union? Unsaving union? The union of a branch, or the union of a parasite?

The short answer first. The kind of union I mean is covenantal union. And when the tree in the scriptural metaphor is the covenant, then I mean the union of a branch. When wheat and tares in the scriptural metaphor are distinguishing true faith from false, then I mean the union of proximity, as with a parasite. Scripture speaks to this issue both ways, and so should we. Wheat and tares are always ontologically different. When you wash a pig you have a clean pig. When a dog vomits, you have a hungry dog. At the same time, when Jesus cuts the fruitless branches out of the Vine, He is removing

33 https://greenbaggins.wordpress.com/2007/07/02/sacerdotalism-part-2/

451 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JULY 2007 them from a position which they share entirely with the fruitful branches (John 15). Same thing in Romans 11, when Paul talks about the olive tree. We need to layer our illustrations, and not treat them as discrete billiard balls that cannot occupy the same space at the same time. And I looked at page 90 of my book, and the closest thing I could find to Lane’s summary was this. “There is no power in the sacrament itself; there is power in that which the sacrament is identified with—the blessings and curses of the covenant itself.” I can see that my phrasing here could have been more, um, as the present writer would say, were the present writer a Victorian, felicitious. I did not mean that the sacrament should be identified with sanctions, as though I was talking about the essence of the sacrament, or as triangles are to be identified with three-sided figures. I meant that the sacrament was closely identified with sanctions, as I (the present writer) am identifed with Moscow. I was not saying that there is a definitional identity between the sacrament and sanctions. I think that this helps address the next question as well.

But if that is the case, then I have this question: how can the thing signified in the sacrament (which I do not believe is the sanctions, but rather the promise of benefit) be said to be given to the non-elect? I don’t believe that the sacrament signifies sanctions, but rather than it signifies Christ. When this Christ is seen in faith, the necessary result is blessing. When Christ is rejected through unbelief, the result is a curse.

And I realize the danger of inappropriate partaking of the Lord’s Supper (see 1 Corinthians 11:27). But does this constitute part of the essence of the Sacrament? Or is it a distortion of the Sacrament? The thing signified is a positive thing, not a negative one

So we are not talking “things,” or “essences,” but rather Christ. In the personal encounter between Christ and the covenant member, there is either love or enmity. Love is the characteristic of the regenerate heart, and

452 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JULY 2007 this love sees Christ (accurately) as Savior. Enmity is characteristic of the unregenerate heart, and this enmity sees Christ (accurately) as Judge. Christ viewed rightly is of course a blessed Savior. But when the sinful heart rejects Him, and that sinful heart belongs to a covenant member, the result is covenantal sanctions. So I agree with Lane that the sacrament is given to us in a positive way, expecting the best. The cup is described as the cup of blessing, not the cup of blessings and curses. But, because certain Corinthians despised that blessing, many were sick and some had died. Uzzah died because he got too close to the mercy seat.

GREEN BAGGINS TAKES AN EXCEPTION JULY 27, 2007 And in his latest response to my response, Lane says this in the course of his continued discussion of Warfield. “Regeneration can happen before baptism, during baptism, or after baptism. Therefore, it is not dependent on baptism.” This really gets at the crux of the matter between us, and it illustrates why I believe that Lane (and Warfield) don’t really believe that sacraments are means of grace. They say they do (because as confessional Presbyterians they have to use that phrase), but they take away with the left hand what they gave with the right. Let me quote Lane again, and juxtapose his words with a pertinent section of the Westminster Confession.

Regeneration can happen before baptism, during baptism, or after baptism. Therefore, it is not dependent on baptism. The efficacy of Baptism is not tied to that moment of time wherein it is administered; yet, notwithstanding, by the right use of this ordinance, the grace promised is not only offered, but really exhibited, and conferred, by the Holy Ghost, to such (whether of age or infants) as that grace belongs unto, according to the counsel of God’s own will, in His appointed time. (WCF 28.6)

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Lane has said that regeneration is “not dependent on baptism,” and he says this because of the varying temporal relations that are possible between the moment of baptism and the moment of regeneration. That latter part is true enough. On that point, Lane, I, and the Westminster divines all agree. Regeneration can occur before, during or after baptism. But Lane concludes from this that regeneration is not dependent upon baptism. This is almost a photo negative of the Westminster doctrine. In stark contrast, Westminster says that the efficacy of baptism is not tied to any temporal considerations like this. So why does Lane make an argument out of temporal considerations? And what is the efficacy of baptism? What is included in this efficacy? Regeneration, among other things (WCF 28.1). Now Westminster says that, at the appointed time, for those to whom the grace belongs, regeneration is not only offered, but exhibited and conferred, and this is done by means of an efficacious baptism, regardless of when the water was applied. All this is accomplished in the power of the Holy Ghost “by the right use of this ordinance.” They do not say that regeneration is not dependent upon a “right use of this ordinance.” So let me ask Lane a question here. Do you believe that the Holy Spirit uses the instrumentality of a “right use of this ordinance” as His way of really exhibiting and conferring the grace of regeneration on one of God’s elect at the appointed time? If so, would you like to retract or modify your statement above? If not, would you be willing to take an exception to the Westminster Confession at this point?

WHAT IT MUST HAVE MEANT JULY 28, 2007 One more and I am caught up in my exchanges with Green Baggins. But before answering the questions he raises about my chapter on baptism, I think it is important to address a question raised in the comments of my previous post.

You make it sound like you’re boys playing king of the dirt pile. Say uncle! A lot of theologizing is like that, isn’t it?

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Yes, it does sound like that if all we were doing is talking. But we are in a situation where the ministries of friends of mine are under assault, and not just verbal assault. The FV guys are bringing charges against no one, challenging the ordinations of no one, and we are not trying to get anybody removed from their pulpit. The same cannot be said in the other direction. In other words, this is not a neener-neener debate. Ministries and livelihoods are on the line. Yes, the reply might come, but this is what confessional faithfulness to the truth requires. But that is where we encounter the kick in the teeth. As I showed in the previous post, the people who are bringing accusations that we are out of accord with the Westminster Confession are in fact themselves out of accord with the Confession. And they are accusing us of being out of accord with the Confession at just the place where we hold to the Confession and they do not. In such a situation, that anomaly should be pointed out. This reveals that in conservative American Presbyterianism, the governing doctrine is not the Westminster Confession, but is rather the agreed-upon-consensus of what the Westminster Confession must have meant. And whatever it must have meant, it cannot stray too far from the baptistic ethos of American evangelicalism. But when you go back to the words of the Confession, you find out that at the appointed time, for anyone to whom the grace of regeneration belongs, the Holy Spirit exhibits and confers that grace through a right use of the baptismal water. Folks have every right to disagree with this, but they don’t have the right to disagree with it on the basis of their “consensus” in the name of Westminster. It is Westminster. Sometimes I feel like a speaker at a Fourth of July picnic who gets himself accused of being un-American because I mentioned that “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” The basic question Lane asks here is “with whom is the covenant of grace made?” I have no trouble with some of the distinctions he makes, particularly if you take them all together. I do have trouble with internal/external if no other metaphors are used, and none at all if it is used in conjunction with a cluster of other metaphors. I think that the distinction of narrow/broad is

455 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JULY 2007 particularly helpful. In the broad sense, the covenant of grace is made with believers and their children. In the narrow sense, the covenant of grace is made with the decretally elect. One other quick thing. Lane also asks why I identify the unregenerate within the covenant as covenant breakers. “Aren’t unbelievers already covenant-breakers in Adam? . . . Are we going to say that they become covenant breakers of both the covenant of works and the covenant of grace?” Well, yes, that is exactly what I want to say. If Adam is their covenant head, they share in his rebellion. That’s covenant breaking. And if they are in the covenant of grace in the broad sense required by the Westminster Confession (remember that even the Mosaic economy is described there as an administration of the covenant of grace), and they fail to keep the covenant because of their unbelief, then why would we not consider them covenant breakers there as well?

Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace? (Heb. 10:29) How is such a person not a covenant breaker? How is he not a covenant breaker beyond the covenant made with Adam in the garden? He tramples underfoot the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified. How could this be anything other than covenant breaking?

GREEN BAGGINS DOES TOO TAKE AN EXCEPTION JULY 28, 2007 Under the heading of “No Exceptions,” Lane has responded to my last post this way:

I do not take any exceptions to the Westminster Confession of Faith. Wilson conveniently forgot to mention WCF 28.5, when he argues that I need to take an exception to the Standards: ‘Although it be a great sin to contemn or neglect this ordinance, yet grace and salvation

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are not so inseparably annexed unto it, as that no person can be regenerated or saved without it; or, that all that are baptized are undoubtedly regenerated’ (emphasis added). This clearly states that regeneration is not dependent on baptism.

Actually, I haven’t forgotten this section of the confession, and I agree with it whole-heartedly. But Lane doesn’t—notice how he modifies the straight reading of this portion also. The premises stated don’t yield the conclusion that “regeneration is not dependent on baptism.” Rather, they yield the conclusion that regeneration is not necessarily or absolutely dependent upon baptism. A man can be baptized and still be lost. Amen. A man can be unbaptized and still be saved. Amen again. This does not prove that there is no link between baptism and regeneration, but rather that there is not a “no exceptions link.”

If regeneration can happen without baptism ever happening (such as the thief on the cross), then regeneration is simply not dependent on baptism. One does not have to have baptism in order for regeneration to happen. And, as the Confession equally clearly states, just because one has baptism does not mean that one is regenerated, either. So, I am in perfect conformity with the Confession in saying that regeneration is not dependent on baptism.

The Westminster divines say that saving grace is not “inseparably annexed” to baptism, and they give two obvious examples. A man can be saved without it, and a man with it can be lost. But in the section of the Confession that Lane differs with, we were not talking about an unbaptized regenerate soul or a baptized unregenerate soul. We are talking about a baptized regenerate soul. Now, in that circumstance, does Lane agree or disagree that in the right use of the sacrament of water baptism that saving grace is really exhibited and conferred by the Holy Spirit at the appointed time?

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Lack of baptism does not mean lack of regeneration, and baptism does not automatically confer regeneration.

Sure, but if someone is baptized and regenerate, what is the teaching of the Confession about the relationship between the two? Does the Confession teach—only for those to whom the grace belongs—that regeneration is exhibited and conferred by baptism?

If regeneration happens at the time-point of baptism, I am willing to say that the Holy Spirit uses baptism as a means through which a sinner is regenerated, although the baptism without the Word can do nothing. And before the TR’s jump all over me for being FV, hear the rest of this out carefully. It is crystal clear it is really the Word that the Holy Spirit uses to regenerate someone. Even in baptism, I would argue that it is the Word which regenerates if regeneration happens at that time.

This does not whisper an exception to the Confession; it shouts it. The Con- fession says that the efficacy of baptism is not dependent on the “time-point” of its administration at all. Lane says that potential efficacy of baptism is limited to the time of administration and, even then, baptism isn’t really doing anything. This is called disagreeing with the Westminster Assembly.

But that will only be because the thing signified is also given, not because of the sign only being given. FV guys are fond of pointing out that the norm appears to be that the sign and thing signified are normally annexed one to the other. But the grace promised in 28.6 is the efficacy of baptism as a sign and seal. This must be distinguished (however closely one wants to tie the sacramental union) from the thing signified.

I would answer this, but I don’t know what Lane means by it. I think there is something important in there, but I don’t know what it is. For the elect, the

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sign seals the thing signified. That’s why we can say that the thing signified is really exhibited and conferred.

That being said, Wilson seems not to want to answer my query about Warfield. I would still appreciate it if Wilson would engage the Warfield quotations from the Shorter Writings, those books out of which Wilson forgot to read when formulating what Warfield supposedly believed about the Sacraments. In other words, I refuse to allow any kind of derailing of the discussion from Warfield’s beliefs to my beliefs. We are really talking about Warfield’s beliefs, not whether I should take an exception to the Confession. My own beliefs are tangential to this discussion.

Lane’s answers here illustrate the point I was making about Warfield in RINE. I interacted with Warfield’s doctrine on this as stated in The Plan of Salvation. At the same time, I acknowledged that Warfield would elsewhere confess that the sacraments are means of grace. Lane produced quotations that show this and challenges me on that basis. But I am going to stick to my guns here. Lane and Warfield have the same kind of “workaround” for the confessional language. Notice how Lane says that that baptism does something—but before his trigger-happy brethren empty their clips into him, he hastens to add this this is okay because he doesn’t really believe it. TheWord does it, not baptism. I understand something very similar to this being what Warfield means by the immediacy of God’s grace in salvation, which goes back to my original point in my book. Last thing. Lane says that whether he is in accord with the Confession if “tangential to this discussion.” This is a nice little set up. Wilkins and Leithart—our presbyterial heavens will tumble to the ground if we find that they are out of accord with the Confession at any point. But is Lane out of accord with the Confession? An irrelevant detail. A trifle. Let us not get distracted. We have work to do. What is that work? Nailing other people for being out of accord with the Confession.

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RC SR. DENIES THE GOSPEL JULY 30, 2007 I am listening to the August message of the month from Ligonier, where RC Sr. is talking about the Noahic covenant. Imagine how I felt when I heard him say that the distinction between the “covenant of works” and the “covenant of grace” was somewhat “artificial” and even “superficial.” Imagine further how I felt when he made of point of insisting that the covenant of works should be understood as fundamentally gracious. Whoa. Scott Clark, call your office. The rot of grace is spreading. It seems clear now that RC’s comments at the PCA General Assembly may have been necessary to throw certain heresy hunters off the scent. The bloodhounds of Westminster West are clearly restless, and are pawing at the locks of their kennels.

CONTINUED REJECTION OF WESTMINSTER JULY 31, 2007 The next issue of Credenda is going to be addressing the whole issue of the Federal Vision, and in that issue you will find a statement of convictions signed by some of the leading participants in this conversation—we have released that document early so you can take a look at it here. For hard copy, get a hold of the next Credenda. Green Baggins is continuing his conversation with me here, and I respond below. There are places where I don’t differ with the substance of what Lane is saying, but I wouldn’t put it the way he does.

The elect participate in the ordo salutis and the non-elect don’t, even if they are all participants in the administration of the covenant of grace. I’m not sure that Wilson would disagree with this. And least, I hope he doesn’t.

No, I don’t disagree. But let me make this qualification. The ordo is not a car you ride to heaven. Rather, presupposing election, it is a description of

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what happens to a person throughout the process of his salvation. I do agree that it accurately describes what happens to the elect, and does not at all describe what happens to the non-elect. But at the same time, I do believe that the reification of certain theological abstractions sometimes gets in the way. Lane asks what covenantal union is, and how that covenantal union relates to the ordo salutis. But he sets the stakes in a truly odd way.

In order to be Reformed, the FV would have to prove that “covenantal union” confers zero ordo salutis benefits.

But what is this? There are at least a couple ways to take the word “prove” here. One is to establish to somebody’s satisfaction that there is no inherent logical contradiction between our view of covenantal union and decretal theology. But this is not a requirement we apply elsewhere. In order to avoid hyper-Calvinism, you need to affirm that man is responsible along with an affirmation that God is exhaustively sovereign. But do you need to prove it? Yes, in the sense that you have to prove each of these tenets from Scripture. No, if you mean that you have to prove there is no logical contradiction between them. I can’t do that—I can’t show the math. But I can easily affirm both as being taught in the Bible. But this leads to the next sense of the word prove. It could mean that we need to prove that we really do hold to both covenantal union and decretal theology—in short, the demand might be that we have to prove that we’re not lying. But when distrust has escalated to the level it has, something like this is almost impossible to prove as well. How do I prove that I am not a lying skunk? But, for what it’s worth, I do affirm that all God’s people, elect and non-elect, share in a covenantal union with Christ. I also affirm that the fullness of this heritage belongs in truth only to the decretally elect. And so, Bob’s your uncle.

Would Wilson agree that the Covenant of Grace is made with Christ and with the elect seed in Him (LC 31)?

Yes, I would—in the narrow sense. In the broad sense, the covenant of grace is made with all believers and their children. I do this for the sake of

461 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JULY 2007 making basic doctrinal distinctions, and the difference beween the elect and non-elect is one of those distinctions. Just let it be noted that the “broad sense” should not be read as the “not really sense.” What is lacking is efficacy, sealing, assurance, and security. Connection to Christ is not lacking. The next issue is an important one. Speaking of the place where I said he was out of accord with the Westminster Confession, Lane says this.

The second point that needs to be addressed is the refreshing honesty of Wilson on the Confession here. He is right in this: the FV interpretation and the critics’ interpretation of the Confession CANNOT both be right and allowable. Wilson is of course specifically applying this idea to the issue of baptismal efficacy, which is the topic under discussion. However, Wilson’s statement seems to have a broader application. In other words the FV should drop the facade that the Reformed world is just one big umbrella that can house many different views, and that the Confession allows both FV views and TR’s to exist simultaneously. No, it cannot. The FV interpretation and the TR interpretation contradict one another. That is what the TR’s have been saying all along. It is refreshing to see an FV guy say so.

I want to respond to this with a series of short responses so we can get on to the question of baptismal efficacy. First, Lane is right that I believe our interpretations of the section on baptismal efficacy contradict one another. But it was not my point to extend that point to the entire Confession. Sec- ond, this can only be done if it is assumed that the Confession is infallible and inspired. A uninspired consensus document (as Westminster was) most certainly can make room for different views in a way that, say, the book of Ro- mans doesn’t. Now I believe that what we call the TR view of things has had an honored place in the Reformed mainstream since the Reformation. But so has the position that we are now calling FV. Simple question: did any of the delegates to the Assembly affirm baptismal regeneration (in the traditional sense) and did any deny it? And did they all vote?

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Now, leaving aside baptismal regeneration in the classic sense, let us rather talk about the nuanced Westminsterian take on baptismal efficacy. Here Lane is simply wrong about the Confession and needs to take an exception. He says:

But the grace promised in 28.6 is the efficacy of baptism as a sign and seal. This must be distinguished . . . from the thing signified.

What Lane is saying here is that the grace that is exhibited and conferred is not the grace itself, but rather the grace of a promise of grace. But his point is tautological. Baptism exhibits and confers baptism.

I would say that in the case of the baptized regenerate soul, the sacrament of water baptism really exhibits and confers the grace of baptism as sign and seal at the appointed time.

Compare this to the statements of Westminster itself. The efficacy of Baptism is not tied to that moment of time wherein it is administered; yet, notwithstanding, by the right use of this ordinance, the grace promised is not only offered, but really exhibited, and conferred, by the Holy Ghost, to such (whether of age or infants) as that grace belongs unto, according to the counsel of God’s own will, in His appointed time. (WCF 28.6)

But if the efficacy of baptism refers to the impartation of the sign and seal of baptism, then the “efficacy” of it is tied to the moment of administration. That is when the sign and seal is applied, right? The grace promised is not the same thing as the grace inherent in the act of promising. God shows His gracious nature in making this promise, true enough. But the grace promised is clearly the grace signified. Now grace signified only belongs to worthy receivers, it only belongs to those to whom it properly belongs (the elect). But for those elect, the Westminster divines taught, explicitly, that the grace

463 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JULY 2007 promised in baptism is really exhibited and conferred on the elect at the moment of their regeneration. Lane doesn’t have to like it, but this is what the words say. It cannot be what Lane is arguing for here. If it were, then the efficacy of baptism is anchored to the moment of adminstration. The only reason for detaching the sign and thing signified in time is because the thing signified often comes at a different time in a person’s life than the moment of their baptism. And just a quick comment on Lane’s reasoning about this.

If baptism confers regeneration upon the elect only, and not on the non-elect, then it does not confer regeneration for the elect either, since such a position requires that regeneration be located within baptism itself. And if it is located within baptism itself, then regeneration would also be conferred on the non-elect, as indeed some say.

Here’s the problem with Lane’s reasoning. Just substitute the word Word for baptism, and his reasoning applies just as well (or as poorly). The Word cannot regenerate because two men sat under the same sermon, and one was converted and the other not. If the Word regenerated in itself, then all who heard it would have to be born again. If the reasoning doesn’t apply to the Word as a means of grace, then it doesn’t apply to baptism either.

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DEMONSTRATING CONFESSIONAL INTEGRITY AUGUST 1, 2007 Green Baggins has begun interacting with the FV statement, and if I may say so, he begins well. He notes first that we claim to be in harmony with the Reformed confessions, and he says that he will assume us to be so unless it is proven otherwise. Secondly, he recognizes the defined scope of the document, along with the provisional nature of some of the claims. He intends to interact with us with that in mind. And third, he notes that we have said we want to be teachable, and he will take us at our word here. He does get a little jab in here, but I think it is above the belt.

So I am going to take them at their word here. I am not going to assume that past behavior dictates future response. If I did, I would not have excessively good reason to deem FV authors teachable. Be that as it may, I think believing this statement of humility on their part is the best way forward.

Okay, even though it is above the belt, I would like to mention that I think it still a bit out of context. Remember that the whole imbroglio started with a Morecraftian heresy trial on the cheap, and a “may God have mercy on their souls” dismissal of us, followed thereafter by a massive internet slander campaign. Someone gave a signal, and one portion of the Reformed world began heaving tin cans, bottles, dead cats, mature vegetables, and old boots at another portion of the Reformed world. “Heretics! Deniers of the gospel!

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False teachers!” Then halfway though the barrage, another signal was given and in the lull that followed, another argument was thoughtfully advanced. “Gee, why are you guys so defensive?” Be that as it may, the loop has to be broken sometime, and Lane’s willingness to do is appreciated. Let’s take it from here, why don’t we? The main thing I want to note is another comment made by Lane, and this brings us back to his denial of Westminster 28.6. He doesn’t believe he denies it, but that’s what all of us deniers say, isn’t it? Speaking of us, he says,

Always, for those who have taken vows to uphold the standards of the church, their teachings need to be demonstrated to be in conformity with the standards.

Now I have made what I consider to be a serious point with regard to Lane setting aside the Westminster doctrine on baptism. And he has not been able to demonstrate (his standard) that he is in conformity with the Standards at this place. It is evident that he is not in conformity. He says that the efficacy of baptism does not include the grace signified, but only refers to the grace of signing and sealing. But this is contrary to Westminster. Consider.

Q. 91. How do the sacraments become effectual means of salvation? A. The sacraments become effectual means of salvation, not from any virtue in them, or in him that doth administer them; but only by the blessing of Christ, and the working of his Spirit in them that by faith receive them. (WSC, emphasis mine)

Remember we are not talking about the unbaptized regenerate, or the baptized unregenerate. We are talking about the baptized regenerate. The blessing of Christ, and the working of the Spirit, enable someone who receives the sacraments in true evangelical faith to rightly consider those sacraments to be numbered among the effectual means of their salvation. Is this paraphrase wrong? If so, where? If not, then how can it be reconciled with Lane’s formulation?

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Question 161: How do the sacraments become effectual means of salvation? Answer: The sacraments become effectual means of salvation, not by any power in themselves, or any virtue derived from the piety or intention of him by whom they are administered, but only by the working of the Holy Ghost, and the blessing of Christ, by whom they are instituted. (WLC, emphasis mine)

The Larger Catechism says the same, although without mentioned the true faith of the recipient. The working of the Holy Ghost and the blessing of Christ make the sacraments to become effectual means of salvation. Right? And let me add that I agree with Westminster that this is not because of any magical virtue in the water, or in the virtue, piety or intent of the one administering the sacrament. God is the one who makes the sacraments effectual the way they are.

The efficacy of Baptism is not tied to that moment of time wherein it is administered; yet, notwithstanding, by the right use of this ordinance, the grace promised is not only offered, but really exhibited, and conferred, by the Holy Ghost, to such (whether of age or infants) as that grace belongs unto, according to the counsel of God’s own will, in His appointed time. (WCF 28.6)

Lane’s explanation of this place fall radically short. The Confession says that the “grace promised” is exhibited and conferred in the right use of this ordinance. Lane says that this refers to the grace of promising, signing, and sealing, but it does not refer to the grace signified—meaning regeneration, among other things.

Question 177: Wherein do the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper differ? Answer: The sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper differ, in that Baptism is to be administered but once, with water, to be a sign and seal of our regeneration and ingrafting into Christ, and that even to infants . . . .

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Now this says that when baptism is administered, with water, it serves as a sign and seal of our regeneration and ingrafting into Christ. Now the “sign and seal” aspect of baptism is tied, by the very nature of the case, to the moment of administration. It makes no sense to say that baptism is administered at one point in time and becomes a sign and seal at another point in time. But it is not nonsensical to say that the sign and seal is applied at one point, and the thing signified (regeneration and ingrafting into Christ) becomes a reality at another point in time. We all know people who were baptized in infancy and who were converted in college. This is what Westminster is plainly talking about. The thing signified may happen at another time than the time of baptism. Now Westminster teaches that the efficacy of baptism in bringing about the thing signified (the grace promised in the sign and seal) is not limited to the moment of administration. This means that Westminster teaches that when someone, baptized in infancy, is converted in college, his baptism is still to be reckoned as one of the means involved. That is what the words say. Lane thinks otherwise. And his standard is that since he has taken vows to uphold these standards, that he must demonstrate that his contrary views are somehow consistent with the Confession. He is not permitted to simply assert that he agrees with the Confession. He must diagram the sentences of the Confession and Catechisms and show how they are saying the same thing that he is saying. The difficulty here is that they are not saying the same thing. The grace promised refers to the grace promised, not the graciousness of promising.

THE WHOLE SCHEBEAL AUGUST 1, 2007 Scott Clark is responding to the FV statement also, which can be found here. In this post, he compares us to terrorists, among other things.

Will the PCA signatories really submit to the judgment of the presbyteries or will they flee to the waiting and willing arms of that woman of easy virtue in Moscow?

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I have been called a lot of things in my day, but that’s a ripe one.

Thede facto leader of the FV movement is also the de facto leader of the FV movement.

Now I, king of the typos, am not going to make a big deal out of this. But I think he meant for one of those FVs to actually be CREC. And, further, it is pretty plain from the context that he was talking about me. So here’s my little question. Among all the wild injuns attacking us, there seems to be a consensus that I am the most orthodox sounding. Even Clark, in a rare moment of catholicity forced by not yet having turned off this comments feature, allowed that I was “on the fence.” But in the past, I have been an odd anomaly, not quite fitting in what is thought to be the real FV world. And yet now I am the de facto leader of the whole schebeal. So which is it? And whichever way he answers the question—full disclosure here—in about three moves I will say checkmate.

WESTMINSTER 28.6 AUGUST 3, 2007 Green Baggins attempts to answer my challenges on Westminster 28.6 here. Before engaging with that response, let me say express some disappointment that Lane also says that this will be his “final statement on it.” When it comes to the efficacy of baptism, I get to have the last word. The problem with this is that it is a double standard. When questions are raised about Wilkins and Leithart, and their conformity to the Westminster Standards, do they get to simply call a halt when they are tired of trying to explain? If the issue is a confessional one, and reasonable questions in good faith are raised, then shouldn’t the discussion continue until there is some kind of resolution? The standard with which you judge, you shall be judged. Those who read through the posts on this thread will see that Lane is very much out of conformity with the teaching of Westminster 28.6, however much he would like that lack of conformity to go away. In this last response, he tries to nuance his position just a bit, but it is still entirely unsatisfactory.

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First, I agree with Lane on the meaning of the phrase “in His appointed time.” This is clearly speaking of the moment of regeneration for one of the elect. And I agree with Lane about the importance of WCF 27.2. Sign and thing signified are distinct but inseparable, and the names and effects of one can lawfully be attributed to the other, which is not the same thing as being equated with the other. Well and good. Lane argued previously that the efficacy of baptism was resident in its role as sign and seal, and not because it had anything to do with accomplishing the thing signified. Now he is adjusting somewhat, saying that the sign-and- sealness of baptism comes to its full efficacy when faith comes. “Baptism has its full effect as sign and seal when a person comes to faith.” “When that promise becomes fulfillment, the promise has itsfull meaning.” “But the sign and seal do not have their full efficacy until faith comes” (all emphases mine). But what does this mean? The thing signified can plainly come later than the baptism, but how can the sign and seal get any fuller? The PCA BCO clearly takes the referent of the “efficacy of baptism” the same way I do, and this is contrary to Lane’s argument.

That the inward grace and virtue of Baptism is not tied to that very moment of time wherein it is administered; and that the fruit and power thereof reaches to the whole course of our life; and that outward baptism is not so necessary, that through the want thereof, the infant is in danger of damnation. (PCA BCO 56–5.1, emphasis added)

The efficacy of baptism refers to that which baptism signifies and seals, which is to say the inward grace and virtue spoken of in WCF 28.1. Sure, baptism in water is a sign and seal, but a sign and seal of what?

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Baptism is a sacrament of the New Testament, ordained by Jesus Christ, not only for the solemn admission of the party baptized into the visible Church; but also to be unto him a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, of his ingrafting into Christ, of regeneration, of remission of sins, and of his giving up unto God, through Jesus Christ, to walk in the newness of life. Which sacrament is, by Christ’s own appointment, to be continued in His Church until the end of the world. (WCF 28.1)

It is a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, of a man’s ingrafting into Christ, of regeneration, of remission of sins, and of his giving up to God in order to walk in newness of life. That is what is signified in baptism. Now 28.6 says that for those to whom this grace belongs, at the appointed time, the Holy Spirit of God uses baptism as one of His instruments for bringing all this about. That is the teaching of the Confession, and Lane does not hold to it. This does not make him any less of a Christian, for there are many fine Christians who don’t hold to the Westminster Confession of Faith. But it does make him significantly less of a confessionalist, and it disqualifies him from bringing accusations against others for their lack of conformity to the Confession. He is tying himself in knots here because he is trying to protect sola fide, but the Reformers had a clear understanding of Word and Sacrament as means of grace, and they did not deny sola fide. For example, Lane says this—”Baptism, however connected it is to faith, is not faith itself. We are not justified by baptism. We are justified by faith alone.” But there are secondary instruments involved. Faith as the sole instrument of justification refers to faith as the sole primary instrument. There are plenty of lesser instruments, lesser means—preachers, tracts, sermons, mothers, mission agencies, the Lord’s Supper, soup kitchens, baptism, and bumper stickers.

The identification of Word and sacraments as media gratiae does not intend to exclude a general or common operation of grace but rather to indicate the function of both Word and sacraments in the regeneration . . . and sanctification . . . of man as the instruments or objective channels

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of special or saving grace (gratia specialis). Word and sacraments are thus instrumental both in the inception of salvation and in the continuance of the work of grace in the Christian life. In addition, Word and sacraments are the sole officially ordained or instituted instruments or means of grace. God has promised the presence of his grace to faithful hearers of the Word and faithful participants in the sacraments. (Richard Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms, pp. 187–188)

Muller is describing the historic Reformed position, which is not the contemporary bapterian position. American bapterians are trying to protect sola fide while keeping the language of means of grace, but they do this by isolating it from regeneration and justification, applying it solely to secondary aspects of the Christian experience, like sanctification. Thus, faith is the sole instrument of justification, while things like baptism and the Lord’s Supper can be a great help somewhere else in your Christian life, like in your on-going sanctification. This is not how the Reformers thought at all. They made faith the sole instrument for receiving justifying grace, but they were quite happy to employ numerous other secondary instruments, all subordinate to faith alone, and all made effectual by faith alone. In short, the historic Reformed faith saw faith as the primary instrument of justification, the one essential thing that made all secondary instruments of that same justification (e.g., sermons and sacraments) worth anything at all. Those in the Reformed tradition who have sought to accommodate the anti-magisterial bent of the American system of theology have done this by means of making sacraments the means of secondary graces, instead of secondary means of grace. They got the adjective in the wrong place is all. Fine. Let them do that. But then when they go on a rampage and start accusing those people who still hold to Westminster the way it was written of denying the gospel, denying sola fide, and denying the Three Silmarils, it gets a bit thick and a response is required. As I said earlier, many fine Christians don’t hold to Westminster. Great. Fine. But if you don’t hold to Westminster, it is not possible to still use it as a club.

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BELLS ON HIS JACKET AUGUST 4, 2007 Scott Clark appears to be auguring in. First, he complains about someone on the URC list who received a request from China to have the Federal Vision statement translated into Chinese. Clark was displeased with the fellow on the list who then arranged for it.

. . . a post from China asking for a translation into Chinese of the new FV Statement. So he naturally issued a call for translators to help spread the galawspel of the FV in China. Could there be anything more heartbreaking?

I’ll tell you what let’s do. Why don’t we arrange for a debate between Clark and me, in any setting, format, or town—written, audio, or live—and then we have that translated into Chinese? Should fix everything. But Clark is the kind of defender of the faith who accomplishes his goal in this respect by retreating to a new setting where nobody is attacking it. He is certainly willing to pronounce about the outside world, but it is a fundamental part of his outlook that no backchat is to be permitted from that outside world. Debates go better that way. First he turned off the comments feature on his blog because questions and counterarguments are just pesky, and incipiently Pelagian. And now he has established a new list-serve for URC types, except for those URC types who are not URCish enough, wanting to translate the other side of a debate into Chinese. Don’t people know that if you want to know what somebody teaches, you must not ask them but must go to their adversaries? So the new list has to have a strict RULE because if we want to contend for the gospel of free grace we have to do it with a strict RULE. Galawspel indeed. Anyhow, there is just one rule for this new list.

Contradiction of the Reformed Confessions is forbidden. This doesn’t mean that there can’t be any questions about our confession and catechisms, but it does mean that folks can’t contradict our confessions under the guise of being Reformed. What this does mean is that the

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URCNA list is no place for Federal Visionists or other movements that are fundamentally subversive of the Reformed confession.

Life in a tight, confessionally sealed echo chamber. But after a time, things will get messy in there, what with a few remaining people coming and going and all, and so access to the chamber will eventually be restricted to one visit annually by one seminary professor, preferably from California. Little bells will be sewn onto his jacket and a rope will be tied around his ankle in case he has a heart attack in there. A prophet, one of your own, one H.L. Mencken, described this phenomenon very well when he said, “All ecclesiastical establishments are very sensitive.”

WHY WOULDN’T WE QUOTE HIM? AUGUST 6, 2007 In a comments thread over at Green Baggins, Jason Stellman says this:

And lastly, I do find it interesting that I can’t seem to elicit a response from a Federal Visionist that doesn’t mention Scott Clark. If you all insist on complaining about being lumped together (which sometimes you unfairly are), then you should stop doing the same thing to your opponents. What’s good for the goose . . . .

I think this is a fair question. First, we quote Scott Clark as much as we do because, although he is not on our payroll, he might as well be. He is fun to quote. We will continue to do so as long as our critics continue to acknowledge him as a capable spokesman for their position. If they make it clear that he is not, then I will immediately stop treating him as a representative critic. Secondly, the point I was making there in quoting Clark was that he has pronounced me the leader of the FV business. This not a claim that I make, incidentally—I don’t think it is true. But if I were, and if I am also one of the FV guys most willing to speak in the language of the TRs, making all the qualifications that folks want us to make, then what’s the problem? Either I am representative or I am not. If I am not, I cannot be the leader, and the CREC is not the hot bed of cool customers that it is being made out to be. If

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I am, then why does not my orthodoxy on certain essentials (acknowledged by a number of FV critics) get attributed to the whole? Third, the FV statement that we issued was motivated in part because of our recognition that we bore some responsibility for the confusion. Consequently, we issued a statement that made very clear what the center of FV agreement was, and the statement also included a number of items where we differ among ourselves. We trust that it was helpful. I would urge critics of the FV to do something similar. We know that “critics of the FV” are not doctrinally monolithic. And ironically, some of those differences are greater than the differences some of the FV critics have with some of us in the FV. The lines are drawn in some weird places. But this means that much of the alliance against us is a function of ecclesiastical politics and is not doctrinally principled. And last, as a variant of my first point, if Lane or Jason or any other critics make it plain that Clark does not represent them, I will be more than happy to start making that distinction myself. But thus far, all I have seen at Green Baggins is appreciation, agreement and respect. “Scott Clark is answering this point ably here . . .” That kind of thing.

SO CONFUSING. I DON’T WANT TO PAY ATTENTION TO THE ADJECTIVES AUGUST 13, 2007 A friend brought our attention to Calvin’s commentary on Acts 3:25, where he says, “And so, although the common election be not effectual in all, yet may it set open a gate for the special elect.” The rot is spreading. Somebody needs to bring charges, and soon. What would the charge be exactly? Well, it would have to be the heinous crime of using one word two different ways and confusing the simple.

A PASSING CAT BY THE EARS AUGUST 8, 2007 It would be nice if we could work through the questions surrounding the FV without all the heat and acrimony that some are generating. But it is kind

475 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | AUGUST 2007 of like discipling kids. Paul says (Gal. 6:1) that if anyone is overtaken in a trespass, the one who is spiritual should correct him, considering his own situation, lest he also be tempted. But when a father is spiritual, and qualified to correct his child for chewing with his mouth open, he is often unmotivated. And when he is motivated, it is usually because he is annoyed, and therefore not qualified to say anything. Those who could have very helpful things to say to us are generally not motivated to do so and are off minding their own ministries. They have better things to do than take a passing cat by the ears. And those who are motivated to say something about the FV are frequently doing so in what might be called a hot and bothered fashion. I continue to interact with Green Baggins for two reasons. I believe that he really is giving an honest and conscientious effort to civil and honest interaction. This cannot be said about everyone who comments on his blog, but you can’t have everything. Secondly, a number of the national leaders of the FV critics have commented there, and I am sure that more are reading his blog. This has become the place where we can, at least indirectly, talk, That said, Lane continues to be plagued by misunderstanding. For example, he quotes the FV statement, “We affirm the reality of the decrees, but deny that the decrees ‘trump’ the covenant,” and then objects to it this way:

Well, this is clear as mud. The decree of God can be thwarted by the covenant? Is that what they mean? The decree must somehow be mu- table and immutable at the same time? The decree of God is unchangeable, eternal, and infinite. Is not the covenant part of God’s decree? So they set the covenant against the decree and immediately claim that they have not done so. This is disingenuous at best.

We affirm the reality of the decrees as decrees. The “reality of the decrees” means that we hold them to be immutable, untouchable, settled, predestined, foreordained, unthwartable, eternal, infinite, and unchangeable. When we say that the reality of the decrees should not be allowed to trump the covenant, we are saying that it is right and appropriate and proper

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and good for a minister to warn a congregation against falling from grace, or trampling underfoot the blood of the covenant by which they were sanctified, or failing to bear fruit as a branch in the vine. We are talking about how we function, how we warn, how we admonish. The covenant is given to us. The decrees are made concerning us. It is not our job to parse the decrees. It is our job to live in terms of the covenant. We affirm that the decrees are there. We deny that we should preach or admonish someone in particular based on a presumed knowledge of the content of the decrees with regard to that person. This is a distinction that the Bible gives us expressly.

The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law. (Deut. 29:29)

It is revealed to us that Christians can fall away from the covenant. It is not revealed to us who was predestined to do so, and who was predestined to remain—although everyone in the covenant is in one or the other category. The latter is therefore not to be the basis of our pastoral warnings. The former is.

SOME BAYLY QUESTIONS AUGUST 14, 2007 As I have said before, I respect the Bayly brothers highly, and have appreciated the integrity of their conduct in the whole FV flap, despite our obvious differences. Please take a moment to read this.

CALL IT A SHADOW ORDO AUGUST 14, 2007 The Westminster Standards say that non-elect covenant members partake of “common operations of the Spirit.” Calvin consistently speaks of general election and special election. Now when some in the FV have used ordo words like regeneration and applied them to those who are not of the special elect,

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the response from the FV critics has been consternation, and the resultant controversy. Now I have always heard this usage as being something like “regeneration after a fashion,” and so on, and that is why the language has not freaked me out. Even if I don’t use that terminology (because I have enough trouble), I think I do understand the way it is being used. Now when the Standards say that the decretally reprobate can and do partake of these common operations, this is the question that I think should be posed. Are these common operations undifferentiated or not? I use the word in two senses—undifferentiated from the operations enjoyed by the decretally elect, and undifferentiated within those operations themselves. If they are said to be not differentiated at all (in the first sense), then the person holding this view would be a classic Arminian. If they are so differentiated (in the second sense) that the common operations of the Spirit amount to nothing more than the Holy Spirit being in the same room with the subject, making him feel vaguely cozy, then this protects the ordo on our schematic diagram, but it doesn’t address the central concern that the FV men have had. That concern is the desire to be able to use biblical language while describing reprobate members of the covenant. The Arminians are not shy about using that language, and we do believe they are drawing erroneous conclusions from it. But their false conclusions are frequently far more plausible than Reformed hand-waving over the apostasy texts. So the reprobate has tasted the powers of the coming age. He has been cleansed from his former sins. He was once enlightened, and so on. This is differentiated language, in the second sense. The Holy Spirit is doing different things within these common operations. So, I think my friends are saying, the Holy Spirit is doing different things at different times in these common operations. The language referring to these different things is sometimes (in the Bible) language that is used in ordo theology. This is okay, so long as we are careful to make the distinctions we need to. Just like general election and special election. Just call it a shadow ordo.

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OUR LITTLE REFORMED CONTRETEMPS AUGUST 14, 2007 Thanks to Randy Booth, who supplied me with some interesting quotes on general and special election from Calvin.

Here, then, a twofold class of sons presents itself to us, in the Church; for since the whole body of the people is gathered together into the fold of God, by one and the same voice, all without exception, are, in this respect, accounted children; the name of the Church is applicable in common to them all: but in the innermost sanctuary of God, none others are reckoned the sons of God, than they in whom the promise is ratified by faith. And although this difference flows from the fountain of gratuitous election, whence also faith itself springs; yet, since the counsel of God is in itself hidden from us, we therefore distinguish the true from the spurious children, by the respective marks of faith and of unbelief. [John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1979), 1:449.]

We must now add a second, more limited degree of election, or one in which God’s more special grace was evident, that is, when from the same race of Abraham God rejected some but showed that he kept others among his sons by cherishing them in the church. Ishmael had at first obtained equal rank with his brother Isaac, for in him the spiritual covenant had been equally sealed by the sign of circumcision. Ishmael is cut off; then Esau; afterward, a countless multitude, and well-nigh all Israel . . . By their own defect and guilt, I admit, Ishmael, Esau, and the like were cut off from adoption. For the condition had been laid down that they should faithfully keep God’s covenant, which they faithlessly violated. [Calvin, Institutes, 3:21:6, cited in Lillback, Binding of God, p. 215].

So the answer may be divided into two parts—that God has by no means cast away the whole race of Abraham contrary to the tenor of his own

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covenant—and that yet the fruit of adoption does not exist in all the children of the flesh, for secret election precedes. [Calvin,Commentaries , 19:410, Rom. 11:2, cited in Lillback, Binding of God, p. 215].

But here someone may object and say, that it is strange that the posterity of Jacob should be said to have been elected in his person, and yet they had in the meantime departed from God; for the election of God in this case would not be sure and permanent; and we know that whom God elects he also justifies, and their salvation is so secured, that none of them can perish; all the elect are also delivered to Christ as their pre- server, that he may keep them by his divine power, which is invincible, as John teaches in chapter 10. What then does this mean? Now we know, and it has been before stated, that the election of God as to that people was twofold; for the one was general, and the other special. The election of holy Jacob was special, for he was really one of the children of God; special also was the election of those who are called by Paul the children of the promise (Romans9:8). There was another, a general election; for he received his whole seed into his faith, and offered to all his covenant. At the same time, they were not all regenerated, they were not all gifted with the Spirit of adoption. This general election was not then efficacious in all. Solved now is the matter in debate, that no one of the elect shall perish; for the whole people were not elected in a special manner; but God knew whom he had chosen out of that people; and them he endued, as we have said, with the Spirit of adoption, and supplied with his own grace, that they might never fall away. Others were indeed chosen in a certain way, that is, God offered to them the covenant of salvation; but yet through their ingratitude they caused God to reject them, and to disown them as children (John Calvin, Commentary on Hosea 12:3–5).

So why then am I up to my neck in our little Reformed contretemps? Why are comments from various people’s blogs buzzing angrily around my head?

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“Ah,” someone might say, “it is because you make the distinction Calvin makes without all those wholesome and edifying qualifications.” The problem here is that not only do I agree with Calvin’s distinction between general and special election, but I also agree with all those wholesome and edifying qualifications—and always have. Not only have I held to them since first becoming a Calvinist in the late eighties, I have not been shy about saying so. I am not just busting them out now in order to exasperate my accusers by becoming orthodox at the last minute.

PUT LAW AND GOSPEL INTO A STORY AUGUST 15, 2007 I want to take a brief point I made in the comments section over at Green Baggins and amplify it. The FV treatment of law and gospel creates the question of how “the law” relates to us as Christians in the course of our Christian lives. And so of course we hold that the law convicts us when we sin. It is not our point to deny this at all. If the law says not to lie, and I lie, then I am cut to the heart by the law. Of course. The point we are making is that to be convicted like this is part of my life as a Christian—God’s rebukes are always oil on my head. Conviction is not an end in itself. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but rather painful. Of course, and the law is God’s paddle for spanking His children. But He does not spank us as an end in itself. It is part of a story, and that story is the peaceful fruit of an upright life. That story’s ending makes the painful chapters part of a comedy—it is good news. This means that I don’t know how to detach the law’s “rough” handling of me from the story, from the plotline. Law and gospel are not static spiritual realities. They are descriptions of how the story is going. In the story of the reprobate, the law indicates the tragic end. But it is not possible for the law to represent a tragic end to one of God’s children. His spankings are efficacious, and I know that fellowship will always be restored. It is the difference between discipline and punishment. Punishment is not concerned with improving the character of the one being punished. It might

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have that effect, but it is not necessary. When a murderer is put to death, it is not done in order that he will get right with God before he dies. He might get right with God before he dies, but the value of the punishment remains whether he does so or not. Discipline is different—it has correction and restoration in view the entire time. Secure children know this. They do not isolate the “law periods” of their childhood and then think of them in isolation—they always see it as part of the happy story. When God has secure children, they are like this too. They know that God intends good for them in everything He does. In discipline when I sin, in hard providences when I was getting too complacent, in blessings straight up, in grace through affliction, I am always in the same story. And it is the story of my salvation. Afterwards, when we are enjoying the peaceful fruit of an upright life, which is promised us in Hebrews 12, do we thank God for the hard discipline which seemed painful and even overwhelming at the time? Are those “law” episodes part of the gospel story? Of course they are. Failure to understand that our lives are stories is a large part of the confusion on this issue. And our lives, in their entirety, will either be part of the divine comedy, or they will end at the inferno. For the former, it is all ultimately gospel, every last bit of it. All law was really discipline. For the latter, it is all law, every last bit of it. All law is really punishment, and it is all law. We all understand “law” and “gospel” as abstract concepts, just as we understand “self-revelation,” or “danger,” or “obstacles,” in a creative writing workshop. But we have to put these things into the story in order to determine what they ultimately are. Is “danger” an opportunity for Robert? Is it destruction for William? That depends on how the story goes.

WHEN THE FORK FLOATS AUGUST 16, 2007 In the discussion over at Green Baggins, one of the FV critics said something important. I responded to it there, but I want to amplify my response here. This is what he said:

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We are not justified by a dead faith. We are not justified by a living faith, either. We have a living faith because we are justified. We are justified by a receiving faith. Remember, God justifies the UNGODLY (not AS ungodly, but WHILE ungodly.) Sola fidemeans that faith is the means, not the analytic ground. Accordingly Reformed is enough, while FV is bloated soteriology.

And here is my response:

Does God justify the unregenerate? According to the ordo, God gives me a new heart, and as a consequence I repent and believe. As I result of believing, I am then justified. Regeneration is first. This new heart, is it alive or dead? If dead, then how is it different from my old heart? If alive, then how did it happen that the repentance and faith that proceeded from it fail to share in that life? You point to a “receiving faith.” How can faith act as an agent in this way without being alive? A dead faith cannot receive. A living faith can receive. Of course faith is not the analytic ground, or any other kind of ground. But it is the act of believing rendered by a new creature, quickened by the Holy Spirit of God. Only a living faith can grasp the living Christ.

And I need to add just a bit more to what I said there. This controversy has been going on for years now, and I cannot recall any of the FV critics making a serious attempt to untangle the order of the ordo. I have presented this argument a number of times, and I do not know what the response of the critics, besides sidestepping, is. If regeneration is first, as it is, then what does this mean? What are the implications? In order to have a non-living faith (so that Christ will ostensibly have all the glory), it is necessary to put regeneration somewhere else in the ordo. But where to put it? If I am made alive first thing, then all my actions after that point partake of that life. How could they not? Faith is not living because it is an independent creature with a life of its own. Faith is living because it is a description of what the new heart, just

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given that life, now does. The new heart, the living heart, the heart of flesh, repents and believes. This repentance is real,alive , because it is not coming from a corpse. This faith is real, alive, because it is far more than the intellectual assent of one who is still spiritually dead. And in this exchange, I hope it is obvious that in the name of splitting hairs in defense of the purity of the evangel, the defenders of that evangel have missed one of the central glories of the Reformed faith. We are made alive (a nano-second or so) before we are justified. We are alive (a nano-second) before we turn from our sins. We are repentant (a nano-second) before we believe. And when we believe we are then justified. And of course I know you can’t put a stop watch on these things. The ordo is simply making a critical theological point by placing regeneration first for illustrative purposes. So what is that point? It is that life pervades the whole shebang. And that life is the sheer, unadulterated, exuberant, overflowing, monergistic grace of God. God speaks, and the dead bones live. The dead bones become a living man. The living man repents and believes, turning away from his old comfortable graveyard, and turning toward his everlasting home. He believes in Christ, and God imputes everything that Jesus did, said, has, or will have to that living man. He receives it all by faith. What faith? The only kind he has, the kind God gave him when He breathed into his nostrils the breath of eternal life. And you want to say this is not “really” Reformed? Wake up, man! I put two whole fistfuls of the black beans of Calvinism into the grinder, and then put five extra tablespoons of the resultant black powder in the coffee filter. I then put a fork in the bottom of the coffee pot. When the fork floats, the coffee is ready. Don’t come around here saying the coffee isn’t strong enough!

SHACKLING THE WIND AUGUST 18, 2007 If you have read the “When the Fork Floats” thread, this is a follow on to that, particularly the comments. This is what I am doing with the ordo, and for FV critics, it constitutes what I believe to be an unanswerable problem for them.

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I have said before in this space that the ordo is a model—like the paper mache models of the atom in your elementary school classroom. In calling it a model, I am happy with it as a model. I am not disputing it as a model and am more than willing to work with it as a model. But the paper-mache model of the atom is not a photograph of the atom. It is not exactly like the atom in every respect—and saying this is more a recognition of the limitations of models for things like this than it is a proposal for an alternative model. I don’t want an alternative model. So, I work within the constraints of the traditional ordo, happy to do so, and willing to subscribe to it. You bet. But in this dispute, the FV critics are trying to put the electron into the nucleus, and I am engaged in cheerfully pointing that out. Not only so, but they are doing this in the name of the ordo, long live the ordo. It just ain’t right somehow. Now, that said, just a couple of comments. The first is to respond to a suggestion from an FV sympathizer, and then another to respond to an FV critic. Roger suggests that folks aren’t regenerated and justified until they are baptized, but that they are believers before this, perhaps minutes or days. Or in the case of modern evangelicalism, years. But this creates an ordo that really can be measured with a stopwatch, along with a host of pastoral problems for the man who has to preach the funeral of the man who was killed on the way to his baptism, or for a stillborn infant. The ordo was always meant to describe the nano-moments of true conversion, before which the person was an object of wrath and after which he is a friend of God. Every person born into this world is in the former condition at one time, and those who are saved make the transition to the latter condition. Now the ordo is meant to describe what happens when you cross that particular border. To apply it to other issues will only tangle us up. If the FV tried to do that (which it has not, despite many assertions from outside), it would either need to make exceptions for the true believers who die shy of baptism, in which case our position will be qualified right out of existence, with much confusion on the way, or we say “tough nails,” you really do have to be baptized in water to be saved, period, in which case, the FV would have to try to get along without my future services.

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There are other important events at the headwaters of the Christian life— and I am happy to say that baptism ratifies and seals what happened when the guy first believed, formalizing it before God and man. That is the moment when he is brought into the visible church, ushered into formal covenant membership. Fine. And we can even say that the grace shown during the ordo was the grace of his baptism, and this is possible because the efficacy of baptism is capable of time travel, and that would be fine too. That’s straight out of the Westminster Confession, and who could be against that? Right, guys? And we view things from the vantage of the covenant, speaking in terms of it, which is also fine. Everything’s fine. But the ordo is talking about the Holy Spirit’s implementation of God’s decrees. We don’t need to measure that, or try to time it when it happens. In- deed, we must not try. But it is important for our theology that we acknowledge that God implements His decrees at a particular moment in the person’s life. We call that the moment of the effectual call and regeneration. And so here is where FV critics run into their stumper. I have not yet seen them address this question in a way that is even remotely satisfactory. To use the phrase living faith sets them to making accusations of Shep- herdism, when living faith as the instrument of justification is demanded by the Confession, the ordo, and by historic evangelicalism. Defending the Confession against their ideas of what Shepherd must have said, they deny the Confession. Greg quoted WCF 13.1. “They, who are once effectually called, and regenerated, having a new heart, and a new spirit created in them, are further sanctified . . .” The result of the effectual call and regeneration is a new heart and new spirit. And that is the heart that repents and that is the heart that believes. A new heart means a new repentance, a new faith. A living heart means a living repentance and a living faith. These men, zealous for their point, are seriously maintaining that God gave us a living tree so that it might bear dead fruit, soli Deo gloria. And they are defending this idea of dead fruit in the name of the evangel of life. Though, to be completely fair, they don’t like calling it dead fruit—that is why they have to come up with something like “not-alive fruit,” or “receiving fruit.”

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Anything but living. Why? “Because we are evangelicals and cannot abide the idea of new life.” I am an historic evangelical, and that is what I am down to the bone. When God comes to us in grace and salvation, He brings life with Him, and nothing else. Everything He touches is made alive, and He touches everything. Everything He gives partakes of that life. It is new life from God, and it pervades the whole. Not only so, but it pervades the whole from the first moment of the effectual call, before we do a blessed thing. But one of the blessed things we do is believe, and it is living creatures, alive for the first time, who do this believing. Faith is not an inert substance, but rather an action performed by persons who are now alive. One last comment and I am done. C.S. Lewis comments on the nature of the early Puritans and Reformers in 16th century—their chief characteristics being their exuberance, their liberation from motive-scratching, their joy, their relief, their delight in new life, their acceptance of something that was too good to be true. The gospel, when it breaks out in power, always has that effect. For those watching this particular controversy, trying to make out what it is all about, here is the basic question to ask. Which group is talking about the ordo as something which bursts all our chains—”my chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose went forth and followed thee”—and which group has the ordo on an anvil, trying to forge it into a chain, one capable of shackling the wind, so that we can always tell where it is coming from and where it is going.

WHY HISTORICAL THEOLOGY IS SUCH A NUISANCE AUGUST 19, 2007 Here are few comments from Calvin’s pastor, Martin Bucer. Hold on to your hats. HT: Steven Wedgeworth

We confess and teach that holy baptism, when given and received according to the Lord’s command, is in the case of adults and of young children truly a baptism of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit,

487 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | AUGUST 2007 whereby those who are baptised have all their sins washed away, are buried into the death of our Lord Jesus Christ, are incorporated into him and put on him for the death of their sins, for a new and godly life and the blessed resurrection, and through him become children and heirs of God (Titus 3.5; Acts 22.16; Eph. 5.26; Rom. 6.4; 1 Cor. 12.13; Gal. 3.27). It is certain that this inheritance is also received and enjoyed in its entirety by all who do not themselves subsequently, by their own wanton sins, cast away this grace which is communicated to them in baptism. For in holy baptism all sins are remitted and forgiven them, and on account of this grace, anything of original sin remaining in them is not imputed to them for condemnation, provided that they do not give way to the wicked desires of this evil passion. Moreover, the power of this passion in them is weakened by the Spirit of Christ, and they are strengthened to fight boldly against it, daily mortifying it more and more, and likewise to obtain by prayer the forgiveness of all their actual sins. The people are to be instructed and reminded, in a clear and earnest way from the word of God, of these great and unutterable graces and gifts of God which he bestows on his own in holy baptism, above all at times of administration of holy baptism, but at all times and especially when they are afflicted with particular temptations and distresses. [A Brief Summary of Christian Doctrine number 16. Quoted from Common Places of Martin Bucer. translated and edited by D. F. Wright (Sutton Courtenay Press: 1972) pg. 84–85]

Our baptism has in common with all baptisms instituted of God the presentation of the remission of sins and communion in Christ, the one mediator; its distinctiveness is to present so full a participation in Christ that there remains for us only the return of Christ in his glorified flesh to conform our lowly bodies to his glorious body, and our attaining to him with his stature at last full grown in us and his heavenly image per- fected . . . . Effects such as these St. Paul predicates of our baptism when

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he writes that we have been baptised into the death of Christ, buried by baptism into his death, incorporated into Christ, clothed with Christ, and so reborn and made anew. All these phrases express the participation in Christ which was awaited by the ancient people of God—“for kings and prophets desired to see and hear these things but did not attain to them”—and which approaches very close to the life to come. However, to prevent scruples arising out of what we have said or have yet to say on baptism, it is advisable to add this, that we are speaking of baptism (as Scripture does) in terms of its divine institution and correct observance, not of its perversion and misuse at the hands of the ungodly. Without any qualifications Paul can call baptism “the washing of regeneration”, and describe all who have been baptised as buried with Christ and clothed with Christ. For baptism was instituted to present this regeneration and this communion in Christ, and no one who receives baptism will in fact lack them unless he refuses to accept them because of his own unbelief. Accordingly, our description and assessment of baptism must be determined by what God has assigned it to effect, even if it is not received by all who are baptised. A minister seeks in his ministry to fulfil the Lord’s will as he understands it from the word of the Lord. Hence as far as he is concerned, in baptising he is always washing away sin and imparting new birth, even though by their own fault some persist in their sins and the old life of the flesh. Yet as soon as they begin to trust in the graciousness of God and in Christ’s redemption which are both presented by baptism, the receive the fruit of baptism. It is improper for the baptism which the Church presented in good faith to be repeated, even though the unbelieving did not receive it in good faith. Instead let those who practise deceit abandon their deceit, and let the Church’s administration of baptism in reliance on God’s word remain valid. [An Explanation of the Mystery of Baptism in Common Places pg. 297, 298.]

Okay, all done with Bucer. It’s me again. Now, would I want to put everything this way? Nope. Would I want to add some additional qualifications?

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You bet. Can this kind of thing be abused? Yes, and frequently has been. If someone with exactly these convictions showed up in our church, might I find myself debating him on some of these points? Or at least wanting to clarify some of them? Most probably. But this one thing is certain. I know enough about historical theology that, if such a person showed up in my church, I wouldn’t run him out of town because of his “betrayal of the legacy of Bucer.” You can fill in some other, different names if you like.

A GUEST POST FROM JIM JORDAN AUGUST 21, 2007 Christian Renewal published a letter by Dr. Beach critical of the Federal Vi- sion, and Jim Jordan took the time to respond to it. Jim’s letter was so full of good info and historical details that I asked him if I could publish it here as well. I have heard that the edition of Christian Renewal with his reply has hit the streets, and so I am now free to welcome Jim as a guest poster.

Dear Friends in the Reformed Faith, I write as someone deeply involved in what is being called the “Federal Vision” (a term we did not choose) to reply to Dr. J. Mark Beach’s letter published in the July 11 issue. Mr. Beach begins by saying that the Federal Vision (hereafter FV) is “principally driven by paedocommunion.” Well, that would be a surprise to three of the four speakers at the Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church Pastor’s Conference entitled “The Federal Vision,” which started this brouhaha, since all three were non-paedocommunionists at the time. While I myself do think that paedocommunion is an important issue, and I realize that those who have invented this FV bugaboo have linked the two, it’s just not correct to say that paedocommunion drove or drives the FV. Mr. Beach defines paedocommunion as “mandated participation of children from infancy at the Lord’s Table.” This is not correct. Nobody teaches any such thing, and I don’t believe anyone in the history of the

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Church has ever taught it. What I believe, and what most Reformed paedocommunionists believe, is that baptism is the door to communion, and only when the child is old enough to chew solid food and drink from the rim of a cup. We do not believe in putting crumbs and drops of wine into the mouths of newly baptized babies. We believe in “normal development” communion. Mr. Beach continues by writing that Mr. Minich’s article “doesn’t mention that paedocommunion is a major item on the FV agenda, probably because he is responding to critics of FV.” Well, that’s because there is no FV agenda. All there ever was was a Pastor’s Conference. The FV “movement” and “agenda” are creations of the minds of people who don’t like what some of us believe. More on that in a moment. After all this time of yelling and carrying on, several of us have finally decided to write up a statement of what we believe, and what it seems that all these various anti-FV people are objecting to. It can be read at www.federal-vision.com. But understand, none of this started out as some kind of movement. “Federal Vision theology” is a creation of the minds of FV critics, and that is why it is so hard to say what it is. It varies from critic to critic. Only now, after 5 years, have some of us decided to try and heal this silly war by stating what we think FV might be. Mr. Beach’s letter is frankly rather insulting as well as erroneous. He states that FV people ignore the history of the Reformed faith and confessions. I’d like for him to show anyone who is guilty of this. Quite the contrary is the case: All supposed FV proponents have repeatedly bent over backward to acknowledge the importance and value of decretal theology, and have paid respect to the scholastic traditions while seeking to refine them. Our motivation is pastoral: to bring the people in the pew in contact with the language God chose to use in the Bible. He says that FV proponents (unnamed, whoever they are) “have great difficulty showing that their theology stands with Dort or the Westminster Standards against Remonstrant theology.” This is just a

491 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | AUGUST 2007 smear and it is totally false. We all (whoever we are) stand squarely with Dort and Westminster. We stand squarely in the Reformed tradition, which teaches that the God who ordains the ends (eternal election in this case) also ordains the means (in some cases, temporary faith and election). There is nothing new about this, and it is only hypercalvin- ists, not authentic Calvinists, who have ever denied it. I shall not go further though Mr. Beach’s letter. I am constrained to say, as someone who is about as “FV” as you can be, that Mr. Beach has not taken the time to understand what anyone is saying. Mr. Minich has read the relevant articles, and he is a trustworthy guide. Mr. Beach is not. What he criticizes is not anything that anyone has been saying. He attacks a straw man. With your kind permission, dear editor, I should like to share with your readers how all of this appears to me. I became enamoured with the Biblical theology of Klaas Schilder and his associates back in 1971, when I read Greidanus’s Sola Scriptura and H. Van Til’s Calvinistic Concept of Culture. That’s over 35 years ago. I was also a fan of C. Van Til and of R. J. Rushdoony’s Bible-centered view of culture. So much for a little background. If you want to know what “FV” is, that’s a place to start. When the Auburn Avenue Conference dealing with covenant theology, called “The Federal Vision” merely as a title, was held in January, 2002, the first people to attack it were Joe Morecraft and his tiny hyper-theonomic denomination. This is hardly a surprise. These people have a very flat view of covenant history, and object to the notion that the New Covenant is the resurrection form of the Old. They also see themselves as “Southern” Presbyterians, which means they dislike Charles Hodge and the kind of open catholicity he represented. Hodge wanted American Presbyterians to make use of the liturgical riches of the Continental Reformed and of the Book of Common Prayer. Morecraft and his “Southerners” are “bapterians” who want no liturgical forms at all. So, they reacted with anger at the covenantal-historical notions presented at the 2002 pastor’s conference.

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Next came the Clarkians at Knox Theological Seminary. They, and they alone, actually spoke to the “FV” people that they disagreed with. This, I’m horrified to recount, is unique. None of the other committees and people who have investigated this “FV” stuff have ever bothered to email or phone anyone they are evaluating. At least the Clarkians did talk to us. But the Clarkians don’t like the FV. Well, is that a surprise? The followers of Gordon Clark say that faith is notitia and assensus, but not fiducia. They have been objecting to historical Calvinism ever since the 1930s. They object to the so-called FV for the same reason: We say that faith involves loyalty, fiducia. Nothing new about that; it’s the standard Calvinistic position; but in the minds of Clarkians standard Calvinism is teaching salvation by faith plus works (fiducia). Hence, it’s hardly surprising that the Clarkians don’t like the FV. They don’t like Cornelius Van Til. They don’t like historic Calvinistic understandings of faith. Then came the PCA Mississippi Valley Presbytery and its report. Well, they don’t like the FV. That’s no surprise. They don’t like Continental Reformed theology at all. They like Thornwell and the other Southerners, who said that baptized children are just little heathen until they have a “baptistic” faith experience and come to Jesus. They don’t like Hodge. They don’t like Calvin, save as filtered through a “bapterian” mysticism. They are happy with a mix of scholasticism and mysticism, and don’t like the kind of covenant-historical thinking of the Liberated movement and of Cornelius Van Til. These people have repeatedly said that Presbyterians who like the Federal Vision ideas should leave the Presbyterian church and join a Continental Reformed body. We believe that it is they, with their American revivalistic individualistic mindset, who have departed from the Reformation and from the perspective not only of the Continental tradition, but also of the Westminster tradition. We claim that Westminster is not that much different from the 3FU, and that we stand with both. That’s not acceptable to Southern Presbyterians, who have been described as “baptists who sprinkle babies.”

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The OPC chimed in next. No surprise. The OPC is full of Klineans who hate any type of cultural transformation. The whole Reformed “world and life view” tradition is rejected by the Klineans. They want a “spiritual” church that might as well be an invisible church, holed up in this wicked world and waiting for Jesus to come back. Not exactly the robust Calvinism of our postmillennial and “optimistic amillennial” forebears. So, the OPC report (from a stacked committee) rejects the FV. No surprise there. Finally we come to Mid-America Reformed Seminary, and here I must confess that I was genuinely shocked and saddened. I expected the Southerners, the Clarkians, and the Klineans to dislike what we have been saying. That’s nothing new. They’ve objected to historic Calvinism for two generations at least. And it’s no surprise that the heirs of Kohlbruegge in the RCUS also dislike Norman Shepherd and the FV—after all, if you are suspicious of the whole Reformed doctrine of sanctification, you are not going to welcome people who say that faithful Christians are obedient Christians. Reading the MARS report, however, I realized that what the MARS faculty dislikes is precisely the Schilderian/Holwerdian thinking that is found in the FV. I don’t know anything much about the politics in the URCNA, but it sure looks to me as an outsider that the MARS report is not really aimed at the FV at all, but at the Canadian Reformed. The things the MARS report criticizes about the FV are mostly Liberated ideas, which we FVers embrace. To be sure, those of us being grouped into the FV are not on the same page with the Liberated at every point, but we certainly do have a lot of things in common: preferring not to speak of the church as visible and invisible, rejecting the notion of a meritorious covenant of works, treating baptized children as Christians, etc. We who have been put together in this FV Myth have all benefited greatly from the Liberated movement. I have on my shelf a complete file of Almond Branch magazine, which I received from 1971–79. (How many of you

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readers are old enough to know what that was?) Some “FV” churches use the Canadian Reformed Book of Praise as a hymnal. Anyway, I guess your magazine will be a place where “FV” notions and scholastic/mystical notions will fight it out. I thought, though, that your readers might want to see how things look from one “major player” in this nonsense. The worst aspect of this whole debacle is the fact that neither the OPC committee, nor the PCA committee, nor the MARS faculty ever made any contact with the “FV” people they criticize. Had they made even one phone call, they could have found out that we don’t believe most of what they accuse us of believing. I find this behavior appalling. I have a bit more to say in a series of essays available at www.biblicalhorizons.com James B. Jordan Biblical Studies Dept. Biblical Theological Seminary, St. Petersburg, Russia

JUST FOR FUN . . . AUGUST 23, 2007 Here is the cover that went to the printers yesterday. You don’t need a secret decoder ring, but it might help.

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I LOVE ANALOGIES AUGUST 24, 2007 Yes, it is true. I do love analogies. Someone who is aware of this fact suggested a hot one to Lane over at Green Baggins:

The Louisiana Presbytery’s exoneration of Steve Wilkins is like the Arizona Republican party exonerating John McCain.

In response, someone in the comments asked why we shouldn’t just accept the decision of the Louisiana Presbytery. And Lane answered with this:

Because the denomination has passed the report, the field looks different. Secondly, the presbytery is quite simply not the final court of appeal, the SJC is. This has needed to get to the SJC for ages now. Thirdly, about a third of the LP voted against the exoneration. Fourthly, other presbyteries have challenged the LP’s ruling. The only place this can be settled once and for all is the SJC.

A couple things. So, then, if the SJC comes down with a decision that FV-critics don’t like, then will it be settled “once and for all”? Or does that only work one way? Somehow I suspect it wouldn’t be settled at all. And that means that Lane and I actually agree that the SJC is not the “final court of appeal”—I can think of at least three senior courts off the top of my head. There is the judgment of the broader catholic Church, outside the denomination. There is the judgment of church history (where is Machen’s guilty verdict now? where is Luther’s?). And then of course, there is the judgment found at the throne of Christ at the Last Day. To call the determinations of an unpresbyterian entity like the SJC—“where the PCA GA outsources its justice!”—a “final court of appeal” is overstating it a bit. It is certainly a necessary part of the process because the PCA did decide to abandon historic presbyterian polity at this point, and it was all entered into the minutes and everything. But we still have to put the SJC into context.

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And now to the matter of analogies and counter-analogies. You take something like Steve Wilkins being exonerated a couple of times by his presbytery, and, if you are a critic, you set that alongside a comparable situation, one that is discreditable to the object of your scorn. Thus you have McCain playing cozy with the Arizona Republicans. But, if you have a fertile mind, other parallels might spring to mind. Those close to a scoundrel might well have their reasons for maintaining a united front. Old boy networks do exist, like in Mississippi. And it is also true that those close to a godly minister of Christ are in the best position to identify all the lies that are being told about him. So Lane is not really going to fix the problem of “what people might say” about it simply by having Steve tried by his enemies instead of his friends. And remember that we can just as easily say that the Louisiana Presbytery’s exoneration of Steve Wilkins is like the North Carolina Attorney General exonerating the Duke lacrosse players.

NEAR ITALY, KINDA AUGUST 30, 2007 The other day my attention was drawn to a post made by a former NSA student, Matt Yonke. That post is here. The reaction to it among some of our TR critics was swift and beside the point—an example can be seen here, if Scott Clark doesn’t do something to break the link once I have put it up. In the light of what is being made of this, I would like to thank Matt for posting this clarification of his commentshere . I appreciate it very much. I doubt if our critics will give this the same kind of circulation, or with anything like the same kind of excitement, but there it is. Anyhow, a sincere thank you to Matt. And while we are on the subject, let me just say two things about slippery slope arguments. First, there are slippery slopes in the world, and people do slide down them sometimes. Secondly, slippery slope arguments are themselves pretty slippery, a fact that is missed amidst all the current assertions that FV leads to Rome. I was actually warned about all this as a baptist—infant baptism leads to Rome. Or take the significant percentage of NSA faculty who have degrees from Westminster Seminary. Westminster degrees lead to

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FV, and FV, as we all know, leads to Rome. Allowing candle lighters at your wedding leads to Rome. Fact is, in 1988 I moved to Geneva. Like it here. Bought a house. Plan to stay. But for certain American provincial ecclesiastics, when you glance at a spinning globe, Geneva is near Italy, kinda.

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CATHOLIC EVANGELICALISM SEPTEMBER 1, 2007 With the FV controversy in mind, I was asked this last week whether I considered myself more “basically” evangelical or more “basically” Reformed. With the one qualifier that if you believe both, then to answer the question is not to say which you believe to be “more true,” let me address it this way. As I understand the question, it is a question about practical systematics— in your heart and life and mind, what is the root of the matter? The root of the matter is new life in Christ, and since I understand that in historic evangelical categories I am much more of an evangelical than I am Calvin- istic and Reformed. I do not say this as though there is some kind of tension between the two, but rather what the priorities are. It is like the Bible. If the entire Bible is inspired by God, the breath of the Holy Spirit, then how can we say that certain passages are weightier than others? Well, because the Bible says that. New life in Christ is weightier than Calvinism. We can tell this because our gracious God has given that new life to all His true children, and He has not given Calvinism to all His true children. Thatwill have to wait until heaven. A couple more qualifications. The root of the matter is actual new life in Christ, not the proposition that you have to have new life in Christ. Thus there have been many non-evangelicals in the history of the Church who have had that new life in reality, and there are many professing evangelicals who need to be converted.

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Okay, then, reconcile that with all the FV hubbub. “Aren’t you guys hard core sacramentalists? How can that be evangelical?” Some people ask this question because they don’t know better than to believe slandermeisters on the Internet. But others have questions because of things like the ad copy for Peter Leithart’s new book34 on baptism as it ran in World magazine—saying something like, “The apostle Peter tells us that baptism now saves us. But we know that baptism can’t do that, can it? Can it?” First, here is how an historic evangelical can have a high view of the sacraments. It is the difference between looking through and looking at. When a Christian presents the gospel to a nonbeliever with an open Bible and says something like, “These words are your life,” nobody (including the unbeliever) thinks he is talking about the paper and ink that came from Thomas Nelson. They are treating the Bible (as they should) as one of God’s appointed instruments for bringing new life. I can recognize that this process is occurring when a hardline fundamentalist leads someone to Christ (and really does), even though that fundamentalist has some quirky doctrines about the Bible itself. Maybe he thinks that Paul spoke in Elizabethan English. That faulty understanding does not prevent the Holy Spirit from working through that situation. In a similar way, an evangelical Lutheran can have a much stronger view of what happens in baptism than I do, but I should still be able to recognize that he has the root of the matter straight in his heart. Now, I believe that paper and ink from Thomas Nelson is an instrument of God in the conversion of a lost soul when that lost soul responds to God in living evangelical faith—the only kind of saving faith that God gives. I believe the same identical thing about listening to sermons, reading Christian books, receiving baptism, and taking the Lord’s Supper. When you believe God, the whole world comes alive, and this is especially true with instruments that God has appointed, like the Word . . . and like baptism. But without evangelical faith, man, your situation is worse than it was before. You gotta have Jesus, and no Christian should have a problem with that.

34 http://canonpress.com/the-baptized-body/

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This is not to say that every evangelical needs to agree with our particular understanding of baptism. If you don’t, fine. Let’s talk about it. Let’s have a Bible study. But you do have a moral obligation to recognize what we are and are not saying about it. Misrepresentation is not an honest Christian option. Two more comments and I am done. Some won’t accept the explanations we offer because they flat don’t believe us. In other words, when it sounds orthodox, it must be a trick. Heretics often manage to sound orthodox. Yeah, but orthodox people often sound orthodox too. Those who believe that we are evil people often have their own agenda, their own issues, and their own history. Internet trolls come to mind. But what about those evangelicals who are not nasty or anything, but they simply cannot get their minds around what we are saying? Before giving my explanation of that, let me refer again to something I said earlier. The grace of God extends quite a bit further than our understanding of that grace does—thanks to God. The explanation I would offer is critical, but by that criticism I do not mean to say that they are strangers to the grace of God. But they are slipping away from the central points of historic evangelicalism. They have become attached to a particular set of expressions, a particular way of praying, a particular way of “asking Jesus into your heart,” and because they have done this in a superstitious way, they cannot conceive of the Holy Spirit regenerating anybody in ways outside their ordinary groove. This is the same error (ironically) that is committed by the papists in their liturgies and processes for conversion. Evangelicals have their liturgies of conversion too, and woe betide those who put some clanker into their testimony. It’s okay if you say you went down to the front of the church and signed a little card with a stubby pencil, and became a Christian that way. It’s okay if you came into the kingdom by throwing a pine cone into the bonfire the last night of youth camp. But if you say you went down to the front of the church and had a minister put some water on you . . . it ‘jest ain’t fittin’.” But a superstitious reaction to water displays the same spiritual problem as a superstitious attachment to water—with the one exception that those who have a superstitious attachment to the water actually have some verses. There are no verses anywhere about the stubby pencil.

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Put another way, those evangelicals who cannot grasp this rudimentary point (simple and genuine faith in Jesus is the only thing that makes any spiritual exercise or activity worthwhile in the slightest) are demonstrating that their evangelicalism is resting on the foundation of a human tradition, instead of resting on the work of the Holy Spirit, who moves mysteriously wherever and however He wills. He has even been known to brood on the face of the waters.

FV AS THE DEATH STAR SEPTEMBER 3, 2007 Just a quick point for the record. In partisan politics, spin doctors will seize on any event and work it to fit with the agenda, the talking points, and the memo that they got just before going on the air. In a presidential debate, a candidate could perform at about the level of Miss South Carolina, and there would be talking heads on air after the debate declaring how this “shows that the senator is fit, breathing, and ready to take the helm.” The same tendency is apparent in ecclesiastical partisanship. And before developing this point further, let me just say that partisanship of this nature is listed by the apostle Paul in his list of works of the flesh, alongside other worthies like witchcraft and adultery. Those who live this way will not inherit the kingdom of God. Factious men, party men, and flag-wavers are to the kingdom what any other fleshmongers are—a distraction, a nuisance, and a reminder of the need for discipline. But to the point. The FV guys have been maintaining that the FV is a conversation, a shared set of questions, not a movement, and so on. Some of the critics have insisted on the opposite—that we are a well-oiled, deeply-fund- ed machine, set to infiltrate and take over the federated Reformed witness in North America. The FV is the Death Star. Okay, then. One comment on a blog somewhere made me realize what may be coming next. Once it becomes obvious that the FV is not the movement that it was claimed to be, the spin doctors will immediately claim that it used to be a movement, but that it blew up. The opposition was victorious! Good thing we acted vigorously!

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FV CRITICS AND GRAD SCHOOL SEPTEMBER 9, 2007 Critical thinking skills are essential in reading comprehension. Someone has done us a valuable service here in applying this truth to the FV debate. Take a look.

BAPTISM AND SALVATION SEPTEMBER 5, 2007 Matt Yonke, the young man who posted a blog piece on how the FV affected him in a Romeward direction, has posted a follow-up question on baptism. Someone else has reasonably asked for a contrasting response from an FV person. So this post is my response to Matt. His question is here:

Here is an invitation, without guile, for FV proponents great and small to explain their beliefs against my misconceptions. A logical place to start seems to be baptism. I believe, as a Catholic, that at the moment of baptism in the Triune name with the intention of doing what the Church does, the sins of the recipient, from the stain of original sin all the way down to the last lustful glance at a woman the recipient took before being baptized, are really and truly forgiven him. He is made Holy and put into a state of grace, a state of favor before God the Father, on the basis of the work of Jesus Christ. He is also grafted into the Mystical Body of Christ, the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.

As a friend of Matt’s pointed out on his blog, this is an individualistic approach to the question. What is happening in the individual, any individual, who is being baptized? The FV begins with a corporate understanding of the meaning and import of baptism—union with Christ, forgiveness of sin, and so on. The decretal status of the one being baptized is not one of the things that baptism signifies, and whether or not the baptized individual is truly justified and saved is dependent upon the presence or absence of evangelical faith somewhere in the course of his life.

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So let me make plain what we don’t believe, over against this Roman Cath- olic expression, with maybe a few questions thrown in. After that a couple brief statements of what I do believe.

I believe, as a Catholic, that at the moment of baptism in the Triune name with the intention of doing what the Church does, the sins of the recipient, from the stain of original sin all the way down to the last lustful glance at a woman the recipient took before being baptized, are really and truly forgiven him.

This is not correct. And by starting with what “must happen” to each and every baptized individual this way, a host of counter-examples cluster around. “Forgiven” is not in the first place a theological category; it is a blessing of the covenant that forgiven people actually experience. Over the course of my ministry, I have had many more people come to our church from Rome than have gone over to Rome. And overwhelmingly, the thing that made these people Protestant was a conversion, forgiveness, cleansing, experienced grace. The theologians of Rome talk a good game, but in the average parish there is an awful lot of guilt. And I am not talking about the guilt of the secret hypocrite, which every church must deal with, but rather the standard guilt of the pious and devout. People frequently become Protestants in a conversion experience of moral relief. There are many baptized individuals, sons of Belial, who are unforgiven, period, and this would include original sin, along with all the sins they had committed because of that original sin. Their baptism didn’t fix them at all, but rather made their condition worse.

He is made Holy

Then why are so many unholy?

and put into a state of grace

And why so many without grace?

a state of favor before God the Father,

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Why so many who feel guilty constantly?

on the basis of the work of Jesus Christ. He is also grafted into the Mystical Body of Christ, the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.

Just curious on this one—does this mean that all baptized Protestants are really grafted-in members of the Catholic Church? If not, then why are they not really baptized when they convert to Rome? If so, then why do they need to go to Rome? All that said, let me state what I believe about baptism, and allow me to do it two ways. First, from the Joint Federal Vision Statement:

We affirm that God formally unites a person to Christ and to His covenant people through baptism into the triune Name, and that this baptism obligates such a one to lifelong covenant loyalty to the triune God, each baptized person repenting of his sins and trusting in Christ alone for his salvation. Baptism formally engrafts a person into the Church, which means that baptism is into the Regeneration, that time when the Son of Man sits up His glorious throne (Matt. 19:28). We deny that baptism automatically guarantees that the baptized will share in the eschatological Church. We deny the common misunderstanding of baptismal regeneration—i.e., that an ‘effectual call’ rebirth is automatically wrought in the one baptized. Baptism apart from a growing and living faith is not saving, but rather damning. But we deny that trusting God’s promise through baptism elevates baptism to a human work. God gives baptism as assurance of His grace to us personally, as our names are spoken when we are baptized.

Sounds pretty tame, actually, from an evangelical Protestant standpoint. Please note that this FV statement on baptism is in flat contradiction to the Catholic statement that Matt gave. But if you want a stronger, more sacramental, more robust statement, one which I also hold, I would comply by saying:

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Baptism is an effectual means of salvation to worthy receivers, that is, to those with true, God-given faith. This baptism is a sacrament of the New Testament, ordained by Jesus Christ, not only for the solemn admission of the party baptized into the visible Church; but also to be unto him a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, of his ingrafting into Christ, of regeneration, of remission of sins, and of his giving up unto God, through Jesus Christ, to walk in the newness of life. This sacrament is, by Christ’s own appointment, to be continued in His Church until the end of the world.

Although it is a great sin to condemn or neglect this ordinance, yet grace and salvation are not so inseparably annexed unto it, as that no person can be regenerated, or saved, without it: or, that all that are baptized are undoubtedly regenerated. That’s the way it usually goes, but not always and not necessarily. The efficacy of Baptism is not tied to that moment of time when it is administered. Neverthless, by the right use of this ordinance, the grace promised is not only offered, but really exhibited and conferred by the Holy Spirit, to such (whether of age or infants) as that grace belongs to, according to the counsel of God’s own will, in His appointed time. There, I finally said it. Somebody needs to bring charges.

THE POPE’S EASTER HAT SEPTEMBER 10, 2007 Scott Clark has had some more to say, and he says it here. As part of his conclusion, he says:

So, let the covenantal moralists, the New Perspectivists, and Federal Visionists (and related folks) have their semi-Pelagian grace and cooperation with grace system. If they want to try to stand, on the basis of grace and cooperation with grace, before the living God who destroyed whole cities by the power of his word, who sent fiery serpents among his people, who demanded such righteousness that the Son of God had to be our substitute, let them try.

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You and I will continue to hide behind our righteous Christ. We will continue to muddle through the Christian life dying to sin and living to Christ, sinning and repenting, crying out for grace and mercy, trusting our Savior to guide us safely through the valley of the shadow of death. This is just an outrage. Look at what Clark is doing—no, not that ninth commandment stuff. I would keep on pointing that out but my arm is tired. Anybody who thinks that I teach a semi-Pelagian “cooperation with grace” scheme ought to be teaching theology in a Reformed seminary on the west coast. Oh . . . oops. And anybody who thinks he has got it right ought to be penalized further by having to take some courses there. Westminster Escon- dido—where tradition meets the blender. The thing that is a new outrage is Clark’s clear and undeniable rejection of sola fide. I mean, look at it, there in black and white. “You and I will continue to hide behind our righteous Christ.” Christ is doing one thing, being righteous, and Clark is doing another thing, hiding behind Christ, and the two actions taken together synergistically result in justification. And look at all the works he drags in! I mean, just look at the verbs. Christ is righteous, and Clark tries to contribute to that perfection all his muddling, dying, living, and crying out. There is more popery here than is stitched into the pope’s Easter hat.

FRANK THE BAPTIST NAILS IT SEPTEMBER 12, 2007 I wanted to promote something said by my friend Frank Turk in the comments section of a previous post. Frank is one of those baptists, and, as such, he sees the intramural presbyterian dust-up much more clearly than some of the participants do. Here is Frank, with one of the best observations that this whole fracas has produced.

On Dr. Clark, I know what he is—confessionally. What he is arguing for overall in his remarks against FV and against DW specifically is that somehow FV is outside the bounds of the WCF and Scripture. Well, yes: it is outside the bounds of Scripture insofar as they baptize

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babies for the sake of adding them to the church—and all the consequences thereof. But Dr. Clark baptizes babies for the sake of adding them to the church. Just because he doesn’t add them to the church in practice doesn’t mean he’s not doing it in theory, does it? The FV guys—as they say in their recently-issued affirmation—are seeking to affirm “that God formally unites a person to Christ and to His covenant people through baptism into the triune Name, and that this baptism obligates such a one to lifelong covenant loyalty to the triune God”. Is that not Presbyterianism?

Yes. It is historic Presbyterianism. And the reason Scott Clark is tied up in knots is that he is trying to reject people who do in practice what he allows for in theory. He needs to get rid of our position (which is causing too much cognitive dissonance), but he cannot call our error by its historic name—“and we must forever banish this Westminsterian sacramentalism . . .” He’s got to call it something else—popery, say. But Frank sees, just as I saw for many years, that the essential “popery” here is infant baptism. And to be good with that and not with the rest of it makes about as much sense as jumping off the high dive at the pool and developing qualms, most of the way down, about getting wet. Let me put it as bluntly as I can. Scott Clark has a baptist ethos, but he is stuck with a liturgical practice (infant baptism) which is a standing embarrassment to that ethos. This causes a great deal of cognitive unrest. Frank thinks it would be best if he dropped the paedobaptism. I think it would be best if he dropped the baptist ethos. But either way the gnawing would stop. Either one would be better than what he is currently doing. How long will you halt between two opinions? This relates to another point. Scott Clark has a recent post, quoting Mar- tin Downes, where he says:

Men will always applaud an irenic spirit over against a polemical approach. But the sound of such approval can quite easily mask the noise

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of the destruction of confessional orthodoxy. Choices must be made and will do no good to cry “peace! peace!” when there is no peace.

But my problem with Scott Clark is not that he has a gun, or that he is shooting it. Polemics is fine. Polemics is most necessary. Contending for the gospel is impossible without it. Where would I get off chastising someone for undertaking a polemical approach? My problem is that Clark is shooting at the wrong people. Here in the Army of the Lord, he is the master of friendly fire. For whatever reason, whether personal animus or incompetence, he is not capable of stating accurately the views he undertakes to refute. But this is a fundamental duty in biblical polemics. For example, Mormons are heretics, but if a man seeks to refute them by claiming that they believe that the sun is a giant green mushroom god— ”and how heretical is that!”—then that man is disqualified from any kind of apologetics ministry to the Mormons. And, lest anyone worry, to say this is not some kind of defense of the Mormons. In another post, the complaint was made about “personally orthodox” folks who took the broad view when it came to others who were not so orthodox. That is how the mainstream denominations went liberal, with men like Speer and Eerdmans making room for heterodoxy. For example, the mainstream denominations accommodated themselves in various ways to the theory of evolution . . . okay, bad example. I mean, Westminster West does that, so how bad could it be? But the mainstream denominations did stuff like that, and Clark sees more orthodox-sounding guys (like me) carrying water for the evil Lusk. In some ways, I am a latitudinarian. But the latitude does not extend at all in the direction Clark assumes—I am hostile (as in, ready for war) to the sexual egalitarians, the evolutionists, the high-placers, the gnostics, the stat- ists, and the like. Although I differ with them markedly, I am not hostile to baptists or to the men who have picked up their ethos—which, incidentally, is why I would be willing to be at peace with Clark. He needs to put some things right before that could happen, but what he needs to put right is not his position, but rather his role in all the friendly-fire.

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SCRAWNY LITTLE OLIVES SEPTEMBER 13, 2007 After something of a lull, I am picking up my conversation with Green Bag- gins over my book “Reformed” Is Not Enough. Chapter 13 is on church unity, and Lane and I actually have a healthy bit of agreement here. For example, he agrees with me on the legitimacy of receiving Roman Catholic baptisms “in order to be nursed back to health.” He has some trouble with the distinction I made on the difference between a corrupt church and an apostate church, and asks a reasonable question—“where does he get that biblically?” Here it is. Churches that have had their lampstand removed are apostate. Churches that are being seriously warned about that possibility are corrupt. Branches that have been cut out of the olive tree are apostate. Branches that are still on the tree but have started to think that they support the root are corrupt. The short answer is that apostasy does not occur with no warning at all—and the run up to that apostasy is the period of corruption. God dealt with the Israelites even though they worshipped him in the high places. They were corrupt, but not yet rejected. The prophets were ticked about it, as they should have been, but God nevertheless still owned them as His people. That was corruption, not apostasy. The severance of Israel from the olive tree after AD 70 was apostasy, the culmination of corruption. But in the course of this, Lane also says something really curious. He says that “any church that has justification by faith distorted is an apostate church, not just a corrupt church.” Now as I am using the word apostate, I mean not a true church at all—an olive branch cut out of the tree and lying on the ground. By corrupt, I mean a branch with scrawny little olives. If Lane is using the word the same way (and it seems he is certainly using it in the strong sense), he is saying that the Nazarenes, the Southern Baptists, the Assemblies of God, the Wesleyan Methodists, and so on—virtually the entire evangelical world—is apostate. They all get justification by faith alone wrong in pretty much the same way that Rome does, and in the way that Scott Clark thinks I do. And that’s really bad.

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Lane also takes me as assuming that church unity is fundamentally an “organizational goal.” I do think one kind of unity should be an organizational goal, but another kind of unity is already given. Lane appears to recognize the unity which is given to us (what he calls spiritual unity), but not the unity that we are commanded to grow up into. For example, when we are commanded to be like-minded, and to all speak the same thing, this is not a charge to be differently minded, and to say contrary things. Referring to Ephesians 4:1–6, Lane says, “Paul does not say that there should be Christian unity. He says there is unity.” In another post a few years ago “A Protestant Vision for Unity“), I addressed this question. Here are some snippets. The same Paul who tells us to labor to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace also tells us the basis of that unity. He tells us that we as Christians are to walk in a manner worthy of our calling as Christians (Eph. 4:1). Our demeanor in this is to be one of humility and patience (v. 2). With this attitude, we are equipped to obey his next command, which is the command to endeavor to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (v. 3). This unity is to be kept by us, not created by us. Armed with the right attitude, assigned the right task, what we now need is the right foundation. What foundation does Paul declare as the basis of this unity? There is already one body because there is one Spirit. There is one hope of our calling. One Lord. There is only one faith. There is only one baptism. And above, through and in us, there is one God and Father (vv. 4–6). In heaven is the triune God, and on earth we find a common confessed faith and a common baptism—Word and sacrament. It is striking that there are no governmental bonds referred to here; the bonds are of another nature entirely. He does not list one holy Father in Rome. Nor does he say one ecumenical headquarters in New York. He does not refer to summit leadership conferences in Colorado Springs. When Paul is appealing to Christians to maintain the unity they already have, he appeals to them on this basis—one Lord, one faith, one baptism. Of course, this does not mean that government is irrelevant to this question of unity. In the next breath, Paul goes on to say that the one Lord ascended

511 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2007 into heaven, and from that exalted place He gave the gift of godly ministry to men. “And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers” (Eph. 4:11). The reason He did this was so that these officers would labor in the perfecting of the saints, building up the body of Christ until we all come to the unity of the faith (vv. 12–13). The task before these officers is the presentation of a perfect man, a Church that has grown up into the measure of the fullness of Christ (v. 13). In short, our foundational unity is trans-denominational, just like Lane says. But God is building this Church, and He fully intends to the put the roof on. And when He does, we are all going to be under it.

NO COVENANT CHILDREN SEPTEMBER 14, 2007 Just a brief comment here, building off the discussion of my Frank Turk post. Frank said this: “But Dr. Clark baptizes babies for the sake of adding them to the church. Just because he doesn’t add them to the church in practice doesn’t mean he’s not doing it in theory, does it?” There is a lot behind this. Scott Clark is in the URC. In that tradition, when do children who were baptized in infancy generally come to the Table? They generally come when they have been catechized, which is when they are done or mostly done with high school. Then, when they are on the threshold of going away from home, they are fully brought into their home church. But this means that if we understand covenant community as being a full participation in koinonia, this is a tradition that does not really have any experience with covenant children. They are technically on the roster (having been baptized), but they have no experience of body life while they are children at all.

A CONSTANT GOD SEPTEMBER 14, 2007 This post does not need to be an extended response to Green Baggins. He largely agreed with the chapter in RINE on assurance of salvation, and had just a couple questions or concerns.

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The first was his response to my statement that we should not try to “peer into the secret counsels of God, or into the murky recesses of our own hearts” in order to gain assurance. Lane asks if I am talking about “trying to see into the Book of Life to see if one’s name is written there,” in which case he agrees with me. But if I mean that we should not draw assurance from the fact of decretal election, then he differs. Well, fortunately, we do not differ. The fact of decretal election is not conclusive in questions of assurance, but it is genuinely helpful. In order to be conclusive, I would have to see my name written in indelible ink on the decretal parchment, and no creature can have that. But the fact of God’s sovereignty is reassuring in powerful ways. He is a constant God. And when I look to this constant God, I am strengthened in my faith, and faith is the instrument of my assurance. The second point may be a real difference, but I don’t think it is a major one. Lane quotes me, saying, “And so a Christian searching for biblical assurance should take these passages of Scripture, see how they are all fulfilled in the font and Table, and then rest in his salvation.” He then responds with this: “Surely we do not want to say that all the promises that Wilson listed in Scripture passages quoted are fulfilled only in the font and Table. Of course, they are primarily fulfilled in Jesus Christ, in Whom all promises are yes and amen.” Well, of course. When I say that all these Scriptures are fulfilled in the font and Table, I do not mean to say that they are fulfilled there independent of Jesus Christ. Everything converges in Christ—Word and sacrament, and everything else. I do not think of the means of grace as so many garden hoses, through which the grace of God flows, and the rest of the world stays dry. No, everything is grace, all the time, and the sacraments, and the Word, are glorious concentrations of that grace. When I speak of the font and Table as though they encompass everything, all God’s benefits, I am speaking in West- minsterian ways. I am not trying to isolate the water, bread and wine in any way that separates them from Christ or hides them from faith.

Sacraments are holy signs and seals of the covenant of grace, immediately instituted by God, to represent Christ and His benefits. (27.1)

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. . . but also to be unto him a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, of his ingrafting into Christ, of regeneration, of remission of sins, and of his giving up unto God, through Jesus Christ, to walk in the newness of life. (28.1)

Our Lord Jesus, in the night wherein He was betrayed, instituted the sacrament of His body and blood, called the Lord’s Supper, to be observed in His Church, unto the end of the world, for the perpetual remembrance of the sacrifice of Himself in His death; the sealing all benefits thereof unto true believers. (29.1)

The font and Table represent Christ and His benefits, so I talk about them as though they do represent that. Baptism is a sign and seal of ingrafting into Christ, so we should speak that way also. And the Lord’s Supper seals all the benefits of Christto true believers, and so long as I speaking of genuine believers (and I am), it is not at all inappropriate to speak of all that God has given us under these signs. These signs were given to us in order to signify. I think we should just relax and let them do that.

DE REGNO CHRISTI SEPTEMBER 17, 2007 I am happy to refer you all over to De Regno Christi, which is hosting a discussion of the Federal Vision, starting today. Many thanks to them for the privilege of participating in that discussion.

BELLWETHER WORSHIP SEPTEMBER 15, 2007 A friend once commented to me, echoing Wolterstorff, that there are three currents in the Reformed river. First, there are the pietists, to whom personal conversion and resultant personal devotion is everything. And then there are the doctrinalists, to whom precise doctrinal conformity to the Canons of Whatsitburg are everything. The third group is the Kuyperian, which believes

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that every aspect of life needs to be brought under the functional authority of the lordship of Jesus Christ. But a problem has been caused by Abraham Kuyper’s success and subsequent influence, in that Kuyperian is now generally taken as a term of praise in Reformed circles, and not a term of abuse. As a term of praise, this means that everybody wants it, and this has resulted in a number of pietists and doctrinalists who think they are Kuyperian but who are not at all. Wouldn’t it be nice to be Kuyperian is not the same thing as actually engaging the world at every point. True Kuyperian practice is not to go out into the world and do pretty much what everybody else is doing, only with a Jesus label attached. This is not the lordship of Christ—rather it is Christians getting into the manufacture of knock-offs. If something gets popular in the world, the Christians are right there with a competing model made with cheap labor in a Third World factory and using a lot more plastic. In order for the Kuyperian spheres to be rightly related to one another, it is necessary for all of them to be rightly related to worship, a worship of God that is at the center. In the first place, this means worship on the Lord’s Day, and in the second place, worship in other settings—like chapel at seminary. So here is the invitation for those choosing between seminaries, but with an illustration first. One of the things you can do if you are dubious about a restaurant is to simply walk in and take a look at one of their restrooms. De- pending on the conditions there, you can go on to look at other things—the menu, the prices, the service, etc. But an appalling restroom ought to be a deal-breaker. Using a similar approach, take a grand tour of all the Reformed seminaries in the United States. Do not sit in on classes, or visit the book- store, or examine the curriculum, at least not first. Just make sure you hit the chapel service. Sit there and ask yourself if you want this to be the future of the Reformed world. Are they singing “Jesus is my boyfriend” music? Is the worship inane? Is the message God-honoring? Is the overall demeanor breezy and casual, with shorts and flip-flops abounding? Is this what “reverence and godly awe” mean to them?

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And the chances are, if you get in a conversation with someone about this, and you raise the point, the defense will be to retreat to their true justification for carrying the Reformed mantle, and it will either be a tight doctrinal defense (“the Heidelberg doesn’t say we can’t worship this way”), or it will be a love and good works defense (“our students volunteer in evangelistic outreach and numerous crisis pregnancy centers”). And this is nothing against doctrinal precision or active evangelism and social engagement. The Kuyperi- an approach includes these and does so robustly. But the Kuyperian approach never justifies a glaring lack in one place by pointing out another place where the lack is not so evident. You can’t defend yourself against a charge of stealing something by pointing out all the things in town you didn’t steal. One other thing. I am not saying that all Reformed seminaries have atrocious chapel services, any more than I am saying that every restaurant in town has a filthy restroom. I am just saying that what they are doing in their chapel service matters and tells you a whole lot more than anything else you might look at there.

GET ’EM BEFORE THE CONTROVERSY BLOWS OVER! SEPTEMBER 19, 2007 The special edition of Credenda on the Federal Vision is now out and should be in your mailbox any minute, if you haven’t already taken it out. We knew there would be a great deal of interest in this one, and so we took the liberty of printing up some extras. They are now available from Canon Presshere .35 Please note that if you want to purchase multiple copies, you can contact Canon for a discount.’

SAVING FAITH SHIVERS AT THE SPECTACLE OCTOBER 4, 2007 Green Baggins has resumed his treatment of my book, “Reformed” Is Not Enough, and so we come now to the chapter on apostasy. But before we get to that, Lane addresses a question I raised earlier about the difference between a

35 http://canonpress.com/c-a-vol-19-issue-3/

516 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2007 corrupt church and an apostate church. As Lane puts it, “The question, then, is whether or not a church has to have justification by faith correct in order to be a true church. I asserted that a church that gets justification wrong is apostate, not merely corrupt.” Lane qualifies this by saying that a church doesn’t have to affirm justification by faith alone “using those exact words,” but that they do have to get the substance of the thing right. My chief objection to this is that it is a denial of justification by faith alone. Now I am not saying that Lane is apostate, because this is precisely the point where we differ. We are not saved by works, and this includes our intellectual and doctrinal works. There are people who would do poorly on the “justification by faith alone” portion of their theology exam who are nonetheless saved people. And there are people who would ace that section who are damned. We are not saved by works. Not by willing, not by running, not by smil- ing, not by thinking, not by catechizing, not by affirming, not by Westmin- ster-confessing, nada, zilch, zip. All our works have corruptions in them and are received by God because they are presented to Him in the perfections of Jesus. This includes our doctrinal works, which are frequently all screwed up. We sin daily in thought, word, and deed. Now when we are saved, we are subsequently and gradually transformed through the infused righteousness of Christ. But as Lane points out, this infusion is our sanctification, not our justification. When we are deciding if a person or a church is apostate, we must be very careful about looking at any kind of works. This includes works of infused catechesis. Lane has asserted his point several times, and clearly enough, but I am still not sure he really means it. When this issue came up the last time, I pointed out that this does not just enable Lane to pronounce Rome apostate, but also cleans out a good portion of the Protestant evangelical world as well. Lane is very specific that if a church teaches that “the righteousness of Christ becomes ours only by infusion, and not by imputation” then that church is apostate, not corrupt. This means that according to Lane the precision of the Reformed standards is required (in substance, although not in terminology) in order for a church to stay out of apostasy, in order to keep its lampstand from being removed.

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But the precision of the Reformed standards is like an electrical schematic diagram, showing how all the lights in the house turn on. Being justified means that the lights are actually on. Now I want all our ministers to know the schematic diagram—and if they don’t, our houses will soon be dark. It is not an unimportant thing. But someone can live in the light without knowing the first thing about electrical theory, and they can even have some very odd ideas about what makes the electricity work. Someone’s heart/trust can be in Jesus (the lights are on) and still have their heads full of bogus electrical theory (which if some actually used to wire a house, would result in a dark house). This is because we are saved by grace through faith, and not through a correction understanding of grace through faith. When a church is not apostate, it is the grace of God plus nothing. And when a church is not apostate, it can still be filled with all kinds of various corruptions. “The purest churches under heaven are subject both to mixture and error” (WCF 25.5). Some of those errors might be under the head of justification, and, looking around at the evangelical world, they usually are. This is not to dispute Luther’s dictum that justification is the article of a standing or falling church. I do believe that. But falling is not the same as fallen. I also believe that doing all the wiring in the house correctly is the article of a standing or a burning house. But a bad risk of burning is not the same as burning, and burning is not the same as burned. One more angle and I am done with this point. Since this point is so clear to Lane, I would suggest that he draft a series of questions for a test that theologians of various communions could take. The questions would have to be specific enough to keep the papists from passing it (no softball questions like “Are we saved by Jesus?”), and general enough to keep Billy Graham from flunking it. And if a theologian, representing his communion accurately, missed just one question, then that church would have to be declared apostate. Think for minute. Why is it not clear that to administer a test like this, on these conditions, is actually a demand for justification by works? So it is true that we are justified by faith alone. It is not true that we are justified through a proper understanding of justification by faith alone.

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Now, to the questions that Lane raised in his treatment of my chapter on apostasy. First, let me clear a couple things out of the way. I have no problem with understanding many scriptural expressions as a “judgment of charity.” I believe that this does explain many passages. When I am preaching to the wheat field, I address them all as wheat, even if I know there are probably tares mixed in. This is a judgment of charity. But what the judgment of charity does not explain are those covenant members who are being described in Scripture in the process of falling away. When tares are addressed together with the wheat as wheat, no problem. Judgment of charity. But when tares are being addressed as tares, and in that condition their relationship to Christ is described as having a certain reality to it that they are in the process of losing, that cannot be explained as a judgment of charity. Examples would include, but not be limited to: 1. “Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace” (Heb. 10:29); 2. “If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned” (John 15:6); 3. “Well; because of unbelief they were broken off, and thou standest by faith. Be not high-minded but fear” (Rom. 11:20). This last example brings us to the question of hypothetical warnings. Lane argues, quite properly, that the warnings are used by God as one of His means for keeping the decretally elect from falling away. We have no disagreement on that point. But there is a related disagreement. The decretally elect are not just kept on the straight and narrow by propositional warnings. They are also kept there by the actual condemnation of covenant members as warning examples. The Roman Christians who were warned to stay in the olive tree by faith did not just have the warning on paper. They also had the example of former branches (whose branchiness was just as branch-like as their own) lying on the ground of the olive orchard. Now if the elect are going to be served by written warnings, they can also be served in the same way by the warning examples. If they look at the olive branch on the ground and say, “Well, that could never happen to

519 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2007 me,” then they are drawing precisely the opposite meaning than the one Paul is urging upon them. “Be not high-minded, but fear.” What are you doing to the warnings when you rush in with an untouchable ordo, tell this branch about decretal election, and tell him he does not need to fear? What are you doing that for? He should already know about decretal election—he just read about it a few chapters before in Romans. He believes in it, and so do I. But whatever we do with the doctrine of decretal election, we must not manipulate it such that we become what Paul is warning against here—high-minded. Saving faith trembles “at the threatenings” (WCF 14.2). This means that saving faith shivers at the spectacle of fellow Christians falling into the hands of the living God. “The Lord shall judge his people” (Heb. 10:30). It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Heb. 10:32). We look at the master gardener sawing a branch off right next to us, and we should think yikes. This is not a denial of decretal election. As Lane points out, it is one of the ways that God’s electing purpose is fulfilled. And to claim that the bad examples have nothing to do with us is therefore to interfere with God’s purposes in establishing the decretally elect in their assurance. To conclude, and to answer another question of Lane’s very quickly— does the reprobate covenant member have any part of the ordo? No, of course not. Do some of the words found in the ordo admit of more than one meaning or application? Yes, of course. Lane says, “Christ is undivided, as Calvin would say. We either get all of Christ or none of Christ.” If we are talking about final salvation, this is of course true. But we can express another related truth in this way: covenant members always get all of Christ—but it is the entire Christ as Savior or the entire Christ as judge. And this is not at all inconsistent with the previous sentiment.

WHAT WOULD HODGE DO? OCTOBER 11, 2007 The Federal Vision controversy has had no shortage of examples of plain old doctrinal confusion, straight up the middle. A good example of that can be found here.

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But my point is not so much as to take issue with the characterization there of FV thought as Arminian. As I have pointed out elsewhere, this new “Arminianism” holds to God’s exhaustive sovereignty over all things, and teaches absolute predestination and maintains that the number of the decretally elect cannot be increased or diminished. If this is Arminianism, then maybe Arminianism is Calvinistic . . . or something. But that is just by the way, a topic for another time. What I want you to notice is the movie poster—a pretty clever send-up of the FV invasion of our hapless Reformed churches. But the only problem is that the poster was put together by Jeff Meyers, one of those who signed the FV statement in the latest Credenda. Now, let’s talk about this. We have not objected (at least not too much) when you all swipe the original intent of the Westminster divines, and acted like it lined up with what you teach. Civility in theological debate means that you have to overlook certain things like that. But when one theological party swipes the alien horror movie posters of the other side . . . I mean that is just not done. Can you imagine Hodge swiping Thornwell’s alien horror move poster? I’m just sayin’.

BY THEIR FRUIT YOU SHALL KNOW OCTOBER 24, 2007 Tim and David Bayly said some very nice things about their visit here over on their blog. That resulted in some interesting discussion in the comments thread, to which I simply want to add a couple of comments. It would obviously not be appropriate for me to add something like “yes, we really are wonderful, and are glad the Baylys said so.” I wouldn’t say anything like that because we really do see all the areas where we fall short of our desire to fully live out what the Scriptures describe as a God-honoring community. In our worship services every week, we confess as sin the various ways in which we fall short—and we are not “just saying that.” That said, the Bible tells us what we should be looking for. The Bible tells us how we are to measure these things. The devil knows what the real measuring stick is, and that is the one he is most interested in affecting.

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Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. (Matt. 7:15–20)

When this point is brought up in the context of doctrinal discussions (in this case, the FV), there is one facile response that is not really dealing with what Jesus said. To counter the Lord’s explicit instructions with “well, I am sure Pelagius was a nice guy too” does not really help us. Jesus anticipated that and said that wolves would frequently be in sheep’s clothing. But “sheep’s clothing” is not the same thing as the wool still attached the way it is supposed to be. The two can be distinguished, and need to be, because this is the standard of measurement we are to use. Artificial fruit tied on to branches can be distinguished from the real thing, that which is really growing there. And so, at the end of the day, Jesus told us to judge by the fruit. He did not tell us to judge by doctrinal hyper-precision because we have now discovered that fruit can be faked. He warned us that fakers would come, and so we are invited to look at the fruit closely. But we were commanded to look at the fruit. Are these people evil and corrupt? Or are they good Christian people? There was one comment made in the Bayly thread that needs a specific response. I would also refer interested readers back to the “Justice Primer” archives on this blog for more on this.

And, as an outsider, I cannot comment on the veracity of the various allegations regarding various pastoral abuses that have been swirling around Moscow for some years. I am prepared to believe that they are 100% false, but if even 10% of them happen to be true, then the 2nd to last paragraph of this article ought to fall flat to the readers.

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And before I give the counter to this, let me say at the front end that I don’t think I’m Jesus. But I do think I am supposed to imitate Him, and if I am following Him I do think that I shouldn’t be surprised when I am falsely accused. Jesus told us that we were not greater than He, and that we will get the same treatment. And, when we do, we are commanded to deal with that in a certain way. This is something that the Bayly brothers understand, and their understanding of this has been displayed in quite courageous ways. That said, here is my response.

And, as an outsider, I cannot comment on the veracity of the various allegations regarding various ethical abuses that have been swirling around Jerusalem for some years now. Glutton, wine-bibber, consorter with prostitutes . . . I am prepared to believe that they are 100% false, but if even 10% of them happen to be true . . . then the Christian faith is false, and we are all still in our sins.

It is not voice of moderation to limit oneself to believe only ten percent of the false accusations. To hear 100 lies and limit oneself to entertaining only ten of them is not being judicious.

HOPE I REMEMBER TO SAY THAT OCTOBER 12, 2007 I am glad that Green Baggins is feeling a little less green at the gills, and has returned to the fray. He responded to my post on the nature of apostasy by suggesting that I am committing the fallacy of composition. If sodium is a poison, and it is, and chloride is a poison, then it is, then shouldn’t a combination of the two be twice as poisonous, instead of being breakfast salt? Another example: every small piece of this backhoe is light. But it does not follow from this that the backhoe is light also. But if every piece of the backhoe is made out of metal, then the backhoe is metallic also. The fallacy of composition is not as simple as it might appear. Lane thought that I had committed this fallacy because he was talking about

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what made a communion or denomination apostate, and thought that I was moving back and forth between the individual and the collective. And so I was, but I would argue that this is a question of metal/metal and not light/ heavy, or poisonous/non-poisonous. Here is why. Lane says this: “With the qualifications mentioned in my last post on this, a church (we’re talking a denomination) that gets justification by faith wrong is apostate. That might mean that many churches are apostate. So be it.” He makes a point of saying that he is not talking about individuals, and even acknowledges that justified individuals might not express their views on the matter in proper language. And yet he says that if a denomination denies sola fide, then that denomination is apostate. In passing, please note that my argument has not been that such a denomination is just fine, but rather that it is corrupt, not apostate. This should not be taken as a well done from me, as though denying sola fideis part of our love and good works. But here is why I think it is a metal/metal issue, and not an example of the fallacy of composition. I think Lane would apply the same rules to individuals as he would to denominations. Someone who denies sola fideis apostate, just as a denomination is. Someone who is muddled about it might or might not be saved, depending, and the same thing would go for a denomination—it might or might not be apostate, depending. In short, Lane is treating the denomination as apostate because he is treating denial of sola fide as equivalent to denying Christ and the gospel, which is a bad thing for a church to do. But this would work out in very similar ways—whether we were talking about corporate groups or individuals. If a denomination is apostate because it denied the gospel, then what happens to individuals who do the same thing? Sodium can’t do what salt can do—season your meal to taste. But an individual can most certainly do what an ecclesiastical body can do—confess faith in Christ or deny Him. So I think the charge of the fallacy of composition fails. While we are here, I would urge Lane to step back from his willingness to swallow my reductio. He acknowledges that this might unchurch many denominations, and he says, “So be it.” This is the path to a tight, Reformed

524 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2007 sectarianism, and I don’t think Lane wants to go there. If justification by faith alone is defined tightly (and in this controvsersy, that is certainly happening), and if a correct formulation of it is then made a requirement to keep one’s denomination from being treated as apostate, then you have just out-refor- mationed the reformation. I have been condemned as a heretic by numerous individuals, including some commenters on this blog, and this, despite that I personally hold to the tight Reformed ordo. Lane has stated it generally, but let me make it very specific. This standard declares all non-Reformed churches to be apostate. Further, that circle not being tight enough, a number of Reformed denominations will also have to be considered apostate. Thee, me, and I have my doubts about thee. I don’t think Lane has a sectarian heart at all, and I would urge him not to be driven into sectarianism for the sake of saving the argument. In the comments section over at Green Baggins, Jeff Hutchinson says this:

Every church everywhere has always and will always administer doctrinal tests (the fact that some tests are too strict and some are too lenient is beside the point). If asking a person what they believe is ‘actually a demand for justification by works’ that would be news to every church everywhere that has ever asked a person membership questions.

Jeff has completely missed the point here. We use the same basic membership questions that Jeff mentions there, and we have no problem asking our people to affirm these things and commit themselves to live in a certain way, a way that befits followers of Christ. But we do not demand that they trust in “living in this certain way” for their justification. We demand the opposite. We require them to not trust in what they are doing, and we also teach them not to trust in what they are saying. We teach them to trust in Christ, not to trust in themselves trusting in Christ. We do call upon them to confess their faith in Jesus alone. This is what we teach them to do, and it is how we lead them. What we do not do is tell them that their salvation hinges on whether they say the magic words just right, or have their face looking “just so” while they

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say it. We don’t tell them that they are apostate if they get some detail about justification wrong. To do so would be for us to deny sola fide. I was talking to a woman once about D. James Kennedy’s famous question, “Why should we let you into heaven?” I told her that the right answer was “because of the righteousness of Jesus Christ alone.” She laughingly told me later that her first reaction was, “Gee, I hope I remember to say that.” This is not some weird hypothetical argument. There are far too many people trusting their tiny, propositional works instead of trusting in Jesus. Anybody who doesn’t think this is happening does not know the human heart the way he ought to. David Gadbois asked this: “A person’s professed theology may or may not articulate that reality well, but can we not be fairly certain that someone is not practicing sola fideif they deny sola fideas Romanists do?” Fine. But let’s push this out to the end of the road. Multiple Protestant and evangelical groups deny sola fidein just the same way that the Romanists do—the only difference between that the Romanists are more honest about it. I am Reformed, and so of course I believe that Arminian expressions of the gospel are deficient in certain ways. If I didn’t think so, I wouldn’t be Reformed. But do those deficiencies (which, like Romanism, amount to a certain level of semi-Pela- gian synergism) make these groups apostate? No. And the reason I would say no is that I believe in the doctrine of justification by faith alone. A genuine faith in Jesus can reside (thank God) in a very imperfect heart. Sometimes those imperfections get into the doctrine, and bless God, we are still not undone. Why? Because God does not receive us on the basis of our performance in any area. Jesus is my righteousness, and His perfection is imputed to me. He understands sola fideperfectly, and that understanding is mine by imputation. But if God were to take me out of Jesus, and run me through my doctrinal paces, with me handling His hardball questions on my own, I am in the highest degree confident that I would be condemned to Hell for my failures of understanding in Romans, Galatians, and the Westminster Confession. I am going to heaven because of Jesus, and not because of my mastery of the dikai-word group.

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WE DON’T NEED NO STINKING PROOF OCTOBER 24, 2007 Green Baggins is on to the next chapter of RINE, the one on heretics and heresy. He begins by acknowledging that individualism is a bad deal, but distinguished individualism from the obvious fact that we all go to heaven or hell, as I have noted elsewhere, by ones. Lane wonders if we in the FV are over-reacting against the admittedly bad individualism at the cost of losing an important emphasis on the necessity of individual salvation. I don’t think so—I have made the point that individual salvation is very important more times than I can remember, a number of those times in the book that Lane is reviewing. Second, the issue of emphasis is problematic when discussing issues like this. I believe all kinds of things that I emphasize in varying degrees. Why is that a problem? Belief is where you measure doctrinal orthodoxy. Legitimate differences in emphasis can be affected by numerous factors like the period of history you are in, the state of the church you are preaching to, the nature of your own personal gifts, and so on. If I am preaching at Thyatira, my emphasis is one thing; if at Ephesus, it is another. The truth remains unified. And third, Lane concludes this paragraph by saying “what must I do to be saved?” is the most important question that anyone can ask. On one level, certainly. But I can think of some people I have counseled where this is the one question I wish they would stop asking. And as a good Westminsterian, I would point out that glorifying God is more important than the second half of the answer, which is to enjoy Him forever (which presupposes that one knows how to be saved). Lane differs with my point that heresy is obvious. He points out that Satan is an angel of light, that Arius was a subtle one, and so on. So let me qualify my statement—heresy is obvious if you look where the Bible tells you to look. Lane responds to a statement of mine this way:

Wilson argues that “sheep don’t have to go to graduate school to find out the difference between a shepherd and a wolf” (pg. 142). Again, I beg to differ.

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Is Lane saying that the sheep do have to go to graduate school? Orthodoxy is a gift, a grace, not an achievement. Jesus teaches us plainly that His sheep hear His voice. John tells us this: “These things have I written unto you concerning them that seduce you. But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him” (1 John 2:26). This is about resisting false teachers, and every true child of God is equipped by the Holy Spirit to do so. This distinction is not obvious to those who don’t want it to be obvious. But it is obvious to those who have the Spirit. Lane makes his point this way:

I know of many church situations where the pastor has been a heretic, and the church became divided over him, some believing that he was just fine, and others thinking he was the devil incarnate.

But when foolish people follow after heretics, this is not an innocent move on their part. This is one of the ways that a division is established between the elect and the reprobate. The reprobate believe lies because they want to do so. When the day of judgment arrives, no one who has been deceived, to the destruction of his own soul, will be able to say that his state of deception was honestly come by. In this sense, heresy is obvious. But it can also be quite tangled up for those who hearts are tangled up also. Lane asks the question—who identifies heretics? “Is it not the church?” I agree. It is the Church. It is not a faction within the church. It is not a roster of selected rabbis. It is not a sectarian subset of the Church. But before the Church comes to this determination, the Church is supposed to have it out. The Church is supposed to discuss and debate it. That said, I move on to this statement: “I see lots of protestations on the part of FV advocates that they have been misunderstood. I see far less proof of it. In fact, hardly any proof of it. In fact, hardly any evidence.” To the contrary, Lane, I have proven over and over again that I have been misrepresented and misunderstood. I have done it in person, and I have done it

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in writing. I have a standing offer on the table to debate these issues in a public forum with any acknowledged representative of the FV critics. If such a debate were to occur (no longer am I holding my breath, incidentally), my principle line of argument would be that I do not hold what you claim that I hold, and here is a stack of published materials that proves that assertion. So don’t come around saying you haven’t seen proof. If you want to see proof, then help me arrange a debate where we can video and audio tape it. Then we could put the proof on YouTube, and it would be impossible to pretend any more that it wasn’t there. In the old days, defenders of the faith used proclamation, argumentation, and apologetics. These days, the defenders of the faith use all the bureaucratic levers they have hidden under the desk. If the SJC goes the way I suspect it might, that would mean that Wilkins would be condemned in the PCA despite two vindications by his own presbytery, despite the fact that no charges were ever brought, despite the fact that no trial was ever held, and despite the fact that he was never given an opportunity to defend himself in open court. Don’t talk to me about proof. We don’t need no stinking proof. In the old days, the prophets of God would thunder the word. These days, they resort to Machinations and Back Room Deals. You don’t think so? Then look at what happens to Wilkins. Look closely. Look at the procedures. Look at what was done, and what was not done. And imagine yourself trying to explain the polity ramifications of all of that to Samuel Miller. The whole thing would be a joke if it were only funny. The last point to make is about discipline as a mark of the Church. Dis- cipline is a mark of the Church in this sense—discipline is the Church’s immune system. Lane objects that I don’t consider discipline a mark of the Church, but rather Word and sacrament only. But this is just a debate about how we structure the terms, not about whether they must be there. Word is a mark of life like breathing is. Sacraments are a mark of life like heart beats are. Discipline is a mark of life the way an immune system is. This last one is different than the first two—in this way. If a man stops breathing, he dies right then. If his heart stops, he dies right then. If his immune system goes, he dies sometime sooner or later, probably sooner.

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THE LAW/GOSPEL STUDY BIBLE, COMING SOON OCTOBER 30, 2007 My apologies to Green Baggins for not getting to his latest installment on RINE more promptitudinously. Things have been busy—ministerial conference, presbytery, and a writing deadline all conspired to reinforce the dictum that obligations are like grapes. They come in bunches. Lane reviewed two chapters together (17 and 18), and he didn’t really have any trouble with 17, the one on sons of Belial, and so neither shall I. In chapter 18, the law/gospel issues come up again. Lane summarizes my view (accurately) this way: “He holds that the law-Gospel distinction is in the mind of the reader, not in the text of the Bible (p. 152)” This is fair enough, although I would probably prefer to say that it is in the “heart of the reader.” I acknowledge that the way I phrase some of this is different, but I am trying to resolve a tension by doing this—I am not doing it for purposes of entertainment. On top of that, I don’t think that this restatement is at odds with the heart of the traditional doctrine, and I will say why in a minute. First, a restatement of my view on this. The Scripture is what it is, and it contains both promises and imperatives. For the one who reads the Scripture in evangelical faith, he sees all the imperatives in the context of a larger grace. For the one who reads the Scripture in unbelief, he can sound out the promises, but they are always trumped by what he thinks is the larger demand of “do this and live.” The former contextualizes everything as a subset of God’s grace. The latter contextualizes everything as a subset of law. For the believer, even the Ten Commandments can be understood as gracious. The preamble reminds the Jews that these words were coming from the one who brought them out of the house of bondage. For the unbeliever, even the message of the cross is foolishness, an intolerable demand. So that, in a nutshell, is what I think is going on with law and gospel. Now Lane says, “I challenge this view of the law-Gospel distinction. I believe it erases the first use of the law, which is to drive us to the Gospel, to Jesus.” But note his use of the word use. What does it mean? It means that the same passage applies differently to different people in different situations.

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But that is what I am maintaining. The Bible applies differently. There are different uses of the same passage—the Word is versatile. This is plain from Lane’s application of WCF 19, which shows that the law given to Adam in the garden did not evaporate simply because Adam disobeyed. The law continued to be a perfect rule of righteousness, and as such was delivered by God at Mt. Sinai in the Ten Commandments. This is all good, and I quite agree, provided I can register a few squawks here and there. First, the law given to Adam was to stay away from a tree, and the Ten Commandment mention nothing about this tree, and so the extension from the Garden has to be at a higher level—“Always do what God says, the way He says to do it.” That applies both in the Garden, and on the mountain. Secondly, all those who are not yet converted are still in Adam and under Adam’s obligation to obey God, which they cannot do. When they are converted, they are at that moment transferred into the covenant of grace, period, and are no longer in Adam in terms of covenantal obligations. The use of the law which drives unbelievers to Christ can be used by believers provisionally, reminding them to turn to Christ when they are convicted by the law, but they are never to do this because they are under any covenant of works proper. I cannot be under a covenant of works if my central duty is to flee from that covenant to Christ. And my duty to flee means that my understanding of my relationship to that law is, at bottom, a misunderstanding. I am not supposed to stay there. And if I am not supposed to stay there, it is not my home. My home is Christ. Lane appears to know this, and I think acknowledges my central point here. He says in one place, for example, “The rule for the CoW was the moral law, the Ten Commandments,” and in another, “I do not believe that the Mosaic covenant can be simply equated with the CoW. The preamble to the Ten Commandments forbids that, in my opinion. Instead, I believe that the CoW has remnants in the Mosaic economy.” But if these remnants are in the text, then list them. We need, it would seem, in the worst way, a CoW and CoG Study Bible, which color codes the different parts of the Scriptures according to what covenant word they are.

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But the standard Reformed understanding of the three uses of the law removes any such need for identifying the first half of this verse as CoG and the second half as CoW. What is the situation? What are the circumstances? Who is listening to this, a believer or unbeliever? This is necessary because the WCF identifies the moral law, here in Chapter 19 with the law given to Adam in the Garden, and elsewhere it identifies the entire Mosaic administration as an administration of the CoG. We cut through all the confusion if we allow that there is a CoW use (for those under the law) and a CoG use (for those not under the law). Those not under the law are constantly reminded of their sinfulness by the holy law of God, and so the first use of the law applies to them provisionally, but not really and actually. There is a vast difference between a law/gospel hermeneutic, which I reject heartily and with enthusiasm, and a law/gospel application or use, which is pastoral, prudent and wise. If you say it is a hermeneutic, then you are in principle saying that a Law/Gospel Study Bible is a good idea. Which it isn’t.

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GENTILES UNDER THE LAW NOVEMBER 2, 2007 In my most recent post responding to Green Baggins’s review of my book, I briefly discussed my understanding of law and gospel. As a result of that, a discussion broke out in the comments section of my blog here, and so I want to follow up on a couple of things that came to mind. One is the question is whether the Gentiles were “under the law.” And the answer is yes, kind of. They were not under Torah in the sense that Gentiles were not part of the priestly nation. But they were part of the world that this priestly nation represented before God. The outer court of the Temple was the court of the Gentiles. It was the place where the law said the Gentiles were to offer their prayers to the true God. It was this court where the merchants set up their wares for the worshippers, thus forcing the Gen- tiles out of their rightful place. Jesus attacked the Jews for this, saying, “Is it not written, My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer . . .” (Mark 11:17) To be brief, the Gentiles of the Old Testament are not really equivalent to the non-Christians of the New. List the saved Gentiles of the Old Testa- ment: Melchizedek, Namaan, Jethro, Joseph’s Pharaoh, the inhabitants of Ninevah at the time of Jonah, and so on. Name the saved non-Christians of the New. Ummm. Now the Gentiles did not have to keep the priestly obligations of Torah, any more than a member of the tribe of Benjamin had to become a priest of

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Levi. But there was still a priesthood operating on their behalf in the world, and this means that there was “a law” that was relevant to them. They had specified obligations to the true God. The obligations were not as tight, but they were nevertheless clearly there. Because the Gentiles (for the most part) disregarded what God required of them, they were under sin (as defined by the law). If Gentiles were sinners, this meant that they were disobedient. Sin is lawlessness, and so death reigned from Adam to Moses. God gave greater priestly instruction to Israel, and so when they fell into sin, they were falling from a greater height. To whom much is given, much is required. The Gentiles did not have to keep the ceremonies of Israel. The Gentiles did not have to keep the laws that were unique to the legal structures of Israel (inheritance laws, for example). But the Gentiles most certainly did have to honor the character of God as it was revealed in what we call the moral law. Why were the Canaanites ejected from the land? Because they had defied the law that God enjoined Israel to remember (Lev. 18:24–27). Why was Sodom destroyed? Because of their unlawful deeds (2 Pet. 2:8). Examples of the prophets of Israel denouncing the sins of Israel’s surrounding neighbors could be easily multipled. And so we come to Paul’s great staging of his premises in his epistle to the Romans. Chapter one: Gentiles are sinners. Chapter two: Jews are sinners. Chapter three: Both of them together are sinners in the same way. God has shut them both up under sin so that He might have mercy upon all. But there is no way, in Pauline thought, to be under sin and condemnation without also being under the law. Gentiles were under the law differently, but no less effectually. We, in the grip of a very popular misunderstanding, think that being “under law” means for Paul that you don’t get to sin, when it in fact means that you can’t stop sinning. “For sin shall not have dominion over you: for you are not under the law, but under grace” (Rom. 6:14). Grace doesn’t mean that you get to sin, while law means you can’t. Law means that you can’t stop, and grace means you are freed from the dominion of sin. So, to the extent that Gentiles were in bondage to sin, to that same extent they were under law in an important Pauline sense. No Gentile was under the wrath of God because

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he failed to show up for his priestly rotation at the Temple, or because he ate bacon, but he was under the wrath of God because of his adultery, sodomy, theft, lying, and so on. Bondage to sin in this sense was a bondage that Jew and Gentile shared. You don’t have to be a Jewish priest, or a member of the tribe of Dan, to be a Gentile skunk. One last comment on this point. We must really take care to remember that Paul likes to use words with more than one meaning, frequently within the confines of one sentence. Nomos (law) is one of his favorites. Any attempt to take Paul as using nomos in one fixed sense is, in my view, doomed to hopeless confusions and entanglements. The second issue concerns whether the division between law and gospel is in the text or in the human heart. The law/gospel approach as a hermeneutic falls into the same mistake that the medieval quadriga did. There are legitimate applications of Scripture that were not in the mind of the writer at all. They cannot be unpacked as one of “his points,” but nevertheless there are legitimate ways to apply the Scriptures to new situations. For example, Paul tells Timothy to take a little wine for his stomach and his frequent ailments. Now, I might be able to apply this text in an honest way in a discussion with a teetotaler—and I can do so with every confidence that such an application of his words never entered Paul’s head. Exegesis brings out of the text the meaning that is there. Application is another matter. Now it should be application of the text rightly understood, but the application is a different thing altogether. The quadriga was a distorted hermeneutic because it confounded exegesis and application. The literal meaning is what the text is saying—exegesis, and what that amounted to would depend on what the text is saying. But the tropological or ethical meaning is usually an application. The allegorical or doctrinal meaning is usually an application. The same with the anagogical or eschatological meaning. But the quadriga in effect treated Scripture as though it had four sedimentary layers throughout, and if you had the right shovel you could dig down through all four. The law/gospel approach as a hermeneutic does something very similar. It determines beforehand what you are going to

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find in the text, and then finds it. What we should do is learn what the text is saying, and then turn to see what we will say with it—in our lives, in our systematic theologies, and so on. Law and gospel are applications, and, as such, depending on the condition of the person hearing the text read, the same text can strike him completely differently—having a law effect, or a gospel effect, depending. Let me illustrate this with a simple sentence that might occur in a sermon, and which one person could legitimately apply to himself in one way, and another person in another way. “Jesus Christ died to save the worst of sinners, those who believe in Him . . .” One person hears “the worst of sinners,” and reasoning from this realizes there is such a thing as sin, as gradations of sin, and that he fits that description. This sentence is functioning as law to him. It is a law-application. Another fellow, sitting right next to the first, hears, “Jesus Christ died to save . . .” He hears a statement of the provision God has made for sinners, and believes to the saving of his soul. This is a gospel-application. The statement in itself is true, but it has legitimate applications both as law and as gospel. But if I had a hermeneutic that insisted that the text had to be one or the other, I would wind up hopelessly confused. It is not one or the other—it contains both. The applications vary, depending on the hearer.

WILKINS THE NEWT NOVEMBER 6, 2007 Let’s make this simple to understand, shall we? Just want to look at the structure of the thing. 1. An accusation was circulated in the PCA, claiming that Steve Wilkins is a newt; 2. The Louisiana Presbytery, understandably concerned, met with him a couple times and determined that in their judgment he was in fact not a newt; 3. Because of newt-controversy elsewhere, a Study Committee of the PCA had been formed, and charged with the task of finding out if there were “newts infiltrating everywhere”;

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4. Those appointed to the committee were all of the conviction that this was in fact so, and there were none appointed who did not hold to this important reformational tenet; 5. The committee returned with a bullet-point summary of what non-newtdom had to consist of, and which GA resoundingly adopted; 6. Somewhere in the meanwhile, a memorial from another presbytery and complaint from within the Louisiana Presbytery made their way to the PCA’s Standing Judicial Commission, from which there is no appeal, and out of which few return to the sunlit lands; 7. The complaint was against Louisiana Presbytery for harboring newts, but was not a charge against Wilkins for actually being a newt, that being sort of assumed as a given; 8. But Wilkins had been earlier relieved by the work of the Study Com- mittee, kind of, because the committee’s bullet points confirmed that he was not a newt. He didn’t have a tail, for starters; 9. But the Starchamber Judicial Commission (SJC) nevertheless determined that the Louisiana Presbytery had, in its inquiry, unaccount- ably come up with what Presbyterian judicialists call the “wrong answer.” This wrong answer was evident from the fact that they claimed Wilkins was not a newt, when the SJC knew for a fact that he was one, leaning heavily on the report of the committee for this insight; 10. The Louisiana Presbytery has the option of pleading “not guilty” before the full Commission, in which case they will then be tried on the accusation that they failed to do what was necessary about the pressing newt issue in their presbytery.

This is where we are now. What is likely in the near future? I will write as though it has already happened because, you know, the way things have gone thus far, it probably already has.

11. The Louisiana Presbytery tried to defend themselves by having Wilkins appear—for if he can show the magisterium that he is not a

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newt, then his presbytery cannot be faulted for saying that he wasn’t one. Hey? One follows their reasoning of course; 12. This effrontery from Louisiana, and from Wilkins, pretending that there hadn’t been any charges against him, much less a trial yet, was ruled out of order, and more than a little bit rude. “We are not here to go over that ground again, Rev. . . . is it Salamander?” 13. And so the sad day finally arrived, when the assembled presbyteroi turned the gentleman into a newt.

But he got better.

TRUTH IS WINE NOVEMBER 9, 2007 Green Baggins liked my chapter on blessings and curses (in the main), but wanted me to clarify something, which I am happy to do. Incidentally, I was blessed by Lane’s last paragraph, where he summarized my position in a way I would be happy to own. May the Lord hasten the day where we see a lot more of that kind of thing. And yes, I would be willing to say that essence of a covenant of salvation is for actual salvation to actually occur. Here is the clarification: I began the chapter by saying, “We must learn how to speak with scriptural language, rather than with the misleading language that comes from our feeble efforts at reasoning.” Lane has a number of reasonable questions about this, as he should. I think I can reassure him at the general level, although we probably would differ over some examples of this principle that I would give. Systematic theology is necessary, and is not a necessary evil either. Un- inspired interpretations of Scripture are also necessary, and this is how God obviously wants it. And that means that we will always have to deal with “misleading language that comes from our feeble efforts at reasoning.” I am a preacher and a writer of Christian books—I had better not be attacking uninspired use of words. But the problem of “misleading language and accurate language” is on a dimmer switch, not a simple on/off switch. Turn it all the

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way to the left and you have the darkness of heresy. All the way to the right and you have the Lord Jesus preaching the Sermon on the Mount. When we talk about the Scriptures, we must do so in our own language, and sort things out according to our own categories. We want to avoid darkness and confusion, and we want to shed light in ways imitative of the prophets and apostles. But that language and those categories are themselves in the process of being sanctified by Scripture, and as time passes we should be increasingly conformed to that Word. So I was not objecting to the use of systematic categories, or uninspired attempts to use feeble words to get at what God has given to us. That is what God wants us to do. What I was objecting to was our tendency to get attached to our own explanations, and to get so attached to them that we place ourselves beyond the reach of Scripture’s corrective. This was the error of the Pharisees—they searched the Scriptures and missed the Christ. In was the error of the medieval Schoolmen, who had an answer for every question that might be posed from Scripture. To this we always say that. So the problem is not systematics or uninspired exegesis—as Lane points out, this is inescapable. The problem is stubbornness, an unwillingness to be corrected from Scripture. This is not a function of our finitude, but rather of our sinful willfulness. Furthermore, if conservative preachers and theologians have a besetting sin, this is it. So used to being “the answer man,” we come to believe that a glib ability to bob and weave in a Q & A session is a reasonable substitute for honesty. But at the end of the process, the Lord says something to us like, “Fools and blind! Which sanctifies which, the gold or the altar?” Stuck in the well-worn groove, we do very well until God sends someone who teaches with authority, and not as the scribes, earning thereby the standing enmity of the scribes. Truth is absolute, but it does not “keep” in the way some people assume. The truth as God knows it is obviously timeless, but the truth as it is entrusted to us is affected by the attitudes and faith of the trustees. Truth is wine, and certain keepers of the cellars do what they do in such a way that it makes them guardians of vinegar.

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So I agree with Lane that wineskins are necessary, and I don’t object to keeping wine in them. But I also want to point out that wineskins get old over time, and when they get old, they get rigid and inflexible in ways that make them incapable of dealing with the kind of thing that God loves to do, like giving His people new wine.

CRUCIFIED LAW NOVEMBER 14, 2007 Green Baggins has moved on to Chapter 20 of RINE, in which I argue that the law of God was crucified in the death of Jesus and raised to life again. Lane does not appear to have a problem with the chapter at large but is not convinced by my handling of Colossians 2:13–17. He inclines to the view that the “hand-written note” that is nailed to the cross is an IOU that our consciences have written in response to the law. I take it as the law itself.

And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses; Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it. Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ. (Col. 2:13–17)

Here, in brief, are some of the reasons why I take this to be describing the law of God. First, this “handwriting of ordinances” is “against us,” just like the law is. The blotting out of the handwriting is treated as equivalent to forgiveness of our trespasses, which are defined by the law. The fact that this handwritten set of ordinances was crucified is the basis for not allowing others to judge us in meat, drink, or holidays, which were features of the law.

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Second, this passage in Colossians is paralleled in Ephesians, where a similar point is made. The law of commandments (entolon) is abolished in the flesh of Jesus (on the cross). Lane is right in saying that I don’t believe the moral law is abolished in the sense of “gone forever,” but I do believe that the moral law was crucified on the cross and rose again in greater glory. I say this in RINE—”All the law, including what we are accustomed to call ‘moral law,’ is included here” (p. 163). The third reason is a theological point. I believe that the law was crucified and resurrected because I believe that Jesus is the law. If Jesus is the law, then whatever happened to Him happened to the law. He was and is the Word of God—He is the Spoken One. He is the law Incarnate. When He came back from the dead, lesser glories were replaced with greater glories. Certain features of the law are no longer applicable, just as certain aspects of Christ’s earthly life are no longer applicable (although they are forever a perfect part of His story). Other features of the law look the same way as they always did—the disciples recognized the risen Jesus as the same man who had taught them for the three years prior. What we call the moral law fits here. Certain features before and after the resurrection were consistent. But this does not change the fact that these consistent features are now risen in glory.

LIMBO OFF TO LIMBO? NOVEMBER 15, 2007 Check out Tim Bayly on how Rome is positioning itself to send Limbo off to Limbo. Right near the end of this fun article, Tim asks this question of the FV:

Remembering that the Federal Vision is “all about the children,” I’d like to see F-V proponents critically engage the Commission’s report. For instance, would they condemn the Commission’s declaration that the absence of baptism these littles ones suffer is a central factor in the consideration of their eternal destiny?

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When I have had to preach the funeral sermon for an infant, stillborn into the covenant, what do I say? I declare, without any ambiguity or doubt at all, that the child is with the Lord in heaven. What warrant do I have for declaring this? The same warrant I had for baptizing that same child, had the child lived. The Westminster Directory for worship says that infants of Christians are Christians, and federally holy. They are saints. If someone dies in that condition, then I have nothing else to declare, and all kinds of promises to encourage the grieving parents.

When it comes to children of unbelievers who die in infancy, I am hopefully agnostic, not having any texts strong enough to support the weight of an argument. But I am confident that the judge of the whole earth will do right, and that sin is not imputed where there is no law, and that salvation is the Lord’s middle name. But this is simply trust in Him, and not confidence about a particular position.

AS PRESBYTERIAN AS BRITNEY SPEARS NOVEMBER 17, 2007 I tried to make this point in the comments section over at Green Baggins, but it got lost somewhere in Cyberville. So I’ll just amplify it, and make the point here. There is a very deft move being made in the strategy against Louisiana Presbytery, and I would like everyone to be looking at it closely while it unfolds. Reformedmusings said this:

Wilkins wasn’t and isn’t on trial. Now LAP is technically on trial for violating the BCO. That said, Wilkins’s errant theology does figure prominently in the case. You can read that clearly in the SJC’s decisions.

Now here is the question. How can Wilkins’s errant theology figure prominently in the case when Wilkins’s “errant” theology has never been established in a trial? A trial, for those just joining us, is a quaint practice that Presbyterians used to employ, back before they learned the squeeze play.

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Steve Wilkins is a minister of the PCA in good standing, and so nothing concerning him can justly be used against Louisiana Presbytery. In order for that good standing to be reversed, charges would have to be brought against Steve, a trial held, prosecution and defense both there and everything, a decision reached, and appropriate appeals made. But for an outside body to come against Louisiana Presbytery, and use as one of the points of prosecution against that Presbytery the fact that they declined to convict Wilkins of certain errors, with the outside body simply assuming that he is in fact guilty of those errors, is enough to make a cat laugh. Water does not rise above its own level. Louisiana Presbytery cannot be guilty of covering for a guilty man—at least under Presbyterian polity—unless the guilt of that man has first been established in a trial. You cannot use what you have not first established. You lay the foundation, and then you build the house. You cannot haul out of your lusty syllogism a conclusion that the major premise containeth not, nor doth the minor. The current proceedings are therefore about as presbyterian as Rowan Wil- liams’s druidic beard. They are about as presbyterian as Bella Abzug’s nightgown. They are about as presbyterian—warming to the theme as I am—as Britany Spears, although, come to mention it, if you rearrange the letters of her name, it does spell Presbyterians, although it seems to me that you have to use the e twice. But since we are talking about the kind of Presbyterians who don’t mind fudging process, let us not quarrel about the double e. It is the result that matters! The current proceedings are about as presbyterian as anything we might do in our day at the zoo that gets all the chimps jumping. They are about as presbyterian as trying to pick up a turd by the clean end. They are about as presbyterian as some juke joint Jezebel trying to pick up a drunk salesman from Toledo. They are about as presbyterian as the fruit of the month club selection, with all the cherries. I don’t want to belabor this point, or take it to extremes, so let us just leave it there. No, wait . . . I’ve got it now. This whole thing is about as presbyterian as a Standing Judicial Commission. Geez, maybe now I have gone too far. I’ll have to sleep on it.

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DOWN IN OUR HEARTS! NOVEMBER 17, 2007 This is a comment I made over at Green Baggins:

And I claim no special knowledge of things BCO. What I do claim to know is that Steve Wilkins is a minister in good standing in the PCA, and hence his bad standing in the PCA cannot justly be used against Louisiana Presbytery. That doesn’t mean the deal won’t still go down— looks like all the gears are in motion to me, and I bet you two dollars that there will be an official looking reference to point to in order to keep people bumfuzzled, and to keep them from looking at what is actually happening. “Now LAP is technically on trial for violating the BCO. That said, Wilkins’s errant theology does figure prominently in the case.” Your own words make my point for me. Technically on trial? I see. So what are they really on trial for? What is really going on? You gave it away in the next sentence—Wilkins’s errant theology. Okay. So when will that errant theology be legally established so that it can be legally used against Louisiana Presbytery? “Oh, we don’t have to do that because Louisiana is technically on trial for putting up with Wilkins, who hasn’t technically been found guilty, but that, of course, is a mere technicality. We all know in our hearts that he is.” Wilkins is guilty! Where? Down in our hearts! One of the things that you all will have to come to grips with is that many in the Reformed world know exactly what play you are running, and have every intention of watching you do it. The fix is in. Biblical justice and due process are clearly not being honored, and it looks to me like the charade will simply be brazened out. But I can assure you that it will not occur without a running color commentary from me. After you run your play, we are all going to watch the replay a hundred times, including the tape of the referee who hath eyes to see, and seeth not, and I am going to be John Madden, drawing

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x’s and o’s all over that thing. And I will have some particularly ripe comments to go with it. It is a subject worthy of my peculiar talents.

STANDING GOOGLE COMMISSION NOVEMBER 18, 2007 Let me begin this by noting that I am a six-day creationist, so nothing in this comparison should be taken further than a simple illustration. In the Scopes monkey trial, the State of Tennessee won, and the creationist position was upheld. But the creationists had the misfortune to have H.L. Mencken in attendance, filing regular dispatches from the front. The State of Tennessee told their story, and Mencken told his. Guess who came out ahead? Over at Green Bagginses, Bob Mattes has attempted to answer my posts on the Steve Wilkins affair. “I normally don’t go to this kind of trouble to answer folks outside the PCA, but Doug insisted.” And I appreciate it. So let’s roll up our shirt sleeves, shall we? Bob starts with a simple review of his own qualifications, with an emphasis on accountability, and then he proceeds to a discussion of mine.

Doug Wilson, on the other hand, in supporting his role as a pastor never earned an M.Div, is self-ordained, self-installed, self-published, and accountable only to himself (humanly speaking). He created his own independent church, then eventually created his own denomination over which he continues to have complete sway. All these are facts. If you don’t believe me, check out Doug’s bio (if you can find one), Mark T.’s blog, Sean’s blog, or Google on “Doug Wilson Moscow.”

There are two responses here. In the first response, we will keep our eye on the ball, and remember that we are talking about Steve Wilkins, and the presumption of his unproven guilt that is being used against Louisiana Pres- bytery. Where did this presumption come from? What are some accepted methods for ascertaining the truth about malfeasance, misfeasance, and non- feasance? Why, Google it, you chump! If you want the goods on someone,

545 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | NOVEMBER 2007 just type in their name, and up comes the goods. “All these are facts.” (!!!) And he is not even embarrassed to cite an anonymous attack blog. Jeepers and land of Goshen both. Is this what the Standing Judicial Commission did with Steve? No idea, but we do know that if that is how they came to their “strong presumption” of his guilt, that would be okay with Bob Mattes. Facts is facts. I mean, no arguing with Google. But secondly, just to show how reliable “the facts” are when obtained by this method, let’s do a little review. Now I know that some of what I am about to recite may not clear the high PCA threshold of anonymous attack blogs, but you do what you can, you know? Our church was planted by an Evangelical Free Church in Pullman, Washington. The early leadership of our congregation, which included me, formed under their oversight. So no, not self-ordained and not self-installed. Self-published? Let me grant you all the Canon titles, just to make this a little more fun. What about the two books from Crossway, Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning and The Case for Classical Christian Education? What about the different essays I contributed to various P&R books, including Back to Basics? What about three years of writing for Table Talk out of Ligonier? The textbooks I edited for Veritas Press? An article in Touchstone, and a debate with Christopher Hitchens in Christianity Today online? As Paul would say, I am out of my mind to talk like this, but you have forced me to it. But if any of you want to double check this with the critics, go ahead and give Mark T a call—if you can find his number in the phone book. Br’er Mark, he lay low.

What does surprise me is that Doug finds it necessary to trash the PCA and its orderly processes on a frequent and regular basis. In doing so, Doug sets himself above thousands of duly trained, examined, ordained, and installed church elders submissive to and led by the Spirit. I find that shameful.

I have no objection to orderly processes. That was not the basis of my objection. I have an objection to unjust processes. And an unjust process

546 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | NOVEMBER 2007 can be moved, seconded, and entered in the minutes, with everyone present speaking in calm tones, and thousands at the General Assembly wondering if they are going to get to the ball game in time. I do not hate order, and I do not hate accountability. I hate a lie. In response to my comment that Steve is a minister in good standing, Bob argues this way:

I wish that I had a nickel for every time a Federal Visionist used that argument. In Wilkins’s particular case, he has only survived in the PCA because Louisiana Presbytery has failed to do its job correctly. That’s not just Bob’s opinion, but the official position of the PCA as found by our Standing Judicial Commission. Here are their words in Case 2007–8:

“2) Does the record support a probable finding that Louisiana Presbytery erred, and thereby violated BCO 13–9.f, 40–4, and 40– 5, when it failed to find a strong presumption of guilt that some of the views of TE Steve Wilkins were out of conformity with the Constitutional standards? “2) Yes”

Now, I don’t know how Doug reads that, but the plain words say that there is ‘a strong presumption of guilt that some of the views of TE Steve Wilkins were out of conformity with the Constitutional standards’. That’s not the description of a TE in good standing and was the basis for my comment.”

Great. Now we’re getting somewhere. Where and when was this strong presumption of guilt established? Are the transcripts available? I am particularly interested in the part where the Commission interviewed Steve, got his views straight from him, and gave him an opportunity to defend himself. But maybe they didn’t need to—somebody on the Commission probably has

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access to Google. Or maybe an anonymous attack blog put up some juicy stuff. You know how—when you are hot on the trail of something—the facts just flowin your direction. So Bob can’t defend himself by pointing to the Commission, when that Commission is committing the same injustice. “Theyare doing it too” is not a demonstration that justice is being followed. But this is Bob’s defense: “That’s what the SJC said and what I summarized.” But in presbyterian polity, there is no such thing as presumption of guilt. Now determining if there is enough evidence on hand to conduct a trial is a lawful thing to do—but what you are in effect getting there is an indictment. And after an indictment, which simply establishes that the prosecutors aren’t hallucinating, the defendent still goes into his own trial with a presumption of innocence, at least for people who have a biblical sense of justice. And as sure as God made little green apples, you cannot use a “presumption of guilt” (pulled from who knows where) to clinch the guilt of another party, in this case Louisiana Presbytery. But Bob just keeps going.

Here it is again. Louisiana is technically on trial! Wilkins’s errant theology, established with him not present, don’t you know, is still the basis for bringing Louisiana up on charges. If they are found guilty of their technical violation, then they will be strung up from the invisible sky hook of Wilkins’s guilt.

It’s that simple. Does the BCO cover such a situation? You bet. From BCO 13–9f says that Presbyteries have the obligation: ‘To condemn erroneous opinions which injure the purity or peace of the Church; to visit churches for the purpose of inquiring into and redressing the evils that may have arisen in them’

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But when you condemn an erroneous opinion, and a particular individual claims that he does not in fact hold to that erroneous opinion, the biblical way of getting at the truth is to hold a trial. You guys want to be honest to goodness Presbyterians? Then why doesn’t someone in Louisiana Presbytery file charges, and have a regular, orderly trial, with true accountability? If the trial comes out wrong, then it can be justly appealed. It is not enough for the Standing Judicial Commission to fire up their search engines.

There is a strong presumption that Louisiana Presbytery has failed to do that in Wilkins’s case, and they now must answer for it. This wasn’t the decision of a pope or any one individual, but the finding of body of properly trained, examined, ordained, and installed church officers elected by the General Assembly and governed by the BCO.

Another strong presumption! This is great, and we haven’t even had to hold one trial yet. Keeps costs down. Bob then quotes the case summary, under the impression that it helps him.

In case 2007–8, the Standing Judicial Commission found that the record supported a probable finding that Louisiana Presbytery erred, and thereby violated BCO 13–9.f, 40–4, and 40–5, when it failed to find a strong presumption of guilt that the views of TE Steve Wilkins were out of conformity with the Constitutional Standards. As such, the SJC continues to conclude that there is a strong presumption that Presbytery has not met its Constitutional responsibilities, and thus has not adequately protected the peace and purity of the Church (see Part I of this opinion).

Doesn’t David pray that the Lord would keep him from presumptuous sins? That’s the problem here—not enough Psalm singing.

So LAP will be on trial (if they don’t plead guilty) because there is a strong presumption that they violated BCO 13–9f, 40–4, and 40–5.

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To be sure, Wilkins’s errant views lurk behind all this, but it is the Presbytery’s own actions that will be on trial.

So Louisiana Presbytery, which did meet with Steve more than once, and cleared him, failed to do its duty, and the Standing Google Commission, which has not talked to Steve about his views, is in a position to overturn the decision of the lower court without interacting with Steve directly? Surely you jest. This can’t happen, right? Ha. Again I say, ha.

Well, anyone who has followed Doug, his blog, or his self-published materials are well acquainted with his “peculiar talents.” By all means, check out Mark T.’s blog for some gory details. Sean also has some related material. Doug’s biting sarcasm and ability to spin stories to ridicule his opponents is well documented. Doug has a number of dev- otees that eat that stuff up, but the almost unanimous 35th General Assembly vote and the votes of six other orthodox Reformed denominations showed how much influence Doug’s self-published acerbic pen has outside his little circle.

Right. By all means, check out Mark T, and you will find out what passes for evidence around these parts. And while you are there, check out what Bob means by that important word accountability—anonymous accusations are just fine with him, contra Deuteronomy 19, and contra his own earlier dithyrambs in praise of accountability.

IN A CLINCH WITH THE TARBABY NOVEMBER 19, 2007 Bob Mattes continues to try to explain this thing. We are (possibly) coming up on the first actual trial in this mess, which we will have if Louisiana Pres- bytery pleads “not guilty.” But Louisiana Presbytery will head into that trial with the body trying her already holding to a “strong presumption of guilt.” Let’s put a couple of Bob’s assertions side by side:

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The PCA Standing Judicial Commission has determined that there is a strong presumption of guilt against Louisiana Presbytery. If Louisiana Presbytery pleads “not guilty” it will receive a fair trial.

Good luck, boys! So the Commission already has a strong presumption of guilt concerning Louisiana. This is quite different than saying there are reasonable grounds for holding a trial. You can indict someone and still hold to the presumption of innocence. In fact, that is when it is most necessary that you do so. And the Commission holds to this strong presumption of guilt because the Commission had seen that Louisiana came up with the wrong answer on Wilkins. The Commission, you see, already had the right answer on Wilkins without trying him, or talking to him, or any of that old-fashioned stuff. So the strong presumption of Wilkins’s guilt (with no trial!) is the basis of the strong presumption of guilt for Louisiana (with no trial!), which presumption will be draped around Louisiana’s neck in preparation for her sacri. . . er, trial. Bob makes much of the fact that I am not in the PCA. But I am writing under my own name, unlike some of the authorities he cites, and I am doing so as a good friend of many faithful men in the PCA, Steve Wilkins among them. And what kind of friend would I be if I saw this wretched business being conducted in the plain light of day, having the resources to point out what was happening, but refusing for some bizarre reason to say anything? I would be no kind of a friend at all. So answer the questions. No hand waving. No appeals to thousands of Spirit-led men. No retreating to the refuge of having earned an M.Div. I would be prepared to be more impressed with that, but apparently courses in biblical justice are not required for the M.Div. anymore. You all are conducting a trial with the accused going into it with a “strong presumption of guilt,” and this in its turn is based on a “strong presumption” of Wilkins’s guilt, and all without any trials! Explain that. And if you insist of proceeding with this plate of jurisprudential corned beef hash, then the damage done to the PCA will not be the result of my “acerbic pen.” The real problem you have with my writing is not the tartness that comes from it—it is a simple matter of justice.

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GORGONZOLA CHEESE NOVEMBER 19, 2007 Bill Lyle, a member of the Standing Judicial Commission, has posted a comment over at Green Bagginses. Go here, and read comment #8. I read through this comment with great interest. While he doesn’t put the thing quite as starkly as Bob Mattes does, the result is still judicially outrageous. He says:

It will be the role of the prosecutor to prove LAP is in error. It will be the role of LAP to prove the indictment is in error.

What on earth is this? Why is it the role of the accused to disprove the accusation? I understand why the prosecution has to prove its case, but why does the defendant presbytery have to prove its innocence? This is why our forefathers in the English tongue came up with great words like travesty. Every trial needs a default assumption. Either the defendant is assumed to be guilty, and has to climb out of the hole, or the defendant is assumed to be innocent, and the prosecutor has to establish his guilt. The defendant can’t be assumed to be guilty and innocent both. In this process, someone has the burden of proof. It is clear from what Bob Mattes said (“strong presumption of guilt”) that the burden is on Louisiana Presbytery to prove its innocence? But that doesn’t sound very good, does it? How did we get to the point, without one trial, where the defendant comes into its trial with its guilt assumed. So it is necessary to blur things a bit—let’s have it both ways! Louisiana has to prove its innocence and the prosecution has to prove its guilt. What a piece of gorgonzola cheese.

LET ME THINK ABOUT IT, NO NOVEMBER 20, 2007 A couple notes. First, please allow me to review what is actually being done to Louisiana Presbytery, all for the sake of getting at Steve Wilkins. And second, I want to explain what I am doing about it here and why. In doing this I am

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not giving anything away, because for those with a basic sense of justice, this whole thing is as easy to understand as pie and as sensible as shoes. For those who are dedicated to complicity in the coming injustice, these things are dark parables, and it won’t matter to them what I say. First, remember that the Standing Judicial Commission is an entity past which there are no appeals. What they do in this case cannot be undone by the General Assembly. A wronged defendant has no appeal. This is a high-wire act without a net. There are to my mind unanswerable arguments against setting up this kind of mechanism in the first place, but if you have that mechanism in place it is absolutely crucial that you take every precaution against a possible miscarriage of justice. Having it fixed in your mind what the burden of proof actually is would be one of those precautions. Having the verdict established about such things through the means of trials would be another. Now, meditate on this. The PCA has stumbled into a situation where an entire presbytery is approaching a trial (her firsttrial), and that presbytery does not have the presumption of innocence going into it. Bob Mattes, a member of the study committee on FV, has said that there is a “strong presumption of guilt” for the presbytery, based on the strong presumption of guilt for Wilkins, also established the way David Copperfield might do it. And Bill Lyle, a member of the Commission itself, has said that while the prosecutor has to prove Louisiana’s guilt, Louisiana has the burden of proving her innocence. Centuries of presbyterian judicial theology down the memory hole. It is clear that the onus probandi, the burden of proof, is not clear in this. And when this murky trial is over, assuming that Louisiana will be found guilty, that presbytery has no appeal. This is being done to a whole presbytery, and it is being done in broad daylight. Now when the stakes are this high, it is absolutely necessary that something as fundamental as the presumption of innocence (which our secular courts inherited from us in the Church, back before we ditched it) be strongly articulated, defended, and maintained. That is not happening—the need for real trials is all muddled up, and the need for a presumption of innocence going into those trials is muddled right along with it.

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Now what I am doing here? I have many faults in my writing, and I do confess it, but generally speaking, I don’t think I write boring prose. A few posts ago, I mentioned my “peculiar gifts,” and that is what I was referring to. And according the cyber-bean counters down at google analytics, the stats for this page, generally high, shot through the roof yesterday. I believe that if I make this interesting enough, we can arrange for every interested Reformed believer on the planet to be looking straight at the Standing Judicial Commission when they make their momentous decision. And the show is set up this way—before David Copperfield takes the stage, I will have been explaining to the assembled audience how the trick will be done, and what to watch for. I will have ruined the show, but I sincerely hope I will have provided another one to replace it. There is another aspect to this (and it’s all in Girard, man!). When due process is abandoned, as it has been in this case, and the rights of the victim are being trampled on, a lynching of some sort (Scott Clark’s word) is in process. Now how can those involved in something like this live with themselves? Due process helps us do justice and keep our consciences clean. If that due process is abandoned, what is substituted for it? The question is an important one because a clean conscience is still most necessary. As Girard points out in multiple places, the designated replacement for due process is unanimity. This is why the engineers of show trials love it when the accused steps up to the plate and accuses himself. See? We all agree that there was no injustice done here! And this is also why (unless I miss my guess) there is enormous pressure on Louisiana to resolve this dilemma for us all by pleading guilty. If that is achieved, then nobody has to prove anything, ever. We don’t have to have due process if there is unanimous agreement that we must have had due process. Where is it? Oh, around here somewheres. We all agree on that. Now because this is going on, I have resolved to be a discordant voice. I have resolved to ruin the smooth flow of what is passing for likemindedness. Not only am I being a discordant voice, but I have every intention of being a loud and interesting one. Standing up to a crowd mulling angrily about in front of the courthouse is difficult work, but actually getting heard is the most difficult thing about it.

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When a discordant voice is actually heard, it creates another kind of anger—the kind of anger Job experienced when he refused to accuse himself, when he refused to plead guilty. There is an anger that occurs when a dispute descends to personalities, when the polemics spin out of control and the ances- tries of the various participants are loudly discussed. I don’t want to have anything to do with that kind of thing. But there is another kind of anger—this erupts whenever self-righteousness is exposed. Those who pride themselves on the rule of law, and due process, and having everything moved, seconded, min- uted, approved, and filed, cannot abide the discordant voice that shows and demonstrates they are not passing righteous judgment. As with Harry Truman’s famous response to the “Give ’em hell, Harry!” cry—“I just tell them the truth, and they think it’s hell”—the anger here is much more fundamental. In response to this, many things will be said about me. Don’t have an M.Div., Canon Press publishes a lot of my stuff, not in the PCA, don’t know the BCO, and the NAI has proven numerous times how evil I am (Nameless Accusers of the Internet). Fine. They will also say my charges here are false, but notice that (to this point) they have not answered even one fundamental point I have raised. Who has the burden of proof? Where are the transcripts that show how we got to a strong presumption of guilt without any trials? You know, the kind of question that J. Gresham Machen could have answered at two in the morning in his sleep. The kind of thing Presbyterians used to know. So we got to a strong presumption of guilt without a trial, and we will shortly establish that guilt without any appeal. What’s wrong with this? Oh, I don’t know . . . everything? Now is the time for all conscientious PCA men to be staring at the tops of their shoes in humiliation and embarrassment. Something awful is unfolding. Want me to keep quiet about it? Let me think about it, no.

A WHOLE LOT CREEPIER THAN I REMEMBER IT NOVEMBER 21, 2007 Okay, I want to go up the stairs one at a time here. Discussion of the ins and outs of this is continuing over here, for those who are interested.

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Let’s begin with first principles—the basic one being the presumption of innocence for the accused. This is not some secular American ideal that I am trying to drag out of our secular courts, imposing it on our church courts. Rather, this is a basic principle of biblical justice, codified under Moses, and reiterated for the times of the New Covenant. Our secular courts got it from us, and we don’t recognize our own legacy anymore. When Scripture says, as it does in multiple places, that every accusatory fact must be established in the mouth of two or three witnesses (Deut. 17:6; 19:15; Matt. 18:16; 2 Cor. 13:1; 1 Tim. 5:19; Heb. 10:28), that the judges in a case must make diligent inquiry (Deut. 19:18), and that they must hold the accusers equally accountable (Deut. 19:19), certain things follow from all this. Until a fact is established (guilt), it would follow that such a fact is not established (innocence). This means that in the Bible, innocence is the default position. A man is innocent until he is proven guilty. Just as the prohibition of stealing presupposes private property, the prohibition of adultery presupposes the institution of marriage, so the prohibition of conviction when you have too few witnesses, or contradictory witnesses, presupposes the innocence of the accused. This is the bedrock of biblical justice. Secondly, the fact that the judges must make diligent inquiry means that (as in Deut. 19) they must be openly willing to be persuaded either way. The members of the SJC, in this case, would have to be openly willing to find that Louisiana Presbytery did in fact do everything they ought to have done. And last, if a false witness comes forward, and his testimony is found to be false, then he is to be punished. But in order to punish him, you have to know his name. He is not allowed to give his testimony from the bushes, even if he is sworn in there (“Yes, I see that hand”). All testimony must be accountable testimony, and if the person giving it is not willing to venture his person, then his testimony is to be utterly discredited. In this unfolding case, to cite one of many examples, an egregious attack blog run by Mark T has been cited as evidence by at least two national leaders of the FV critics. This shows me what they consider to be adequate evidence, what they count as compelling testimony. No, thank you.

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Okay, then. The innocence of the accused is a biblical principle, the objectivity of the judges is a biblical principle, and the accountability of the witnesses is a biblical principle. So how did we get here? Bob Mattes yesterday defended himself by saying that “strong presumption of guilt” was a phrase that he used because it was in the BCO, put there to prevent frivolous charges from being brought. In other words, it was intended to set a high threshold for indictment. But this just moves the problem back a step. It does mean that Bob is not a lone, rogue accuser in using this phrase, but it also means that danger of a miscarriage of justice is still very high. Why? He quotes the BCO thus:

31–2. It is the duty of all church Sessions and Presbyteries to exercise care over those subject to their authority. They shall with due diligence and great discretion demand from such persons satisfactory explanations concerning reports affecting their Christian character. This duty is more imperative when those who deem themselves aggrieved by injurious reports shall ask an investigation.

If such investigation, however originating, should result in raising a strong presumption of the guilt of the party involved, the court shall institute process, and shall appoint a prosecutor to prepare the indictment and to conduct the case. This prosecutor shall be a member of the court, except that in a case before the Session, he may be any communing member of the same congregation with the accused. Bob then says,

You mistake that ‘strong presumption of guilt’ phrase for being a bad thing. Actually, it is intended to protect members from frivolous charges and trials.

Several things. I have already noted my objections to having such a commission exist in the first place, but given its existence, let’s work with it. Note

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that this section of the BCO is talking about Christian character issues. This is not to say that heresy charges are not a character issue, but rather to note that it is certainly much more complicated to determine if Wilkins is holding, say, to a non-confessional position on baptism than it is to determine if Rev. Smith ran off with the choir director’s wife. Heresy-character issues are not simpler than personal-character issues. So if the use of the phrase “strong presumption of guilt” is defended as maintaining a high bar for indictment, then how is it to be explained that the SJC cleared that bar without interviewing Steve Wilkins? He denies the charges. He denies that he denies the Confession. His published views raise the question in the minds of some, sure. So, is his number not in the phone book? There has been great turmoil over all this. It is harder to determine if there is a strong presumption of guilt in such circumstances, right? Why was there not a corresponding higher effort to match the conditions of the case? The phrase strong presumption of guilt is intended, you say, to protect the accused. So why aren’t you protecting the accused? The use of this phrase in a complicated case like this—when the SJC did not interact directly with Steve Wilkins at all—is having exactly the opposite effect you say that it was intended to have. His rights have not been jealously protected by the system. And this means, in short, that he has a strong presumption of guilt hovering over him, and that Lousiana Presbytery has a strong presumption of guilt also, without, as I have noted, any trials. Not only have there been no trials, there has not been even a cursory, informal discussion between Steve Wilkins and the Commission. Because of this, the presumption of innocence has several large holes in it, regardless of what the language of the BCO intended to accomplish. Bob Mattes goes on:

If Louisiana Presbytery pleads ‘not guilty’ it will receive a fair trial. It will have all the time it needs to cross-examine prosecution witnesses and to mount a forceful defense. It will not be prevented by the system from anything less, and in fact, it will be urged to mount the best

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defense it can. That’s the nature and guarantee of an orderly and open system. And the trial, if held, will be open to the public; it will not be held behind closed doors. Justice and equity will rule supreme.

A just and equitable trial takes more than letting the defense say whatever it wants to. A just trial is based, not merely on what the defense is allowed to do on its own behalf, but centrally on what the court is allowed to do. As they hear the case, what can the SJC do in this? The man who tells us here that “justice and equity” will reign is the same man who boasted on his blog about how he leaned heavily on a witness under his authority in the military to get testimony more to his liking. And he openly applies the same tactic to Louisiana Presbytery—“if you know what’s good for you, then throw Steve off the sled.” If this is justice and equity, then it is whole lot creepier than I remember it. The man here who reassures us that justice and equity will prevail is one of the men who publicly accepts the testimony of the anonymous Mark T, contrary to one of the basic principles in Deuteronomy 19. Tell us, then, will Mark T be allowed to testify against Louisiana Presbyter in the upcoming trial, retaining his anonymity? Well, you might say, we don’t know that Mark T knows anything about Louisiana, or the situation. Right—and you don’t know whether he knows anything about Moscow either, but that didn’t even slow you down. Several other things. As should be plain by now, I do not have an objection to “reasonable cause” thresholds for indictment. But reasonable cause for holding a trial is not the same thing as reasonable grounds for assuming guilt. They are not even remotely connected. In the civil realm, there should be reasonable cause for search warrants. In civil and ecclesiastical realms, there should be reasonable cause for an indictment. Given the circumstances, I do not object to a trial for Steve at all. When a man is indicted, no injustice is necessarily done—but a lot depends on how he is indicted. The trial should have come from within the presbytery. Steve has opponents there. They should have brought charges. So if the SJC finds against Louisiana, the penalty should actually fall on those members of the presbytery

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who “knew” that there was a problem and refused to bring charges. The majority of the presbytery did not bring charges because they honestly did not believe they were warranted. But what of those men who “knew” they were warranted, and who refused to do anything, thus dragging the PCA through this interminable swamp? The one who knows what to do, and does not do it, for him it is sin. Last point, and this is fundamental. Is Louisiana on trial for “failure to indict” or “failure to convict”? If the former, then if the SJC finds her guilty, then the requirement should then be to ensure that formal charges are brought against Steve at presbytery, a trial held, and then, as necessary, appealed. Or, as an alternative, the SJC could assume original jurisdiction, and hold a trial for Steve, starting from scratch, with Steve being given the presumption of innocence in that trial. The problem with this second option is seen in the manifest injustice of how the national leaders of the PCA stacked the study committee—as stacked as Dolly Parton after her new implants. If the SJC is stacked similarly, then Steve will just escorted through the motions of a trial, and in the aftermath, there would be no appeal. If the latter, Louisiana found guilty of “failure to convict”—and this is the grave danger I have yelling about—then Louisiana will be convicted of “harboring Steve,” whatever that means, and Steve will be considered as guilty, without once having had his day in court. Without once being able to answer his accusers. Without once being allowed to present evidence on his own behalf. Anyone who doesn’t see this as a live possibility is just kidding himself. And anyone should be able to understand why those of us who see it as an unfolding play believe the way we do. Enough for one morning.

MUDGOBBING AND DEADCATTING NOVEMBER 22, 2007 I am not going to spend a great of time today answering this—it is Thanks- giving after all—but I thought I should let you know about it, and make two quick observations.

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First, our FV critics are so bent on pursuing their particular “defense of the gospel” that they are willing to join forces with Intoleristas, feminists, abor- tion-rights advocates, lesbians, radical secularists, megadisgruntled Chris- tians, openness theists, anonymous hacksaw bloggers, neo-Confederates, pietists, and more. This is one bizarre alliance. But always remember—where there’s smoke, there’s a smoke machine. Second, please know that this ad hoc alliance has formed for one reason, and only one reason. This counterattack has been mounted because the questions I have been raising about the judicial process being applied to Steve Wilkins via Louisiana have been potent and effective questions, and to this date, unanswered. This is intended as a distraction, but I am not going to be distracted. Look at them! These are the guys assuring us that Louisiana is going to get a fair trial to the nth degree, and then they haul out an Internet muckrake. Their idea of sorting out the evidence is to gather all the mud you can, throw all of it, and if any sticks it must have been true. Suit yourselves, guys—for all the judicious believers out there you aren’t helping your case any. Not at all, in fact. It is Thanksgiving, so let us all give thanks. Jesus said that when men curse you, and revile you, and despitefully use you, the appropriate response is to rejoice and be glad. He also said that when we have been mudgobbed and deadcatted, the particular thing He wanted us to do was to bless those involved in it. And so my hope and prayer is that Jeff Hutchinson and his family would have the best Thanksgiving day feast they have ever had, that God would profoundly bless him, his wife, his children, and all his friends. I pray that the turkey would be the very best, and that the gravy would be better. I pray for all blessings on his head, spiritual, covenantal, and temporal. And, as God is my witness, I have really and sincerely asked for this on his behalf, and not just pretended to. And amen.

THE WARD CHURCHILL WING OF FV CRITICISM NOVEMBER 22, 2007 I want us to keep our eye on the ball, which is the upcoming trial of Louisiana Presbytery before the Standing Judicial Commission. I have been writing

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about my deep concerns that the desire of some in the PCA to get at Steve Wilkins is so profound that they are willing to take out a whole presbytery to do it. Kind of like burning down the house to get the termites. Or like that time in the Vietnam War where one of our military officials said, “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.” Now these concerns of mine were not just me with a case of the willies (because an injustice could conceivably happen), but were grounded in objective problems with the process as it was unfolding, and as it was being represented to us by its advocates. In the controversy that has followed my posts, a few important things have come to light, or have been reinforced, and I want to summarize them briefly here. 1. What does justice look like? What constitutes the burden of proof? What constitutes lawful evidence? It has become increasingly obvious over at Green Bagginses (a sort of clearing house for this stuff now) that certain leaders among the FV critics have no problem whatever in circulating the reports of anonymous screechers, and giving credence to them that Scripture does not permit us to give. I have actually been extremely grateful that all this came tumbling out in the way it has, because it has made my repeated concerns glaringly obvious. If the “evidence” posted in the last forty-eight hours at Green Bagginses is any indication of what the SJC will accept as lawful evidence, then Louisiana is in a lot of trouble. Now if SJC is the football team, then the guys at Green Bagginses are the cheerleaders. But everything reflects on the team, and if I were the anti-FV coach I would walk over there and tell them to put a sock in the last couple cheers. “TRs and Lesbians! We’re number one! TResbi- ans!” is puzzling some of the season ticket holders in the stands. To summarize this point, I have been saying for some time now that justice is not being pursued; Steve Wilkins is being pursued. I have encountered hot disagreement on this point, but now this mini-eruption of slander at Green Bagginses comes, just in time. Do I reel in horror? No, we have heard it all before, and I want to extend my thanks to all involved—this is the kind of thing I am talking about. Look at the reassurances of promised justice, and then look at what the reassurers think is lawful evidence. Yikes.

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2. As an aside, I want Lane to know that I read, and appreciated, his qualification about what has happened to his blog. I am not painting with a broad brush when it comes to Lane personally. At the same time, he needs to consider the possibility that when he gets back to his blog, it might not be habitable any more. And he should also consider what this particular melt- down is going to do for his credibility as a judicious prosecutor in this case. If I were arguing for the defense in the SJC trial, want to know what I would bring up about a hundred times? 3. Just for the record, again, I do not believe that Bob Mattes was trying to get an airman to lie for him. I believe that Bob sincerely thought he was doing the kid a favor, giving him a chance to tell the truth before he committed himself in court under oath to a lie. And Bob did this on the basis of his knowledge that he had the other guy, the guilty guy, dead to rights. And now Bob thinks he is trying to do the same kind of favor for Louisiana Presbytery. But here is the problem, and it is a critical one. This is why mastery of biblical justice is so crucial. What does it take for Bob to think he has somebody “dead to rights”? Not much, apparently. An anonymous blog or two should do it. And in his post on this, he made the point that you need to be loyal to the right people. Right. And the next day, Jeff Hutchinson shows up cheek by jowl with the Ward Churchill contingent of local Moscow politics. 4. Louisiana was asked, several times, to check into Steve’s theology, which they did. Louisiana had Steve’s writings, and they had personal conversations with him about those writings, and they gave him a clean bill of health a couple times. The SJC did not like this result; they had his writings but did not talk to Steve. They have called Louisiana on the carpet for simply clearing Steve. Now they can only do this if there is a “strong presumption of guilt,” but how can the SJC say this when they did a less thorough investigation of Steve’s views than did Louisiana? The further you go in a process like this, the higher the standards get, not lower. 5. And this is why the Standing Judicial Commission needs to clarify a couple really basic things. I am not expecting them to write me a letter, ob- vously, but thousands of Reformed believers are following this, and a public

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statement of some sort at some time is necessary. The SJC needs to state clearly, contra Bill Lyle’s comment (even though he is a one member of the Commission), that the burden of proof lies fully on the prosecution, not on the defense, and not on the prosecution and defense jointly. In short, it needs to be absolutely clear that Louisiana Presbytery is going into her trial with the full presumption of innocence. Secondly, Louisiana cannot be allowed to defend herself against a charge that she did not convict Steve. How could she convict Steve without a trial, and how could the SJC know what the outcome of the trial should have been without a trial? This is fundamental. In order to be just, the charge against Louisiana needs to be formulated as a “failure to indict.” Was there sufficient evidence to require a trial or not? This is very different than whether Steve should have been found guilty. “Failure to convict” as a charge would mean that the SJC thinks it already knows that Steve Wilkins is guilty, and they would have had to have gotten this information by esoteric means because there has been no trial yet. But if Louisiana is convicted of “failure to indict,” then this means that Steve Wilkins would then need to be tried, from scratch, with the presumption of innocence. When it comes to biblical justice, we are not permitted to cut corners. If the SJC is wise, they should not want to look like they are cutting corners. And bringing us full circle, the clamorous support they are receiving from Green Bagginses is not really helping them look judicious in this regard. Any day now I suspect that members of the Commission will receive anonymous packages from “a concerned brother,” which will contain information that both Wilkins and I have been featured in The Intelligence Reportof the South- ern Poverty Law Center, the world’s richest civil rights organization. (I never mention the SPLC without saying that, just as I never mention Heidegger without calling him a Nazi.) But any high-profile minister who hasn’t been targeted by the SPLC ought to be worried about whether he needs to kick it up a notch. That kind of thing ought to be worn like it was a Bronze Star—not hidden in the attic lest a brother in Christ find it and attack you for it. “Doesn’t this medal implicitly show that you have, in the past, been somewhat . . . belligerent?”

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QUESTIONS FOR LOUISIANA NOVEMBER 25, 2007 Just a couple of brief comments. The last week has been revelatory on the Louisiana Presbytery front, to put it mildly. Now I can ask for clarifications all I want and am unlikely to get them from any official source. Why should I? I am not a player in this, but I am a commentator. And I hope to continue to comment in such a way that those who are players will be in a better position to see justice done. Earlier today I was wondering how many law school graduates are also serving on sessions in PCA churches. These would probably be men who have not heard much about FV, but who have picked up some of the negative buzz about it, but who are continuing to go about their business serving the kingdom. At the same time, these are men whose business it is to deal with issues like the “presumption of innocence” all day every day. When we come down the point, and if we are successful in getting all eyes on the trial when it happens, if the confusions that have been evident up to this point are not straightened out, their collective reaction will probably be in the line of yikes! To recap:

1. If Louisiana comes to trial, a charge not inherently unjust would be “failure to indict Wilkins.” An unjust charge would be “failure to convict Wilkins.” The SJC could not charge Louisiana with the latter without trying Wilkins themselves, which has not been done. 2. Lousiana should go into such a trial with the full presumption of innocence, and the burden of proof needs to rest entirely with the prosecution. 3. If Louisiana is found guilty of a failure to indict Wilkins, then that means that Wilkins should be indicted and brought to trial—with a full presumption of innocence, and with the burden of proof resting entirely on the prosecution.

As I said at the beginning, I am not in the least expecting anyone to give me the answers to these questions. No one owes me anything. But Louisiana

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Presbytery is a concerned party in this, obviously, and these are questions they need to present to the SJC asap (and of course, I am not assuming that they haven’t). They have a pointed interest in the answers, right? Louisiana needs to ask, respectfully, “will the charge be failure to indict Wilkins, or failure to convict Wilkins? And will we have the full presumption of innocence in the trial?”

CONFLICT WITH CHRISTIANS NOVEMBER 26, 2007 The latest round of slander against us has come up with a new one, or at least an old one expressed in a new way. This slander is the argument for the necessity of anonymity, for if our local critics identified themselves, so the thinking goes, we would send some deacons around to bust their kneecaps. No one objects to samizdat publications under the Soviets—so it is here. Right? This is an accusation that should be answered (briefly, as it deserves), but then in turn it raises a theological point that needs to be addressed as well. The new expression of this old charge is that I am guilty of “destroying people’s lives,” and that behind this “jovial exterior” of mine lurks a sinis- ter malice. I mean, if you would have evidence, these people say, just look at all the “destroyed lives.” It is quite true that some people I know over the last few years have destroyed careers, friendships, and businesses. This happened because they initiated unsuccessful attacks on Christ Church in an attempt to destroy or split the church and they encountered shepherds who actually know how to fight, and who were willing to defend the flock. There was conflict, which they lost. But once someone has done something like that, and is unwilling to repent, he cannot just go back to the way things were for him before. There is no such thing as risk-free church-split attempts. You are shooting the moon, and you either hit it or you don’t. There is a way back—called repentance—but the elders of the church have no right to allow unrepentant animosity to continue in the church unmolested. On a personal level, do I feel bad for these people who threw away so much? Yes, I certainly do. Do I feel guilty for fighting them off?

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Not even a little bit. A good shepherd protects the flock (John 10:11–14), and a hireling does not. Now here is the theological question. It is quite true that one tendency of the FV is to broaden the boundaries of the covenant. In Peter Leithart’s very fine commentary on Kings, he says this:

American fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals in particular tend to operate with free church ecclesiologies in which they regard themselves as the remnant, the true Israel, separated from the false church in the mainline. Thinking that they are following Luther, they withdraw from contact with the mainline churches, largely ignoring them and leaving them to their own devices. To be sure Elijah and Elisha set up their own network of prophetic communities, but they remain in regular, if confrontational, contact with Israel’s mainline. (p. 125)

Remember that word “confrontational.” Liberalism broadens the boundaries of the covenant in order to have a schmooze-fest. “We’re all saying the same thing, really!” “We are all climbing the same mountain by different paths.” Conservatism narrows the boundaries of the covenant in order to stay faithful to Christ and the gospel, but they lose catholicity, which is an aspect of the gospel. FV is proposing another alternative. Elijah recognized Ahab as a fellow Jew, but that didn’t make them pals. A few posts ago, I posted a variation of a WW2 poster, “Man the Guns,” with a statement at the bottom making fun of Christians fighting each other instead of the enemy. The point of this was to poke our tendency to strangle gnats. We ought not to be fighting each other over sprinkling vs. dunking, sibboleth/shibboleth, tomato/tomahto issues. Of course not. But for those Christians who want to ordain homosexuals, deny the gospel, fund the pro- aborts, and so on, covenantal faithfulness requires constant conflict—“confrontational contact.” To declare “peace” simply on the basis of the objective covenant bond is to capitulate to liberalism. If that is what broadening the covenant necessarily means, then I would prefer sectarian faithfulness to

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compromised ecumenism. But of course sectarianism is also a form of faithlessness—if that sectarianism is adopted as a doctrinal stance (as opposed to having it imposed on you by persecuting bishops, say). So this means that I am willing to fight fellow Christians when the analo- gia Scripturae demands it. I am unwilling to fight faithful Baptists, Method- ists, charismatics, and so on, even though we have marked differences (e.g., David and Jonathan). I am more than willing to fight with Bishop Spong, with Bishop Robinson, et al (e.g., Elijah and Ahab). I don’t fight with them because they are not in the covenant; I fight with them because they are. And last, I am reluctantly willing to fight (defensively) with conservative believers who have taken it into their heads to launch an unnecessary attack on us (e.g., David and Saul). The world is a messy place, and so we do the best we can to sort it out. One of the things that FV critics say is that they are worried about the FV extension of the boundaries of the covenant. They are afraid of another round of the liberal schmooze-fest, and it is a reasonable concern. I have seen some troublesome applications of this myself in FV circles. But you can’t maintain this concern, and also have trouble with FV Christians who are willing to confront sin and wrong within the covenant. This point is a variation of Christ’s “we played the banjo and you did not dance, we played the oboe and you did not mourn.” You can’t have it both ways. “We extend the right hand of fellowship and you cry ‘liberalism’! We fight and you cry ‘bellicose combativeness’!” Of course it should go without saying that there is a time and place for everything. The only difference between salad and garbage is timing.

ANDY WEBB EXPLAINS NOVEMBER 27, 2007 Andy Webb recently answered the question of an OPC pastor who asked why my procedural concerns about this PCA mess were being dismissed. “I thought his questioning of basic fairness and burden of proof were troubling and would welcome meaningful interaction with them rather than personal attacks and name-calling.” Yeah, I agree with that.

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In his response, Andy said that his response had not been intended as “an ad hom against Wilson.” Rather, it was intended to be an application of the maxim “consider the source.” Okay, and so how is that not an ad hom? Andy then argues that FV advocates by definition will cry procedural foul so long as our views are not upheld, which is manifestly false. He says, “the only way the FV community will consider a report ‘fair’ and the scholars who prepared it ‘wise’ is if it approves their theology.” Oh, I don’t know. My threshold is much lower than that. I would have considered a study committee report procedurally fair if they had not, for example, stacked it with all opponents, nothing but opponents, opponents all the way down. Substance and process are different issues. I have repeatedly named FV critics who are obviously fair-minded and judicious men. I know they are out there, and I pray that some of them are on the SJC. So there is a difference between a decision with which we differ and a decision which is obviously a judicially-coated bum’s rush. Then Andy gives a summary of the whole Wilkins’s deal. I will follow the numbering of his summary, and add comments as we go.

1. Wilkins is a member of Louisiana Presbytery, which has only 8 churches, and has in the past harbored other malefactors. “For instance, Jeff Steel, former pastor of an LA Presbytery church, went on to become Father Jeffrey Steel and an assistant to N.T. Wright. Simply put, this is not a Presbytery where an attachment to the FV or NPP is considered odd.” Wilkins is suspect because another pastor in his Presbytery went Anglican? I wonder how many presbyteries in the PCA are suspect on this interesting basis. 2. “Steve Wilkins own attachment to the FV is unquestionable.” Okay, I’ll give him half of this one. FV and Auburn Ave Theology (named after Steve’s church) are interchangeable, and Athanasius Press, the publishing arm of Auburn Ave, published a book entitled The Fed- eral Vision, which had an essay by Steve in it. But unquestionable attachment to the FV is a very different thing than asserting that the

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opponents of the FV are representing it accurately. Wilkins is FV, all right, but if FV is what some people say it is, then he is not, and neither am I. 3. This next one is astonishing. “Despite the size of the Presby- tery attempts have been made to bring charges against Wilkins by members of the presbytery. These attempts have never produced a trial because the Presbytery has consistently refused to do so.” Oh? Every day I learn something new about PCA polity. I did not know, for example, that charges can only be filed if Pres- bytery allows it. Or let’s suppose another suppose. Let us assume that the men who objected to Wilkins did file charges properly, and the Presbytery, in defiance of the BCO, refused to act. So why wasn’t Louisiana Presbytery brought up short on charges for that? Excuse me. How is this possible? Is Andy making an accusation here that Louisiana “consistently refused” to act on charges properly submitted? Is he able to prove this? Is he able to bring charges? If Loui- siana really did something like this, that really would be actionable. 4. In January 2005 Central Carolina Presbytery asked Louisiana to examine Wilkins’s formally, which they did, deciding that there “was nothing chargeable in Wilkins’s views.” No comment here. 5. This one takes us back to #3. “Given that no action against Wilkins was available from within the LA Presbytery, several Presbyteries determined . . .” Okay, humor me. Let’s go over this assertion again, for it has been made two times now. “No action against Wilkins was available from within.” That is a substantive assertion, one we ought to be able to hang our hats on. So where is the peg? What happened? Were there not enough members of the Presbytery to file charges? Did they file charges and the Presbytery kept losing the paperwork? Can charges only be filed if the charges themselves are approved by a majority vote of the Presbytery? Or was it some other thing I haven’t thought of? Notice Andy’s curious circumlocution here: ““No action was available . . .” What is that supposed to mean?

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6. Although one appeal from the outside presbyteries was rejected, another one based on BCO 40–5 was taken up. This memorial charged that Louisiana was guilty of “important delinquency and/or grossly unconstitutional proceedings.” This is how Louisiana first found itself having to answer to the SJC. Another Presbytery asserted that they had done wrong, and the SJC considered it. 7. “The SJC determined that our memorial was in order, and that LA Presby- tery had erred both in the methodology of their investigation and in their decision to exonerate Wilkins.” Emphasis there is mine. I have to assume that this cannot be understood as a finding of Wilkins’s guilt, but rather a determination that exoneration was premature or improperly grounded. Louisiana was told to reinvestigate, using new guidelines. Notice that all these are inquiries, investigations, reinvestigations, sets of questions, and so forth. No trial yet. No charges (to this day) have been filed, and the procedures that a trial would call for have not yet been applied. 8. Louisiana examined Wilkins again and exonerated him a second time (Is that the word we want, exonerated? He is not on trial). The vote was 13 to 8, and 7 of the dissenting votes filed a complaint with the SJC. 9. In the meantime, the GA assembly overwhelmingly approved a study report which condemned what they considered to be FV theology. The runaway train aspect of this whole affair is summed up nicely by R.C. Sproul’s statement on why there was no minority report, why it was okay for the committee to be stacked. You don’t put the de- fendants on a jury, it appears. Right, but it was a study committee, not a jury. And if it were a jury, you don’t put avowed opponents of the accused on a jury any more than you put friends, employees, or cousins of the accused on a jury. Either way you go with it, that was all screwed up. If a study committee, why no minority report? If a jury, why were adversaries of the accused allowed on it? 10. This last October, the SJC approved the complaints against Louisiana, and have indicted Louisiana to appear and explain itself. We are all now waiting to see how that turns out.

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Got all that? And so now we return to the original question, the one that Andy was replying to. Andy made all these points without interacting at all with the points I have been raising. So here they come again, in short form, in just a minute. But first, let us by-pass the mysterious failure of charges to appear from within Louisiana. Let us wonder no more about it. Let us pretend that that didn’t happen, and let us pretend that the PCA really is dealing with an anom- alous situation, where charges from within are impossible, and yet something absolutely must be done. A big pretend, but let’s do it, shall we? After all, we can put out of our minds the fact that seven members of the Louisiana Pres- bytery were able to file a complaint with the SJC, but somehow their ability to file charges from within the Presbytery was beyond their ken. Look, I am not asking you to believe it. Let’s just pretend that we are okay with how the SJC got this mess on their agenda. Now, given this, the questions I have been raising are basic, and Andy’s claim that the PCA has been moving at glacial speeds does nothing whatever to answer my concerns. Glacially slow injustice is still injustice. So here are my questions again. Will Louisiana be charged with failure to indict Wilkins, or failure to convict Wilkins? If the former, then a full trial for Wilkins, not Louisiana, will have to be held in some venue, and Wilkins will have to go into that trial with the full presumption of innocence, right? I am asking Andy here. Right? If the latter, if the charge is a failure to convict Wilkins, then how can this be sustained when Wilkins has not yet had his day in court? And when every setting where he has been able to answer questions (not in a trial setting) has been dismissed? So when will the SJC arrange for a trial for Wilkins, with the full presumption of innocence, so that they can then charge Louisiana with a failure to convict him? And last, as Louisiana comes to appear before the SJC, do they have the full presumption of innocence, and is the burden of proof on the prosecution? Does the prosecution have to demonstrate beyond the shadow of a doubt that

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Louisiana was negligent in their second interview of Wilkins? Or does Lou- isiana have to prove their innocence, as one member of the Commission (at least in part) thought? These are basic questions, and Andy has given us a history lesson covering the whole saga. But he has not answered the questions. So, Andy, is Louisiana innocent before the SJC until the prosecution proves them guilty in open court? And are they judicially innocent of a charge of “failure to indict,” or are they judicially innocent of a charge of “failure to convict?” And if the latter, when will Wilkins have his trial? And does he have the presumption of innocence? Or are you of the conviction that obviously guilty people shouldn’t have fair trials?

A GOOD ANSWER NOVEMBER 28, 2007 Finally got a good answer to one of my questions here. In the past the SJC has interpreted the “strong presumption of guilt” as nothing more than “probable cause.” This is simply the threshold for indictment, before prosecution can begin. But as the SJC noted, once the trial starts, the burden of proof rests entirely with the prosecution, which is as it should be. The SJC was responding here to a session which believed that this threshold meant that, once indicted, the burden of proof shifted to the accused, which the SJC rightly rejected as false. My questions were provoked because it seemed to me that some of Steve’s antagonists were making the very same mistake. But the SJC gave some cogent reasons why the BCO holds to the presumption of innocence for the accused. This is all very good. The bottom line is that Louisiana is judicially innocent right now and will remain that way unless the prosecution proves that they were culpable in their examination of Steve. Provided the SJC applies this same standard to this case, which seems reasonable, my presumption of innocence question has been answered. But here is the corner Steve’s adversaries have painted themselves into. Steve Wilkins is a minister in good standing; he is judicially innocent of all

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accusations made against him. He is judicially in conformity to the Westmin- ster Confession because it has not yet been proven and shown in ecclesiastical court that he is not. Now the remaining questions are whether Louisiana will be indicted for a failure to indict or a failure to convict. If it is failure to convict, then the prosecution would have an impossible case—the prosecution would have to prove that Louisiana was guilty of treating Steve as innocent when the SJC is simultaneously treating him as innocent. In other words, the SJC cannot assume Wilkins’s guilt—that has not yet been established. And if the SJC cannot assume Wilkins’s guilt, they cannot fault Louisiana for doing the same exact thing. That leaves us with failure to indict. The SJC can find that in their judgment there was probable cause, and that charges should have been brought. So if that is what they find, what is the appropriate redress in a situation like that? Someone would have to bring charges. When those charges are brought, Wilkins would then be tried in some venue, and he would have the full presumption of innocence in that trial. The prosecution would have to prove that he was not in conformity with the Confession, instead of doing it the Internet way, which is to baldly assert that someone is out of conformity with the Confession, leaving him to try to prove his way back into conformity. So this would be a real debate, a real confrontation, requiring real arguments. The accused would have the advantage, instead the current slander system, where the prosecution has the advantage. At the same time, genuine theological experts from both sides would be called to testify. It would be the trial of the century. Finally, we would have a setting in which we all could define our terms and settle the matter. It would be fantastic. Throw us into that briar patch.

THE CASE OF THE MISSING CHARGES NOVEMBER 29, 2007 One of the stranger things about Andy Webb’s history of the FV business in Louisiana was his assertion (twice) that it was not possible for charges to originate from within the presbytery.

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Apparently, Andy has now said that Louisiana “refused to allow charges” when a motion was made in 2002 (and was defeated) to begin an investigation of Steve based on the public accusations made in the RPCUS, a different denomination. Louisiana declined to do this because of the deplorable lack of process in what the RPCUS had done. But a refusal to begin its own investigation on the basis of an attack from outside is not the same thing as prohibiting one of its own members from filing charges. There has not been any such prohibition. So here it is again. No one in Louisiana Presbytery has ever brought charges, and the way was open for them to do so. Steve has repeatedly im- plored anyone to bring charges if they believed that he was in violation of the PCA’s standards. No one has done so. This is not because the entire presbytery is in Steve’s back pocket—seven members of the presbytery filed a complaint with the SJC regarding him. But the advantage of a complaint like this is that it requires someone else to do the heavy lifting. Those members of the Louisi- ana Presbytery who thought Steve was out of compliance with the Westmin- ster Confession should have filed charges, and then made their case. Instead, they waited until the dogpile was safely mounded before they jumped on it. So it appears likely that a number of the members of Louisiana believe that charges against Steve would be fine, so long as somebody else does it. This is not how things are supposed to operate. This is why words like irregular were invented. But the point about what they should have done is a side point. The main point here is that Andy Webb’s contention that charges were not possible is false. Charges could have been filed at any time, and they were not. Why weren’t they?

DEAD RAT BEHIND THE FRIDGE NOVEMBER 30, 2007 When Dan Rather put out his report on George Bush’s National Guard service during the Vietnam War, within hours, bloggers had shown that the evidence he was relying on was fabricated. When politicians try to pull their

575 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | NOVEMBER 2007 old-style political tricks, within minutes someone somewhere has exposed the thing. The most recent example of this was the exposure of Democratic plants among the questioners at this last Republican debate. We see new examples of this kind of thing all the time—the interconnectivity of everything is transforming everything. From blogs, to YouTube, to Google Alerts, to real time responses, the game today is a lot faster, and, more to the point, completely different. Of course every new technology presents us with new ways of sinning, and the Internet is certainly no exception. Thus we see anonymous attack blogs, trolls, vicious gossip moving around the world at high rates of speed, and more. But the glass is also half-full, as these good examples of the new media demonstrate. This is because the old technologies created established ways of sinning also, and they usually involved various cozy arranangements, bureaucratic insider connections, and old-boy networks. When the Presby- terian Church did what they did to Machen, the full injustice of it was fully manifest . . . to historians. Their actions were pretty brazen, but it didn’t matter at that time. Until there is a mechanism to catch you, it doesn’t matter how brazen it is. My father has told me of a certain baseball player, back when major league baseball only had one umpire, who didn’t mind being completely open like this. It didn’t matter to him how many people knew what he was doing, so long as the wrong person didn’t know. When he was on first base, and a fly ball was hit to the outfield, the ump had to run out to see how the ball was fielded, and so this runner would just take the short cut to third base, behind the ump, right across the pitcher’s mound. Of course everybody in the stadium saw him do it, but the ump didn’t see it, and the ump was the only one who counted. When the smoke cleared, there the runner was, on third. Like generals who always fight the last war, the masters of the old media have not adapted to the new conditions at all. They are still running the old plays, using devices that used to consistently work for them back in the day. The establishment guys are like this base runner, and they are having trouble adjusting to the fact that we now have a full umpiring crew. The point about

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the new media is that a significant portion of this new umpiring crew is now an informal, interconnected web of observers, all around the world. And unlike the fans in the stadium, they can do more than just yell about it. I say all this because the process currently being used on Louisiana Pres- bytery and Steve Wilkins would have worked, smooth as satin, if this were 1975. In that day, the gatekeepers had genuine functional authority, and someone in the process received justice or injustice depending on whether the gatekeepers were godly or ungodly, or depending on whether they had a firm grasp on the biblical principles of justice. In a similar way, in 1975, if CBS had run a similar story to the Bush National Guard story, they would have gotten away with it. But how public events occur and are reported has completely changed. This change has not by-passed the Church; it affects us as much as it affects anybody. So, where do I get off, intruding myself into this PCA story? There are two layers to my involvement, and hence two answers to the question. One, I was a player already so it is not a matter of intruding. This is not a case of me picking up a passing dog by the ears. I was at the 2002 Auburn Avenue conference as a speaker, and so this is not a case of me butting in. Further, a number of leaders among the FV critics have now picked up the accusations of some of our local Moscow critics, and have begun using these accusations as weapons in the broader FV conflict. And if I am being used as an argument, I reserve the right to act as a robust counterargument as well. Further still, those citing anonymous attack blogs as credible sources are demonstrating that they believe them sufficiently authoritative—which needs to be pointed out. They are demonstrating for us what they believe justice looks like—and I want the whole world to know what they believe justice looks like. The leading cheerleaders of this prosecution of Steve Wilkins via Louisiana continue to demonstrate in public that they are prepared to accept, and have accepted, anonymous testimony. In addition, this use of slander from our local Intoleristas clearly shows that they thought it was way past time to change the subject. Having everybody look at whether the PCA was treating Louisiana with all biblical justice

577 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | NOVEMBER 2007 was disconcerting, and it was quickly felt that everyone would be much more edified if they were directed to anonymous blogs identifying me as a moun- tebank, ruffian and poltroon. Someone like me who was loudly insisting that the accused has to have the presumption of innocence and that the burden of proof must rest with the prosecution was clearly up to no good. Like Aristot- le, who taught us that the ad hominem is a logical fallacy, I plainly must have something to hide. Otherwise, why would I say something as crazy as that? But here is the second point, and, I think, it is a far more significant one. I am writing, not just as a participant in this particular controversy, but also as part of the new media. When Dan Rather misled the American people, and Little Green Footballs called him on it, the cries of outrage were predictable. Little Green Footballs was not part of the internal accountability network, meaning by this that they weren’t part of the internal no-accountability network. The real complaint was that because they were not in the formal framework of accountability, it was far too easy for them to provide actual accountability. If a denomination like the PCA wants to indict an entire presbytery, this is a public event. It does not just concern the members of the PCA. As a public event, it is fully appropriate to raise questions of justice and process, and to point out what is being done, or not being done, to ensure that justice is being honored. It is particularly appropriate for me to do so since my name is invoked so often. Flip this around, and ask what people, critics included, think I should do. Here is the set-up. I am not in the PCA, but I do have a blog that is widely read and followed in the Reformed world, including a lot of people in the PCA. A controversy erupts in the PCA, but the controversy also involves me and what I believe, and a number of PCA men are accusing me of teaching things I don’t believe or teach at all, and they are accusing friends of mine in the PCA of teaching those same things when I have good reason to believe that those are misrepresentations also. In the course of the controversy, some of these PCA men who have misrepresented my doctrinal views in their books, articles, reports, and blogs have also started citing anonymous reports

578 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | NOVEMBER 2007 attacking my character. Here is basic question—if you were in such a circumstance, do you believe it would be appropriate for you to weigh into the discussion? Particularly if you were in a position to make the truth plain to thousands of people following it? Of course you would. I would be a negligent Christian, pastor, and friend if I stayed out of it. One last comment. It grieves the Holy Spirit of God when Christians who ought to be edifying one another are tearing each other down instead. And anything that grieves the Spirit ought to be a grief to us as well. But we need to be wary of committing the fallacy of composition. The fact that a disruption in the Church is grieving the Spirit does not mean that every participant in that disruption is grieving the Spirit equally. Relativism doesn’t work here any better than it works anywhere else. The row at Antioch grieved the Spirit, and the hypocrisy of Peter and Barnabas grieved him as well. But the fact that Paul confronted the hypocrisy for what it was did not grieve the Spirit, even though it made Paul a participant in the disruption. And someone like Paul could be grieved that it was necessary for him to do what he had to do, but not be at all grieved that he did it. It was a shame that it became necessary, but it was, at the end of the day, necessary. In the same way, I am grieved that the Reformed world in North America has decided to disgrace itself in this particular way. I am grieved that this combat has broken out. But I am not grieved to be a combatant. Rather I am honored to be Steve Wilkins’s friend, and I am privileged to be in a position to supply relevant testimony. It has been the good pleasure of God that situated me in the midst of this conflict. Because I am in conflict with fellow Chris- tians, I want to make especially sure that I fight honorably—this is important because a number of people in this imbroglio don’t know the difference between hitting hard and hitting below the belt. This is part of the prevailing confusion over the standards of justice. Just as, in the South, you can say anything you want about anybody, just as long as you add the little exculpatory tag, “Bless his heart,” (He’s a lying skunk, bless his heart”), so in Christian circles, you can come sneeveling around with slanderous accusations circulated by anonymous and lying cowards, just as long as you say something suitably

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pious as an attachment to the slander. “I read on covenantsludge.com that Doug Wilson has coats made for his wife out of Dalmatian puppies, but we must always remember to pray for him even as we report this to the saints, with grief in our hearts, considering ourselves lest we also be tempted.” A little like trying to fix the problem of the dead rat behind your fridge with a little air freshener. And if I respond to this with an honest, above-the-belt response—like comparing it to a dead rat behind the fridge—the response, from die-hard conservative types, is to fall into the postmodern morass of relativism. “Above the belt? Below the belt? Define belt. Who’s to say what a belt is? Both sides are hitting. Why does the belt matter?” So here’s where we are. The SJC was involved in this unnecessarily. The trial, if there needed to be one, should have happened in Louisiana Pres- bytery. If there wasn’t one at presbytery, then this was the failing of those men who believed a trial to be necessary and did nothing, and not the fault of those who did not believe it to be necessary and did nothing. Because of how irregular this whole thing is, and how obviously it is politically driven, observers are right to be nervous. Any process that could conceivably result in Steve Wilkins being forced out of the PCA for “heterodox views,” as this process certainly could, without Steve ever having a full, complete, open and honorable trial, with a presumption of innocence, is a process that deserves to have honest men everywhere ladle piping hot contumely over the top of its pointy little head. If this kind of vigorous response makes folks feel uncomfortable, then they should stop defending the indefensible. As one commenter on this blog put it, when sorting out a conflict among the kids, what do we think when one child says, “It all started when he hit me back”? Folks who want me to shut up about the PCA sure aren’t acting like they want me to shut up about the PCA. One last comment about the anonymous attack blogs. I don’t talk about them as much as I do because they bother me, or because I fret that people might believe what they read. I have thicker skin than that. I talk about them as much as I do because they are the best present that anyone in this conflict has

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ever given to me. I feel like I have fallen into a chocolate pie. How hard could it be to show reasonable Christians, still making up their minds, that testimony of this sort is risible testimony? And not only have the elliptical orbit critics started up these blogs, but many established leaders with names among our critics have begun to cite them. This means one of two things: either they are shrewd men but their cause is now officially desperate, or they are men who really don’t know what they are doing. In either case, I can deal with it. In the meantime, all you PCA pastors who have ever had to deal with a hard discipline case, here is what could happen to you, under “the new justice.” You once had to discipline a man in your congregation for adultery, or beating his wife, or sexually molesting kids, or something pretty skanky like that. He is not repentant, and he hates the church for the discipline. A couple years go by, and your church gets into a conflict with another church down the road—involving how much baptismal water is necessary for a true baptism, or what constitutes proper Advent colors, something crucial like that. The disgruntled former member sees his opportunity and sets up a website detailing all the tyrannies he suffered while a member at your church, and the only reason he doesn’t sign his name to the lurid account is that he “is fearful of the retaliation he might suffer.” Heh. I can understand why a wife-beater would be concerned about his reputation. I can understand why he might need to contend for righteousness from the shadows. Can’t be too careful. Is this an impossible scenario? Not on your life. And this controversy has now revealed the fact that, for a number of our Reformed leaders, acceptance of this kind of testimony, taking it at face value, is perfectly fine with them. They might want to put some sort of high bar on this for acceptance, of course, like “it is only acceptable to receive spurious testimony from anonymous sources if you are contending for the gospel.” This is not the position of the odd person here or there. This is the position taken against us in the last several weeks by a prominent PCA pastor, a member of the PCA study committee, and an editor of a national book critiquing the FV. Is this bothering me? No, not at all. As long as they are trying to railroad my friends, I wish they would do so more and more. My reputation only suffers among people

581 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | NOVEMBER 2007 who don’t know or care what justice is. Their reputation suffers among those who do know what justice is. Which would you prefer? But they are not doing this simply because they are critics of the FV. Men like Tim and David Bayly are critics of the FV too, and they hate this kind of crap. Anonymous slander-acceptance is happening because the men in charge of the crusade against the FV are political, not principled. And because though they are politically-motivated, they have now painted themselves into a political corner.

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JOHN ROBBINS’S DOG DECEMBER 1, 2007 Jeff Hutchinson has posted something on my “dead rat” post here, and in the course of his post, he identifies himself as the dead rat I was referring to. “To him, I am the dead rat behind the fridge . . .” Jeff also turned the comments off, so I need to correct some things here. In my post, I distinguished between hitting above the belt and below the belt, and had I been calling Jeff, or anyone else in this fracas a dead rat, that would certainly have been below the belt, and I would owe that person an abject apology. But that was not the point of the illustration. The dead rat is the sin of countenancing anonymous accusations for more than the two seconds they deserve, and the air freshener was the attempt to do this in a way that seems pious, thoughtful, or respectful. The joke turned on the incongruity of the two activities, just like the parallel example I used—“He’s a lying skunk, bless his heart.” Second, Jeff makes a point of saying that he and maybe Bob Mattes were the ones I was thinking of. I was actually thinking of three—Jeff, Bob, and Gary Johnson have all written that the anonymous attacks on me are at least worthy of consideration. But they are not worthy of consideration, and not because they say I am a sinner. I am a sinner. They are not worth consideration because they violate the principle laid down for all lawful testimony in Deuteronomy 19. Jeff wrote for the record, and so shall I. I don’t believe that any of our adversaries in this mess are rats, dead or otherwise. I would happy to buy any of them a beer, and would welcome them to the Lord’s Supper together with us if any of

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them visited us here on the Lord’s Day. And precisely because they are brothers, I am calling them on this sin and am going to continue to call the air freshener they propose using as nothing but air freshener trying to cover up a stench. For example, in this post, Jeff said this:

In retrospect, it would have been wise for me to have run my proposed post by a few trusted folks first. They would have most likely helped me with the “temperature” of my post. I do apologize for having unnecessarily inflamed an already tense situation, having gone ahead with a post unedited by anyone else, and I do ask everyone’s forgiveness. Please forgive me.

I would be more than willing to forgive Jeff for the temperature of his post, but there was nothing sinful or wrong about the temperature of his post. The problem was with what he did, not the heat with which he did it. If the action itself were lawful, his temperature was just fine. But the action was not lawful. See Deuteronomy 19. Again. Jeff’s concern about his temperature amounts to a concern that he forgot to say “Bless his heart.” He notes that he issued appropriate warnings, showing that he was not telling everyone to believe whatever they read in those anonymous sites. Doesn’t that make it fine? NO. I said he treated them as credible, not because he accepted everything they said, but rather that he thought they were worth reading in this conflict as long as the reading was done carefully—“with appropriate warnings, for those who might choose to read the articles and documents,” which he certainly wanted to be read “with godly discernment.” Jeff says “the facts are not as [Wilson] represents them.” Jeff defends himself by saying that he did not “cite anonymous attack blogs as credible sources. But here is the point I am making. Credible means believable, not necessarily believed. A credible report is one that some might believe while others don’t. To pass something on as worthy of consideration (however you yourself come down on it after considering it), is to treat it as credible in principle. But godly discernment reads an anonymous attack on someone’s Christian character just long enough to discover that it is anonymous, and then prints it off

584 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | DECEMBER 2007 and immediately lines the parrot’s cage with it, telling everyone he knows to do the same. Yes, Jeff was urging godly discernment. But he wasn’t practicing it, because godly discernment assigns zero worth to anonymous testimony. What is so hard to comprehend in this? This is a principle that Jeff probably understands quite well, and I think that he could even argue the point I am making, using Bible verses and everything, provided the tables were turned. Suppose there were an anonymous website out there that accused Jeff of child molestation (just as some of the stuff he linked to accused me of horrendous stuff). And suppose that I have an FV controversy going with Jeff, and anything that puts a few dents in his reputation in perilous times like these can be considered by me as a defense of the gospel. I am not saying I believe the reports, and I might even go so far as to say that I probably don’t. But suppose I put a link to the slanderous website on my site anyway, and urged everybody to read the anonymous slander “with godly discernment.” What’s wrong with this, besides everything? I am not saying this as an FV partisan. As I have mentioned before, the Bayly brothers are critics of the FV, and they get this principle. And to return the favor, I think R.C. Sproul stumbled badly in his speech at General Assem- bly, and confused the issues enormously for a lot of people. He is a great man, and I was embarrassed for him. But nevertheless, he came out “on the other side,” so is that somehow a signal for me to go look up all the anonymous and scurrilous attacks that were attacking him last year, put them up on my website, and tell people to read them “with discernment”? God forbid. Those sites, aimed at someone now on the “other side” of this thing, are still every bit as reprehensible as the sites directed at the ministries here. All that matters to me on this point is that men who are embarrassed of the name Christ gave them at their baptisms who are willing to besmirch the names of others (who are not ashamed of their names) on the basis of supposd “insider knowledge” are not going to get any consideration from me under any circumstances. If there were a little emotikon available, showing a character spitting on the ground, I would put it here. I wouldn’t do to John Robbins’s dog what some people are willing to do to advance the purity of the gospel.

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Let us conclude with an observation or two about investigative reporting. Jeff refers to “a pattern that I believe to have been long established by the investigative reporting of journalists from WORLD Magazine, Presbyterian and Reformed News, and even the New York Times” The New York Times did have a reporter out here, and what they did could honestly be called reporting. Molly Worthen for the Times did what we begged World magazine to do, but which they declined to do. The NYT piece was a balanced bit of reporting, one that included both kudos and criticism, but the upshot of the article was (we thought) very positive for us. Judging by the people who got angry about it, it most certainly was. And when Molly was out here, she talked to everybody in detail, friends and foes alike (as World should have done), and the result was an article we were pretty happy with. But the World piece was investigative reporting in the same way that one of my periodic flights to the east coast could be described as me going over Nebraska “with a fine-tooth comb.” As forPresbyterian and Reformed News, let’s not get me started on that—not if we are trying to keep my satiric proclivities in check. In short, a conservative Christian church in a small university town has been in one of the hotter parts of the nation’s culture wars, for all the reasons that you can imagine. Our opponents have included the standard issue pro-aborts, lesbians, hard leftists, and so on—but here comes the wrinkle. They are joined by some professing evangelicals, the local ones twisted by bitterness, the non-local ones blinded by . . . I don’t know. You tell me what’s blinding them. When this clash between conservative believers finally got noticed at the national level, did we get investigative reporting and a fair shake from fellow believers? Nope. We did get an actual reporter, and a fair shake, from The New York Times. Go figure that one out.

NOW THAT I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION DECEMBER 3, 2007 Among those observing the unfolding drama surrounding Louisiana Presby- tery and Steve Wilkins, there may be more than a few stats-monkeys who are interested in the following. Over the course of this last month, this blog has

586 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | DECEMBER 2007 had 13,590 different visitors, that many different people. When I look at what these people have been interested in, what pages of this blog they go to, I find the following. Out of the top ten content pages, the first three simply amount to the front page of the blog, which is to be expected. The fourth is the archives list, where folks want to go look in my basement. Out of the remaining six pages, five of them were under the category of “Auburn Avenue Stuff.” The remaining one was my post on Pat Robertson’s endorsement of Rudy. When the SJC settles down to its work, my goal is to have a lot of people aware that they are doing so. From these stats, it appears that this goal is going to be met. In the Reformed world of North America, 13,000 people is a lot. As far as it goes, this is just great. I want the SJC to set up at mid-field, and I want the stadium to be full. But we shouldn’t want mob justice any more than we want the star chamber stuff. Justice is not determined by majority vote or demagoguery any more than it is determined by ecclesiastical coziness in the corridors of power. That is why all these observers should be checked out on the basic principles of justice before any judicial process gets under way. And so here are a few relevant principles, again, given in a form that could fit on an index card.

1. Anonymous accusers don’t have any idea of how biblical justice works. And people who give any level of credence to such anonymous accusations don’t know what justice is either, and ought not to be trusted as commentators on any events connected with Louisiana, the SJC, or Steve Wilkins. 2. Any process that results in Steve Wilkins being forced to leave the PCA under any kind of doctrinal cloud, if Steve has not had a chance to defend himself in court, would be a process that is by definition fundamentally flawed, and not to be respected. 3. And as I continue to comment on this process, I would urge my readers to remember that slander should always be recognized for what it is, and ought not to be confused with other activities like forceful refutation, colorful metaphors, efficacious criticism, or simple opposition.

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LOVING THE TRUTH DECEMBER 5, 2007 It is difficult for me to express how grateful I am to the Bayly brothers for their continued refusal to play the petty game of ecclesiastical politics. The only thing I am worried about for them is the possibility that they will fall between two stools. Their insistence that the Reformed church debate these FV issues in a manner consistent with biblical justice is one of the more admirable things I have ever seen—and I honor them for it. But, of course, getting honor from me is not exactly what they need in this circumstance. Not surprisingly, this stance they have taken has caused some true-bluers among the FV critics to wonder, and not very quietly, if the Baylys are really FV critics down in their hearts. But loyalty to justice is larger than any faction or party, at least for men who love the truth. So let me speak personally for a moment on a couple issues. One of the many charges leveled against me is that I am a would-be empire-builder, trying to recruit, cajole, and manipulate the Reformed world into allowing me some sort of fiefdom—and in this project, I apparently allow nothing to get in my way. By hook or crook, I lure churches into the CREC, bringing them under my despotic control, bwahahaha. But if that were the case, what I am doing fighting to keep FV men from being run out of the PCA unjustly? If the personal charge against me were true, and my character were as black as all that, I would object just enough to let everyone know that I disapproved of the action, but not enough to actually affect whether or not it happened. All this is to say that I am obviously fighting contrary to the interest my adversaries say that I have for fighting at all. But in all honesty, I hope and pray that Steve Wilkins will finish his honorable ministry, many years from now, in the PCA. The second point is that a pastor must be willing to fight when the occasion demands, otherwise he is no pastor at all. But Paul tells us in the pas- torals that an elder must not be violent or quarrelsome—a man who likes fighting for the sake of the fighting is disqualified from holding office in the Church. Above all else, I want my ministry at the last day to be approved and received by God, not by man. As a teacher and pastor, I want to build on the

588 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | DECEMBER 2007 foundation of Christ, and I don’t want to do it with wood, hay, and stubble, all of which will be simply consumed. That means all my fighting has to be in the former category, and not in the latter. No man does this kind of thing perfectly, no one is sufficient in himself, and everyone who attempts it is desperately in need of the prayers of the saints. One of the ways observers can tell that I am not fighting as a “faction-leader” is this: I have not drawn the lines in a white hats/black hats way at all, where all the FV men inhabit Rivendell, with the critics crawling out of their orc-dens. I am happy to state publicly what my strategy in all this is. For those who don’t get it, me stating it openly won’t matter, and for those who do get it, the ones I am aiming at, the argument is, in my view, compelling. My whole approach in this is not to categorize the FV critics (or those suspicious of the FV) as evil men. Rather, I presuppose that the overwhelming majority of them know exactly what fair play and justice are. Do I think that the judicial mechanism that I fear is going to do a number on Louisiana would be responsive to direct appeals from me, or Mark Horne, or Peter Leithart? Of course not. But I do believe that there are any number of people on the other side of this unfortunate divide who are not so invested in the controversy that they are blind to the basic principles of justice. I am writing what I am writing for them. There are any number of conscientious men in the PCA who don’t have a doctrinal dog in our doctrinal fight but who are capable of seeing a railroad job when they see one. They are capable of saying, “Yeah, what about that?” And they are in a position to make a phone call to ask about it. And, unlike the attempts at personal contact I have initiated, they will actually get through.

ALL WOLVES, ALL THE TIME DECEMBER 6, 2007 I just now have gotten an opportunity to respond to Andy Webb’s “nuclear” response on the SJC process. His response was two-fold, the first being an explanation why charges did not originate against Wilkins from within the Louisiana Presbytery. Andy said this:

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○The majority in the presbytery had already shown its hostility to such requests, and indicated its substantial agreement with TE Wilkins. For someone in the minority to move forward to make a case as a voluntary prosecutor themselves, when their almost assured failure to win the case would have caused them to be censured (note not charged—but censured) as a slanderer of the brethren (per BCO 31–9) would have been extremely foolish.

No, it would have been courageous, not foolish. Confronting what you believe to be sin or heresy is not supposed to be a day at the beach. But it should be personal, honest, and open, and not accomplished by bureaucratic machinations at the next level up. So here is my bottom line again—any process that could result in Wilkins being condemned by implication, when he is never given his day in court, is a process that could be better used for wrapping fish in. Any process that says that Wilkins was in effect tried “because we tried Louisiana for not trying him, and found them guilty of not trying him,” and then surreptitiously slipped in what the result of what such a trial of Wilkins would have been, had we only had a trial, is not justice but rather a pea and shell game. Andy’s second post was a tu quoque, basically saying that the process that we are objecting to now with the SJC was a process that Louisiana Presbytery itself tried to use in another cause involving Tennessee and the John Wood case. That case involved a woman who had apparently preached at a couple of evening services, and Louisiana had passed an overture asking that it be looked into. I checked with Steve on all this, and so the following basic info is from him. I am almost certain that in an early form of this post, Andy said that this “inconsistency” happened when Steve was moderator of Louisiana Pres- bytery, but that observation appears to have been removed. That is good, because Steve has never been moderator of the Louisiana Presbytery. And the overtures that Andy is talking about did not originate with Auburn Avenue. One of them came from another church, and the rest came from a TE in that

590 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | DECEMBER 2007 presbytery. Steve thinks he supported most of the overtures, and voted for them, but neither he nor his church were pushing or advancing them. But here is the irony. One of the main advocates today of the SJC deciding Wilkins’s case, the man who has challenged the current questioning of the SJC’s authority and actions, is the same man who brought overtures in 2000 to denounce the SJC back then. He wrote up the “constitutional inquiry” that has been cited, he brought the overture to decline to adopt the SJC as the GA’s own commission, as well as an overture to condemn the SJC decision in the John Wood Case, along with an overture to remove from the SJC those members who voted with the majority in the John Wood case. And so Steve notes that the “hypocrisy,” if there is any, “is not mine but his.” Steve says that “The authority of the SJC which he so vehemently opposed in 2000 (and I thought, had grounds to oppose), he now vehemently supports in 2007.” But Steve had problems with the structure of the SJC in 2000 and has problems with it now. But this reminds me of another issue that I was just talking with a friend about today. I have been involved in a series of controversies since 2002. I was forty-nine when all this started. I had been a pastor since I was twenty-three, and before this most recent controversy season started, there was the occasional dust-up, but absolutely nothing like the last five years. I say this in order to lean against an optical illusion that might be understandably forming. All polemics all the time would be a tiresome business, and not characteristic of a fruitful ministry, and not what Christ calls us to. As I have noted before, a shepherd who doesn’t know how to fight is a loveless shepherd. But a shepherd who does nothing but fight—all wolves, all the time—is probably making up wolves. And he is almost certainly not leading the flock to green pasture. So there is a time and a season for everything. In addition, when everything is polemical there is a tendency to circle the wagons, and never acknowledge any fault—for what you acknowledge as fault can and will be used against you. And if the fight is everything, admitting fault compromises your “everything.” This is obviously a false standard, and so over the course of this controversy, we have sought to

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maintain a willingness to acknowledge it plainly where we erred, or sinned, or misjudged in some respect. And this has not been an abstract willingness either—I can think of a number of instances where we have had to humble ourselves and say that we said something wrong or handled something wrong. We believe this to be the right way to proceed, and we pray that God supplies us with the grace to do what we believe to be right, when the situation calls for it. I also honor men like Lane Keister, who has evidenced this same commitment to truth over party interest on the other side of this unfortunate aisle. The last point is that controversy rivets the attention, and so we have to make sure that we are continuing to teach and emphasize the whole counsel of God. Balance, balance, balance. These controversies have occupied more of my energy and attention than I would have chosen, but at the same time, we have actively sought to avoid becoming the ecclesiastical equivalent of Johnny One-Note. The majority of the saints here at Christ Church don’t really know much of anything about these raging tempests outside because we are too busy trying to focus on the details of parish living. During this time, I have preached through Galatians, Ezra and Nehemiah, and 1 Timothy, done a series on a biblical worldview, and another one on Islam. In my writing, I have done a lot on atheism (books answering Harris and Hitchens and answering Dawkins on this blog). I have published a book on marriage, and there is a forthcoming book on the impact of the gospel on the world. In short, I want to be active in this controversy to the extent I need to be—I don’t want to shirk—but neither do I want to be defined by this. If any my friends out there see that definition forming, please feel free to say so.

MOONING THE REF DECEMBER 10, 2007 These are not talking points. These are just remembering points. You don’t have to say anything, or “talk” to anybody about them. All you have to do is remember these things as you watch the unfolding saga continue. For ease of remembrance, I have just listed ten of them.

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1. To keep things simple, the Federal Vision in its essential FVness should be defined by the Joint Federal Vision Statement. This is a doctrinal statement on the controverted points that all the leading figures on the FV side of things agreed to. Related to this, the FV should not be defined in terms of a position that is not in that statement. 2. This does not mean that there cannot be questions about other doctrinal positions not listed there. Rather it means that such questions should be directed to the individuals who hold to them, or who are thought to hold to them, and not attributed to the “Federal Vision” generally. For example, by this standard, denial of the imputation of the active obedience of Christ cannot be described as a tenet of the Federal Vision. 3. Beware of formulations that beg the question, that assume what still needs to be shown. For example, it has been recently pointed out that my degrees are in philosophy, not theology, and that therefore I ought not to be messing around with the Reformed confessions. I agree with this sentiment entirely, which is why I don’t go around messing with the confessions. But unfortunately, while it is possible for a man like me to avoid messing with the confessions, it is not possible to keep some people’s children from asserting that I have been messing with the confessions. This means that the thing which still remains to be shown (that I have abandoned the Reformed standards) is quietly assumed, and my “departure” is explained as the result of my lack of theological chops. But precisely because I was trained in philosophy I can recognize petitio principii when I see it. 4. The substance of the doctrinal controversy is one thing, the methods by which the controversy is carried forward is something else quite distinct. Given the two variables—right or wrong in substance, and clean or dirty in the clinch—there are four possible ways this could go. 1. The TRs could be right and fight clean. 2. The TRs could be right and fight dirty. 3. The FVs could be right and fight clean. 4. The FVs could be right and fight dirty. There will be no “well done, good and faithful servant” for either 2 or 4. So both sides need to keep in

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mind that there is a deeper right than being right. This applies to all levels—to questions of justice in process and to questions of apologies and forgiveness on a personal level. 5. Anonymous attacks, and those who give them the time of day, are demonstrating that they don’t know the first thing about handling Scripture, evidence, other people’s reputations, or Reformed theology. And the fact that they are on “your side” should be cause for alarm and embarrassment, not a cause for cutting them additional slack. This is a point that all biblical Christians, regardless of their doctrinal convictions in this mess, can agree on. And so I list this one as a Chris- tian, not as an FV guy. 6. But, as it turns out, I am also an FV guy, and to the extent that my exhortation in #5 is ignored (as thus far it has been), it is not giving me any tactical headaches. If someone is going to do it, far better to have the left tackle on the opposing team mooning the ref than to have your guy doing it, if you know what I mean. 7. Barn brushstrokes make controversy simple at the beginning, but those who indulge themselves this way will come to regret it. Those who live by the barn brush strokes will die by the barn brush strokes, so to speak. For one glaring example, Federal Vision is not the New Perspective on Paul. John Piper has a new book out critiquing N.T. Wright (a book I appreciate), but Piper likes Daniel Fuller, and we all know how bad that is, and Richard Gaffin blurbed Norman Shep- herd’s book, and Peter Lillback wrote The Binding of God, and a lot of the TRs in the States really like what the FV-friendlies in the UK are doing, for some strange reason, and I do too, and where is John Frame in this?, and it is getting that you can’t tell the players anymore without a scorecard. At some point, somebody is going to have to stop and say, “Heh, heh. It seemed a lot simpler in 2002.” 8. If Steve Wilkins is forced to leave the PCA without ever being given a fair trial, then we should all know by that point that we are in a boo and hiss melodrama.

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9. To borrow a phrase that a friend recently sent me, much of this morass is so personal and subjective that you could drive a couple Idaho snow plows side-by-side through the gray areas. 10. Real reformations burst wineskins, even the ones with the official Ref- ormation® tags stitched on to them.

IMAGINATION RULES THE WORLD DECEMBER 12, 2007 As critics are rummaging around, trying to find something that works, you have to expect the occasional novelties. The most recent one is that I am a theological liberal, akin to those who were resisted by Machen back in the day. This argument is made by Pastor Todd Bordow (OPC). He does this while granting that that I do “not deny supernaturalism, as many liberals did.” This being the case, then how can he maintain that there are many similarities between me and the old liberalism? He gives three reasons. His first objection is that liberals used traditional words like salvation and faith but used them “stripped of their biblical meanings.”

This abuse of language is common among FVers. DW states how the salvation Christ came to bring is not only the salvation of souls, but salvation of governments and cultures. How is a culture “saved?”

But here is where Pastor Bordow misses the key distinction. There is a vast difference between using a term with different definitions, which is equivocation and dishonesty, and using such a term with additional meanings, which is called having a larger vocabulary. The liberals did the former. We are doing the latter. Pastor Bordow says, “In FV speak, it is not even clear what ‘salvation’ means.” But actually, salvation means everything that personal salvation has always meant among genuine believers. It means forgiveness of sin, freedom from condemnation, deliverance from Hell, and a promised resurrection

595 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | DECEMBER 2007 from the dead. To object, as Pastor Bordow does, because we also speak of the salvation of institutions and nations is to miss the point logically, as well as to strip certain biblical passages of their traditional meaning. And does this latter point make Pastor Bordow a liberal. How on earth can you disciple nations? How can you baptize nations? Like the Great Commission says to do? He says:

That is why someone should not be overly impressed when men like DW offer a bone to the greater Church with a sermon or statement that affirms traditional theology. One needs to carefully read DW’s material elsewhere as to how those terms are explained and applied to people and see if this matches the traditionally believed understanding of these concepts.

It is not offering “a bone” to affirm the fivesolas , the five points of Calvin- ism, and so on, when they are affirmed as carrying the same meanings that historic Reformed theology has affirmed since the time of the Reformation. But, that said, are we allowed learn anything else? If so, then let us talk about it, carefully examining new light to make sure that we are not unwittingly giving up something we ought not to give up. No problem with that. But if not, then what is with that semper reformanda business? His second argument for my liberalism is that I have returned to a principle of works righteousness, just like the liberals did.

If one reads DW’s literature carefully, one notices a common theme; it is the theme of blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. DW is unabashed in his love for this truth. What DW fails to understand, and it is truth most five-year-old believers understand, is that this is a principle for law, not gospel. DW sees Deuteronomy 28, the blessings for obeying all the law and curses for disobeying all the law, and he sees a principle enforced under the New Covenant. The liberals could not distinguish law and gospel so basic to theology, and neither

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can DW. His Credenda Agenda even speaks of Christian parents who send their children to public schools as ‘breaking covenant’ with God and being under a curse. Whether he defines the curses eternally or in this life, this is still a denial of the gospel, where Christ takes upon himself the curse of the law for us fully. To DW the curse of the law is still in effect for the Christian. Thus DW’s views are simply a subtle reworking of the old liberalism.

Pastor Bordow is correct that I am “unabashed in [my] love for this truth.” He is quite wrong in saying that in my view “the curse of the law is still in effect for the Christian.” But before answering his doctrinal objection, please note the oddity—I am a liberal because I teach that Christian parents ought not to allow their children to be discipled by liberals. In Pastor Bordow’s book, it is apparently a mark of staunch conservative theology to allow liberal theology to be poured into the minds and hearts of the children of the covenant for five days a week, just so long as they get a catechetical dab of the old time religion on the Lord’s Day. But what about the blessings/curses argument? Is this keeping Christians under condemnation, contra Paul’s glorious statement to the contrary (Rom. 8:1)? Of course not. With regard to an individual believer’s standing before God, with regard to justification, the only thing that God considers is the perfection of Jesus. God does not look at our lusts, our failings, our strivings, our virtues, our homeschooling, our private Christian schooling, our merits, our prayers, or our Westminster-confessing. The gospel is that in Christ God saves sinners. That said, go and find out what this means—why does God scourge every son that He receives? What son is without discipline? Why does Paul give Ephesian believers a commandment (law) with a promise (grace)? And what is that promise exactly? Why are new covenant believers told not to harden their hearts the way their fathers did in the wilderness? Why are Christians promised that God will answer their prayers, if they pray in faith, believing? The short form—the short theological harmonization of this—is that for all the elect, the curses of the covenant are simply forms of discipline, not

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punishment. They are corrective, not raw justice. God’s just wrath for all our sins fell upon Christ alone. These chastisements are therefore part of God’s gracious blessing and are used by Him for our sanctification. For those members of the covenant who are not elect, the curses are just that, curses. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Our God is a consuming fire. His third argument is that liberals downplay the importance of the “im- mortality of the soul,” and minimize the importance of presenting the gospel to individuals that they might believe and be saved. Apparently in line with this, I mock “heavenly-minded believers and true gospel concern for lost people.”

Again, anyone familiar with DW’s writings knows how commonly DW mocks those concerned with the soul’s eternal salvation over against the reformation of culture and society, labeling them “Gnostics.”

Actually, what I challenge is that kind of evangelism that tries to secretly woo private individuals away from their household gods without ever confronting the principalities and powers. But idolatry is all of a piece. Of course, we want every man to repent and believe, and to walk away from his private idolatry to find forgiveness in Christ—and I have never mocked those who are fruitful in doing this. Not only have I not mocked it but have been engaged in that work myself for many years. But why should we stop there? Why are preachers of the gospel being told to limit our fire to thelittle idols? Why may we not preach against the big ones? Might it be that the big ones have ways of retaliating? Now it should go without saying that when we confront the idolatry of Americans at large, we are not saying that it is fine with us if private individuals go to Hell. The gospel is good news for the nations, and this includes all the people in it. Peace on earth, good will toward men. If I desire—as I surely do desire—the kindness of God in Christ to overwhelm our nation with a gracious deluge, it would surely be an odd objection to say that I must somehow want the non-Christian next door to remain dry.

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God is great, and we serve and worship a great Savior. Our sin and rebellion were crimson, but the greatness of God’s forgiveness comes to make us white as snow. Because Christ is the Logos of God, imagination rules the world. It remains for Christians to submit their imaginations to that Logos (so that we will not perpetuate our apostasy with our rebellious imagination), and to proclaim what God has actually done in Christ. He has remade the world, He has remade humanity. God has established a new heavens and a new earth. It remains for preachers of the gospel to submit their imaginations to the express Word of God found in Scripture alone. And when we have done so, the words of the psalmist will become true for us. I believed, and therefore I have spoken. The Bible is God’s final and absolute word to us. Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ alone, is the King of these United States. He is our Prophet as well, and we are to live by every gracious word that proceeds from His mouth. The just shall live by faith. He is our High Priest, and so now we have access to God the Father, by one Spirit, through the shed blood of the everlasting covenant, and only through that shed blood. In the resurrection of Jesus, we have our complete justification. If this is liberalism, I confess to being a little disoriented.

THE DEMANDS OF THE SYSTEM DECEMBER 13, 2007 Andy Webb tries to take us to task, but it doesn’t come out very well. He says:

There are so many non-Reformed doctrines floating around in the FV that one hardly knows where to begin addressing them. But the idea that everyone in the covenant is “saved in some sense” regardless of whether they are elect or not is a good place to start discussing their departure from the Standards.

Andy uses Minich’s synopsis of the FV as his basis for this, but his entire case rests upon a misquotation, and it is ironic, because what he misquotes consists of the placement of . . . quotation marks. Here is the section of Minich’s work that he relies on.

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Thus, according to Wilkins and others, all covenant members are “saved” in some sense.

Now what is the difference between saying that all covenant members are “saved in some sense,” and saying that they are all in some sense “saved”? The former creates the picture of an undifferentiated mass, with gradations of salvation within that mass. The second indicates that the word “saved” is being used in a different way. If I acknowledge that Smith might be “married,” but he has a common-law wife, my language is flagging the fact that I am using the word in a different way. It is not an attempt to blur the distinctions between marriage and cohabitation. Blurring is going on in this situation, but it is coming from other sources. Am I willing to say that a reprobate covenant member, a son of Belial, a skunk and a bounder, is “saved”? Sure. Am I willing to say that he is, in some sense, “saved along with the rest of us”? Of course not. Now this exasperates some among our critics who want to believe that we are within the confines of Reformed orthodoxy. “Why do you even talk this way, then?” they might ask. “Just asking for trouble.” The reason we talk this way is because some among the Reformed have set up the Confessions as a Procrustean bed for Bible verses. Verses are stretched or lopped offin order to fit their idea of the system. This is a denial of a central tenet of the Reformed system, which is sola Scriptura. A sterling example of this comes from this very post of Andy’s.

Contra the statements above, the Standards (and scripture) do not teach that the non-elect are ever united to Christ or saved in any sense because the only way we can be united to Christ is via FAITH and faith is the result of Effectual Calling and Regeneration.

Okay. Andy says that Scripture does not teach that “the non-elect are ever united to Christ or saved in any sense.” The emphasis is mine. The standard he has set is pretty high here. No union with Christ ever. No salvation in any

600 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | DECEMBER 2007 sense. Got that? There is no sense in which we can say that a reprobate ever had “salvation” in any sense. No reprobate ever had any kind of union with Christ. Nothing in the Bible about it. The demands of the system require them to say that what their net don’t catch ain’t fish.

They answered and said unto him, Art thou also of Galilee? Search, and look: for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet. (John 7:52)

They had a grid, they had a system, and that system would not allow the text to speak to them. But when you start muzzling the text, you don’t know beforehand what truths you are going to miss.

Nevertheless the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation, when at the first he lightly afflicted the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, and afterward did more grievously afflict her by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, in Galilee of the nations. The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined . . .For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this. (Isa. 9:1–2,6–7)

The demands of a system can hide an awful lot. In the case of the Jews, their system hid the Messiah. In Andy’s case, the missing truth is far less serious, but the same kind of process is going on. When someone’s system requires a man to believe that Jesus never went to Capernaum in any sense, it will do no good to produce verses that show Him there (e.g., Matt. 8:5). Here is what Andy has said. No reprobate was ever united to Christ. No reprobate is ever saved in any sense.

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I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away . . . If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. (John 15: 1–2, 6) And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert grafted in among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree; Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee. Thou wilt say then, The branches were broken off, that I might be grafted in. Well; because of unbelief they were broken off, and thou standest by faith. Be not highminded, but fear: For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee. Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off. (Rom. 11:17–22)

Who is the Vine? Who is the Root? Who is part of the Vine here? Who is part of the Root here? Is there any sense in which these branches were ever united to Christ? To ask the question is to answer it, provided you are asking questions of the text, and not of the system.

For therefore we both labour and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe. (1 Tim. 4:10)

Now is this statement true in any sense? At any level? Having said all this, let me now affirm my commitment to the Reformed standards. I love them, teach in accordance with them, teach through the Westminster Confession every other year, thank God for them, and use torn pages from Finney’s systematic theology to light my cigars. But I was brought to the Reformed faith because of the teaching of Scripture. The confessions did not open the Bible to me; the Bible made me willing to see the confessions

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for the first time. God humbled me to the point where I was willing to admit what Romans 8–11 was actually saying, right there on the surface of the text. That being the case, I am not about to listen to those among the Reformed who are insisting upon the very same kind of special pleading (only with different labels) that I repented of in 1988.

TEMPORARY JUSTIFICATION DECEMBER 14, 2007 In the discussion of my previous Auburn Avenue post, one commenter asked what Reformed group has ever allowed for notions of temporary regeneration or justification. An outstanding answer to that question can be found here. Note carefully the three reasons that the English divines gave to the good gentlemen at Dort for their appeal, and what the result of their appeal was. Like those English divines, (please note!) I differ with the idea of temporary regeneration or justification. But a difference can be expressed without consigning those who differ to the nether regions of heterodoxy. Seeing the English Puritans demonstrate a greater catholicity on such a point than American bapterians can muster is quite striking. Having said this, we live in odd times—being Reformed is now apparently a matter of having an authorized “presbyterial succession,” and so there’s no telling what standards we might be failing to meet next. Truly reformed moderators might be needing to wear mitred hats, for example. And in order to preserve the Westminster Confession we have to ignore what it instructs us to do in all “controversies of religion.”

TIME OF ADMINISTRATION DECEMBER 18, 2007 David Gadbois argues here that FV proponents hold that infant baptism is normative, and somehow marginalize those baptisms which are performed on the basis of a profession of faith. In this course of this argument, he quotes Pastor Bordow, who put it this way:

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If you look for a credible profession before baptizing, aren’t you assuming a man is justified apart from the sacrament? How could you possibly look for a credible profession before baptism if you did not assume that man wasn’t already justified and Spirit-filled? And if you believe he was already justified and Spirit-filled, and thus a proper recipient of the sign, how can the sign convey justification and the Spirit?

And David adds, “Pastor Bordow has hit on a point that I’ve brought up many, many times throughout this controversy. FV seems to have to marginalize adult baptisms . . .” But this argument only works for those who are willing to take an exception to the Westminster Confession, which says that the efficacy of baptism is not tied to the moment of its administration.

The thing that has astonished me in this controversy, again and again, is how the erstwhile defenders of the Westminster Standards can attack the teaching of those standards (and those who actually hold to them) in the name of defending the standards. Look at the argument above. The whole thing depends on the chronological order of baptism and justification mat- tering, and the teaching of the Confession is that the efficacy of baptism is not tied to the time of administration, and that the grace promised is really exhibited and conferred at another moment, the moment when the person to be justified has come to his appointed time. That appointed time might be after his baptism in water, or it might be prior to that baptism. Put this another way. The Confession says that the efficacy of baptism is not tied to the moment of administration, and comes now Pastor Bordow arguing that baptismal efficacy cannot be applied in the case of a person not

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yet baptized. But what is this but to tie the efficacy of baptism to the time of administration? And then to use that tie down as a confessional argument against those who agree with the Confession? There are times when I walk around in tight little circles, looking helplessly at the horizon. Pastor Bordow says, “aren’t you assuming a man is justified apart from the sacrament? How could you possibly look for a credible profession before baptism if you did not assume that man wasn’t already justified and Spirit-filled?” No, we are not assuming that a man is justified apart from the sacrament—we are Reformed, for pity’s sake. I would assume such a man is justified before the application of the sacrament, which is quite a different thing. I am not assuming that God cannot use a subsequent means of grace in His prior giving of that grace—I am a Calvinist. And none of this threatens sola fidein the slightest because to maintain that faith is the sole instrument in justification does not deny that God uses other secondary instruments, always subsidiary to the primary instrument, which is faith alone. Those other subordinate instruments would include, but not be limited to, preaching, Gideon Bibles, tracts in the laundromat, billboards, sermon tapes, baptism, godly mothers, and so on. If Pastor Bordow has subscribed to the Westminster Confession, he needs to notify his presbytery that he needs to take an exception, because he maintains that the grace of baptism cannot be exhibited or conferred at any moment prior to its administration, contrary to 28.6.

SOME AGREEMENT IN SPITE OF OURSELVES DECEMBER 22, 2007 Andy Webb has responded to my Demands of the System36 post here. In his handling of John 15, I actually appreciated and agreed with much of what he had to say, so this response might possibly bring some closure to this line of the argument. Just two crucial points. First, Andy thinks that I was setting the Reformed Confessions against Scripture, which is not true. I subscribe to the original Westminster as the best extant summary of the teaching of Scripture. But Andy says:

36 December 13, 2007.

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Doug Wilson once again shows the FV tendency to attempt to set the Reformed Confessions against scripture, alleging that those opposed to the ever-developing Federal Vision theology use them as a “Procrustean bed for Bible verses” where “Verses are stretched or lopped off in order to fit their idea of the system.”

My position is that Scripture is senior to the Confessions, and that the Confessions are senior to (and quite different from) popular American bapterian readings of the Confessions. My allegation, quoted by Andy, was actually that “verses are stretched or lopped off in order to fit their idea of the system” (emphasis added). The system is fine. The Confessions are fine. The problem is that Reformed bapterians have as many problem passages in the Confes- sions as they do in the Scriptures. What does “exhibited and conferred” mean again? Second, in my post, I was engaging with the following claim that Andy had made:

Contra the statements above, the Standards (and scripture) do not teach that the non-elect are ever united to Christ or saved in any sense. (emphasis added)

What I was responding to was the sweeping and universal claim that reprobate covenant members have no union with Christ whatever. But in this last post, Andy has now modified his claim, and so after this post I am happy to drop the point. He now says:

At this point, no doubt Pastor Wilson and the other FV men will insist that I cannot assert that these branches that were cut off never had a vital, or living union with Christ, because he says they were “in me.”

You can’t change horses in the middle of the stream, and you can’t change terms in the middle of the argument. I am actually happy with any adjectives

606 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | DECEMBER 2007 that differentiate the branches that were united with the Vine, some fruitless and others fruitful. Such distinctions line up with the point of Christ’s parable. I simply am not happy with adjectives which deny the central point of the parable. To distinguish dead branches from living ones (all of them united in some sense to the Vine) is to reinforce the point of the parable. But to say that the dead “branches” were actually a bit of tumbleweed caught in the branches, or the neighbor kid’s lost frisbee, is to miss the point of the parable. If someone were to say, for example, that the dead branches in the Vine of Christ were actually branches in another vine in another vineyard entirely, five miles away, and if I were to object, it would not be to the point to say that Christ’s words were a parable. Yes, it is parable, spoken by the Lord Himself, and so we ought not to edit it like that. So the claim I was responding to was that the reprobate covenant member never had any kind of union with Christ, not that he didn’t have a vital union. I agree that those who are cut off never had a vital union with Christ, as I argued over the course of three chapters in “Reformed” Is Not Enough. Not only do I agree that they don’t have vital union at the time they were cut off, I have also gone out of my way to teach that there is a vital union that they never had. Something was wrong with them from the beginning. But Andy had argued that reprobate covenant members did not have any union with Christ, in any sense, at any level. And that is what I was responding to. John 15 clearly shows Andy’s original claim to be false, a point which Andy has now quietly granted. He even quotes Bishop Ryle in support of my point: “There are myriads of professing Christians in every Church whose union with Christ is only outward and formal. Some of them are joined to Christ by baptism and Church-membership. Some of them go even further than this and are regular communicants and loud talkers about religion. But they all lack the one thing needful. Notwithstanding services, and sermons, and sacrament, they have no grace in their hearts, no faith, no inward work of the Holy Spirit. They are not one with Christ, and Christ in them. Their union with Him is only nominal, and not real.”

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The good bishop acknowledges all kinds of union with Christ here that are not real in the sense of being salvific,as do we, but which do constitute union with Christ in some sense. I mean, look at Ryle’s list again—nominal union, outward and formal union, baptismal union, church-membership union, intellectual assent union, verbal claims union, and communicant union. Bishop Ryle, he’s the man. If he can’t say it, nobody can.

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ANTI-FV ESPIONAGE JANUARY 3, 2008 Well, okay, it now looks like I need to offer a brief comment on the FV critics’ espionage network. Here’s the deal. Jim Jordan is the main dude at a ministry called Biblical Horizons. That ministry includes a private list discussion group, to which I belong. The list requirements concerning confidentiality are quite strict—for example, if someone offers up a prayer request, and someone else wants to pass that prayer request on, he first gets permission from the individual who posted it. Everyone on the list agrees to the rules in order to participate. In short, there is no way for someone to forward information from that list to others outside the list without breaking his word in a strikingly dishonorable way. So the first point is this: whoever passed on the contents of this conversation from 2003, making it public, is not behaving with any kind of integrity. Let me say this again: no member of the BH list could possibly pass on the contents of a conversation like this without breaking his word. Second, this “leak” made its way to the meister of an anonymous attack blog, a guy named Mark T. All the indications are that his anonymity is very important to him, and that when the Mosaic warning comes to fruition in his case (“be sure your sin will find you out”), we will all say something along the lines of “that figures.” This conversation was posted on his blog under the title “Bag O’ Snakes” without any self-referential irony at all. But, to review, someone broke his word to get the material to Mark T, and Mark T cheerfully

609 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2008 passed it on to the world. I am astonished but am somehow not surprised. In earlier stages of this controversy, we had people stealing and publishing minutes from our elder meetings. Third, trying to justify this action (along with the need for anonymity) because the contents of the conversation were “so despicable” doesn’t work, even if the conversation were despicable, which it wasn’t. But even if it were, how does that justify breaking your word? If the BH discussion threads really were unedifying, then the offended soul should have told us all that, and resigned from the list with regrets. That would at least have been an honest response. As it is, we have an anonymous skulker who is willing to maintain to the world (so long as his name is not used!) that BH discussions were bad and evil, but who is the only person involved who actually broke his word. This is a person with a backbone like a Kleenex that has been floating in the sink for ten minutes. Fourth, I just now again read RCjr’s article that set off that particular conversation, and then through the entire conversation again, as it was posted. The whole thing seemed like a generally reasonable, backroom theological discussion to me. There was one point where Jim dismissed what RCjr was doing in a manner such as might be used by a Dutch Reformed farmer having some trouble with an obstinate cow, but he immediately corrected and modified what he was saying in a follow up. In this, he appears to have been responding to and agreeing with someone named Tim, whose point was apparently edited out of the transcript by one of our valiant reporters. Fifth, I contributed two posts to that discussion, and I still agree with them, and stand by what I said. I am not ashamed of my points, I am not ashamed of the friends with whom I was interacting while making these points, and I am not ashamed of my baptized Christian name. This is more than can be said of the person who leaked this information, or of Mark T. They really like theirpoints , but they are both ashamed of their names and of their friends, hiding them both away lest someone find out. And last, I continue to number RCjr among those friends.

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LOUISIANA INDICTMENT JANUARY 5, 2008 The indictment of Louisiana Presbytery by the Standing Judicial Commission has now been made public, although I don’t know where it is on the Net. As soon as I do, I will link to it. The portion that was emailed to me is almost as interesting as a caucus in Iowa. In it, there were two matters of note. The first is that the language seems to alternate back and forth between saying that there were grounds for indicting Steve Wilkins for being out of conformity with the Confession (which is of course appropriate for them to say and do), and assuming that he actually is out of conformity with the Confession (which has not yet been established anywhere). The former is saying that there was “probable cause,” enough indications of a problem to warrant a trial. But in their indictment of Louisiana, they are going well beyond this. They are saying that these indications were so marked that Louisiana, by not acting on them, were guilty themselves of a “fundamental neglect of the Biblical responsibilities of the eldership.” The second point is really striking. The indictment gives Louisiana Pres- bytery two options for breaking this “impasse.” The first is for the Louisiana Presbytery to repent (and show its repentance by bringing Steve to trial or referring the matter to another body to try). The second is to have the ecclesiastical connection between Louisiana Presbytery and the PCA dissolved, with the borders of neighboring presbyteries being adjusted to pick up any Louisiana churches that desire to remain in the PCA. If Louisiana pleads not guilty, then their trial will be held at the beginning of March. If they are found to be in the clear, then that should settle it. If they are found to be guilty, then that would require a trial of Steve. But it also looks as though the SJC has given Louisiana the option of pleading guilty now, retaining jurisdiction over Steve, and scheduling a trial for him before Louisiana Presbytery. Further bulletins as events warrant.

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CALVINISM UNDER JOVE JANUARY 15, 2008 Reformation Calvinism was born under Jove. It flourishes under Jove and is spiritually healthy there. But for the last several centuries (at least) it has come under the baneful influence of Saturn. For those who dismiss my “pagan tomfoolery”—planetary influences and theology indeed—with a sneer and say that they want a Calvinism under Christ, thank you, the better to enable us to get back to the gospel-preserving debates about supralapsarianism, not to mention how many eggs your wife is allowed to cook on the Lord’s Day, several things have to be said. First, they haven’t understood my point. Nobody around here has any sympathy for pagan unbelief and superstition. Christ is Lord, and only Christ. But when my point is misunderstood this way, folks haven’t understood it because they are under the baneful influences of Saturn. Second, this is not a minor issue. Just as Lucy and Susan wouldn’t feel safe around Bacchus unless Aslan was around, I don’t feel safe around Calvinists under Saturn. When these precious doctrines of ours are used to perpetuate gloom, severity, introspection, accusations, slander, gnat-strangling, and more, the soul is not safe. Third, the original Protestants, and the Puritans especially, were not at all under Saturn.

But there is no understanding the period of the Reformation in England until we have grasped the fact that the quarrel between the Puritans and the Papists was not primarily a quarrel between rigorism and indulgence, and that, in so far as it was, the rigorism was on the Roman side. On many questions, and specially in their view of the marriage bed, the Puritans were the indulgent party; if we may without disrespect so use the name of a great Roman Catholic, a great writer, and a great man, they were much more Chestertonian than their adversaries. (C.S. Lewis, Selected Literary Essays, p. 116)

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And fourth, with this as the good news, over the last generation, there have been a number of indications that our saturnine exile may be coming to an end. Many Calvinists are again becoming jovial—which should not be reduced to a willingness to tell the occasional joke. The issue is much deeper than that—we are talking about rich liturgy, robust psalm-singing, laughter and sabbath feast- ing, exuberant preaching, and all with gladness and simplicity of heart. The winter is breaking. This is not just a thaw but promises to be a real spring. But occasional jokes are certainly okay, and speaking of them, Peter Leithart took the prize this last week at Auburn Avenue. It seems that Pres- ident Bush’s advisors came into his office to notify him that three Brazilian soldiers had been killed. He went white in the face and passed out. When he came to moments later, still ashen, he looked at his advisors and said, “Just . . . just how many is three brazilian?”

HEARING THE CLICK JANUARY 21, 2008 In the midst of some very kind comments about my visit to Mississippi, Steven Wedgeworth37said this:

This was clearly the case on imputation. He kept proposing that the imputation of Christ’s active obedience was equivalent with recapitulation. Jesus is the new Israel, so there ya go. While I can see some of this, I think it is theologically imprecise, and I wonder if Wilson wouldn’t find himself more “FV dark” if he were stricter with his use of terms.

There are two issues going on here, and together they result in an amber ale—or perhaps, depending on the day, a black and tan. Let me try to sort it out. The first concerns the simple fact of the imputation of Christ’s active obedience to somebody else, to anybody else. Every form of recapitulation requires this. This question addresses the objection that the life Christ lived

37 Steven now blogs here, but this particular post appears to have been lost in the ether.

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was simply a necessary precondition for Him being a spotless sacrifice, which everyone in this dispute believes. But those who affirm the imputation of Christ’s obedience throughout the course of His life are saying more than that. They are saying that somehow, on some level, everything that Christ said and did is ours by faith. I have not just paid the penalty for my sins, but I have also passed the probationary test that makes continued maturation possible. This test—that of obeying God throughout the course of my life—was a test I flunked in my first father Adam, and which I passed with flying colors in the founder of the last humanity, the Lord Jesus.

Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are your’s; Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are your’s; And ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s. (1 Cor. 3:21–23)

If all things are mine, then how could it be possible for the obedience of Christ to not be mine? The fact that the New Testament goes out of its way to show the life of Christ as a recapitulation of the history of Israel, but with this time Israel doing it right, makes this, in my view, undeniable. In all that He is and does, Christ is Christ for us. He does not recapitulate the history of Israel to show off how much He knows. It is not literary doodling. It is clearly redemptive—His entire life is salvific. The fact of it in the Incarna- tion is salvific, the trajectory of it in His recapitulation of Israel’s history is also, and the culmination of it in His death and resurrection is the capstone of our salvation. But it is the second issue which makes all this seem imprecise to Steven. But I don’t believe it really is imprecise. Try this on. The real issue that is confounding the Reformed world is the relationship of Christ to the individual believer and the relationship of Christ to His corporate body, and then the relationship of the individual believer to that corporate body. Put this question another way—this recapitulation of Israel’s history, this active obedience of Christ—is it imputed to the reprobate covenant member? If we say that

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Christ’s active obedience is imputed to each elect covenant member only, one at a time, thus building up the body of the elect (as an abstracted roster), then we are disparaging the role of the organic Church. But if we say that the imputation of Christ’s obedience is “for the new Israel,” and I am a covenant member of that new Israel, then His obedience is mine, right? Q.E.D. But this leaves us to puzzle over the differences between the elect covenant member and the reprobate covenant member and leaves the classic TR (rightly) suspicious. The imputation of the active obedience of Christ cannot be taken as simple handwaving over the entire visible Church. In my appeal to the recapitulation of Israel’s history in the life of Christ, that is not what I am trying to do. This is how I understand the difference between the elect and reprobate covenant member in their enjoyment of the benefits of that covenant. By “benefits of that covenant” let us use the imputation of the active obedience of Christ, but I believe the same thing applies to all the blessings of the covenant. The elect enjoys them with the result of ultimate salvation at the last day. The reprobate enjoys them temporarily as the common operations of the Spirit, to use the language of Westminster. If this following illustration helps, great. If not, then maybe we can find a better one later. We are all in the car of salvation, barreling along at a high rate of speed, headed toward the eucatastrophic wall that bars the road at the end of history, and which we will all hit at that high rate of speed. We are all in the car, we all have a seat, we all have equal access to the drinks and snacks in the cooler, and we are all buckled up, except for some sons of Belial in the way back. We have all been expressly told to buckle up, and we have mostly done so. Some of those buckled have just shoved the thing in thoughtlessly, but the converted covenant members hear the click. That click makes all the difference, for everyone and in everything. So the qualitative difference between the elect and reprobate extends to their enjoyment of every blessing. It affects every blessing, and it affects it totally. Is the obedience of Christ given to the reprobate car-rider? Yes, but no click. Is the obedience of Christ rendered to every elect covenant member? Absolutely . . . and click. In this respect, the reprobate covenant member’s

615 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2008 enjoyment of the common operations of the Spirit is exactly like the reprobate non-covenant member’s enjoyment of rain and sunshine. The greater the enjoyment, the more we should have a sense of gathering tragedy and doom. As C.S. Lewis points out somewhere, damnation works backwards.

GOD’S PALIMPSEST JANUARY 22, 2008 Let’s begin with the basic reason why it is so important to understand what the ground of our justification is—the early Reformers insisted on this (rightly) in the Pauline spirit of preventing any man from boasting about his salvation, which sinful men always want to do. The point was not that we had to have every detail of God’s foundation worked out (which would be presumptuous), but rather that we understand that the foundation was not a mixture of iron and clay. The foundation of our justification cannot be partly God and partly us. If it is, then all of us are in deep trouble. Now I am entirely in sympathy with the suggestion that the lifelong obedience of Christ, recapitulating the history of Adam, as well as the history of Israel, is the foundational to our glorification, just as the first Adam’s obedience would have been the foundation of our glorification (without have to expiate sin) had Adam only obeyed. So much is obvious. But given the intrusion of sin, and the reality of it, and the stark fact of the fall, we are more than justified (heh) in linking our justification and our glorification. Paul places them end to end like boxcars in Romans 8.

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified. What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? (Rom. 8:28–31)

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Justification is on the way to glorification. It would not have been had Adam not sinned, but that is not the world we are in now. This means there are a couple of anomalies which prevent us (in my view) from applying the active, recapitulating obedience of Christ to glorification alone, and His passive obedience on the cross to justification alone. The first is the order in which they come in the life of Christ—which is to say, backwards. Why would the obedience that establishes glorification precede the obedience that establishes forgiveness, without which I cannot have glorification? It is out of whack typologically. It is as though Christ built the attic and then poured the foundational concrete on top of it. The second anomaly is that in other circumstances, some FV advocates are comfortable in speaking of a future justification—speaking of the actual, final deliverance, the deliverdict. Although I don’t really speak that way, so long as terms are stipulated and used as defined, I can live with it and profit from it. But this means that justification and glorification are not being kept in separate places like they were oranges and bananas. Given God’s saving intention for a fallen race, they now are organically connected, and are all part of the same glorious inter-related process. But this means that the recapitulating obedience of Christ cannot be reserved apart for justification-at-the-moment of conversion alone. All of what Christ did and accomplished is applied to all of what we need—and we need it all, all the time. And this brings us back to the first point. Our salvation, every aspect of it, owes its reality to solus Christus. And it must be solus et totus Christus—not only Jesus, but only Jesus and all of Jesus. This means that we are resting, not upon the essence of Christ, but upon the history of Christ, the biography of Christ, which, when rightly understood, is the history of the world. It is a new history, now being written on top of the old—in Christ we are God’s palimpsest.

AN ANARCHIC PERSONALITY JANUARY 26, 2008 You know you have hit a real nerve—without necessarily knowing which nerve—when nonbelievers take a deep and abiding interest in the arcane

617 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2008 intramural disputes among conservative Presbyterians. But here we are. Nick Gier, who has been one of the chief voices in our local disturbances here in Moscow, has been writing a series of articles on my religious empire. He has come now to my involvement in the Federal Vision stuff. In this intramural dispute, Gier simply sides with the critics of the Fed- eral Vision because the enemy of my enemy is my friend. This strange human tendency has been one of the weirdest elements of the whole fracas, and I have watched the two-way schmooze traffic between the TR camp and radical progressive camp with great interest. “What occureth?” has been my general sentiment. Gier cites with approval the statement by the RPCUS that “declared that Wilson’s teaching ‘has the effect of destroying the Reformed Faith through the introduction of false hermeneutic principles; the infusion of sacerdotalism; and the redefinition of the doctrines of the church. . . . We therefore resolve that these teachings are heretical.’” And if there is one thing that a radical liberal theologian like Gier cares passionately about, it is saving conservative Presbyterianism from “sacerdotalism.” Oh, and “redefining the doctrines of the church.” My point here is not to defend myself from the charges one more time, but rather to point out how funny this is. If a conservative Presbyterian were to veer off into sacerdotalism, would the tremors be felt deep within Buddhism? Gier extends the same approval to a declaration by the Mississippi Valley Presbytery. Makes one wonder if any of those guys in Mississippi are worried about the support they are attracting. Let me think about it, no. No, they aren’t. Gier then turns to the General Assembly of the PCA.

Delegates at the June, 2007 PCA annual meeting overwhelmingly rejected Wilson’s version of John Calvin’s theology. Out of 1,400 delegates in attendance, one observer counted less than fifty votes for Wilson and his associates. Of central concern for the PCA delegates was Wilson’s very liberal definition of who is saved. For Wilson one is fully justified and sanctified simply by being baptized in any Christian denomination.

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There are two things to note here. The first is that those Christian critics of mine who have borne false witness about my beliefs on “who is saved,” and what constitutes what it means to be “fully justified and sanctified” may observe the fruit of their labors in this article of Gier’s. I don’t expect Gier to be able to follow the theological argumentation involved in these issues. How could he? But those Reformed disputants who could have known better, and who have had a duty to know better, and who have persisted in circulating falsehoods anyway, what can I say? It must be rough having a conscience that looks like a rainy Saturday in Pittsburg. The second thing is that it is inaccurate in the extreme to say that the GA vote was aimed at “Wilson and his associates.” That is to make me far more important than I actually am, and more central to this whole deal than I am. It is Gier’s intent to show how the PCA overwhelmingly rejected me and my pernicious teaching. But the casual observer would look at this and think, “Wilson is so important that the entire Presbyterian Church in America voted on him?” I’m not, and they didn’t, but Gier would apparently like it to be that way and is doing what he can to make it so. I don’t actually have an empire, but if people like Gier and organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Cen- ter say enough times that I do, well, then, the day might come when I have to write them a little thank you letter. Gier, who is very liberal, is really upset that I am going liberal.

In reading Wilson’s “Reformed” is Not Enough one is struck by how liberal he is when defining what it is to be a Christian and how little “cut glass” there is on his road to salvation. Wilson states: “A Christian. . . is anyone who has been baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit by an authorized representative of the Christian church”(19). R&G [Robbins and Gerety] take the three New Testament passages that Wilson uses to support this doctrine and demonstrate conclusively that they do not support this incredi- bly broad definition, one that does not even require continued belief in basic Christian doctrines.

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Gier refers to, but does not understand, the distinction I make between Christians by covenant and Christians in evangelical truth. An adulterer is really married—that’s in part what makes him an adulterer. A faithful husband is really married too, but there is far more to the story than the two of them being “really married.” The reason this doctrine is eating at Gier is because he had a Christian upbringing, and he is covenantally obligated to return to a genuine faith in Jesus, an obligation which he feels deeply, and which he is nevertheless refusing to do. Most evangelical Christians refuse to talk about this obligation, and this is the nerve that I suspect I have hit. Under ordinary circumstances, Gier would applaud any developing “liberalism” on my part. The reason he attacks it (as a liberal!) is because he understands it is not liberal in the standard sense at all. He must repent and believe, and return to a simple faith in Jesus. His baptism still obligates him. And, if Robbins or Gerety are reading this, let us be clear that he must return by faith alone. Gier also misunderstands and mishandles the entire individual/corporate issue. He thinks that a Hindu Vedantist would be excited by my theology, but not an orthodox Christian. So why is Gier objecting? Why is he defending orthodoxy against me and my incipient pantheism? Well, because the objection is what careful thinkers call “not true.” If I really were an incipient pantheist, Gier would be thrilled. But I am not, and he knows it. But he also knows that if you throw enough mud, some of it might stick. And if you keep repeating something, the chances of it sticking—google-wise—go way up. This is why he returns to one of his talking points about me. No article on me by Gier would be complete without reference to Southern slavery, and my purported racism.

PCA members have also condemned Wilson’s book The Serrated Edge, in which he argues that Jesus himself employed racial epithets.

He’s right. In that book, I do argue that Jesus used a racial taunt in the incident of the Syrophoenician woman. I wonder if there is anything else

620 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2008 that I said there in that discussion that might be relevant? I wonder if in the past I have pointed it out? Maybe I forgot to. Maybe that’s why Gier doesn’t know the point of that passage. Maybe that is why he has asserted once more something that I thought I have corrected multiple times? Nah . . .

In his early days Wilson had always described himself as a “New Testament Christian,” and knowing him as well as I do, I was very surprised that he decided to join a denomination. True to form, he wants to run his own show and that he will not be bound by anyone else’s theological limits. This anarchic personality is what made him such an interesting philosophy student at the University of Idaho in the 1970s.

Keeping with the theme of the whole article, there is a bunch of bum dope in this concluding paragraph. I will leave it to the interested reader to sort it all out. But I will say one nice thing—for using that swell phrase anarchic personality, I am prepared to forgive everything else.

THE GAME SHOW’S BRAND NEW SEASON JANUARY 27, 2008 There is a dust-up in progress at Westminster Seminary East. There are three basic issues involved, and I happen to be in a position to speak to two of them. The first would be the speaking habits of Westminster president Peter Lillback, the second would be reaction to Peter Enns’s book Inspiration and Incarnation, and the third would be the ins and outs of faculty relationships— who did or said what to whom and when. This last one I don’t to pretend to know anything about, and I hope and pray that those involved will be able to keep it that way. This website complained that the president of Westminster spoke at an event sponsored by Vision Forum. I am in a position to speak to this because Peter Lillback has spoken for us at a couple of our Trinity Fest conferences. I have spoken to him about his standards for doing speaking engagements, and I know for a fact that he doesn’t mind speaking for disparate groups so long

621 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2008 as they don’t place restrictions on what he says. We didn’t, and he was happy to speak for us. I assume he had the same standard when he spoke for Vision Forum. Dr. Lillback is a first-rate scholar, and a Christian gentleman, and if he has the opportunity to speak for different kinds of groups and speak his mind, then he should just go for it. To fault him for this kind of “guilt-by-association” thing is just bogus. The fact that this is then characterized sim- plistically as “embarrassing flirtations with a far-right-wing political agenda” perhaps reveals more than the writer intended. The second issue is Enns’s book, which I can also say something about, having read it. My review of that book can be read here38. A confessionally Reformed seminary exists, in part, to ask and answer the hard questions within the boundaries of the Reformed tradition. Peter Enns has done an exemplary job in asking honest, hard questions, and he does this without flinching. At the same time, as indicated in my review, I believe his answers fall short in a number of significant ways. Because of this, I believe that what he has written is fair game for his colleagues to question. But everyone who does this needs to do more than demonstrate that Enns got “the wrong answers.” Getting the right answers without asking honest questions is no virtue and is an orthodoxy that can be readily mastered by a parrot or a digital recorder. The last thing we need is in a brand new season of What’s My Doctrine?, with your host, Pat Answers.

SOME IMPORTANT NEWS JANUARY 28, 2008 Yesterday the congregation of Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church voted (without dissent) to leave the PCA. They also voted to have Steve Wilkins continue as their pastor, and to approach the CREC for membership. They have been adopted as a mission church of Grace Covenant Church in Na- cogdoches, Texas, pastored by Randy Booth. Steve was a member in good standing of the Louisiana Presbytery and consequently may transfer his membership according to the PCA BCO (38–3a), with the presbytery simply

38 Current link.

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recording the action. The Louisiana Presbytery has been formally notified of all this. We welcome Auburn Avenue into our fellowship of churches with an odd mixture of grief and joy.

AUBURN AVENUE STATEMENT JANUARY 31, 2008 Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church has made a statement on why they made the decision to leave the PCA. You can read that statement here. Since they have been adopted as a mission church of Grace Covenant Church in Na- cogdoches, TX (CREC), that church also issued a statement which you can find here.

CALVINISTIC SYNERGY FEBRUARY 7, 2008 Green Baggins has now resumed his review of my “Reformed” Is Not Enough, picking up where he left off. That, as it turns out, is with the second half of Chapter 21, on justification by faith. He discusses briefly—without really disagreeing—my illustrative point that justification and sanctification are definitionally related, but not inter-related. A husband is not a husband without a wife, but a husband is not a wife. The same point could be made by saying that height is not height without breadth and depth, but height is not breadth and depth. Lane takes my point, and does not differ with it exactly, but says that he and folks like him get a little skittery with illustrations like this.

However, this definition will still make Reformed folk a bit skittery. Reformed folk are so used to excluding works categorically from justification, that any language such as “definitionally related” is going to cause angst.

Skittery is fine, and maybe I can help. The use of husband and wife was not intended as a definitionof sola fide, but rather as an illustration of it. And all I meant was that you cannot have one without the other, but that the

623 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2008 other concerned was truly other. I am fine with categorically denying that our works have anything whatever to do with God’s forensic declaration that we now have the perfections of Jesus Christ. The only thing our works do in this event is get in the way, and God’s grace blessedly overcomes the obstacles our works attempt to throw in the way. So Lane and I continue to be okay on this one. In the comments following this post, an interesting discussion arose with regard to monergism and synergism. In monergism, God alone works, and with synergism, God works together with others. As with many of these discussions, there is some confusion between God’s creational sovereignty and God’s redemptive sovereignty. Now every Calvinist (when it comes to viewing God’s relationship to the created order) is an ultimate monergist. God freely and unalterably ordains whatsoever comes to pass. The work is all His, ultimately His. Okay, but this sovereignty, the Westminster Confession is at pains to point out, does not abolish the liberty or contingency of secondary causes, but rather establishes them. Now when Paul says that we are saved by grace through faith, He takes care to remind us that even that faith is a gift from God, lest any should boast. This tells us that justification is “synergistic,” if we must use this language. I am justified through faith, and it is my faith that God’s uses as the instrument (not the ground) of my justification. But, because the sinful heart of man would like to boast about this, he goes on to remind us that behind it all, ultimately, our justification is monergistic. God gives justification through our faith, but He also previously gave us that faith. What do we have that we did not receive as a gift? But justification is certainly monergistic in the same sense that everything is. Regeneration is monergistic in a strict redemptive sense. God does not regenerate us in response to anything we did prior to that point. Regeneration is the kick off to the whole game, and God alone does it. This is why God receives all the glory for everything that happens after that point. Is prayer and answered prayer monergistic or synergistic? Well, it is monergistic in the sense that God ordains everything, including this. It is

624 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2008 synergistic in the sense that a significant part of what He ordains is the activity of free, responsible agents. The first moment of creation was monergism simpliciter. The first moment of a man’s conversion is analogous, God creating light in a dark heart, and is also monergism simpliciter. But when God gives me a job, allows me to earn a paycheck, and I purchase groceries to feed my family, this is monergism through agents, or, to the extent there is such a thing, synergism. Now with those distinctions made, is justification a direct act of God’s or is it an indirect act of God’s through another agent? Clearly, if justification is to be through the agency of faith, then it must be the latter. The problem with this is that synergism is frequently used by people who want God to do 90 percent, and we do the remaining 10. He carries one end of the heavy object, and we carry the other end. This is not a Calvinistic understanding at all. In Calvinistic synergy, God does one hundred percent, and I do the other one hundred percent. Shakespeare writes one hundred percent of Hamlet’s lines, and Hamlet speaks one hundred percent of Hamlet’s lines. The wrong kind of synergy has Shakespeare writing the plot of Hamlet’s life, with Hamlet ad-libbing his way through it. Calvinistic monergy is when God does it, and we don’t do anything, like when God made the moon. Calvinistic synergy is when God does it, and we fulfill what God has done. Regeneration is Calvinistic monergy. Justification by faith alone is Calvinistic synergy.

WHAT A FINE BOY! FEBRUARY 8, 2008 I somehow missed Green Baggins’s treatment of the first part of my chapter on justification. Again, there is not much to say because there is so much agreement. I am tempted to say that had there been no unnecessary controversy, there would be complete agreement. But, there you go. I quoted Randy Booth in order to agree with him, and I have no trouble saying that the good works we do are demonstrative. The kind of faith that justifies is also the kind of faith that gives itself to love and good works, and

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we can see the former by looking at the latter. But under no circumstance does God look at our good works and say, “What a fine boy! I think I’ll let you into heaven.” Two other points, however. I use the illustration of husband and wife, and one commenter asked why we cannot use the illustration that James used, that of body and spirit—faith without works is dead. I am happy to do that also, but it has to be said that the illustration is tighter than mine, more closely intertwined. Once, in conversation with a prominent FV critic, I pointed out that as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead, and in that illustration, the body is faith and the animating principle is works. His response was, “No!” We want the dead, inert substance to be works, and the thing that brings it to life as faith. But James has it the other way round—and of course, I believe that either is fine, depending on what error you are fighting. If you are fighting arid propositionalists, then works has to be the animating principle. If you are fighting moralistic do-gooders, then, following Paul, you should emphasize faith as the animating principle. This is because sinners like to be dead in different ways. One last comment—a question was raised about election as a ground of assurance, and good works as a ground of assurance. I hold to both, among others. But two comments here: election raw is not a ground of assurance— it has to somehow be my faith in God, coupled with the conviction that He has elected me, that is a ground of assurance. The second comment is that I hold that good works are a ground of assurance simply because the Bible says so. Jesus says, “If you love me, keep my commandments.” By this we know we have passed from death to life, because we keep His commandments. As many as are led by the Spirit of God, in putting to death the misdeeds of the body, these are children of God. So any biblical doctrine of assurance has to include the important features of how the person is actually living. If a church can discipline someone, saying that they don’t display the marks of a Christian, based on how they are living, then certainly that individual should be able to come to the same conclusion, and true repentance would require that he do so.

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NEWS FLASH FEBRUARY 10, 2008 News flash—Sam Duncan, the prosecutor for the Auburn Avenue business, stated on the floor of the Louisiana Presbytery that no one from LAP could expect to get a fair trial before the SJC. This astonishing comment has been commented on in different places. Jeff Meyers has this, and Lane posted an explanation after speaking with Sam Duncan on the phone. Here is a website for a man (not an FV sympathizer) who confirms that this is what Duncan said. In the comments on his blog, note the exchanges between him and Duane Garner, who also heard the statement. Now let me consider this from an angle other than “This is what he must have meant,” and “No, it wasn’t.” For the sake of discussion, let’s just grant that Duncan meant exactly what he told Lane that he meant, and that his statements just came out wrong and sounded bad. This is not just a guy in a debate saying something he didn’t mean, but later on he can correct it. He was speaking before the Louisiana Presbytery, which had already been pressured into a guilty plea, and was now (in effect) being pressured into another one. Whether or not Duncan meant it this way (let us grant he did not), can we agree together that reasonable people sitting on the floor of presbytery would have been well within their rights to take it this way, and that in fact it would have been odd if they hadn’t taken it this way? And that they were therefore well within their rights to believe that if they continued to plead “not guilty” they would not get a fair trial, and there would be stiff consequences waiting for them? This means that a simple clarification of the true meaning (on Lane’s blog) is not sufficient. At a bare minimum, the acknowledgement of this mis-statement means that any pressure that was (according to this account, accidentally) placed on Louisiana Presbytery needs to be lifted, removed, taken away. The real question is whether or not Louisiana Presbytery took any action in light of this perceived threat. If they did, what will be done for redress? If they did not, what will be done to ensure they do not?

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THE HORSE’S MOUTH FEBRUARY 12, 2008 Steve Wilkins and Duane Garner are now blogging.39 Good deal.

MERIT OR OBEDIENCE? FEBRUARY 14, 2008 Green Baggins makes reference to something I wrote in RINE (p. 174), while talking about the justification of Jesus. The fact that Jesus was justified is seen in this great passage from Timothy. “And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory” (1 Tim. 3:16). Typologically, we can see that this is an important salvation text simply because the reference ends in 3:16. Just kidding. But this is a basic statement of the gospel. God manifest in the flesh is referring to the Incarnation, and I take “justified in the Spirit” as a reference to the resurrection. The resurrection can be referred to as the justification of Jesus because it was in that resurrection that Christ was fully vindicated. It was in the resurrection that He was declared, with power, to be the Son of God (Rom. 1:4). When God the Father says to the Son, “Today I have begotten you” in the second psalm, this is a reference to the resurrection, as Paul plainly asserts in Acts 13. Lane says, rightly, that to talk about Jesus being justified in the same sense we are justified (that is, forgiven of sin and being granted the righteousness of another) would be simply blasphemous. I agree with him on this. But we are justified in the resurrection of Jesus (Rom. 4:25). He was raised to life for our justification. Christ’s righteousness in His resurrection is (in part) the ground or basis of our justification. This does not exclude the Cross any more than references to the death of Jesus exclude the doctrine of the resurrection. The terms function in the New Testament as synecdoche; to refer to one is to include the other. We are not justified by a resurrectionless cross. We are not justified by a crossless resurrection.

39 https://auburnavenue.wordpress.com

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But how does this work? We participate in all that Christ did and said, and we do so by faith alone. Christ was publicly vindicated as the true Messiah, the Sinbearer for His people, the Son of God, by and through His resurrection from the dead. Because we participate in that vindicatory event by faith, our sins are forgiven, and His righteous status is bestowed on us, and we receive it by faith. So Christ’s justification is not just like ours, right alongside ours, but is rather the archetypical justification, in which all our little justifications must participate if they are to be justifications at all. The telos toward which Christ’s life pointed was that great vindication, which was then crowned with all glory and honor in His ascension. When we are baptized into His death, and raised to life in His resurrection, we are forgiven, and His righteousness is given to us. But I would argue that we cannot participate in His resurrection for justification unless His resurrection was a justificatory event. It was different for Him than it is for us, obviously, but not an entirely different thing in an entirely different sphere. Christ’s justification and ours are related. One other thing. Christ was justified, vindicated, in this way because He had lived a perfect, sinless life. This was not brownie points in the bank, as though Jesus had somehow lived autonomously, earning raw merit. It was not a transaction with Jesus’s works on the one hand, and the Father’s rewards on the other. Rather, Jesus was justified as the culmination of His obedient life, but it is not possible to live an obedient human life without faith in God. This means that Jesus lived a life of perfect faith, which was the foundation of His obedience—not that He would be saved from any sin of His own, but rather that He would be delivered through all temptations, preserved during His abandonment on the cross, and vindicated in His resurrection. Jesus believed all this because Jesus believed that Scripture could not be broken. He chided His disciples for not believing it. This means that Jesus lived and died and rose by faith. We participate in His great obedience, and the fruit of His great obedience, on a derivative level, by faith as well. In the Pauline vocabulary, works and faith exclude one another—they displace one another. But obedience and faith are not contrary principles at all. To believe is itself an act

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of obedience and is the ground of all future obedience. When Christ believed God, He was obeying God. When we believe God we are obeying God. There is nothing meritorious (in the quantitative sense of acquiring bookkeeping points) about this whatever. We are only doing what we were told. So the resurrection was God’s crowning vindication of all Christ’s obedience. We are granted the blessing of that obedience as we believe in Jesus, by faith alone.

LIKE DROWNING IN A CAULDRON OF HOT BUTTERSCOTCH FEBRUARY 16, 2008 A PCA pastor named Dewey Roberts has recently taken me to task for what I have written about the SJC—or, as he put it, my “campaign of ‘disinformation’ against the PCA and the SJC.” He has thrown down the gauntlet, and I think that when you read how he has phrased things it will be obvious that I need to respond. He said, and I quote, “I have told friends of mine that Wilson is a prolific writer, but not a profound thinker.” Of course I am not a profound thinker. Things come to me in the shower, for Pete’s sake.

Nothing illustrates that better than his disinformation against the SJC. He truly does not know of what he speaks. One of the lost tools of learning is to do “critical” thinking—not criticizing thinking. Critical thinking helps us to look at issues objectively and to be aware of our own biases.

Right, and being unaware of one’s own bias is what all those other guys must be doing! I think Dewey means here that Wilkins was run out of the PCA by men who were looking at life objectively, and who were thoroughly aware of their own bias. Heh.

The next time Wilson posts something negative about the SJC, I am going to ask him two questions: First, can you show, Mr. Wilson, where or how the SJC acted contrary to the constitution of the PCA?

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But of course, I have never pretended to be even remotely acquainted with the ins and outs of the PCA BCO. Quite the opposite, as I have cheerfully acknowledged before. My case against what the SJC has been doing has been grounded on the basic principles of justice as outlined in Scripture. I don’t know the constitution of the PCA, and don’t pretend to. I do know the Bible, and I do know what is being done. Now I assume that what is being done is contrary to (at least) the spirit of the PCA’s constitution, but this is actually a judgment of charity. Because this whole thing is such an obvious railroad job, I have a hard time believing that the constitution of an historic Reformed denomination would explicitly sanction anything like it. But I defer to those who have actual knowledge of the BCO. If someone were to show me that this travesty had been perfectly legal in all essential respects, I would not therefore be impressed. Something does not become just simply because it can be justified procedurally. When the Sanhedrin met to condemn Jesus, I’ll bet they had a quorum. And, because of how this controversy has gone thus far, I need to hasten to add that I am not accusing FV opponents of being Christ-killers, or maintaining that Steve is Jesus. Steve is Machen, not Jesus. And, because of how this controversy has gone thus far, I need to hasten to add that the preceeding sentence was a joke. Partly a joke. But the Sanhedrin reference makes an important point, relevant to this discussion. Legality is not the same thing as righteousness. Those who bribed Judas were very concerned with legality, and upcoming audits. They didn’t want the money Judas returned to them to be found in the wrong account because that would be bad. Their problem was that they did not conduct their business with the Final Audit in mind. As a result, they were simultaneously scrupulous and unjust. And that is a basic problem.

Second, can you show, Mr. Wilson, what constitutional rights belong to members of the CREC to prevent this “travesty” about which you complain concerning the PCA?

Sure, and this is preeminently a fair question. Allow me to make three points here, which between them cover the short term and the long term.

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First, we have no standing judicial commission, in the hands of which a minister could fall without ever having had charges brought against him, and from which there can be no appeal. We have nothing like that, thank the Lord. Second, before a case can appear before presbytery, according to our constitution, it must have been adjudicated first at the local level. Once that is done, appeal can be made to presbytery. The court of appeal has authority over whether to hear the case or not, and is constitutionally required not to hear frivolous appeals. Because this is a fallen world, injustices can still occur, but we have taken pains to keep those injustices from being able to occur in some grand, centralizing way. And third, even this is obviously not absolute. It is important to note that constitutions, being paper, do not actually protect anybody—honorable and conscientious men do. If the CREC falls into great sin, and the kindness of God departs from us, our descendants will be able to twist honorable words to dishonorable ends, which is a long and trusted tradition of old boy networks everywhere. And so this is why, knowing that we are fully vulnerable to all the same temptations, and because we deny any kind of CREC “ex- ceptionalism,” we have included a “song of Moses” in the preamble to our Constitution, which says this:

Consequently, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we charge you, the generations who will follow us in this confederation, to submit to the Scriptures with sincere and honest hearts, and to the standards of this confederation as consistent with the teaching of Scripture. When a portion of our order and confession is found to be out of conformity to Scripture, we charge you to amend it honestly, openly, and constitutionally, as men who must give an account to the God who searches the hearts of men. We charge you in the name of the Lord to abhor all forms of ignoring our intentions in what we have set down through dissembling, reinterpretation, dishonesty, relativism, pretended explanations, presumed spiritual maturity, assumed scholarly sophistication,

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or outright lying, so that the living God will not strike you and your children with a curse. We charge you to serve Him in all diligence and honesty, so that the blessings of the covenant may extend to your children for a thousand generations.

In short, we know that the way of all flesh is not an area where we have somehow been given some kind of special exemption. And so I would answer Dewey this way—it is quite possible that a hundred years hence (say), the CREC will be doing something awful to somebody. And so I pray, honestly and without guile, that if that happens, God will raise up a courageous voice to confront them on it. I don’t care if he is a member of the CREC or not, but I hope he is. Ezra, the founder of the Pharisees, heard the Lord Jesus giving them what for, and added his amen to it.

I hope for his sake that Wilson has the wisdom to lie low because I have taken the measure of a “man of his talents” and have concluded the emperor has no clothes.

He is wrong on two counts here. I am not a naked emperor. I am a clothed peasant. And not a smelly peasant either, because ideas come to me in the shower.

I won’t let Wilson get by with trying to wordsmith his way out of these questions. He will either have to quote chapter, paragraph and line or he will be exposed as a master of disinformation.

But as I have noted, my case does not in any way depend on chapter, paragraph and line” of the BCO. It does depend on Scripture, which I have been willing to cite, and have cited repeatedly, and which to this point remains unanswered. Show me in the Bible where a man has to prove his innocence. Show me in the Bible where conclusions can be drawn after hearing the prosecution only. Show me in the Bible where anonymous accusers are given the

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time of day. Show me in the Bible where expressions of pietistic concern and sentimentalist grief are an adequate substitute for basic integrity and justice. Being prosecuted by sentimentalist pietists is like drowning in a cauldron of hot butterscotch. Is this an example of me “wordsmithing my way out” of a jam? Deal with it.

P.S. If Wilson doubts me, I would recommend that he contact James Jordan’s pastor, Mickey Schneider (who is a minister in the CREC), under whom I apprenticed in 1973.

All I need to say here is that Mickey’s church just came into the CREC this last year. Apparently, the utopian vision of future prosecutions that Dewey envisages was not alluring enough to attract Mickey to the PCA. In another post, Dewey Roberts says, directly to me, that:

I have laid the gauntlet down to you (in Wilkin’s Rationale) about all the false accusations you have made about the SJC for these past several months. My basic position about you is that you are a propagandist of disinformation. You artfully weave disinformation about the PCA and SJC into comments about known facts. That is always the best and most effective way to disinform. But your gig is up.

I think he meant that the jig is up, because the gig is up when the band is loading their gear into the van, or you have raised your arm to jab a sharp spear at a frog. But let us not digress. This is frankly beside the central point. The definition of propaganda is not “saying something that displeases the prosecution.” The definition of propaganda should not include conscientious attempts to return to biblical standards of justice.

Now my advice to you would be to call Mickey Schneider when you get a chance and ask him about me. After you do so, I think you will probably decide that you don’t want to engage me in a battle of wits. Why?

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Because watching the two of us in a battle of wits would be like watching a nuclear war between Burkina Faso and Ghana? No?

Because I won’t chase rabbits with you and I won’t let you get away with your nonsensical, ill-informed statements about the SJC any longer. I will force you to face the facts of the constitution of the PCA which will effectively cut your comments off at the knee.

But all my comments have two knees, and so even if you cut me off at the knee, I would still be able to hop around in my disingenuous fashion. “It’s just a flesh wound!”

And I will make you show how the CREC is “better” by quoting from your constitution (that should be interesting!). After all, people who live in glass houses (like the CREC) don’t need to throw stones at those who have a historic Presbyterian constitution (like the PCA does).

I have already answered this basic point, but I would be quite interested if anyone wants to write up a brief history of all the standing judicial commissions of historic Presbyterianism. Of necessity it would have to be a brief little tome, but I would be happy to read it. And when I got my copy in the mail, one of the first things I would do is look at the subject index to find all the references to Thornwell. Among the many ludicrous pictures this controversy has generated, few can compete with the image of staunch southern Presby- terians pulling on the levers of this huge crane they call a standing judicial commission, “Whatcha doin’ with the crane?” we ask. “Removing the mote from brother Thornwell’s eye.”

Doug, it is your choice. Either go away quietly. Or, I am going to ex- pose you to the blogging world as just a bully who is a propagandist of disinformation. It is your choice.

Bully? Now that’s rich. Second-grader Wilkins kept getting his lunch money stolen by the fourth-graders, and so we have invited him to come

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have lunch with us. This is interpreted as persecution of the fourth graders. Well, okay. And did I read him right? Did he actually offer me the choice of “going away quietly?” Suppose I don’t?

CATHOLICITY AND FUNDAMENTALISM FEBRUARY 19, 2008 There is quite an interesting post, and follow-up discussion, to be found here. Tim Bayly defines the sine qua non of fundamentalism as a willingness to fight in order to defend the faith once delivered. There is a good fundamentalism that acquired a bad name through its faithfulness. “There’s another sense, though, that hearkens back to the early decades of the twentieth century when Christians first starting fighting with some zeal against modernism’s heresies and got a bad name for it . . .” This analysis is right on the money, but I would want develop the thought just a tad further. I would want to distinguish sectarian fundamentalists (willing to fight over the gnats) and catholic fundamentalists (willing to fight over the camels). If someone is simply pugnacious and combative, fighting over the “truth of the gospel” for no better reason than that he fights over everything, that’s obviously no good. But in reaction to this, the invertebrates of the modern evangelical world won’t fight for anything. There are those among us who will swallow both the gnats and the camels—liberals. There are those who will not swallow the gnats and will swallow the camels—precisionist sectarians. There are those who will swallow the gnats, but not the camels—evangelicals at the better end of the conveyor belt of compromise. And there are those who don’t want to swallow either one—catholic fundamentalists.

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THIS WILL HAPPEN TO US TOO MARCH 2, 2008 I was reading this morning in Luther’s Table Talk, and came across an insight that is more than a little relevant to some of our confessional and dogmatic controversies. When someone had proposed the collected works of Luther, he said this (the emphasis is mine):

I’d like all my books to be destroyed so that only the sacred writings in the Bible would be diligently read. For one is referred from one book to another, as it happened in the ancient church, when one turned from a reading of the Bible to a reading of Eusebius, then of Jerome, then of Gregory, and finally of the scholastics and philosophers. This will happen to us too.

The desire to have all his works destroyed is obviously hyperbole, but Luther knew that the natural human tendency to elevate human teachers (however honorable) above the Word of God was not a human tendency eradicated by the Reformation.

BY FAITH, NOT BY SIGHT MARCH 3, 2008 Greeen Baggins has picked up the thread again, and so shall I. There is not a lot to talk about here, but rather just a few questions to answer.

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Lane gives three basic ways to take the “I am righteous” language of the psalter. One is say that the psalmist is not claiming a perfect righteousness. The second is to say that David’s righteousness was comparative. The third is to take such language as typological and as spoken by the Messiah. I actually take it in all three senses. The first sense is qualified by other professions of sinfulness by the same writer, the second is contextually grounded—when the Bible says that the elders of the church are to be blameless, this does not mean absolutely blameless. And John Day has written a fine book—Crying for Justice—that presents a fine case for seeing Christ in all the psalms. So, when offered these three options, I would say, “Yes, please.” Lane worries about something that I am not interested in doing at all. “The interpretation of the Psalms does not lead in a direct line to our own application, by-passing Christ.” To which I would say, “Of course not.” No Christian can ever by-pass Christ. Why would this even come up? He also asks what I mean by “justifying vindications” on page 178. I do not mean some sort of process justification, whereby my initial justification (which cannot be improved upon) is somehow improved upon. What I mean is that the lexical range of justifying, vindicating language in Scripture is much broader than the two and only two senses allowed by many in the current debates. Those two are ordo justification in Paul and demonstrative justification in James. If you start to casually turn to any other passages, or any other books, someone is going to bring you up on charges. But Jesus is justified. What does that mean? The psalmist is vindicated. What does that mean? On page 178, I was not trying to smuggle another meaning into ordo justification, in order to make it more elastic. I was trying to show that this word is used in the Bible in more than two senses. Having a range of meanings greater than two doesn’t bother us with words like kosmos. We roll those definitions right into our Calvinism, and everybody is happy. Why do we stumble when the words begin with dik- instead of kos-? Lane also asks if I believe we can know if we are decretally elect? Yes, I believe that we can know this with genuine assurance, but I believe that this assurance is grounded on faith alone, and not on the basis of sight, as Lane

638 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | MARCH–MAY 2008 seems to indicate. I agree with Turretin that God’s decrees become visible as they come to pass, but we have to be careful here. In other words, I know that God decreed, from before all worlds, that I would drive down my driveway this morning. I know this was decreed because that is what happened. Had it not been decreed, it would not have happened. But I don’t see my election, or my regeneration for that matter, the same way. My election does not present itself to me as a datum that I can see, touch, or hear. But I can know, and the New Testament writers encourage us in this knowledge (1 John 5:13). But that knowledge is, throughout the course of our lives, obtained through faith alone. We walk by faith, not by sight, but this means we walk with confidence (with faith), not with trepidation.

VIPERS IN DIAPERS? MARCH 12, 2008 Green Baggins is nearing the end of his chapter by chapter review of “Re- formed” Is Not Enough, and thus far I think it is fair to say that he has not found anything that would place me outside the pale of Reformed orthodoxy as he defines it. He has found multiple places where he think I am ambiguous, but I have sought to clear up those ambiguities in these exchanges. I am very grateful to Lane for taking the time to do this, and for seeking to hear me state what I believe in my own words. He has managed to do this without having had his orthodoxy called into question, and I am thankful for that as well. In this response, Lane begins by saying that he thinks that the FV controversy is about a nexus of issues, the status of children being an important one of them. He was responding to my statement, “In a very real way, this debate is a debate over the theology of children.” I was speaking generally, and of course I agree with Lane’s qualification. Here Lane clearly states that “children can have faith from the womb.” He then goes on to add what he believes to be the important qualification that such faith will not fail. “Where I would probably differ from the FV is that I would say that such a seed of faith, if it exists, will infallibly produce complete

639 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | MARCH–MAY 2008 salvation over the course of one’s life, with apostasy not being a possibility. And I do not believe that every child of the covenant possesses it.” But of course, I agree with this completely. If we are talking about God-given faith, evangelical faith, the kind of faith that God grants to those whom He has determined to save, then I agree with this entirely. Reprobate covenant members don’t have this kind of faith, ever. Those who have this kind of faith have it because they are elect. If an elect individual is regenerated and has faith, then that individual will be infallibly saved, whether he came to faith when he was two or twenty-two. And it is also undeniable that many covenant members from infancy do not have this kind of saving faith. But the one additional comment that should be made is that infant covenant members can have a kind of faith, just as adult covenant members who are reprobate can. Before the Lord tells certain individuals to depart because He never knew them, they said something that indicated that they thought they had faith. “Lord, Lord . . .” They were mistaken because historical faith is not saving faith. There are many reprobate covenant members who have had historical faith only, and they have had it their entire lives. They believe that Jesus is Lord for the same reason they believe that George Washington was the first president—nobody ever told them different. I have no reason for supposing that this qualification would alter Lane’s agreement with me here, so we can just move on. Next, Lane had some trouble because my references to the Southern Pres- byterians were taken from Schenck’s book, and not directly from Thornwell or Dabney. There are two responses here. The first is that Lane’s counter that Dabney held that infants are capable of redemption. I grant that, but the issue is how children who are being brought up in the covenant are to be treated. We are not talking about whether an infant (who dies in infancy, say) can be saved. I wasn’t accusing the Southern Presbyterians of being baby-damners. We are talking about the children who live, and what is assumed about them and required of them before they are brought to the Table. The issue is not, can little children be saved? The issue is how do we treat baptized children, growing up in the church? Where is the burden of proof? Do they still, at

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some future date, have to produce some other evidence (other than their baptism and covenant status) in order to be accepted into the Church? The Southern Presbyterians said yes, and we say no. Lane ended by saying that he could not find the Thornwell quote in his copy of Thornwell’s works. I am not sure what quotation he is referring to, but here is a relevant citation from Thornwell’s Works (IV, p. 341). How are we to treat those children who have been brought up in the realm of the church?

They are born unto her as children, and as children, the great duty she owes to them is to educate them. But in heart and spirit they are of the world. In this aspect, how is she to treat them? Precisely as she treats all other impenitent and unbelieving men—she is to exercise the power of the keys, and shut them out from the communion of the saints. She is to debar them from all the privileges of the inner sanctuary. She is to exclude them from their inheritance until they show themselves meet to possess it.

The emphasis added is mine. This is certainly a recognizable form of the “vipers in diapers” doctrine, and while I honor Thornwell as a great man in the history of the church, and I follow him on many other issues (along with Dabney) this particular understanding of his is one that I reject with whole-hearted detestation. This rejection really is a central player in the FV controversy. And I think it is worth noting that on this point at least, Lane is closer to where I am than to where Thornwell was.

THE HALFWAY COVENANT MARCH 20, 2008 Lane continues to interact with my book in his recent post on the relationship of a profession of faith with the half-way covenant. This is an issue that, in my view, requires some untangling. First, let me summarize was the half-way covenant actually did. The New England Puritans were paedobaptists, but they required a (high-bar) credible

641 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | MARCH–MAY 2008 profession of faith before someone was admitted to the Table. As a consequence, many baptized individuals grew up in their churches, but never became full communicant members. After the passage of time, these folks grew up, married, and had children. Because they believed the Christian faith and accepted their churches’ exclusion of them from the Table, they wanted their children to receive infant baptism as well. Because of the theocratic nature of that society, church membership was related to other civic privileges as well. Now, should the church baptize the children of baptized but non-communicant parents? The Half-way Covenant said yes. This was a function of very scrupulous views of what constituted “true conversion.” What the non-communicant parents had to profess in front of the church in order for their children to be baptized was rigorous. In those days, such a person couldn’t get to the Table—today, depending on the presbytery, they might find themselves ordained. The Half-way Covenant was not a lackadaisical slide away from rigor; it was actually the result of overly-conscientious pietism, trying to solve the problem caused by their high standards without actually lowering them. Now, what should they have done? They ought to have brought little children to the Table routinely, brought them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord and, if any of them grew up and apostatized, he should have been excluded from the Table at that point. The Half-way Covenant is the reductio ad absurdum for those who want to protect the purity of the Table a priori. All pastors and elders should want to protect the Table from corrupt use, but we should do so a posteriori. The approach to church purity taken here is that of hiring big, beefy security guards at the door to check everyone’s IDs three times. The approach taken to church purity by what I take to be a more consistent covenantal approach is to hire big, beefy bouncers. Now, with that said, I need to interact with just a few of Lane’s comments.

This post will finish the review of chapter 22 of RINE. The issues before us are these: is a two-tiered church membership the result of the Half-Way Covenant? Is a two-tiered church membership biblical? Are

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we placing our faith in something we can see if we require a profession of faith in order to have access to the table? Wilson would answer yes to the first question, no to the second question and yes to the third question. That is a fair summary, I believe, of Wilson’s argumentation in the rest of chapter 22.

Yes, it is fair, depending on what we mean by two-tiered membership. But if we mean different things, or if the meaning shifts in the middle of the discussion, then I have to say that there is confusion here that needs to be cleared up. It is not enough to simply say “two-tiers.” What is the composition of each tier? On what basis? By what standard? Lane says, “A two-tiered membership of the church corresponds to the visible/invisible church distinction in ideals. As such its biblical basis rests on that distinction. Of course, it cannot correspond in reality, since many make profession of faith who are hypocrites. But the church must fence the table somehow” But this, in my view, surrenders the whole point. If a practice has as its biblical basis the visible/invisible church distinction, and if that practice does not correspond to its basis, then what are we doing? Not only are many professors in the visible church hypocrites, but many non-communicants are regenerate and elect. In other words, the members of the invisible church cut across both tiers. If the house that was built and the foundation beneath it are all catawampus, then maybe we need to go back and redo some things. If we are talking about visible and invisible church, I believe in a two- tiered membership. If we are talking about over three feet and under three feet, that is also two-tiered, but not one that is grounded in Scripture. Lane goes on.

With regard to the third question, Wilson makes a mistake. Requiring a profession of faith does not mean that the church trusts the word of man rather than the word of God (contra Wilson, pg. 185). The Bible speaks about professing with one’s mouth (Romans 10:9, and the content of that profession follows, which rules out an overly wide

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definition of professing so as to include a baby’s nursing, etc.). A verbal profession of faith is commanded by the Scriptures. If that is commanded, and the church is supposed to do something about that, then does the church stop believing God’s Word in order to listen to a man to see if it is credible? The church must judge so as to exercise church discipline properly. Of course, Wilson will disagree with me here. But I did want to demonstrate not only that the critics’ position on this is Reformed, and not dependent on the Half-Way Covenant, but also, and more importantly, that it is biblical.

I grant that the Bible requires a verbal profession. But it requires a verbal profession for salvation, not just for church membership. On what basis can we grant a special dispensation to infants with regard to salvation, but not with regard to church membership? Why do we say that verbal profession is required for all those who are capable of making it, but that it is not required for salvation in cases of death in infancy, and it is not required for baptism, but that all of a sudden, different hermeneutical rules apply when we are talking about the Lord’s Supper? I expect Frank Turk to come in to back me up—right, Frank? If the argument applies to the Table, it applies with equal force to the Font. If it doesn’t apply to the Font, then it doesn’t apply to the Table.

IS FOOD A PRIVILEGE? MARCH 25, 2008 Just a few more comments in response to Green Baggins’s latest. I think we have already covered the basic issues, but a few points really need to be emphasized. The first is that I agree that our inability to get the church in history to correspond name-for-name with the church in the eschaton is not an argument for giving up on the pastoral task. This is why we preach the Word in season and out of season, this is why we counsel and admonish, and this is why we discipline. But this is not an argument for refusing to let people into the church in the first place because of potential problems down the road.

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Still less is it an argument for letting them into the front door and making them stand there. The second point to make is that Lane compares the situation to one of citizenship and certain privileges of citizenship: “Church membership is a bit like citizenship in the US. We are born citizens. We don’t ever become more of a citizen than we already are by birth. However, that doesn’t mean that an infant can drive a car, vote, or drink.” I agree with this completely, but the analogy is being misapplied. I agree that the fact that we baptize infants does not obligate us to allow them to vote in church elections, or drive the bus to the family retreat. But what we are talking about, with regard to the Table, is food. All children who come into our households should have the privilege of food. And last, Lane said, “The church must have some way to judge whether in fact a person at the Supper is exercising faith, including notitia.” Two responses here. If we allow parents to speak for a child at the Font, why not at the Table? Where did their parental and covenantal authority go? I will make you a deal. Tell you what let’s do. You tell our friends the Reformed Baptists what passages you use to allow parents to speak for their children at their baptism, and I will gather up those same passages as an argument for allowing parents to speak for their children at the Table, and I will have the nerve to ask our RB brethren this simple question. “Friends,” I will say, “I know you don’t buy it. But surely you can tell me this—don’t you find these passages on the question of the Table to be just as compelling as when applied to the Font?”

HOLDING BACK THE WORD MARCH 25, 2008 Green Baggins has responded to my last comment, and has also finished his review of my book “Reformed” Is Not Enough. He invited me to have the last word on our paedocommunion exchange, which I will do just briefly. He then asked a few questions which I will try to answer. His question on paedocommunion amounted to “do paedo-communionists really believe that credo-communionists are starving their children?”

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Well, no, maybe, and yes, depending. But it should be noted that we do not raise this as a question because we have a superstitious or magical view of the elements of the Supper. The Lord’s Supper is what it is while woven together with the Word accompanying it. The real problem for me is not the withholding of the Supper—it is the withholding of the Word. The Supper simply provides a dramatic audio-visual of the manner in which the Word is being withheld. To use an expression of the Puritans, the thing we should be after is to “close with Christ.” We should want it for ourselves, obviously, and we should want it for our kids. Now we know the children are not partakers of the Sup- per simply because they are in the same room with the elements, and they are not recipients of the Word simply because the Word is declared in the same room where they can hear it. “Christ died for sinners” is the Word generical- ly, but “Christ died for you” is the Word brought home. Now the reason we withhold the Supper from kids is that we are formally and judicially not sure that the latter expression of the Word is true concerning them. The reason we withhold the sacrament of the Table is that we are not sure the Word as good news has really reached them either. If we were sure, we would welcome them to the Table. We don’t, and so this speaks as loudly about the children’s relationship to the Word as it does about their relationship to the sacrament. Given that this is the case, it is a mystery to me why churches with this set of assumptions about their children continue to baptize infants. In my days as a Calvinistic baptist, I saw clearly the tight connection between paedobaptism and paedocommunion. I know that they went together. When I became a paedobaptist, even though this logic was as compelling to me as ever, I refrained from adopting paedocommunion for a time—not because I was convinced by the anti-paedo-com arguments, but rather because in the process of becoming Reformed I had also come to greatly distrust my own dependence on my own reason. I knew that the Reformers had overwhelmingly rejected paedocommunion, and I had just repented of my years (as a baptist) of saying that the Reformers had done a great job starting the Reformation, but that they didn’t go far enough. I had abandoned that attitude toward

646 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | MARCH–MAY 2008 them when I abandoned my baptistic convictions, and I didn’t want to pick that same attitude up again five minutes later as a paedocommunionist. But years went by, and the tight covenantal connection between the Font and Table seemed to me unanswerable, as it still does. So semper reformanda. Lane makes a point of saying that he holds that the “outward administration” of the covenant is objective, but that salvation is the result of a subjective appropriation at the heart of the covenant. Now I agree with this, depending on what is meant by “outward,” and whether or not that outward administration is still binding if the subjective appropriation is missing. I agree with Lane completely that unless a man subjectively responds to the gospel, he does not have the heart of the matter, and he is lost. We agree there. But suppose we have a married man who does not subjectively enjoy the blessings of that relationship. He and his wife are estranged. What I mean by “objective” is that he is still married for all that, and he still has responsibilities in line with that objective status. Baptized individuals who do not love God have a covenantal responsility to repent and start loving God. That is what I mean by objective. I do not mean that this objective covenant does just fine without a subjective response. Then Lane asks a series of questions that I will answer briefly. He wants to know my position on Romans 7:14ff. I hold that Paul is using the historical present to describe what the law did to him while he was an unconverted Pharisee, still under the law. I agree with the standard Reformed view of sanctification as the spirit and the flesh struggling with one another, but I find that doctrine taught in Galatians 5, not Galatians 5 and Romans 7. I appreciated Lane’s clear understanding of the differences between NPP and FV, as well as an acknowledgement of the differences that exist within the FV. In my experience with FV critics, which by now is extensive, Lane has done very well on this issue. In a controversy where rhetorical points are often made by blurring things together, he has my respect for his willingness to resist that tendency. For his last question, Lane says that he has enjoyed the interaction with me (which I can also say), and he believes that we have successfully clarified

647 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | MARCH–MAY 2008 some issues, and I also agree there. He then asks (since he is now done with RINE) if I would be willing to continue the conversation, this time using the FV statement as the basis for our discussion. I would be happy to.

THE CLARITY A NIGHT ON THE SOFA PRODUCES APRIL 4, 2008 Green Baggins has begun a process of working through the Federal Vision issue of Credenda. He worries in his last few sentences that I might feel like he hit below the belt in this exchange, but I don’t think that at all. There are a couple of roundhouses where he doesn’t hit anything at all, but I don’t really have any objections to that. He can do that as much as he likes. He brings up a number of issues, and I don’t think I can get to all of them in just one post. I’ll parcel it out over a series of posts. He begins with a discussion of his appreciation of systematic theology, and likes the fact that I believe systematics are inescapable, which I certainly do. Connected to this is Lane’s appreciation of the Protestant scholastics. He likes what I said about this general topic, but takes other FV guys to task for disparaging the scholastics. I have seen some of that, but I have also seen numerous positive FV citations from the scholastics—Mark “Turretin” Horne comes to mind. These are easy to forget because the Protestant scholastics frequently say things that would get them in trouble in Mississippi Valley Presbytery. But they did write them, and FV guys have quoted them with pleasure and satisfaction. Having said this, let me mark one caution over the systematic lovefest. Lane said,

As Muller represents, scholasticism refers to a method of teaching, not the content of said teaching. One could perhaps state that the form contributes to the meaning. Fair enough. But do fine distinctions undermine clarity or produce it?

Well, systematics is inescapable. But that doesn’t mean that there are no differences of method between various systematic approaches. And, as Lane

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even acknowledges, method can have a shaping effect on the content. For example, the logic developed by Ramus was a method, but it certainly could be a Procrustean bed of a method if you didn’t watch it. Not everything is divisible by two. Lane asks if fine distinctions undermine clarity or produce it. Sometimes they produce it, sure—and certain kinds of fine distinctions are necessary. But at other times fine distinctions undermine clarity. Sure. Happens all the time. “Honey, does this dress make me look fat?” “Well, when you say ‘fat,’ are you drawing the line at 130 lb? With 129 okay, and 131 tubby? These fine distinctions are necessary if we are to make any headway in this discussion. If we are to achieve clarity.” The clarity that a night on the sofa produces. Lane’s first criticism was directed at my explanation for why FV guys have not always acknowledged errors. I had said, and Lane quoted, “Part of the reason Christians are reluctant to acknowledge any kind of wrong-doing in the middle of a fight is because ‘anything you say can and will be used against you.’ Stonewalling is easier than giving ammo to the adversary.” Now Lane represents it as though differs with me on this one, and goes on to urge a humble recognition of the possible weaknesses of your own argument. The impression is left that I think that stonewalling is somehow a good idea, as opposed to the point I was actually making, which is that stonewalling is a natural human tendency which we FVers share with all other humans under attack. Not a good thing at all, but something that should be understood. The comments at Lane’s blog indicate that I was somehow arguing for some kind of fleshly response, and that I have forgotten the importance of love. But . . . those comments were an explanation of a certain kind of behavior, not a defense of it. Just a few sentences above the quote I had just said this:

In the course of this controversy, on the Federal Vision side of things, I have seen more than a few examples of intemperate remarks, frayed tempers, and an unhelpful imputation of evil motives to others.

The article was entitled “A Cautionary Note,” and with one notable exception, virtually the whole article was directed to guys on our side of the line,

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urging them to consider their own hearts and their own temptations in the course of this controversy. Precisely because of the criticism that we act like we are above criticism, and because I was acutely aware of our temptations, we led off this issue of the magazine with spiritual cautions and warnings to our guys. And how was it represented to the world at Green Baggins? As though his exhortation to humility contrasted sharply with my exhortation to stonewall. Anticipating a point I will make in my next response, I am not accusing Lane of lying about me here. I am saying that he is misrepresenting me. Peo- ple can say false things knowing them to be false (anonymous blogs are good for that), and they can say false things not knowing them to be false. The former is lying; the latter is confusion. I believe Lane to be genuinely honest, and I have good reasons for believing so. And with instances like this, I believe him to be thoroughly confused about what I said—and I have reasons for believing so.

LETTING THE GREASE COOL DOWN APRIL 4, 2008 In this next section, I will quote Lane quoting me.

Secondly, a bit about the Golden Rule. Wilson states this: “I have been misrepresented by FV critics time without number, and because I don’t want Schlissel or Lusk disavowing me for things I don’t really believe, I have no intention of doing it to them. And FV critics have not been reliable in handling what I have said, so why should I take them as reliable when they decide to give my friends the treatment?” (emphasis original)

And then Lane responds with this:

I would like to ask all FV advocates this question: do you think that FV critics have been lying about what the FV teaches? If so, then why have you never instigated Matthew 18 procedures against said people?

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The response here is that I cannot think of any critic of the FV—provided we are talking about critics who sign their own name to their concerns or charges—that I would dream of accusing of deception or lying. I believe the distortions and misrepresentations (which are quite real) come from a paradigmatic net that won’t let certain thoughts or concepts through. It is not lying to say something false. It is lying to say something false deliberately. This is not to say that there is no culpability in such tangles and confusion—there is, can be, and has been on both sides. But it is the sort of thing that should be sorted out in conversation and debate, not charges. Lane’s next point has to do with the burden of proof lying with the accuser. I said this, and Lane agreed with it but. He then outlined all that the FV critics have done, all the hours they have studied, etc. This is a point where Lane and I will just have to flat disagree, no getting around it. Thousands of hours of study without meeting with the principals face-to-face is thousands of hours yelling up the wrong rain spout. Establishing committees that are as stacked as a painting on a WWII bomber’s nose is not the way to inspire my confidence. No, I haven’t gotten over the sheer brazenness of that study committee. But I am glad that Lane acknowledges the central point on the burden of proof, and I believe he is genuine in this.

I, for one, feel this burden of proof rather strongly, that it lies on me/ other critics to prove the guilt of the FV. However, what doesn’t lie on me, or any other FV critic, is to prove to the FV advocate’s satisfaction the guilt of the view in question. The FV is not the court that decides whether their views have been adequately and fairly represented. The denominations’ courts are those courts that decide.

Sure, the denominations inquire into the doctrinal health of their members, and the larger Reformed world looks on, taking stock of the judicial and investigative procedures that said denominations claim are consistent with biblical justice. The denominations conduct their affairs, and those of us in the stands can tell whether or not there has been a wardrobe malfunction. If

651 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | MARCH–MAY 2008 a minister gets the boot because it was determined by his presbytery that he was out of conformity with the Standards, well, then, that’s the way it is. And if the larger Reformed world (including, as I am fond of pointing out, the second-year seminarians who have read books) takes a look at how the wheels of justice were pre-prepared with extremely well-heated grease, then they will make their determinations as well. As they watch ministers frog-marched to the door without ever having been asked a single question, they will say to themselves, “Self, do you really want to remain under care at the Isaac Parker Memorial Presbytery? Not so much.” On this second, more demographic way of establishing vindications, the results will not become clear for another decade or so. But I believe they will become clear. In the meantime, for those who want to look at what the denominations have done, along with how they have done it, they should take care to pay close attention. In the middle of all those investigations and reports that Lane talks about, there was only one church that included actual interaction with the one being investigated as part of its research. That group was the CREC in their investigation of me. All the others determined that opportunities to answer questions, clarify points, or even to retract positions would constitute a terrible delay, and would only cause the grease to cool down.

SOME THINGS DON’T GET SAID APRIL 5, 2008 Lane’s next point concerns my statement of loyalty to my friends.

Fourthly, regarding Wilson’s loyalties. He states, “So my loyalties to my friends and fellow laborers in this reformational ministry have not budged, nor will they” (pg. 4, 2nd column). This is really too bad. This means that Wilson will continue to stonewall for his friends.

Note that Lane said that my statement of loyalty meant that I will continue to stonewall for them. This does two things. First, it ties into the point already discussed, where I pointed out the reality of stonewalling, describing

652 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | MARCH–MAY 2008 it as a temptation, and not as something to be defended. It shows that Lane actually is lumping me in with a pattern that I was actually condemning. Second, what Lane predicts I would do with my loyalties is very different than what I actually did with them. He said that my loyalty meant continued stonewalling. What did I say that my loyalty would result in? Let’s take a bigger swath of that section of the article than Lane did.

So my loyalties to my friends and fellow laborers in this reformational ministry have not budged, nor will they. But I do want to urge my fellows in the FV trenches to take heed with regard to the following things. I have seen issues that concern me, and so I want to caution against them. Some of this I have already addressed in private conversations, and all of it needs to be said in public.

And what followed was a detailed article on the temptations and failings that have been apparent within FV ranks. Now tell me, what are we to make of the common criticism that FV types never admit to having been wrong about anything, anytime, anyhow? When I write about problems in FV circles I don’t do it in lemon juice. So why is it invisible to our critics? It is invisible because it is inconvenient. Their talking points are not a great host to begin with, and they can’t afford to lose any more of them. In short, Lane said that my loyalty would result in stonewalling when he took that statement about loyalty from an article that was admonishing my friends. And it was an admonition, incidentally, from which I do not exclude myself. In fact, on the basis of it, I went back and deleted a sentence in the previous paragraph.

ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE APRIL 8, 2008 Lane says that, although I offer some qualifications, when it comes to the history of doctrine, I am essentially a Hegelian. I would take issue with that description—here are the qualifications I gave.

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The third issue can be illustrated by adapting something from Hegel’s playbook. His take on history was that a thesis would provoke an antithesis. The two of them would meet, make a little love, and we would soon have ourselves a little synthesis. This synthesis would become a new thesis, and the process would repeat. Now as a master explanation of history, this is lacking in all kinds of ways, and among other bad things brought us the carnage of communism. But it does explain some things, at least for purposes of illustration.

It explains some things at least illustratively if you adapt it. I am no Hegelian of any sort, and it is apparent that I need to be careful about standing within fifteen feet of any illustration like that. Oops. As Nietzsche once said . . . But Lane then asks a series of questions that in my view lie right at the heart of this entire controversy.

By “ossified and formulaic expressions of evangelicalism” I trust he means the confessions. I have this question to ask of Wilson, then: are the Westminster standards true or not? Are they ossified, and therefore of no value to us except in the archaeology of desiccated theologians . . . . How does this Hegelian doctrine of theological advancement square with saying that they are not asking us to give up those precious old doctrines? Does justification by faith alone mean what the Reformers exegeted the doctrine out of the Bible to mean, or does it need constant fixing?

My point here is this. Although I don’t believe the Standards are absolutely perfect, and agree with Lane that clarification is sometimes needed, and would also say that there are sometimes new issues that need to be addressed confessionally, that was not my main point here. The Westminster Confes- sion of Faith does not need constant fixing; the hearts of Westminsteriansdo need constant fixing. The problem is not Moses’ seat, but rather the Pharisa- ical bums ensconced there. I have been regularly surprised at the defenders of

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the Confession who cannot answer simple questions about what is actually in it. Their loyalty to the confession is loyalty to the idea of having it, and not to what it actually says. Are you children of Abraham? Don’t show us the papers of your family tree—do the works of Abraham. Are you Lutherans? Then preach like Lu- ther did. Are you children of Calvin? Then do the works of Calvin. Don’t read us the words of Calvin in a monotone; don’t read them off the marble monument you set up in the lobby of the Reformed museum. And if you try to read them in that monotone, and I object, don’t try to make it appear that I have problem with his words. Preach them to the world in the open air; preach them in such a way that people start accusing you of being a madman, or drunk, or evil, or something. Preach them in such a way that people set up anonymous websites to destroy your reputation. Don’t pin his words to a poster board like a row of dead but orthodox butterflies. This problem we have reveals no deficiency in the Confession because this very human religious impulse (to put spiritual things under glass and behind velvet ropes) is something we do to bronze serpents, arks of the covenant, holy lands, and revelations of Scripture. The Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord! When God found fault with the people, He was finding fault with the people, and not with the old covenant. I am answering Lane here, but not speaking of him. Lane appears to me to genuinely love our Lord Jesus Christ, and to love Him the way Christians ought to love Him. But I am speaking to a very dour segment of our small Calvinistic tribe, and, if you will permit me for a moment, I want to speak as a preacher of the good news of salvation. Do you really love Jesus Christ, or do you love debating propositions related to Him? John Calvin once said that the human heart was a forge of idols—has this innate human tendency toward idolatry ever evidenced itself with the accoutrements of Reformed history and theology? When Hezekiah destroyed the bronze serpent was he complaining against Moses for making it in the first place? Or was he doing something else, something you need to consider far more deeply than you have with your own soul’s welfare in mind?

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Are you so in love with debates over the ordo that it has never occurred to ask whether you are actually standing in that queue? If you gathered up all the fruit of the Spirit and squeezed it, it is not bile that is supposed to come out. I raise these questions, not because I am trying to insult anyone who differs with me on these doctrinal matters—I know that there are many Christians on the other side of this issue who are my spiritual betters by orders of magnitude. But from long experience of preaching the gospel, I know that the sinful heart loves to hide from God in clever places, and precisionist orthodoxy is one of the cleverest. But clever confessional disguises cannot hide a malicious heart forever, and so it is there (and only there) that I direct my appeal. Be reconciled to God. If it is ever appropriate to declare to God’s covenant people generally that some of them are likely not to have been genuinely converted, and are therefore not truly regenerate, then it is also appropriate to pray that God the Holy Spirit will reveal His glory in such a way to get such evangelicals saved. So when I speak of ossification I am not talking about the glorious truth of the Standards somehow going stale. As C.S. Lewis says somewhere, the square of the hypotenuse does not go moldy by continuing to equal the sum of the square of the other two sides. But there is this problem with wineskins— they get old, and they cannot contain the new wine. This does not represent any disagreement with the true and glorious propositions embroidered on the side of the wineskin. So the doctrine of justification by faith alone is as glorious as it ever was. It needs to be confessed, believed, cherished, and preached. But there are some who who deny it by wearing it around their necks as a talisman; they are in grave peril because when the gospel is declared to them, they mutter to themselves that they are already children of Abraham and have never been in bondage to anyone.

LIKE JESSE JAMES ROBBING A TRAIN APRIL 9, 2008 So this response should finish up my reactions to Lane’s first critique of the first article in the FV issue of Credenda. And in this last installment, I do

656 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | MARCH–MAY 2008 have a few things to say, even though I don’t believe there is a great deal of disagreement at this point. On the question of introspection, Lane asks this:

Firstly, were the Puritans better off or worse off for their obsession with self-examination (which, by the way, is grossly exaggerated, in my opinion)? Were they more holy in life or less holy in life for examining themselves?

My answer is that the Puritans were a large group. Some of them were magnificent on this subject. Those who were really solid are usually still in print (Watson, Burroughs, et al.), and those of us in the ministry today should be striving to be their careful and attentive students. I want few things more than to be a contemporary version of this kind of Puritan. When I grow up, maybe I will be. But there was also another kind of Puritan, sad to say. Think of Handkerchief Moody, a preacher who wore a cloth over his face all the time so that the people would not be able to look upon his shame. Like Jesse James robbing a train. We should do everything in our power to not be like that kind of Puritan. Or that Wigglesworth poet guy, who was another head case.

Secondly, how many people are actually out there who morbidly self-examine themselves? My question would be rather along these lines: who examines their inner spiritual life at all these days? I, for one, am not exactly pressed for time to minister to people who cannot seem to get past their own sinfulness. I am far more occupied with trying to get people to realize that they are sinners at all.

I agree completely that ours is generally a complacent era, and that sins of laxity and lack of devotion take up most of my pastoral energies as well. But there are still several things to note. First, in certain sectors of the Reformed world, the problems that attend introspection are still a screaming problem.

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Second, even in this complacent era, this is enough of a problem that pastors have to deal with it regularly. I have been counseling people for over thirty years, in a community that has strongly leaned against morbid introspection, and I have still had to deal with assurance issues many, many times. Just last week, a parishioner in my office was joking with her husband about how many years of preaching it took to convince her that she might, in fact, be a Christian. And third, the real problem here in our churches is the experiential standard that our churches require before bringing our young people to the Table. When the conservative Reformed world stops losing her sons and daughters to the world, then I would be willing to say we don’t have a version of this problem any more. Lack of assurance is a two-edge sword. There are people who don’t have assurance who desperately want it. There are others who don’t have it (and don’t really want it anymore) because the church chased them away. The Master is busy with the regenerate people, we said.

By Wilson’s words, is he implying that the critics do not preach grace? When I preach justification by faith alone, and by that I mean that faith distinct from faithfulness is the instrument that lays hold of Christ’s righteousness, am I preaching something that will lead people to gospel rest, or will it lead to morbid self-examination? How can it, when the object is Christ?

It will lead some to rest and thank God for it. It will lead others to doubt. This will not happen because “the object is Christ,” but will rather happen because the listener is a sinner. A faith that is distinct from faithfulness is saving faith. A faith that is separate from faithfulness is damnable, as we both agree. So another point to be made here is that a faith that is separate from faithfulness is also invisible. This means that an average listener can wonder all kinds of things about it and attribute all kinds of things to it. Can get himself tied up in knots. And some do.

At the same time, when the Bible says to examine ourselves, we are to do that. And what we usually find is sin. That should drive us back to

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looking towards our Savior. There is not a single FV critic who would disagree with what was just written about introspection. Therefore, in the regard, the FV was created to fix a problem that doesn’t exist at all in modern confessional Reformedom.

Yes, we are to examine ourselves. And when we do, we should be looking for sin. Our liturgy at Christ Church has this built into our weekly worship, and this is because we believe it ought to be part of every Christian’s daily practice. But what sin? How is this sin to be defined? I have no problem with self-examination. Every Christian ought to regularly weigh himself in the balances. But he needs to take care that he is not using false weights and mea- sures—because those are an abomination to God. God hates them. So don’t just measure yourself—use His standard, and not your psychological traditions. A Christian with a bad porn habit needs to examine his heart, his head, his life, and his computer. A Christian with a bad habit of examining his heart all the time instead of loving his neighbor . . . needs to do what exactly? And the fact that pastors who are FV critics and pastors who are FV men would probably agree on a bad case of morbid introspection proves nothing. Lane’s point here simply does not follow. FV critics and FV men all agree that God hates divorce. That doesn’t mean we don’t have a problem with it in our churches.

One last word. I have been a bit sharp in this post, rhetorically speaking. Most of it is sparring, and definitely some of it light-hearted. I trust that Wilson will not consider this sparring as being below the belt.

Not at all. And if I am sometimes tart in response, I am only doing it to provide Mark T with something to write about. I would hate for thoughtless- ness on my part to take away someone’s reason for living.

LIKE CONTRASTING WALKING WITH LEGS APRIL 9, 2008 Green Baggins has put up another post, this one working through a short article I wrote on pp. 7–8 of the FV issue of Credenda. Given the subject matter,

659 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | MARCH–MAY 2008 this post will be very brief. Well, maybe not very brief, but comparatively brief. Man, look at it grow . . . Just two issues. The central point of my article is that different views on the nature of Adam’s required obedience in the Garden constitute the crux of the whole matter. FV guys reject the idea of Adam doing anything meritorious, and FV critics, in order to maintain their version of the covenant of works, want Adam to be in a position to merit the “well done” from God if he passed the probationary test. Lane concludes his post by pressing me to accept a particular kind of merit.

The principle by which Adam would have entered into life was a principle of obedience, not one of faith. Therefore, it was a principle of works. Not of condign merit, but of pactum merit. Not of congruent merit either, but of pactum merit.

Two things in response to this. First, I am not crazy about the word merit, but I can live with it, depending. The only thing I want to insist on is that any merit Adam “earned” would have placed him under an obligation to thank God for it. This is how I put it in that article.

Had Adam passed that probationary period of testing, the only appropriate response for him would have been to turn to God and give thanks for the deliverance.

Another way of putting this is to say that, at bottom, the covenant of works has to be understood as a gracious covenant. Yes, and amen, and a long line of Reformed theologians have agreed with this over the centuries. But you have to be careful about agreeing with it these days, depending on the presbytery. So, to use Lane’s language, I don’t mind at all if Adam had received pactum merit, as you put it, just so long as he thanked God for all of it, because Adam, like all of us, needed to be a sola gratia man. You should always thank God for His gifts, and everything from God is always a gift—in

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Adam’s case, it would have been the grapes, the Garden, the woman, the world, the obedience . . . all of it, the sheer grace of God. So, Lane, I will work with you and provisionally agree to the language of pactum merit. If Adam had obeyed, and God gave him his pactum merit, would Adam have needed to say thank you for it? Or do you take the only other possible position, which is to say that Adam would not have needed to say thank you for it? As an aside, if you look again at the quotation above, I agree that everything depended upon Adam’s obedience, but I am just baffled by Lane contrasting obedience and faith. In my mind, that is like contrasting walking with legs. The last point to make here is that Lane spent a lot of time in this post to show that had Adam obeyed God, he would have been promoted beyond his protological body and would have received his glorified eschatological body. I agree with this completely, and so maybe we are getting somewhere.

A REFORMED MEAD HALL APRIL 14, 2008 In my previous Auburn Avenue post, which had to do with the concept of merit, a good discussion broke out. But in the course of the comments a couple stray points were raised near the end that I really wanted to get Lane’s response on. And because the recently re-published work of Robert Rollock had been highly commended at Green Baggins, this point began with him. Here are the relevant sections:

Lane, Robert Rollock doesn’t think he has to agree to merit: “It is a question here, whether in the first creation, good works in the covenant of works, were required of man as meritorious for the promised life? I answer, not so. But they were due in the creation as pledges of thankfulness in man to his creator, for that excellent work of his creation, and to glorify God his creator.” [Treatise on Effectual Calling, London, 1597]

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Now I am still curious, are the FV men heretics for thinking Adam owed thanks to God? On the question of Adam meriting eternal life, can the FV men answer, with Rollock, “not so”, without the heresy charges flying? Can there just be disagreement on this issue without the anti-FV crowd crying heresy? Lane? This is not a rhetorical question, I want to know. —katecho

To this, another insightful commenter added:

Now what Katecho’s efforts (among others) show is that, even if there are real differences between FVers and anti-FVers, those are no greater than the differences between former divines and beloved Reformed doctors. The fact that FV critics are invincibly ignorant to this, thus causing them to misread and misuse the confessions, ought to disqualify them from any ability to make accusations. Sorry to be snarky, but some folks are just not even in the game . . . In other words, the “odd errant blips” on the Reformed theological radar include, Bucer, Calvin, Musculus, Bullinger, Zanchius, Vermigli, Ursinus, Knox, Rollock, Craig, John Forbes, Robert Bruce, Cornel Burgess, John Davenant, Hooker, Gataker, Vines, Twisse, Polhill, and of course Baxter, Edwards, and Murray. —Steven Wedgeworth

Let me state the point this way. I was recently talking with a friend about his perception that a certain portion of the Reformed world has an Anglican drift going. If that is going on, I have to confess that I am not a part of it, but also, equally important, if that is going with some other folks, I don’t really mind. Biblical Anglicans have the 39 Articles, which is a dang sight better than what a bunch of my fellow evangelicals are running around with. And my hero John Knox served as an Anglican chaplain for six years, and was offered the bishopric at Rochester, and he still managed to reform my motherland, none the worse for wear. When I mentioned this to my friend, he said that he didn’t agree with Knox on everything. Yes, quite. Me neither.

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But how is it possible to disagree politely with giants in the faith on doctrine x, but when doctrine x appears in modern garb, denounce it as heresy? That is the problem. Of course, the fact that Calvin, and Knox, and Bucer, and so on held to certain things doesn’t make them true. But it certainly should mean that to hold such positions in common with them is within acceptable bounds? There has always been plenty of room for theological debate and disagreement within the thatched walls of our Reformed mead hall. Sometimes voices were raised, and sometimes chicken bones were waved under the noses of others in unseemly ways. But we got along well enough, for all that. In this last generation, some have taken to chopping heads off—demanding that their particular bench in the hall be recognized as the entire hall. In the name of being Reformed, they are conducting a purge. And no, not just Murray. Keep going back. We can’t claim to be Reformed and in the next breath reject half our fathers in the faith as heretics and scoundrels. And so we don’t reject them outright—we keep their names carved in marble in places of honor, and we keep their books on our shelves, and we reprint these commemorative editions in to keep them in honorific libraries (without intending to actually read them). One of the central points that I made at the infamous Auburn Avenue conference was something I had learned from my Banner of Truth edition of John Murray’s works, which set had been given to me as a gift of gratitude by certain saints who now view me as a heretic—for having read and believed what they gave me as a present. Ah, well.

SCOTCH, HOTCH, AND POTCH APRIL 16, 2008 Lane has taken a moment to answer my question here, and so I guess it is now my turn to respond. This is the way the controversy is framed by our opponents, and there are some basic structural problems with it. They say that if you want to affirm the gospel in the way our Reformers fathers did, you have to affirmdoctrines scotch, hotch, and potch. To which our argument in reply has been, yes,

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quite, but our Reformed fathers Smith, Jones, and Murphy denied scotch, Reformed fathers Johnson, Watson, and Williams denied hotch, and the Lu- therans never heard of potch. First, to this response, it is entirely beside the point to say that they denied scotch, hotch, and potch in a different way, or for different reasons than we in the FV do. The point is that they don’t affirmthese doctrines, for whatever reason. And that means that the initial statement about explicit affirmation must not be accurate and should be dropped. Second, it is not at all clear to me that they did deny these doctrines for different reasons than I do because I learned many of my denials from them, along with their compelling reasons. You see, I, a Reformed newbie lo these many years ago, gathered them by gleaning carefully in my Banner of Truth sets that you people still publish for some reason. Third, if you can infer orthodoxy and implicit affirmations by reading charitably between the lines of the old, dead guys, why not do the same with us? Fourth, the only straightforward way for TRs to deal with the intractable facts of Reformed theological history is to argue heresy through chemical combinations. “Denials of scotch are within the pale. Denials of hotch are also. And denials of potch are equally okay, and intramural amity may still prevail. But when you deny scotch, hotch and potch, all together, the results are a denial of the gospel.” This is at least a possibility, but it is the kind of the thing that would have to be demonstrated. And by demonstrated, by the way, I do not mean to the satisfaction of a stacked committee. Fifth, if there is one significant element of the FV project that really does not have a long and significant representation of adherents in the Reformed tradition—and there is, just one, paedocommunion—then it would be appropriate to try to demonstrate that this element, motch, let’s say, is the thing that makes denials of scoth, hotch, and potch the kind of thing that requires us keep our pistols loose in the holster. But again, this is something that would have to be argued, shown, demonstrated. So then, to sum up, every distinctive element in the FV project, saving one, has long antecedents in the history of the Reformed faith. Either show

664 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | MARCH–MAY 2008 that our peculiar combination of these distinctive elements is spiritually deadly or drop the controversy.

NINTH COMMANDMENT ISSUES APRIL 18, 2008 Okay, please bear with me for a moment—I have a string of quotations, and with some answers and responses from me interspersed. First, from his blog, Lane asks me this question:

I know, I know, this post comes from the self-proclaimed Fully Documented Anonymous Attack Blog, or FDAAB for short. You all will notice that I don’t link to that blog. I simply cannot, and Mark knows why, and has accepted that fact. However, I will admit to reading every post of his. Hypocritical? Probably. I would like for Doug to answer this post, though, if he has a minute. The evidence is all from Doug’s own blog, which is public for everyone to read. Would he chalk it up to rhetorical flourish? In which case, Mark T’s comment still stands: does this rhetoric make the charge of lying worse or better? Wilson does seem to have charged people with lying, and not just seeing through their paradigm-limited glasses. I am thankful that he has recently dialed down such rhetoric. The internet is far too vitriolic as it is. But has he never accused Scott Clark or Guy Waters of lying?

This question was asked because in a recent Auburn Avenue post, I had said this:

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say something false deliberately. This is not to say that there is no culpability in such tangles and confusion—there is, can be, and has been on both sides. But it is the sort of thing that should be sorted out in conversation and debate, not charges.”

When I posted that, I received a friendly inquiry about this in the comments section from a friend, given his awareness of the “full-contact rugby” I have been playing in this controversy. Here is his inquiry, followed by my response.

Doug, “The response here is that I cannot think of any critic of the FV— provided we are talking about critics who sign their own name to their concerns or charges—that I would dream of accusing of deception or lying.” I don’t want to stir the pot on this, but there is a related issue: what about your accusations of ninth-commandment-breaking and other problematic behavior? I’m hesitant to name names, but in the interests of being specific (you’ve already been public enough) you have taken moral issue with John Robbins, Guy Waters, and R. Scott Clark, to name three. Am I mistaken? If not, are not lying and/or deception in some way involved in the alleged sins of these men? Blessings, Keith LaMothe—4/4/2008 9:05:29 PM

And my reply . . .

Keith, thanks for the check. I don’t believe any of those gentlemen are getting up in the morning and saying, “How can I lie about Wilson today?” But I do believe that because they are trained in theology, they have a moral responsibility to grasp what they appear to be incapable of grasping. And that is a moral, ninth commandment issue in the Larger Catechism sense.

Now let me make what I meant by “Larger Catechism sense” a little more specific. When I charge someone with violating the ninth commandment, I am invoking a broad set of issues. This, in my mind, is distinct from accusing

666 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | MARCH–MAY 2008 someone of lying directly. The two are obviously related so let me outline what I mean (which I should have done earlier). This controversy has contained numerous breeches of the ninth commandment. From where I sit, the really egregious stuff has come from the FV critics, but given what I am about to quote, I do not believe that FV partisans have been squeaky clean in this either. I will highlight sections I believe to be particularly relevant, even though almost all of these questions and answers are relevant to this controversy.

Question 143: Which is the ninth commandment? Answer: The ninth commandment is, Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

Question 144: What are the duties required in the ninth commandment? Answer: The duties required in the ninth commandment are, the preserving and promoting of truth between man and man, and the good name of our neighbor, as well as our own; appearing and standing for the truth; and from the heart, sincerely, freely, clearly, and fully, speaking the truth, and only the truth, in matters of judgment and justice, and in all other things: Whatsoever; a charitable esteem of our neighbors; loving, desiring, and rejoicing in their good name; sorrowing for, and covering of their infirmities; freely acknowledging of their gifts and graces, defending their innocency; a ready receiving of a good report, and unwillingness to admit of an evil report, concerning them; discouraging talebearers, flatterers, and slanderers; love and care of our own good name, and defending it when need requires; keeping of lawful promises; studying and practicing of: Whatsoever things are true, honest, lovely, and of good report.

Question 145: What are the sins forbidden in the ninth commandment? Answer: The sins forbidden in the ninth commandment are, all preju- dicing the truth, and the good name of our neighbors, as well as our own, especially in public judicature; giving false evidence, suborning false

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witnesses, wittingly appearing and pleading for an evil cause, outfacing and overbearing the truth; passing unjust sentence, calling evil good, and good evil; rewarding the wicked according to the work of the righteous, and the righteous according to the work of the wicked; forgery, con- cealing the truth, undue silence in a just cause, and holding our peace when iniquity calls for either a reproof from ourselves, or complaint to others; speaking the truth unseasonably, or maliciously to a wrong end, or perverting it to a wrong meaning, or in doubtful and equivocal expressions, to the prejudice of truth or justice; speaking untruth, lying, slandering, backbiting, detracting, tale bearing, whispering, scoffing, reviling, rash, harsh, and partial censuring; misconstructing intentions, words, and actions; flattering, vainglorious boasting, thinking or speaking too highly or too meanly of ourselves or others; denying the gifts and graces of God; aggravating smaller faults; hiding, excusing, or extenuating of sins, when called to a free confession; unnecessary discovering of infirmities; raising false rumors, receiving and countenancing evil reports, and stopping our ears against just defense; evil suspicion; envying or grieving at the deserved credit of any, endeavoring or desiring to impair it, rejoicing in their disgrace and infamy; scornful contempt, fond admiration; breach of lawful promises; neglecting such things as are of good report, and practicing, or not avoiding ourselves, or not hindering: What we can in others, such things as procure an ill name.

From the comments of mine that Mark T assembled at his bog (is there a problem with the l on my keyboard? perhaps!) the two strongest appeared to be my references to “high slander mode,” and “taking a chain saw to the ninth commandment.” The others he either misunderstood or misconstrued (for example, saying something is a false charge is not the same thing as saying the person uttered the false deliberately, knowing it to be false). Those two references (colorful to be sure) were references to the world of the ninth commandment as outlined above by our very convicting fathers at Westminster. Do I believe that FV critics have taken a chain saw to questions 144 and 145

668 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | MARCH–MAY 2008 of the Larger Catechism? Yes, I do—they have done so repeatedly. It is continuing down to the present, most recently when Lane (who ought to know better) asked me to comment on this sludge. So let me be very explicit about this, and clarify what I have meant in the uses of phrases like that, and in the charges I made about breeches of the ninth commandment. But before I explain and defend myself here, I think it is necessary to do something else first. If you have been in controversy like this one for five years, as I have, and have written hundreds of thousands of words about it, as I have, it is impossible to read through those Westminster questions above and say, “Yep. I sure did all of that right.” Specifically, I can say (and do say) that my purpose and intent was not to accuse any of the named individuals in this controversy with the sin of purposefully lying. But because I did not make this qualification carefully at that time, I believe that it would be quite a reasonable for a reader not to see this, and that problem was my responsibility. I was not making a blanket accusation (for example) of flat-out lying against the men at Mid-America or Westminster West. I don’t believe that accusation to be true, but since my words could reasonably be construed that way, I need to seek the forgiveness of any FV critics affected by it. In short, any of the named Christian leaders, critics of the FV, who believed I was calling them liars simpliciter, please forgive me for my breech of the ninth commandment in this. But as tempting as it would be to end everything right there with a group hug, there are still some outstanding issues that need to be resolved. Why are we here? Notice that the Larger Catechism also requires “love and care of our own good name, and defending it when need requires.” That is what I have been seeking to do for the last five years, heart and soul—defending in the first place the names and reputations of my friends, and also of my own. So here is the summary. I believe that men like Mark T lie as fast as a dog can trot. And when I say “lie,” I mean that in the old-fashioned sense that would get you into a fight in a bar. He wants to defend his anonymity by means of yet another slander—which is that we here in Moscow “haff our

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vays” of dealing with opponents, with a secret police and everything. Disagree with Wilson, and get a visit from jackbooted deacons in the middle of the night! That’s why he has to attack without any accountability for himself. We, by our evil, have forced him to it. Now I don’t fault anonymous critics in cultures where there are Gulags, racks, stakes, and more. But is anonymity really necessary when what would happen is that the man’s pastor (assuming with a long shot that he has one) would get a letter? The lake of fire is reserved for liars, and I take this as referring to those whose consciences are seared as with a hot iron. I believe this is speaking of men who don’t care about the truth and are willing to advance stories that they know to be false. I don’t ever use that word lightly. One of my tasks in pastoral counseling, while trying to unsort human tangles, is to keep people from using that word. This doesn’t mean that Larger Catechism violations are okay, but just that we should have a sense of proportion. The Reformed world today has huge problems, caused and perpetuated by our sins in this area. I do believe that many Christian leaders, like Lane, who would never dream of advancing an overt falsehood knowingly, nevertheless do violate the ninth commandment, routinely and egregiously. They have done so repeatedly in this controversy. That is what I have been referring to, and what I have been fighting against. I am answering this particular question right now because of one more gross violation of it. When Lane gives the time of day to men who make false accusations from the shadows, by reading every post written in those shadows, he is “countenancing evil reports,” to take just one example. Read Deuteronomy 19 again. For reasonable men to bestow any kind of credibility at all on anonymous attack blogs like Mark T’s is for reasonable men to sin in just the way the Larger Catechism describes. The excuses and evasions made in defense of countenancing such evil reports is just mind-boggling to me. Lane said this:

Wilson does seem to have charged people with lying, and not just seeing through their paradigm-limited glasses. I am thankful that he has

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recently dialed down such rhetoric. The internet is far too vitriolic as it is. But has he never accused Scott Clark or Guy Waters of lying?

No, I have never accused them of lying. I have accused them, and continue to accuse them, of conducting this controversy in a manner that is completely out of step with the Larger Catechism’s teaching on the ninth commandment. I believe that Lane has fallen into the same trap, which is why I had to write this post. So there is the context, and that is what I mean. Happy to answer any questions about it.

OBEDIENCE AND LIFE APRIL 22, 2008 Lane begins to interact with the Joint Federal Vision Profession here. The place he begins is with the issue of bi-covenantalism.

However, I will seek to prove one example where I believe that the FV statement is thoroughly non-confessional. As we all know, the PCA study committee report roundly reinforced a bi-covenantal structure to the WCF.

But, as we should have realized by now, there is a difference between denying bi-covenantalism and having a different take on the nature of the two (bi) covenants. For example, I am not mono-covenantal. I signed the JFVP Lane is interacting with here, and I hold that there are two covenants—the covenant of creation and the covenant of grace. One, two.

The Covenant of Works, in chapter 7 of the WCF, plainly says that eternal life was promised to Adam upon condition of personal and perfect obedience. The JFVP says plainly that ‘the gift or continued possession of that gift was not offered by God to Adam conditioned upon Adam’s moral exertions or achievements’ (see under the section ‘The Covenant of Life.’ Now, I am not sure what else Adam’s moral exertions or achievements could be other than his obedience to God’s law, or personal and perfect obedience. So the condition of obtaining eternal life was works, according to the WCF, and not works according

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to the JFVP. The PCA has decided that this is not going to be an allowable exception to the Standards.

But here are some terms that one ought not be allowed to interchange as though they were synonyms—obedience and works. Not one of us believes that the WCF was wrong to say that Adam had to obey. He disobeyed, and here we are in a sinful world. Had he obeyed, we would not have been. We all hold to the necessity of that obedience, as the Confession says. So when we deny that the gift was conditioned upon Adam’s “moral exertions or achievements,” we are denying the idea of autonomy. We are not denying the idea of trusting obedience, upon which continued bliss absolutely depended. For proof of this, consider another part of that same section in our statement, a passage which Lane failed to cite. We said, “We affirmthat Adam was in a covenant of life with the triune God in the Garden of Eden, in which arrangement Adam was required to obey God completely, from the heart.” Try to find a contradiction between that and the section Lane quoted from the WCF. There is no conflict between “personal and perpetual obedience” and “required to obey God completely, from the heart.” The question is not whether we hold to the requirement of obedience. We all hold to that. We are all confessional on this point. The debate is over the nature of that obedience. Was it an aspect of God’s grace to man, or was it to be autonomously rendered by man? That is the point of debate, and on that the Westminster Confession requires nothing of us, one way or the other. So Lane is simply wrong to say that we are not confessional here. The only part of the confession he quotes is the part that says obedience is necessary. I quoted a section from out statement that clearly shows we believe obedience to be necessary. If he wants to show us out of conformity with the Confession, Lane needs to pick another place and try again.

OBEDIENCE AND WORKS MAY 1, 2008 Lane has come back from presbytery, apparently unscathed, and wants to resume our discussion. So here we go. He says:

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I was saying that you were rejecting any overlap between obedience and works, such that you could say that the CoW was based on grace, and that obedience was required, but works were not. I am challenging that assertion . . . .

It is fine to challenge this assertion, and it would be really good to have a good discussion of this in Reformed circles. But if all Reformed theologians agree that obedience was necessary in the Garden, and a lot of them (as Lane concedes) believe that the covenant of works there was actually a gracious covenant, it follows from this that the required obedience, had it been rendered by Adam, would have been a gracious gift from God. This means that obedience and grace do not exclude each other. When Paul talks about grace and works driving one another out, he is talking about grace on the one hand and autonomous works on the other. In the Pauline vocabulary, grace and works displace one another. But Paul doesn’t think the same way about grace and obedience. They don’t displace one another. Now in speaking this way, I acknowledge that there are places where Paul does use the word works in this obedience sense. But I am trying to capture a distinction that I believe he does make between, for example, “works of the law” in Romans and “good works” in Titus. Or the works we were created to in Christ Jesus (Eph. 2:10). A bit later Lane asks,

So, when Paul talks about justification being not by works of the law, is he excluding all works done by faith or without faith, or is he only excluding some works? Is he excluding obedience from that?

I was talking about the unfallen Adam. If Adam had stood the test, it would have been through the instrumentality of faith-animated obedience, graciously given by God. We, however, are fallen, and God does not justify us on the basis of raw, autonomous works, and He does not justify us on the basis of Spirit-animated obedience. He justifies us through the instrumentality of Spirit-animated faith, a faith which continues, after the initial moment of justification, to be animated in obedience.

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Lane also asked for my take on Romans 2:13, which says, “For not the hearers of the law [are] just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified” (Rom. 2:13). “Is this a statement that says that people will actually be justified on the final day by works, or does it mean ‘do this and live,’ a hypothetical but realistically impossible schema”? Actually, I would take neither option. I see this as saying that only doers of the law are justified, but this does not mean that Paul is here giving the reason why they are justified. The ground of our justification is the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ, both active and passive, plus nothing. Least that’s what I hear from Mark “Charlie” T, and he is a touchstone of orthodoxy for some, as I hear it. The recipients of this justification are those who receive it through the instrumentality of faith, faith alone, meaning faith considered as being all by its lonesome. This faith that is considered-as-all-alone-for-purposes-of-justification turns out not to be alone, but in every instance does the law—not perfectly (which is what it would have to do for justification), but genuinely nonetheless. Faith without obedience is dead.

IS GREEN BAGGINS A CALVINIST? MAY 3, 2008 Lane thinks that our discussion of God’s covenant with mankind before the Fall has gotten interesting, and I agree. But it will take me a few installments to answer the various issues he raises here. The one I want to begin with is Lane’s (no doubt inadvertent) denial of Calvinism. I had said, “If Adam had stood the test, it would have been through the instrumentality of faith-animated obedience, graciously given by God.” And Lane responds:

I would not put it this way. I would say that if Adam had stood the test, it would have through the instrumentality of faith-animated obedience (understanding faith here to be different than what we have, in that Adam could see God), the ability of which was condescendingly given by God. The obedience itself, in other words, was not given by God.The

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ability to obey was, since it was part of Adam being created morally innocent. (emphasis added)

The problem here is that all Calvinists are supposed to believe that all things are given by God. Had Adam withstood the test, how is it possible for any Calvinist to say that Adam did it by himself? God decrees all things. The hairs on all heads are all numbered, prelapsarian hairs and postlapsarian hairs alike. In the Garden of Eden, not one sparrow could hop around in his chirruping forever apart from the will of the Father. If Adam had resisted the tempter, it would have been because God had freely and unalterably ordained that it come to pass. And when it came to pass Adam would have thanked God for it. Lane wants the allow the pre-Fall covenant to be gracious in the sense that God condescended to make it in the first place, when He did not have to, and that it was gracious for God to offer such blessedness in exchange for the small performance of staying away from one tree. Now I agree that all this is gracious. But I also maintain, because I am a high predestinarian, that Adam’s performance of obedience, had it been rendered, would also have been the result of God’s gracious decree. How could this not be? Now I cannot honestly fathom how Lane can resist this conclusion. God ordains all things. Adam’s obedience, had it occurred, would have been a “thing.” God therefore would have ordained Adam’s obedience. Therefore, it would have been a holy and grateful act for Adam to thank the Lord for it. Moreover, it would have been an unholy and ungrateful act to refuse to thank Him. But note how Lane implicitly denies his Calvinism here:

Where would the impetus have come from, then, for Adam to obey God? It would have come immediately from Adam, even though such ability to choose the good had been given him by God. It was still up to Adam to use that gift properly. God bound Himself by the terms of the covenant, then, to reward Adam’s obedience. If Adam had obeyed, he could have come to God and said, “Father, you promised that if I obeyed, you would give me eternal life. I have obeyed. Please give me eternal life. (emphasis added)

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Sure, Adam’s obedience would have come immediately from him, but it would also have come (behind that) from God’s gracious decree. This does not destroy the liberty or contingency of secondary causes, but the secondary causes are secondary. Lane is saying that (in a world where Adam did not fall) God gave the ability to not fall, but that He did not give the “not falling” itself. God gave the possibility of obedience, but He somehow did not give the obedience itself. How is this possible in a world where all things whatsoever are governed by God’s decrees? How can any Calvinist say that God does not freely and unalterably ordain whatsoever comes to pass? How can Lane argue for this?

GOOD CALVINISM SOLVES PROBLEMS MAY 6, 2008 Lane has taken up my question about his Calvinism. In his response, he sets out a scheme that I agree with entirely—which is only to be expected, since we are both Calvinists. He acknowledges that God is the first cause of all that comes to pass, which would have included the obedience of Adam, had Adam obeyed. But he then asks how this excludes reward on the level of second causes. I respond that it does not exclude reward at all. What it excludes is any reward for autonomous obedience. We both agree that Shakespeare writes one hundred percent of all the plays, but that the characters, on the level of the plays, act in accordance with their natures. So I agree that had Adam obeyed God, he would have been blessed with greater glory, he would have been given mountains of blessing, he would have been rewarded. He would have been told, “Well, done, good and faithful servant.” And he would have said, “I only did what I was told.” In our interactions with God, we move easily between recognition of first causes and second causes all the time—except in the Garden for some reason. I understand that Lane doesn’t hold to a strict merit scheme (one which would forget the grace of God that surrounded the Garden, and indeed, the entire cosmos). I understand that Lane holds to a pactum merit view, one which (apart from terminology) I don’t have any real problem with. Adam

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would have been blessed, rewarded, given to, and praised. And upon his obedience or disobedience, the future of our race depended. But we don’t just function from “within the plays.” God has placed eternity in our hearts, and we thank Him all the time for His gracious decrees. I don’t just thank God for the preacher, for the tracts, for the godly upbringing, and so forth—whatever means were used to bring me to Him. I also thank Him for His gracious election. We thank Him for His decrees. Right? So why would it not be possible for Adam to recognize that he was being blessed for his obedience, and also to recognize that he had only been obedient because God had decreed it? He, being unfallen, would certainly have had less trouble with these distinctions than we do. So I will agree with Lane so far as to use the phrase pactum merit, if he will come my direction and acknowledge that Adam’s obedience in this pactum merit scheme would have been from God, through God, and to God, and that Adam would have bowed his head afterwards to thank God for his obedience. God would have praised, honored, and rewarded Adam’s obedience, and Adam would have humbled himself and said, “I only rendered back to You what was given to me.” And God’s treatment of Adam, and Adam’s response to God, would both have been appropriate and right. In true Calvinism, when God and man fellowship together, first and second causes are necessary woven together tightly. In all strict merit schemes, they are divorced.

INTERNET AIREDALES FOR TRUTH MAY 7, 2008 One of the classes we offer the covenant kids here at Christ Church is a course in memorizing the Heidelberg Catechism. I know, say what you will, but we FVers can be pretty audacious at times. We even pretend to ourselves that we believe this stuff. Anyhoo, one of my parishioners emailed me because he works through the questions with his daughter, using G.I. Williamson’s commentary as an aid. And he came across something that seemed to resemble what he has

677 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | MARCH–MAY 2008 heard from the pulpit here on the nature of living faith—but which is hotly disputed by certain members of the Internet Airedales for Truth Brigade. Thought I should share it, with many thanks for the living eye illustration.

Faith itself is not the source of our righteousness. The source is exclusively Jesus. He lived a sinless life and was therefore well-pleasing to the Heavenly Father. Jesus was also willing to give that righteousness to us. Not only that, but he was willing to bear our sin, our guilt, and our punishment as our substitute. On the basis of this double imputation (of his righteousness to us, and our sin to him), he was condemned and we are put right with God. What puts faith in the spotlight, as it were, is the fact that it is by faith alone that we receive this righteousness. Just as it is by a living eye (not a glass eye) that we can see (receive) the light of a beautiful sunset, so it is by a genuine faith (not a dead faith, as James says) that we receive the righteousness of the Lord Jesus. There is no other way that we can receive the righteousness of Christ. We receive it only by relying on him completely. It should be obvious that when we say “by faith only” we do not mean “faith in isolation.” Here again, it may help us to think of the seeing eye in order to understand this. It is by the eye alone that we can see things. But there never was an eye that could see in isolation. If you ever see a human eye lying on a slab in a laboratory, you can be sure that the eye sees nothing. The reason is that an eye functions only as a living part of a human body. So it is with faith. If you have “faith” all by itself—faith in isolation—then your faith is dead rather than living (James 2:26). In other words, genuine faith in the Lord Jesus will be accompanied by a repentant heart and a willingness to obey his commandments. Nonetheless, it is by faith alone that I am righteous. All I need to do is accept the gift of God by faith in order to become right with God (Lord’s Day 23, pp 107–108).

Really good stuff.

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TWO PEAS IN AN ARCHETYPICAL POD MAY 12, 2008 Green Baggins is now addressing the section on the Trinity in our Joint FV statement. I agree with the caveats that Lane issues, acknowledging that the triune nature of God is something that He is, and not something that He builds out of three independent Persons. I think that Ralph Smith guards himself against that error better than Lane thinks he does, and I think that the view Lane advances really is vulnerable to the point made by Steven Wedgeworth in the comments. But in talking about Trinitarian theology, we have to be careful—all of us are in so far over our heads that as soon as we allow someone’s drift, trajectory, or emphasis to dictate whether they are a heretic, then no one is safe. I think it would be best for us to simply take one another’s adherence to Nicea and Chalcedon at face value, and try not to speculate too much. The really interesting thing for me in Lane’s post was this:

I wish to reaffirm the covenant of redemption as being the archetype of the covenant of works and the covenant of grace.

Notice: the covenant of works and the covenant of grace share one single archetype here. Now if our FV confession that the pre-fall covenant and the post-fall covenant were both gracious in character is enough to get us labeled (by Lane) as monocovenantal, what are we to make of this intra-Trinitarian covenant being the single archetype for both? Two things that share an archetype . . . what does that make them? A lot alike?

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JUNE–OCTOBER 2008

A RAGBAG RESPONSE TO GREEN BAGGINS JUNE 2, 2008 Lane gave me a helpful nudge the other day. What with end of school year frenzy, and a trip back east, I lost track of where we were. I will try to get us caught up here—but that will mean that my responses will be kind of a ragbag and briefer than they usually are, and hence they will not rise to their usual levels of compellingness.

1. Lane says, “In other words, in the Pauline sense of the word ‘justification,’ works and obedience play no part.” This is part of his discussion of my distinction between a Pauline understanding of obedience and a Pauline understanding of works. Probably the best way to illustrate this distinction, and one I should have pointed to before, is the fact that “working to earn the gospel” would be an incoherent concept for Paul, a soteriological square circle. But Paul does not mind speaking of obedience to the gospel, and does so naturally. 2. I think Lane and I worked to an agreement on the issues of Calvinism, pactum merit, and so forth. If Lane and I were the only two Reformed ministers in town, and there were no larger controversy raging, the differences between us on this one would be negligible. Nevertheless, Lane asks if by autonomous obedience I mean rebellious obedience, and the answer is yes. In reply to the point that this is a contradiction, I agree—and point out that contradictions in the presence of God

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is something that sinners love to attempt. I agree with Augustine’s posse peccare et non peccare, so long as we are looking at it from Gar- den-level, at the level of the creature. At the level of the decrees, the Fall was going to happen because God freely and unalterably ordains whatsoever comes to pass. This means, at that level, it was not possible for Adam to not sin. Lane says, “What I am uncomfortable saying is that Adam would have had to thank God for the obedience itself on the level of secondary causation.” But nobody is asking anyone to thank God for displacing the creature. That is not the point. The point is that in our discussions of this we are to move, the way the Bible does, between the secondary causes of secondary agents and the ultimate cause of everything—for in Him we live and move and have our being. In short, the only thing I care about with regard to the covenant of creation in the Garden is that we not exclude the decrees of God under- girding everything—not even to make a system of theology go. 3. Lane brings up the question of whether a covenant is an “agreement” or a “relationship.” TRs tend to emphasize the former, and FVers the latter. I actually think that this is a false dilemma. One of the things that people in relationships do is generate agreements. By synecdoche, I am certainly comfortable speaking of a covenant as agreement. 4. Lane also mentions the discomfort he believes that FV types with regard to systematic theology. Not only have I repeatedly defended the necessity of systematic theology, I have also repeatedly pointed out the failures of certain vocal TR advocates to understand and follow their own systematic tradition. What are the “good and necessary consequences” of a phrase like “exhibits and confers”? 5. No, not all amills are historical pessimists. And neither are all premills (think Spurgeon). But the issue is optimism or pessimism about the course of history—not the post-resurrection state. All Christians are ultimately optimists. But very few are optimists about the course of

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the gospel in history. Prior to the return of Christ, will the world be Christian or not? The optimist answers yes, the pessimist no. 6. Lane does not really have a problem with our call for public Chris- tianity. At the same time, he is nervous that we do not emphasize private piety enough, wondering if this is just an imbalance of presentation, or if we think public piety is all God wants. “What is a bit disconcerting about this is that I haven’t exactly seen FV guys pushing for private piety in other contexts. It seems to me to be underplayed at best, ignored at worst.” I can only defend myself here by defending myself, which I will now proceed to do. One of the central strands of our ministry here in Moscow has been a jumping up and down emphasis on the disciplines of personal piety—confession of sin, freedom from bitterness, godly life in the home, and so on. I feel like Paul did when the Jerusalem elders asked him to continue to remember the poor, which was the whole reason he was there in the first place, for Pete’s sake. 7. The reason we said that the nations were to submit to the yoke of Christ through baptism is because we were quoting Scripture, and that’s what Scripture said. We were echoing the words of the Great Commission. We did not speak of an invisible faith there because Jesus did not speak of it when He gave His Church our marching orders. The Bible does speak of invisible faith elsewhere, and we affirm it gladly, in a rowdy and robust manner. But Jesus told us to disciple the nations—comma, series of participles explaining how this was to be done—baptizing and teaching obedience. Objections to the language need to be taken up in another quarter. I used to object to the language about remission of sins in the Nicene Creed until I realized that the fathers were quoting the book of Acts. Oops. 8. And last, I agree that the Church is required to teach more than the world is willing to learn, and I would go on to say that we should maintain that willingness until the world has dropped her objections, and is willing to learn.

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JUMPING AND OBEYING JUNE 4, 2008 I made a comment in passing about how the language of obedience to the gospel comes naturally to Paul’s pen. Lane picked up on this, and interacted with one of those places, 2 Thessalonians 1:5–8.

[Which is] a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God, that ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which ye also suffer: Seeing [it is] a righteous thing with God to recompense tribula- tion to them that trouble you; And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thess. 1:5–8).

Some of the commenters at Lane’s blog supplied other examples, not all from Paul.

But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you.

Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness. (Rom. 6:17)

By whom we have received grace and apostleship, for obedience to the faith among all nations, for his name. (Rom. 1:5)

And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him. (Heb. 5:9)

For the time [is come] that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if [it] first [begin] at us, what shall the end [be] of them that obey not the gospel of God? (1 Pet. 4:17)

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Lane struggles unsuccessfully with this kind of thing because he wants to parse it grammatically and dogmatically, pointing out quite unhelpfully that the Thesslonians passage doesn’t specifically mentionjustification . No, but it mentions the good news, the gospel, which is a gospel of free grace, and which certain people did not respond to with obedience. Romans refers to the obedience of faith, and to an obedience that results in the freedom from sin. Hebrews says that those who obey Christ receive salvation from Him. And Peter mentions obeying the gospel, again, an obedience to good news, and not an obedience to a demand for autonomous good works. Because of a superstitious avoidance of certain words (obedience reminds some of merit-mongering) we not only find ourselves trifling with the sacred text, but also neglecting the simplest solution in the world, one that should fill every Protestant heart with gladness. “Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent” (John 6:29). The response of Lane and others to this point is simply a category confusion and shows a real lack of awareness of certain key differences between different kinds of verbs. To obey is a general verb and can therefore encompass all kinds of actions. To jump is a specific verb and can encompass the action of jumping. Now if I tell one of my grandkids to jump off the porch and he obeys me, which one is he doing? Is he jumping or is he obeying? Because a certain kind of Protestant mind maintains in all seriousness that it has to be one or the other. But of course, he is doing both—he is obeying by jumping, because that is what he was told to do. Now when God through His preachers tells us that Christ died and rose again, and commands us to repent of our sins and believe this message, is it possible to obey Him by repenting of our sins and believing the message? Of course. When we do as we are told, we are obeying. If we are told to respond to the goodness of God by faith alone, and we do so, are we disobeying? Of course not—we are obeying. If we try to shoehorn in some of our own autonomous works so that we might get some of the credit for our own salvation, are we obeying? No—in the name of works and obedience, we are disobeying.

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The motion of believing does not therefore displace the motion of obeying if believing is what we were commanded to do. The action of works-righteousness fails, not because it is obedience and obedience is bad, but rather because it is disobedience and disobedience is bad. If God offers us the free gift of the righteousness of Jesus Christ, both active and passive, and He insists that we receive it through the instrumentality of faith alone, it is not possible to receive that justifying righteousness apart from obeying Him. Is this works? Of course not—we were commanded to repent and believe. We were not commanded to scurry around to establish our own righteousness, for pity’s sake.

A WORKSY SOUNDING WORD JUNE 5, 2008 Lane has responded to my post on “jumping and obeying,” and confesses himself a bit puzzled. And I, speaking for myself, am puzzled also. Lane took me as objecting to grammatical and dogmatic parsing generally, when I was only objecting to it as a means of solving non-existent problems. Just for the record, I am very grateful when detailed lexical or grammatical study solves problems in the text. My suspicions are aroused, however, when this device is resorted to as a means of solving problems for our dogmatic theology created by the text. Lane’s entire follow-up discussion of this is a case in point. I quite agree that the Thessalonians passage is talking about the contrast between the course of life displayed by unbelievers and by believers. I also agree that “obey the gospel” can be readily applied to the Christian life in a way that encompasses our sanctification. So? How does that somehow exempt the very beginning of this process? If a bride and groom promise to love each throughout the entire course of their marriage, does this start ten days after the wedding? Is it “till death do us part,” except where restrictions apply? Certain dogmatic commitments require special pleading, and this is a plain instance of it. Because obedience reminds us of works, being a worksy-sounding word, and we know that works are not the instrumentality of justification,

686 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JUNE–OCTOBER 2008 we deny (lest anyone free associate in jesuitical ways) that obedience has anything to do with justification. But in our zeal to avoid jesuitical casuistry, we have become parsing jesuits. I mean, look at this. I can’t believe Lane actually wrote it. “No implication, therefore, is made of whether coming to faith itself is an act of obedience.” That means that believing in Jesus must be disobedient. And all God’s people said, “Jeepers.” Here is a good place for some good and necessary consequence. A command can only be disobeyed or obeyed. Ignoring it is disobedience. Pretend- ing not to hear is disobedience. Given the authority and legitimacy of the command, there are no other options. If someone wants to maintain a third possibility, I am open to hearing what it might possibly be. Now, does God command men to believe the gospel? Sure, and it would be tedious to reproduce all the instances of such commands here. But if this point is not granted in about ten minutes, I will be happy to do so. Let one example suffice for now. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:15). So if God has commanded us to believe, then that command must either be obeyed or disobeyed. And if the act of believing, in response to this gospel command, is the sole instrumentality of justification, which it is, then how can Lane deny the implication? So we are therefore justified by the instrumentality of obedience (Sean G and Mark T can do the snip quote thing here), but remember that obedience is defined and restricted by the command. If God said to believe, to do anything else of a merit-mongering nature is disobedience. Obedience does nothing other than believe with an evangelical and God-given faith. Obedience is doing what we are told, and we were told to believe. This shouldn’t be hard.

IS THIS CHECKMATE? JUNE 9, 2008 Here is a quick response to Lane’s latest, and then I am content to move on. First, I don’t object to detailed grammatical exegesis, and I don’t object to it in the Thessalonians passage that Lane was dealing with. I was simply

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pointing out that we were talking about the kind of problem that remains right where it was after all the exegesis is done. When I said “these texts cannot be properly understood with that kind of analysis,” I was referring to the question that was before the house. Those texts can, of course, be parsed in edifying ways. My argument was that such analysis in our debate was simply beside the point—not that it was beside every point. I will make that point again in my third comment here. Second, when I used the illustration of the bride and groom I confess I thought of the possibility of miscommunication on chronological issues, and so I should have made some kind of qualification there. I know that Lane does not believe in a chronological separation of justification and sanctification, and should have said so. But again, I think this is beside the point. Now the third point—is evangelical, justifying faith obedient faith? This is the issue, and it a good place to test Lane’s commitment to good and necessary consequence. Evangelical, justifying faith has to be obedient faith if it is rendered in response to a command from God to have evangelical, justifying faith. So then, does God command true faith? Does He command us to believe in Him sincerely, from the heart? If so, and we do, then we are obeying. If not, then our faith is neither obedient not disobedient—it may be a third other thing, but only if God did not command it. Lane is very clear here. He says it is an “all-important point” to say that “faith is not related to the category of obedience when it comes to justification.” He does this wanting a third way, a third option—something that is neither obedience nor disobedience. “Because I do not say that faith is an act of obedience does not in the least imply that I am advocated that faith is an act of disobedience.” Now just for the record, I know that Lane does not describe evangelical faith as disobedience—he wants it in another category entirely for the sake of saving his particular construction. But he may only have this third option if God has not commanded us to believe in this way. If He has, then it is fully acceptable for classical Protes- tants to describe our obedience to the command to believe as obedience. If God has not commanded us to believe, then our faith may be described as a

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third thing—an offering, a voluntary motion of the will, or something else. But if God says do x, and we do x, even if He gives the gift of doing x, the motion of doing x is obedience. That is the word we have for doing what we are told—obedience. Lane has only two options if he wants to avoid checkmate here, and both of them are the equivalent of overturning the chessboard and throwing the pieces around the room. He can deny the authority of good and necessary consequence—if all dogs are mammals and Fido here is a dog, then Fido is a mammal. If doing what God says to do is obedience, and true faith is doing what God says to do, then true faith is obedience. So Lane could say, if he wanted, that he is tired of Aristotle. But if he does that, then all bets are off and anybody can believe anything he wants. Everything is then orthodox. Or not. Whatever. The only other option is to maintain that God has never commanded us to have true, evangelical faith, which is the only kind of faith that is the instrument of justification. Otherwise, checkmate. I am not saying this lightly, and I am not doing a touchdown dance while I say it. These are important issues. The issue of obedient faith is not all of the Auburn Avenue controversy, but it is a good third of it. And we have gotten to the point where, to escape the correct conclusion, we must deny good and necessary consequence, or we must say that God never told us to have true faith. The only alternative left is to say that faith, the instrument of justification, is an obedient faith. Now if we do this, it is perfectly acceptable (and necessary) to add that this “obedience” must not be confused with the obedience of our good deeds throughout the course of our sanctification. I wouldn’t mind Lane saying that, because that is what we say. Our faith is obedience, true enough, but it is not the kind of obedience that can be confounded with helping little old ladies across the street. But if Lane does not want to accept these alternatives, as I have no doubt he does not want to do, then he has an obligation to specify exactly what true, evangelical faith (in response to God’s command) is doing, if not obeying.

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If it is neither obeying nor disobeying, what is it doing in response to God’s command? Like I said at the beginning, I am willing to move off this point, but as I understand it, Lane cannot afford to.

GOOD AND NECESSARY CONSEQUENCE JUNE 16, 2008 Lane has picked up our discussion of faith as evangelical obedience here, and Tim Prussic has captured the problem with Lane’s argument in the second comment there at Green Baggins. The issue is not really an exegetical one—I granted in an earlier part of our discussion that his exegesis pointing to sanctification is okay by me in principle (although I obviously have no problem with seeing the same kind of thing at the commencement of the life of faith). But this is not an exegetical issue; it is a good and necessary consequence issue. But Lane has a trump card that voids my application of the laws of logic.

I suspect that Doug and I will simply not agree on this issue, because my position is based on the law/gospel distinction, which I see as being present in the text, and which Doug sees not as part of the text, but as part of the application of the text.

When Lane says that he holds to the law/gospel distinction, as opposed to my application of law and gospel from the text, this means that he holds to the law/gospel hermeneutic. Now if you have a law/gospel hermeneutic, you have decided going into your exegesis what that exegesis can and cannot reveal to you. So if I produced a verse that said “Thou shalt exercise justifying faith as your evangelical obedience,” this would not even be a minor challenge to a law/gospel hermeneutic. A law/gospel hermeneutic would chase the verb around the room, until the aorist imperative ran out the door screaming, turning the verse into gospel, remarkably enough. Look. Here it is again. God commands us to have the kind of evangelical faith that apprehends the righteousness of Jesus Christ and is thereby

690 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JUNE–OCTOBER 2008 justified. Right? People either do that or they don’t do that. Right? Doing that would be best called . . . what? Refusing to do it would be . . . what? I challenge Lane to come up with any phrase or word that describes a response to a command of God that is not obedience/disobedience or an equivalent set of synonyms. If he doesn’t do it by the next round, I will say checkmate.

OBEDIENCE UNTO JUSTIFICATION JUNE 17, 2008 Let me begin this round of my exchanges with Lane with straight up agreement on at least one point. Lane says,

In my opinion, this whole issue is very parallel to the debate about faith’s aliveness. It is not the aliveness of faith that makes faith the instrument of justification. Rather, it is the fact that faith lays hold of faith’s object (Christ in all His righteousness) that makes faith justifying. Justifying faith is always alive. We are not justified by a dead faith. But neither is faith’s aliveness that aspect of faith that is instrumental. I believe that the debate about faith’s aliveness and the debate about faith as evangelical obedience are very similar in structure.

Not only is this similar in structure to the “aliveness” debate, it is the same debate. And the reason I am debating this is not because I want some human work, thought or deed to earn some credits toward justification, but rather because I want us to stop confusing categories. Notice what Lane says right in the middle there.

It is not the aliveness of faith that makes faith the instrument of justification. Rather, it is the fact that faith lays hold of faith’s object (Christ in all His righteousness) that makes faith justifying.

Well, sure. God does not reward faith for the good work of being alive and then make that aliveness the ground of justification. The ground of our

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justification is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But let’s amplify what Lane is assuming here without knowing it: “It is not the aliveness of faith that makes faith the instrument of justification. Rather, it is the fact that faith, being alive as it is, lays hold of faith’s object (Christ in all His righteousness) that makes faith justifying. And of course, if faith were not alive, it couldn’t lay hold of anything, much less Christ.” But Lane only acknowledges that this justifying faith happens to be alive, but he has told us here that the aliveness (or obedience, take your pick) plays no role in the justification that happens. Well, it certainly plays no role as credit or merit or attaboy. But does it really make sense to say that the “aliveness” of the eyeball does not make it see? I could go with the “aliveness” of the eyeball does not look at the aliveness of the eyeball, but for some reason I don’t want to say that “living” is optional for a seeing eye. When I say that faith is alive, I am saying nothing more than that faith is really faith. When I say that faith is obedient, I am saying nothing more than that faith is true faith. If it were not alive, or not obedient, you would not have the same basic thing, only with some of the paint chipped off. You wouldn’t have faith at all. And if you don’t have faith at all, then you don’t have justifying faith, or faith that lays hold of Christ. Put another way, faith must be faith to be the instrument of justification. To be perfectly clear, aliveness is not a good deed, or a meritorious work. The obedience of faith is not credited to us as righteousness. At the same time, life and obedience are essential characteristics of the instrumentality of faith, in just the same way that life is an essential characteristic of a seeing eye. But I do not see blue as a reward or payment for having a living eye. This does not make the life irrelevant to the seeing however. So Lane has not yet answered my challenge. He says that he could come up with plenty of words other than obedience (“there are far better terms”) that describe faith responding to the command of God—but then he didn’t give us any examples. This is where good and necessary consequence draws a pretty tight circle. If obedience is what I am arguing for, then this means that when God commands us to “believe in Christ,” the action of believing and

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the action of obeying are the same action. It would not be the case that obedience is somehow on the premises, but a non-participant. To return to my earlier example, if I command someone to jump and they do, the jumping is the obeying. All this by good and necessary consequence. Lane reminds me of a challenge of his that I have not met, which I shall now do—so as to set a good example.

All this reminds me of my challenge, which I do not believe Doug has met: find one single passage where evangelical obedience and so-called rebellious works are contrasted with regard to justification. By what exegetical method does Doug exclude Spirit-filled works from the phrase “works of the law” in Romans 3:21–31, say?

The second question first. don’tI exclude Spirit-filled works from the Pauline principle stated in Romans 3:28. We are not justified through the instrumentality of dead works, wicked works, or Spirit-filled works . . . because we are not justified by works period. We are, however, justified by the instrumentality of Spirit-wrought faith, and the very nature of this Spirit-wroughtness includes life. So I exclude Spirit-filled “works” from justification because the Bible teaches that we are justified by faith, and not by works of the law. But I don’t exclude Spirit-filled faith from justification. Honestly, to hear these guys describe this, it comes across like saying, “surely, the faith that justifies is always wrought by the Spirit, but the Spir- it-wroughtness has nothing whatever to do with why this faith justifies.” I just can’t make heads or tails of it. On to the first part of Lane’s challenge. And I appeal to this passage without excluding the idea of subsequent sanctification.

Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness. (Rom. 6:16–18)

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Paul here says that there are two kinds of servanthood, both characterized by obedience. The one you obey, you are that one’s servant (v. 16). The obedience to both masters is described as “yielding.” Obedience in one direction leads to death. Obedience in the other direction leads to righteousness, or, to put it more provocatively, obedience unto justification (hypakoes eis dikaiosynen). But thanks to God, though the Romans were once servants of the evil works unto death, they (at the point of transition from one form of servanthood to the other) obeyed the form of doctrine that was delivered to them (v. 17). This form of doctrine is clearly the gospel, because it was the message that brought about their deliverance from their former bondage and ushered them into their current liberty. This form of doctrine, this gospel, is what they had to believe (faith alone) in order to be ushered into this new servanthood of liberty. This is the message they heard and believed, or, put another way, this is the message they obeyed. Because we are talking about their conversion, their transition from death to life, we may contrast their previous life of sin (rebellious works) with the evangelical obedience (synonymous with faith) that escorted them into the liberty of their justification. Please note that this is all of a piece, and so the life of subsequent sanctification is not detached from this at all. But because we are talking about the time when the Romans passed from one condition to the other, we cannot leave justification out of it—that, along with the fact that Paul mentions justification explicitly. Final note. There will be some who maliciously twist the title of this post into evidence that I believe in justification by works. Let them. Their condemnation is just.

DIKAI-INFUSIONS AND DIKAI-IMPUTATIONS JUNE 19, 2008 Lane thinks we are making progress, and I agree. But I don’t think we agree on what that progress actually is. He makes four points that I would like to address.

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The first is on the “aliveness” of faith. “But in what does faith’s aliveness consist? Does it not consist in sanctification? Does it not consist in good works?” No, that is part of what it consists in. Of course, the liveliness of faith does consist in the obedience of sanctification during the course of that sanctification. But the aliveness of faith also consists in receiving, resting in, and relying upon, the Lord Jesus Christ for justification. If faith were not alive, it could not “do” the latter any more than the former. It could not rest without being alive any more than it can do without being alive. Second, Lane tries to answer my challenge to provide words or phrases that describe faith’s “response in justification.” He offers as candidates “the gift of God” and the “righteousness of God.” But this is nothing but a deft sidestep. I didn’t ask for a word or phrase to describe faith’s response in justification. I asked for a word or phrase to describe faith’sresponse to a command, the result of which is justification. Now I agree that our response to the command is the gift of God, and I agree that the gift is the righteousness of God. But neither phrase comes close to describing a response to God’s command to believe. That is what my “good and necessary consequence” argument depends on. God command us to believe. We either do or we don’t. What is that? It is either obedience or disobedience. Category mistakes have Lane all tangled up here. It makes no sense to debate whether or not I gave my wife a birthday present or a necklace for her birthday. We have moved the pieces back and forth enough on this one. Checkmate. Third, Lane was grateful that I excluded works of every kind from justification but is still troubled over my use of the phrase “Spirit-filled faith.” He asks, “Do we have to be sanctified in order to be justified?” Well, if we define sanctification as any form of infused righteousness, then the orthodox Reformed answer to this is clearly yes. Just for the record, I have raised this point multiple times, and no one has offered a satisfactory answer to date. In the ordo, the first item of business is regeneration, which is a transformation in us. It is a form of infused righteousness, a type of sanctification. If my heart is not changed, then I cannot believe the right way, and if I cannot believe the right way, then I cannot be justified. The order we affirm is “change

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of heart in me,” “repentance and faith, “righteousness imputed to me,” and then “ongoing changes in me.” If Lane objects to this, then he can rewrite the Reformed ordo. But when he does that, he ought not to call that rewrite “walking in the old paths.” And fourth, I will refer the readers back to Romans 6, but three points as they go. First, I agree with Lane that the entire course of life is in view there, but we also see the crossroads of two ways of life—the point at which a person transitions from the way of death to the way of life. That point of transition is clearly effected by the obedience of faith. Second, my argument throughout our discussion been a “good and necessary” consequence argument, not an argument from a particular text. If I were to argue that way from a text, Romans 6 would be a good choice, and I believe it establishes the point well enough. But I return to my argument. Lane still has to explain how “Smith is justified by ______the command of God to believe.” I have asked Lane for a word that fits in there instead of “obeying.” His suggestions of “the gift of God” and “the righteousness of God” just make the sentence incoherent. And last, Lane doesn’t want to use the word obedience anywhere close to justification because there are too many occasions for stumbling—if I say that we are “justified by the obedience of evangelical faith,” this is far too close to the precipice of popery for him—because I am talking about justification and obedience in the same breath. People will too easily tumble into a brownie points view of salvation. But Lane can look at Romans 6 and tell at a glance what use the dikai-righteousness-justification word is being put to there. Using the same word for the infused righteousness of sanctification and the imputed righteousness of justification is not a stumbling block when Paul does it. Must not be too hard to tell dikai-infusions from dikai-imputations. I agree. And I don’t think it too hard to tell evangelical obedience that rests in Christ alone from every form of impudent disobedience that doesn’t rest in Him but still wants to use the word obedience. Lane says, “‘Righteousness’ is the word in verse 17, not justification.” But that is not true. The word is dikaiosynen. So we shouldn’t freak out over the word obedience having an interesting semantic range either.

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BUMFUZZLED, POLEAXED, GOBSMACKED, AND BEWILDERED JUNE 23, 2008 Lane does not believe the chess game is over, as he states here. He says he is not going to “answer every point,” which is fine. I would be content if he simply answered the central one. He says this, “Quite simply put, our response to God’s command to come to faith is God’s doing, and therefore of grace, and therefore cannot be put in the same category as obedience.” This formulation really is problematic—our response of faith is from God because God mo- nergistically gives us a new heart, but this repentance and faith is indirectly from God. God gives the fountain, and the fountain produces the water. But Lane is here claiming that God gives the faith directly, and since God is the one doing it, the words obedience and disobedience do not apply. Lane is quite right logically, of course—if God is the one fulfilling His own commands, then we are not responding to the commands in obedience or disobedience. And it is not our faith. If it were our faith, then we would be obeying, and we can’t have that! But the Bible speaks of our faith as a possession of ours. The fact that it was a gift prevents boasting, but it does not prevent ownership.

Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works. (James 2:18)

For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, [even] our faith. (1 John 5:4)

On the “aliveness” of faith, just a few comments. Lane says,

The point I am raising is that the aliveness of faith is not part of the justification mechanism itself. It is a sine qua non, but not a part of the cause. (emphasis mine)

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But of course, living faith is part of the justification mechanism, and is part of the cause. I don’t know why Lane is so skittish about this, when we have vocabulary to guard the heart of sola fide. Faith (the kind of faith it is, living) is in no way the ground of our justification. But faith (our faith) is emphatically the instrument of justification. I grant, enthusiastically, that God does not justify us because He thinks the aliveness of our faith proves that we are admirable human beings. Then Lane says this:

Regeneration happens simultaneously with justification, not before it. I have excellent antecedents in the Reformed faith for thinking so: John Calvin, Richard Gaffin, Sinclair Ferguson, and the entire WTS faculty. Calvin believes that union with Christ is the basic soteric category in which all other things are comprehended.

To which I reply that I am bumfuzzled, poleaxed, gobsmacked, and bewildered. This was one of the earlier points of controversy in the whole FV dealio, when the hounds of confessionalism were baying full-throatedly around the base of the tree that Rich Lusk was sitting in. Union with Christ is the basic soteric category in which all other things are comprehended? Could you please go over the problem with Lusk’s view again? Do you recall that I used different illustrations of theordo (e.g., paper-mache models of the atom) as I was defending Lusk’s view and the traditional ordo? And do you recall the FV guys defending themselves from the charge of heterodoxy on the ordo by pointing to Gaffin and what they had learned at West- minster, along with you apparently? Do you recall that when I raised the point of the primacy of regeneration, leading logically to repentance and faith, not chronologically in stopwatch fashion, that I was responding to you guys making a big deal out of the traditional ordo. And that I said, fine, if you insist, this means that some form of infusion is logically prior to imputation? And now, after all this, you simply announce that “union with Christ” is the basic “soteric category”? Everybody can come out now? Is the coast clear?

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Isn’t this a bit like Grant at Appamattox announcing the great victory that he has achieved for states’ rights?

On Romans 6, is Doug seriously suggesting that dikaisunen means justification? He needs to look up the word in BDAG. When he does, he will find out that the vast majority of the uses of the term simply mean righteousness. It is by extension that the term means righteousness judicially by divine declaration. The word by no means automatically implies justification.

Fine. And my point is that the word obedience by no means automatically implies merit or do-goodery. If you want to be skittish about the word obedience, which you plainly are, my point is that God has no trouble using the same word to describe ethical obedience on the one hand and on the other the state of imputed righteousness from Another, blurring a key distinction upon which the entire gospel depends. Try to defend your skittishnes and insistence on watertight lexical categories with regard to the word obedience by appeal to the one word the Bible uses for justification and personal righteousness. A twofer.

Furthermore, just because one word has an interesting semantic range has nothing to do with whether another word has an interesting semantic range . . . . The point is simply that the semantic range of one word does not determine the semantic range of another word.

Sure. Though I want to argue that obedience has a similarly broad semantic range in Scripture, let me give it to Lane, and say that we are the ones who are using the word obedience with this broader range. To do so is not to complicate things hopelessly and does not jumble the gospel up. If God can use the same word to describe things that Lane insists must be kept distinct, then can we follow His example and keep sanctification-obedience distinct from evangelical-faith-obedience?

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A couple quick things from Lane’s last section, which interacts with the next section of the FV statement. My hermeneutic is basic—historical/ grammatical. God has created us to use language in a certain way. When we come to an authoritative text in that way, the text itself (content-wise) continues to teach us, and we get further lessons in hermeneutics. Put simply, I come to the text of Scripture the same way I encounter all language in this world. If I come submissively, then I learn more. I hear the words of God the same way I first heard the words of my mother. If I am submissive to the words of my mother I learn more about what she is saying to me. So then, the base rock is creational—historical/grammatical. The next level of hermeneutical understanding comes when we “listen to our mother,” allowing the apostles, for example, teach us that Christ must be found throughout all Scripture typologically. It is here that we learn about the Trinity, law and gospel, and the Rock of Christ that followed the Jews in the wilderness. Lane then talks about “good and necessary” consequence. He says that to the extent the Westminster Standards are summarizing the teaching of Scrip- ture accurately, to that same extent they are the words of God. I agree with this completely. The same thing is true of my sermons. To the extent that they are scriptural, they are scriptural. What we don’t have with Westminster (or anybody’s sermons) is a guarantee across the board that what we are getting is the Word of God. But to the extent that we are, we are. I have put it this way before. What the neo-orthodox say about Scripture (a place where one might encounter the word of God, as you might encounter a bear in the woods), I would say about uninspired teaching from men of God. And as Calvin taught, in faithful churches, the people should assemble expecing that encounter. We should expect the same from the confessions to which we have subscribed. So I do affirm good and necessary consequence. I have been arguing on the basis of it throughout this entire exchange. God commands us to believe. We do or we don’t. The words the Bible uses for “doing” or “don’ting” are obedience and disobedience. Therefore, when we believe the gospel, we are obeying. Good and necessary consequence. Q.E.D.

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I also believe in good and necessary consequence when the Westminster divines extract the teaching of Scripture faithfully. This is why, for example, the Word of God tells us that saving grace is really exhibited and conferred by water baptism when applied to worthy receivers. Lane doesn’t like this, but there it is. When it comes to good and necessary consequence, Lane is like the son in the parable who says he will go work in the vineyard, but when the father turns around to see if the boys are coming, non sequitur.

SAYING A FEW AMENS WITH SCOTT CLARK JUNE 24, 2008 Just a quick response to Scott Clark’s comment about faith and obedience. This is also part of my continued interaction with Lane, since Lane handed this round off to Scott. There are a number of places there where I could cultivate my differences with Scott, as though they need cultivating, but let me take this space to agree with a few things. Scott says:

Yes, both the law and the gospel have conditions and imperatives but they are not the same conditions nor are they the same imperatives. The imperative “believe in Christ and in his finished work” is a gospel imperative. The response to the command “believe” is to trust in the finished work of Christ. The answer to the imperative is to rest in and Christ and to receive him alone for righteousness.

This is all very good. The first point is one I have made repeatedly. If God commands us to trust in Christ alone apart from any effort of our own, then obedience excludes any attempts on my part at self-justification. Self-justification would not be obedience to the command believe, but rather disobedience. When I obey the command to believe it done, this is very different activity than an attempt to do it myself.

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As I said before obedience and believing are not necessarily the same thing at all—that depends on whether we were commanded to believe, which we were. Jumping is not obedience unless I was commanded to. If I was commanded not to, jumping is disobedience. I agree with the second quotation also. But if we can have a gospel imperative, then why can we not have a gospel obedience? This is why I consistently use phrases like evangelical obedience—not meaning strenuous moral efforts by evangelicals, but rather obedience in complete restful response to the evangel. If we are commanded to rest, then should we not obey? On the third one, just amen.

NFPV(S)P FOR SHORT JUNE 25, 2008 Zowie. The RPCNA has adopted a report that speaks in loud, muffly tones. The emphasis is mine. The skylarking afterwards is also mine.

1. That Synod DECLARE that we stand in solidarity with our Reformed and Presbyterian brethren in rejecting as contrary to the Scriptures as summarized by our confessional standards the theological views that are generally associated with the movements identified as“the New Perspective(s) on Paul” and the “Federal Vision.”

Some of you may be familiar with the Daisy Cutter bomb. Not a precision instrument. The kind of bomb you drop on terrorist militants and others generally associated with them. Not to mention others not generally associated but standing too close anyhow. Or others just passing by. Get a truckload of that. The theological views “that are generally associated with” the New Perspective on Paul, or the New Perspectives on Paul, or the Federal Vision. Huh. Now there’s a scalpel that is about as sharp as a pound of wet liver. So we have, at a minimum, three distinct movements, one FV and two NPPs, maybe more. Do we condemn those movements? That could be

702 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JUNE–OCTOBER 2008 inferred, but such an approach would be too liberal. We do not content ourselves with condemning the views of these movements, but rather condemn theological views that are generally associated with them. Not specifically associated, mind you, but generally associated. And it is not necessary to specify who has the authority to do the general associating, or, as has happened throughout much of this controversy, the free associating. Richard Gaffin shared the platform once with N.T. Wright. Saw it with my own eyes. Not only that, but he blurbed that infamous Norman Shepherd book. Canon Press is generally associated with me because they publish my books. And Presbyterian & Reformed is generally associated with Norman Shepherd. Not only that, but every current P&R author is also tainted. No one is safe, not because the cooties are spreading, but rather because of how easy it is for them to spread. You know, by this last criterion, I’m in additional trouble because I still get royalty checks from P&R, and they published Norman Shepherd, and Richard Gaffin blurbed it, and I met Richard Gaffin at the Auburn conference, and he was friendly. Of course, this had more to do with him being a Christian gentleman than being Reformed, but try that defense around here these days and see how far it gets you. I was already radioactive, but that doesn’t affect the principle of the thing. If I hadn’t already been tagged, I would have been generally associated with Norman Shepherd through P&R. So the RPCNA has condemned the FV and the horse it rode in on. The RPCNA has rejected the NPP(s) and its sisters and its cousins, whom it reckons up by dozens, and its aunts. The RPCNA has denounced all theological views in the general vicinity of FV and NPP(s), NFPV(s)P for short, but have reglected to specify the radius of contamination. They have also neglected to specify what meter or what scale they are using. And then, Scott Clark had this to say about anticipated reactions from us.

The cynic in me knows that the first reaction from the FV boys will not be, “Oh my, yet another NAPARC denomination has soundly rejected the FV and NPP.” No, the immediate reaction will be, “They

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still don’t understand us.” Wait for it. Five, four, three, two, Hold your ears, one . . . .

No, my first reaction had nothing to do with NAPARC, which sounds like an elite fighting unit out of a Tom Clancy novel. And neither was it “they still don’t understand us.” I am beginning to wonder if the drivers behind all this understand anything. Scott Clark’s method of determining theological verities reminds me of Mencken’s definition of democracy—establishing the truth by counting noses and promulgating it afterwards with a club. And then he adds: Not that we’re keeping score but so far, the OPC, PCA, RCUS, URCNA, OCRC and now the RPCNA have all rejected the FV. That’s the problem with men like Athanasius. No good at math. Don’t know how to count. Can read pretty good though.

PLENTY OF ROOM AUGUST 5, 2008 The historic Reformed faith is a spacious mansion. We really need to stop living in the broom closet that some want to call true Calvinism. And it is possible to come out of the broom closet and not be in the process of leaving the house.

OUR REFORMED FIGHTER JETS JUNE 30 Just a quick answer to two points raised on Green Baggins. The first is a reply to Lane’s question, what do we mean by “hyper-specialized terminology in the regular teaching and preaching”? All technical vocabulary will be specialized, and there is no way to avoid it. I believe that trying to avoid it, especially in theology, will have pernicious effects. So by “hyper-specialized” we don’t mean “specialized.” I believe the context of that section of the FV statement makes it clear that hyper-specialization has occurred when one narrow technical meaning is privileged over the broader

704 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JUNE–OCTOBER 2008 biblical meanings and trumps them. If the narrow confessional use is asserted to be the only possible meaning, and Scripture contains broader meanings, then hyper-specialization has occurred. I agree with Lane that many of the Westminster terms are biblical terms, and I also agree that the Westminster definitions of these terms overlap with biblical definitions. What we are saying is that if “election” means one thing one hundred percent of the time in Westminster (because it is being applied in a precise, theological way), and it means that very same thing seventy percent of the time in Scripture, a Bible teacher needs to be able to say what is going on exegetically that other thirty percent of the time. That is all, and it ought not to be controversial. Lane used the example of homoousias, which is not the best example. In the ancient standards, it means “of the same essence.” There is no scriptural use. and so we are home free. But there is another, more complicated, example, one that is to the point. Consider hypostasis, which is used creedally as well (and in crucial ways), referring to the three hypostases or Persons in the Trinity, and the hypostatic union in the Incarnation. These are their technical and creedal definitions, ones that I would go to the stake for. Yet at the same time, this word is used in the Bible, and the meanings aren’t clustered for us in a tidy way. It means confidencein 2 Cor. 11:17 and Heb. 3:14, confidentin 2 Cor. 9:4, person in Heb. 1:3, and substance in Heb. 11:1. Now what do we do? The creedal use means that I must side-step some scriptural definitions and set others aside while functioning in the realm of these precise definitions. If I confess one substance and three persons in the Trinity, then to throw the scriptural use of hypostasis as substance in there is only going to confuse things horribly. Let me be clear and provocative. There is a legitimate scriptural definition of hypostasis that has no business in interpretations of Nicea, and vice versa. So the point here is a simple one. I can translate hypostasis as confidence in 2 Corinthians without denying the Trinity. And I can see broader uses of the word election in Scripture without denying in the slightest the doctrine

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of decretal, jet fuel election, a doctrine which flies our Reformed fighter jets really, really fast, and which I like as much as anybody. Second point. As it happens I agree that decretal election is very much in view in Ephesian 1. But it isn’t in Romans 11:28.

IN THE SUMP PUMP HOLE AUGUST 22, 2008 I am afraid Scott Clark continues not to know what he is talking about. In his most recent pronouncement, which you may read through here, he says quite a number of false things. But in order to observe some economy of effort, I want to concentrate briefly on three true things that he said. First, he linked to an anonymous attack blog so that you might find out more about the “situation in Moscow.” And if you read that blog carefully, you will certainly learn about a situation that was in Moscow. But it was a pastoral situation, and Charlie has since moved away. You will learn almost nothing about the churches in Moscow, but you will learn a great deal about someone who once lived here Second, before introducing the testimony of someone else who is obviously hurting, Clark said this.

Like a talk-show host, I can’t verify if everything the correspondent claims is true but it resonates with other posts that I’ve received about the CRE and FV-influenced congregations generally.

Like a talk show host, indeed. This is also true—Clark cannot verify everything that was included in this testimony. This would follow by good and necessary consequence because Clark cannot verify anything that was said. People who can’t verify anything can’t verify everything. Stands to reason. And last, Clark concludes with a very important truth.

I may be all wet about the CRE and so may be the correspondents who’ve written to me over the years but, at the very least, these emails warrant serious investigation.

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That’s true too. But of course if Clark were actually toconduct a serious investigation, instead of saying that one would sure be nice, I would be seized with delight and fall out of my chair. And if he were to refrain from writing until after the serious investigation was conducted, I would have to put my feet on my chair and let the blood run down to my head. Letting disgruntled people know what address to send their complaints to is not a good way of getting to the truth. It is to make Westminster West the hole in the basement where the sump pump is.

LOUISIANA BEARSKINNING OCTOBER 4, 2008 Here is an occasion for thanksgiving, along with a need for continued prayer. Yesterday, the Northwest Presbytery of the PCA approved a report finding Peter Leithart within the boundaries of the Westminster Confession. There was minority report that found differently, but the vote at presbytery was strongly in Peter’s favor. The need for continued prayer is because the minister who drafted the minority report has said that he is not going to drop the issue, which means that it will make its way to General Assembly. We have heard from Peter (before he knew how the vote would go) that the whole process was preeminently fair and judicious. So please thank the Lord with us, and please pray that if this case does wend its way to General Assembly that the whole thing will continue to be fair and judicious. Please pray that the handling of this will not resemble in any way the techniques of Louisiana bearskinning.

A COUPLE DOCTRINAL PATHOLOGIES OCTOBER 19, 2008 One of the things we must come to understand is that the various theological and practical pathologies that afflict the Church today are very rarely new. There is nothing, Solomon taught us, new under the sun. A common error in conservative Protestant circles is the error of propositionalism. This is the error that holds that if a particular truth is essential to

707 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JUNE–OCTOBER 2008 the gospel, and that without that truth the gospel would be no gospel at all, then it must follow that it is necessary to salvation to believe that particular truth in all its purity. In the recent doctrinal controversy, that mistake has been made over and over again with regard to justification by faith alone. This is of course essential to a right understanding of the gospel, which is why we must require all our candidates for ordination to get this one right. But getting it wrong does not imperil our salvation, and it does not precisely because the doctrine is true. We are justified by faith alone, apart from works of the law, and this includes the law that “thou shalt score 100% on the justification portion of your Westminster exam.” But I have made this point before, and it is not my purpose to do it here again. For those who have eyes to see, it is easy enough to see. My point here is that this error is not new in the Church, and that it does not owe its existence among us to the Enlightenment or the musings of Descartes. Consider the following from the Athanasian Creed:

Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith; Which faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. He therefore that will be saved must thus think of the Trinity. Furthermore it is necessary to everlasting salvation that he also believe rightly the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the catholic faith, which except a man believe faithfully he cannot be saved.

This is the same mistake, made with the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation. This is propositionalism, and there it was, thriving in the Church a millennium before the first conservative Protestant. Now of course the Trinity and the Incarnation are essential to salvation. If Jesus is not God, we are all still in our sins, and if He is not true man, we are even deeper sunk. But it does not follow from this that a sweet little old Christian lady of 78, who muffs a question about the hypostatic union, is going to thereby perish in flames eternally.

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Many ecclesiastical pathologies in conservative Protestant circles have a long and sorry history in the medieval Church, and some of them long before that. I wrote yesterday about the problem of people cringing as they come to the Supper. One commenter suggested that perhaps this was the result of our “bare memorial theology” of the Supper. But the problem here is the many centuries of cringing, minimal observance, fear and hiding from the host, long before the mere memorial position was ever thought of. People are a piece of work. We are sinners. We screw it up. We don’t believe God is gracious. We don’t believe He is kind. We don’t believe that He loves to forgive sin. And we don’t hold the realities of damnation and hell in the other hand. Only the sovereign grace of God can straighten us out. But thank God that He is well engaged in doing so.

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THE INVISIBLE CHURCH IN THEIR HEADS NOVEMBER 17, 2008 I am just emerging from a busy season, and now have some time to get back to a promise I made to Lane over at Green Baggins. That promise was to finish our conversation, and so here I am. There were three posts of Lane’s, as I understand it, that were waiting for a reply from me. Thefirst has to do with my historical/eschatological church distinction, as a supplement to (not a replacement for) the visible/invisible church distinction. Lane says that my distinction is diachronic, which is exactly true and was the central point of it, while the traditional distinction is synchronic, which is also true, and which is the reason why that distinction needed an additional distinction to be made.

I would ask this question: is it legitimate in any way to say that members of the visible church who are not elect are not part of the church? How else can the visible church be described but as a church that seeks to measure up to the invisible church? Contrary to FV claims, this does not result either in denigration of the church, or in Baptistic thinking (unless the FV wants to take the unprecedented step of accusing non-paedo-communionists of being Baptistic). We do not believe in regenerate church membership for the visible church. That is the essence of Baptistic thinking. What is different about us is that we believe in regenerate membership of the invisible church.

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In order: is it legitimate in any way to say that non-elect members of the visible church are not part of the Church? Sure. Scripture is full of this kind of thing—a true Jew is one who is one inwardly, synagogues of Satan, you are of your father the devil, and countless more. Our whole point is that baptized covenant members are Christians, members of the Church, connected to Christ, etc. in some important sense, not that they are participants in these things in every sense. So, is there a legitimate way to say that non-elect members of the covenant are not part of the Church? Absolutely.

How else can the visible church be described but as a church that seeks to measure up to the invisible church?” Well, another way of saying largely the same thing is to describe the visible church as the church throughout history, and the church of all the regenerate as the eschatological church. When I claimed that historical/eschatological preserved the “necessary distinction” made by visible/invisible, Lane responds here by saying “it does no such thing!” But what I meant was the distinction between professors and the decretally elect. Both v/i and h/e preserve this distinction. The former does it in a timeless way, and the latter in a time-oriented way.

The FV claim is not that the visible/invisible church distinction leads to a denigration of the church. The claim is more modest—that is to say, that it can lead to this, and in our particular wing of the church, that is has. I have lost track of all the people I have met who despise the visible church, but who are faithful members of the invisible church in their head. Lane says that to claim that non-paedo-communionists are baptistic (I would use a small b) would be “unprecedented.” But actually it is not unprecedented at all—this issue has come up quite frequently in all our discussions. I agree with Lane entirely that the position of the Baptist proper is to define the visible church as consisting of the regenerate only. But what we mean when we talk about “bapterians,” for example, is that the same logic in presbyterian circles draws the same kind of line at the Lord’s Table, and not at the Font. Lane believes that the standard for communicant membership in the

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visible church is a regenerate status. I think that this is baptistic in tendency. I do not say this as a taunt at all. It actually explains why I have consistently gotten a more respectful and thoughtful hearing from TR Reformed Baptists than from TR Presbyterians. Baptists frequently get what we are arguing in a way that others do not. And last, as it happens, I also believe in regenerate membership of all those in the invisible church, provided I am allowed to point out an anomaly. If the invisible church is made up of all the decretally elect, and it we try to plot it out in a timeless fashion, then we have a problem with the concept of regeneration. This is because regeneration happens in time. Every person who is elect was once unregenerate, and at some point in their timeline, they are born again. This means that Smith, who is part of the invisible church because he is elect, was a member of that invisible church before he was born again. This is not a reason to throw the visible/invisible distinction away. It is a good reason to supplement it with another metaphor—because that is what these distinctions are. And no glorious thing can ever be described with just one metaphor.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN, HERMENEUTIC? NOVEMBER 18, 2008 Here is my next installment in getting caught up with Green Baggins. I will not be trying to pick up the thread of discussion that was going on prior to this, but simply reply to some of Lane’s concerns expressed in this post. Lane says, “I really challenge the assertion that repentance and faith are only indirectly from God.” So do I actually. Paul plants, Apollos waters, and there you have the external instruments and means. But God gives the increase, and He does so immediately and directly (1 Cor. 3:6). The difference God’s direct gift makes can be readily seen in the fellow who enjoyed all the same planting and watering, but who did not believe. Why did he not? Be- cause God withheld the blessing. Think of it this way. God’s direct gift is His blessing of the intermediate means. If He does not bless those means, then those means will be fruitless. The only thing I would want to resist is the notion that because God’s gift of

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regeneration is immediate, external means are superfluous, and that we get zapped by invisible lightning bolts from heaven. God’s direct intervention is absolutely necessary, but it is an intervention in the world, a world that includes more than just the sinner’s heart. Lane says, “If faith is direct gift from God, then that challenges his assertions that faith is obedience, and yet Scripture plainly teaches that faith is such a direct gift from God.” And yet I would say, anticipating Lane’s next point, obedience is also a gift. And because of this Lane thinks that I am rejecting the law/gospel hermeneutic. And I am. The law/gospel hermeneutic needs to be rejected—but this is not the same thing as rejecting the law/gospel distinction, which I do not reject. “I really think the bottom line on this one is that Doug does not accept the hermeneutical law-gospel distinction (against the whole Reformed tradition), and I do.” The problem with this convenient analysis is that that law/gospel distinction is to be applied to human hearts, and not to the text. The law/gospel distinction is part of the apostolic gospel message—it is not the basis of their hermeneutic. To say it is a hermeneutic is to say that this verse is “law,” and that one “gospel,” and here are the hermeneutical rules to sort it all out. Show me that hermeneutical rule in the apostles. Show it to me in the confessions of the Reformed tradition. And you have not shown it to me if you show me law and gospel. I buy that. What you have to show me is an interpretive grid that sifts all verses out into a law pile and a gospel pile. “Obedience is a law term, whereas faith is a gospel term.” Not a bit of it. Works is a law term, and the problem with works is that it is disobedient. We are commanded to trust God. We are commanded to not rely on ourselves or our own merits. When we obey Him, and I don’t know how else to say this, we are being obedient. Of course obedience is a gift. We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared beforehand for us to do (Eph. 2:10).

AS COOL AS THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PILLOW NOVEMBER 18, 2008 Just one last post here, and I am caught up with Green Baggins. Look at me go.

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There are four basic issues to respond to in this post. The first is that Lane says, completely misunderstanding everything, that the “FV definition of the covenant” says that the “covenant of grace is undifferentiated between the elect and the non-elect.” This, despite the fact that over the last number of years I have made clear that the covenant of grace is not undifferentiated between the elect and the non-elect and have done so more times than Carter’s got pills. I don’t know what to do anymore, so I will just stand here forlorn, arms hanging by my sides. On second thought, I do need to say something. I will be calm. I will be as cool as the other side of the pillow. If Lane can say this, and he is one of the few guys on the other side trying to understand us, heaven knows what everybody else over there is thinking. Some of them might even be thinking that Guy Waters did his homework, for example. Just for the record, this is a misrepresentation simpliciter. The fact that I am sure it was not deliberate doesn’t change the fact that the claim made about us is false and incoherent. To say that the covenant of grace is undifferentiated between the elect and the non-elect covenant members is to say that there is no such thing as a distinction between elect and non-elect covenant members in the first place. To make the latter distinction at all establishes a necessary differentiation, one which has been made clear in other ways explicitly—multiple times. What do they want? Egg in their beer? Second, Lane asks what the “common operations of the Spirit” are for the non-elect. Here is a summary statement of it. The common operations of the Spirit for a non-elect covenant member would include every or any covenant privilege, minus efficacious grace. Those privileges would include, but not be limited to, baptism, hearing the Word, a Christian upbringing, restraint from grievous sin, and so on. Like common grace outside the covenant, such privileges when despised serve simply to heighten judgment when it comes. Third, Lane argues that we ought not to be dismissive of the “judgment of charity” argument, as applied to those instances of Scripture where non-elect people are addressed as the elect, or as part of the elect body. Lane complains that the judgment of charity is airily dismissed by some FV folks and asks us

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to argue “exegetically that the judgment of charity argument holds no water.” Two points here. First, I believe that there are a number of places in the New Testament where the judgment of charity is obviously occurring, in my view. In other places it can’t be occurring. For an example of the former, when Paul tells the Colossians as the elect of God to put on tender mercies, he is addressing the church corporately, and he speaks of them in their corporate identity. As most pastors would, he would probably have his doubts about some of them, but nevertheless addresses them all as the elect of God. He is not making an apostolic dogmatic pronouncement about the decrees. He is talking to a church body, and he calls them the elect of God because all of them are supposed to be, and most of them probably are. The phrase judgment of charity covers this very well. But note in passing that there is a difference between the judgment of charity and a judgment of suspended suspicion. But here are many instances where the judgment of charity doesn’t fit with the text at all. When Jesus talks about branches being cut out of the Vine in John 15, or when Paul uses the same kind of language in Romans 11, the judgment of charity doesn’t fit with the language. If I address a body of a thousand people as part of the elect of God, a judgment of charity recognizes that some of them may well be decretally non-elect. But when Jesus talks about branches being cut out of the Vine, it is not a judgment of charity to say they were in the Vine. It is a state of fact—they were in the Vine that they are being cut out of. The illustration doesn’t work if they were really not in the Vine. The same goes for Romans 11. Decretal election is something that some church members never have, and so to speak of them as though they do is a judgment of charity. But we cannot say of removed branches that they never had branchness. Branchness is not a judgment of charity, but rather a judgment of fact. The last point is that Lane asks what covenantal justification is. “What is it? I would propose that if the FV cannot answer this . . . then it is a very unhelpful term.” I have not written a lot (if any) about covenantal justification, but let me take a stab at this anyway. I would begin by asking a question—is the Church corporately justified? I am a justified person, true, but is there such a thing as a justified people? Sure. Corporate justification language is used in

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the New Testament. “And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed” (Gal. 3:8). Contextually that blessing is justification. The Bride of Christ is justified, and it is clear that an individual who is unjustified can be a member of a justified body. He partakes of that covenantally justified status for a time, but he is removed in due time. He was never justified individually. The warts and blemishes are a true part of the Bride for a time, but they were always blemishes, and they are now removed. A blemish that is part of the justified Bride is not the same thing as a justified blemish. So there we are, all caught up.

PRETEND THE CHURCH IS A BAR NOVEMBER 20, 2008 Lane has answered my catch-up posts in one post here. I will just touch on a few things in response, and then await his next installment. On the first matter, I don’t think we differ anymore. The disagreement now has to do with whether I have changed my views on this (which Lane thinks), clarified my views (a possibility), or remained clear and consistent throughout (a view I find especially attractive). Lane acknowledges that I do believe in the visible/invisible church distinction now. “But I would argue that Doug did not articulate that in RINE, or in the 2002 AAPC lecture.” Let’s settle it this way. If I made it clear back then, I am happy to make it clear again (Phil. 3:1). And if I didn’t make it clear enough back then, my apologies, and I hope I have made it clear now. One last quibble. Lane says that the visible/invisible distinction is “a cross-section of the current church.” This, at best, is an application of that distinction, because the distinction itself defines the invisible church as “the whole number of the elect” (WCF 25.1). That’s not a cross-section. On the second point, Lane continues to reject the baptistic label because for admission to the Table he requires a “credible profession of faith,” which is not the same thing as demanding absolute proof of regeneration. This is quite right, and it is exactly the same thing our Baptist brethren look for when

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bringing someone to the baptistry. The line is drawn in different places, and I am happy to grant that Lane is not formally baptistic at all—he baptizes babies, which is not done in stricter Baptist circles. But there is a mentality that I am describing here. Pretend for minute that the Church is a bar, and see how this works. Call it the security guard mentality and the bouncer mentality. Say we have both baptists and non-baptists who both want to run a peaceful establishment. The baptists check everyone’s ID at the door. The non-baptists kick you out if you make trouble. Lane is saying he is not baptistic because at his bar check the IDs before they let you into the lounge. On another front, Lane raises a really fine point in discussion of this point. Do I really want to argue that the vast majority of the Reformed world has been baptistic (in this limited sense) because it has not been paedo-communion? No, I don’t, not at all. But there are different ways to apply a non-paedocommunion position. Those parts of the Reformed world that have wanted credible evidence of an internal work of grace before bringing a child to the Table are baptistic in the sense I am describing, and the widespread presence of this mentality in paedobaptist circles is precisely the reason why the Re- formed Baptists aren’t going away anytime soon. There will always be someone present who can follow the argument out to a more consistent conclusion. But say a non-paedocommunion church admitted all baptized children as soon as they could recite the Creed. I would differ with that, but it would not a baptistic thing they were doing. On to the law/gospel thing. I would never say that those who hold to a law/gospel hermeneutic are not Reformed. I was just saying that my take on this, using a law/gospel application instead of a hermeneutic, is fully within any sane tolerances. But riddle me this. Is Deuteronomy 30: 11–12 law or gospel? And when Jesus said, “Follow me,” was that law or gospel? And to make the latter question harder, if not impossible, I will not tell you if the quotation comes from Luke 9:23 or Mark 10:21. My penultimate point has to do with Lane’s statement of “the FV definition of the covenant.” Lane grants that I say there is a differentiation within the covenant, but that Wilkins will not unless pressed. I would say that

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Wilkins acknowledges it when asked, and affirms his belief in this differentiation within the covenant. Since this puts both me and Wilkins at variance with what Lane says is the “FV definition of the covenant,” which is of course the heart of the dispute, I will take this as a clean bill of health for both of us. Lane made a good start with an illustration keyed to John 15. Suckers as opposed to fruit-bearing branches are a great way to describe the kind of thing going on there. But he then falters. If suckers don’t have life of any kind, then how did they grow? What are they cut out of? Speaking of me and Wilkins, a friend sent me this snapshot below of the two of us playing Sweet Home Alabama at a recent family advance earlier this month in Florida. The real complaint to be made against Wilkins is that despite my willingness to join with him in singing about his home state, does he ever sing about Idaho? I ask you.

SAVING SMARTS NOVEMBER 25, 2008 Here comes my latest reply to the ongoing discussion at Green Baggins. Lane is interacting with the section entitled “Reformed Catholicity” in the FV Joint Statement. As an illustration of just how much we are talking past each other, Lane says that this “statement in and of itself does not necessarily exclude all works from justification.” The statement itself affirms “that justification is through faith in Jesus Christ, and not through works of the law, whether those works were revealed to us by God, or manufactured by man.” Huh. He that is suspicious, let him be suspicious still. I was glad to see that Lane sees the difficulty of getting infants saved while at the same time keeping the door closed to those with a “completely opposite view of salvation to what the Bible says.” The reason this is difficult for him is because Lane is (unwittingly) denying justification by faith alone. “An adult, on the other hand, needs to understand justification in order to be saved.” Okay. How well must he understand it? What score on the justification test must he achieve? Eighty-five or above?

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Now this is an example of why this section is entitled Reformed Catho- licity. This is a place where I believe that Lane has screwed up the doctrine of justification. But the reason this does not cause me to question his salvation is because the doctrine of sola fideis true. If it were not true, then we would all have to be good little boys and girls, study our catechisms hard, because justification depends on studying hard and getting it right. But for the life of me I cannot fathom how this kind of “working hard” and “free grace” go together. We are justified by the imputed righteousness of Christdespite our failings. Those failings include, but are not limited to, doctrinal failings. On top of everything else, those failings include doctrinal failings with regard to justification. Lane says that adult needs “to understand.” Okay, since our eternal destiny depends upon it, what is “an adult?” When do we become adults, needing to “understand”? How much must we understand? The Confession says that the principle acts of saving faith, justifying faith, are three-fold, and that this saving faith trusts in Christ alone for three things. Quick (and no peeking), what are the principle acts of saving faith? And what three things does this faith appropriate? And if you got any of them wrong, or if you had to peek, you clearly are not justified. How can a person be justified unless he understands the principle acts of saving faith? Not only is this position unfathomable to me, but we need to keep in mind the fact that the person here who insists that justification is a matter of free grace in Christ plus nothing else, nada, zilch (me) is the one under suspicion of smuggling works into the whole business, and the one who openly declares what work must be performed by adults (that of understanding to an unspec- ified level of saving smarts) is the guardian of sola fide. One other quick comment on John 15. Lane says that “the text does say that in terms of what counts (fruit) the unfruitful branches are not alive at all.” But of course, the text says nothing of the kind. The text does not tell us that the unfruitful branches are synonymous with “not alive at all” branches. It does mention the death of these branches, but that death is something that happens in the course of the illustration. “If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into

720 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | NOVEMBER–DECEMBER 2008 the fire, and they are burned” (John 15:6). The death, the withering, happens after the fruitless branches are removed from the Vine, who is Christ. As far as this metaphor goes, they are dead because they are fruitless, not fruitless because they are dead. With regard to Lane’s comments on how Steve Wilkins has supposedly failed to describe the difference between the elect and non-elect, I would refer you to the first comment on that post.

DIFFERENT KINDS OF DIFFERENCES NOVEMBER 26, 2008 Lane thinks that I am taking him to task because he simply affirms that saving faith must contain the element of notitia, which I also affirm. Lane requires this of adults, but argues that even infants have nascent understanding, a view I am also sympathetic with. The reason I said that Lane was (unwittingly) messing around with sola fideis that he was talking about something that saving faith had to go and do. And in his defense, the Bible sometimes sounds like this. “that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Rom. 10:9). But if I took what Lane and I would both say about notitia, and said the same thing structurally about baptism, he would be all over me like white on rice. “. . . arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord” (Acts 22:16). Was that a work? Well, not when Paul did it. Let me propose a solution, and given what Lane has already said here, I think we might actually agree on it. It solves the problems of elect infants dying in their minority, as well as the other stumpers that might come up. Saving faith is something that God gives, and He gives it by means of giving a new heart. That new heart will always behave in certain predictable ways, given the same circumstances. If the circumstances vary, then the responses will also. When God gives an infant a new heart, the child does not start clamoring for his Berk- hof. But that heart will be always be fundamentally submissive and tractable to the truth as it comes to him. The child doesn’t have to go and “do” notitia in

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order to be saving faith, but it will always exhibit the fruit of notitia when that is the appropriate response. We have to say something like this; otherwise saving faith for infants would have to be a different kind of thing than what it is for adults, and I want to argue that it is basically the same kind of thing. Our discussion of John 15, unlike some of the branches in that passage, has been fruitful. First, I grant and insist on an ontological distinction between the fruitful branches and the fruitless branches. I am simply saying that this ontological distinction is not (in this image of Christ’s) that of dead versus alive. The distinction in this image is fruit-bearing vs. fruitless, and abiding vs. not abiding. That is all Jesus says about it. He does not equate death and fruitlessness or death with not abiding. To bring those terms in is eisegesis. Jesus explicitly says that fruitlessness and/or not abiding lead to cutting out, withering, and burning. If fruitlessness leads to a dead withered state, it cannot be a dead withered state. Now I am quite prepared to say that other images in Scripture describe this ontological distinction in terms of death and life. Absolutely. But this is why we must not take these metaphors as though they were schematic diagrams for our systematics texts. In one image, Jesus contrasts the nature of the plant (wheat/tares). In another He assumes a parallel in the nature of the plant life, and attributes the differences to the kind of soil. What we should do is take all the images together, affirm them all, recognize them all on their own terms, and let the Spirit harmonize them. This is distinct, in my mind, from a systematic harmonization. A sow that is washed is, at its best, a cleaned up sow, and this is why it goes back to the mire. Others fall away even though they tasted the heavenly gift.

LIVING FAITH NOVEMBER 29, 2008 When God creates, He does so with authority. He commands light to shine out of darkness, and it obeys. He commands the earth, and the mountains to stand forth, and they do so. It is the same with our new life in Christ (2 Cor. 4:6).

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Now in the Federal Vision controversy, when we speak of living faith, eyebrows go up and our orthodoxy is challenged. This, despite Westminster’s insistence that saving faith is “no dead faith,” which sounds like living faith to me. But it is not enough to show that a doctrine is confessional—it has to flow out of Scripture and make sense in that world first. And so what do I mean by living faith? What do I mean by obedient faith? When God issues the imperative live!, the faith that comes into existence and lives in the manner commanded is being obedient. God says to live and it is doing so. That is the obedience rendered—simply being what God commanded it to be. It is obedient by virtue of the life within it. By obedience in the phrase obedient faith, I am not referring to any of the doing that proceeds out of this being. I am treating obedient faith and living faith as synonymous. The subsequent actions performed by this obedient faith are genuine and sincere, but not perfectly so (because of our remaining sinfulness). Because they are not perfect, they cannot be the basis at all of our justification—our best works would condemn us in the worse way. Neither can the living faith that gives rise to all these actions be the ground of our justification. But it is obedient in its life, and in that living condition it is the instrument of our justification.

DON’T FORCE IT DECEMBER 3, 2008 Lane and I continue on. First, Lane says, “The instrumentality of obtaining the glorified state was works in the first covenant, and faith in the second covenant. This is non-negotiable.” Suppose I were to say something like this—would Lane find it acceptable or not? I am honestly asking. “The instrumentality of obtaining the glorified state was faith resulting in staying away from the forbidden tree in the first covenant, and faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus in the second covenant. This is non-negotiable.” Of course I agree that the first covenant was conditioned on Adam’s obedience. Of course, just as our salvation is conditioned on Christ’s obedience. But obedience is a human action, and

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therefore requires human intentionality. That intentionality will either exhibit faith in God or it will not. Confusion about what makes us perform certain actions is pervasive throughout this debate. Lane says, “to say that Adam would have obtained the highest state by faith alone (indicating instrumentality) contradicts utterly the WCF 7, which explicitly says “upon condition of perfect and personal obedience.” But it does not contradict it at all. I believe that Adam’s happiness in the Garden was upon condition of perfect and personal obedience. But perfect and personal obedience is not rendered by blocks of wood or stone. Obedience is something rendered by someone with a heart. In the comments at Green Baggins, someone argued this way—“there was no need for ‘faith’ prior to the Fall. Faith is evidence of things not seen, whereas Adam knew God.” Adam certainly knew God, but he did not know (in the sense of being able to see) if he would actually die when he ate the fruit of the tree. He had to take God’s word about this on faith, or not. To set faith (a motive for action) over against obedience (the action itself) seems to me to simply be confused. So here it is again—my understanding of the covenant of life. I will leave it to Lane to pronounce on whether I have strayed beyond the non-negotiable boundaries. Adam’s glorification was dependent upon his perfect and personal obedience, which in turn, was dependent upon Adam believing God and taking him at His word. Our glorification is dependent upon genuine and personal faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus, the second Adam. For the life of me, I cannot see the cash value of insisting that Adam had to have the opportunity of obeying God without an attitude of faith. I just don’t get it. On notitia, Lane wants to insist on its necessary presence, while at the same time leaving room for the salvation of infants. And he says, quite rightly, that we frequently underestimate what infants can know. But I want to insist on the salvation of fertilized eggs, as well as infants, and I am quite interested in hearing Lane explain the “non-Bavinck-level” of understanding exhibited by such. I have no trouble saying that incipient faith has the characteristics of incipient notitia, assensus, and fiducia. Emphasis here on incipient, with

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gratitude that God is the one who judges these things. But if, as Lane insists, some recognizable form of notitia must be present, then he must say that all fertilized eggs, dying at that stage, are damned because they don’t have the intellectual wherewithal. And if these people are saved by some other extraordinary exception, then this means that the rest of us have to “get notitia,” making it something we do, which was my point. Lane is tired of John 15, but I am not, really. He says that I ought to be willing to bring in Ephesians 2 into the discussion, where Paul says that in our unconverted state we are dead in our transgressions and sins. This is quite true, and it is just as true of unconverted covenant members as it is of unconverted non-covenant members. Amen. It is also true that in the wheat and tares parable, the unconverted are tares. In the parable of the sower, the unconverted are wheat choked out by thistles and such. This does not give me the right to say that wheat and tares are the same. The way I would apply Ephesians 2 (in my volume of systematic theology, were I to write such) would be by saying that all unconverted men and women are dead in their transgressions and sins. They are dead, not sick. I would also hasten to point out that in other senses they are alive, not dead. For example: “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath” (Eph 2:1–3, niv). Words like alive and dead admit of different senses. In John 15, the converted and unconverted are both in the vine that is Christ. In this image that Jesus used, the fruitless unconverted are removed, and the fruitful converted. Some scriptural metaphors describe an ontological distinction between the converted and unconverted (sheep, goats, wheat, tares, etc.). Other metaphors don’t do that. Systematic theology puts it all together, and this is a fine and a noble pursuit. But what systematic theology does not have the right to do is edit Jesus’s words for Him, telling him that He

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put the withering, dead part description in the wrong part of His metaphor, causing some unstable souls in Idaho to get the wrong idea. A number in the Reformed world need to just admit the obvious—there is a sense in which the unconverted covenant members are in Christ. They are in Christ in the sense described in John 15 if words have any meaning. Why do we want the plain sense of the text in Romans 9, and we find it intolerable in John 15? If John 15 were the only passage we had, the average Arminian understanding would be beating up all the Reformed kids at recess and be taking our lunch money. So here is the quick and easy guide to the FV controversy. Traditional Calvinists take Romans 9 straight up and use their exegetical funny business on John 15. Arminians take John 15 straight up and pull the funny business in Romans 9. FV Calvinists try to take both Romans 9 and John 15 straight up. I was talking to an Arminian gentleman one time (after all this FV business started), and he said something like, “Hey! What are you doing messing around with our verses?” So I read the rest of my Bible too—there are other senses in which we must say that unconverted covenant members have no portion in Him. Amen to that as well. But when you are assembling your verses into that grand system, just forget about the adage that I learned in the Navy, which was, “Don’t force it. Get a bigger hammer.”

SAME FAITH, DIFFERENT FEET DECEMBER 10, 2008 Lane and I continue our discussion. First, on baptism. Lane wonders what “formally” means when we say that baptism formally unites a person to Christ. He then says that if this means that baptism “puts one into the visible community of the people of God.” Well, that is what it means, with this one proviso. We believe that the visible Church is genuinely connected to Christ. I would ask Lane if he believes the visible Church to have a connection to Christ. The Vine has true branches that are removed because they are untrue. We agree with Lane that baptism obligates the one baptized to repent and believe.

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Lane then discusses the details of the word regeneration in Matthew 19, which I think is neither here nor there, because he is arguing that baptism is not in that text. Correct, but it is in the Westminster Confession. Something that is a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, and all that it represents, is surely involved in the regeneration of the world (28.1). How could it not be, when the nations were to be baptized into the triune name, and taught to obey all that Christ taught? Since all that happens in the Regeneraion, how can it not be related? But Lane comes down to the point when he says this: “In other words, according to this statement, baptism initiates one into the historia salutis, but not into the ordo salutis, according to the Joint Statement.” Right. Per- fect. What is what we are saying. Lane represents this as a problem, but why should it be? In the historia salutis, the world is reconciled to God (2 Cor. 5:19). What should an individual person therefore do? He should get his personal ordo baggage onto the historia train, that’s what he should do (2 Cor. 5:20). The world is reconciled; be ye therefore reconciled. The discrepancy only exists for those who are in the process of missing the train, and we shouldn’t do theology based on their neglect. When we deny that trusting God’s promises concerning baptism does not “elevate” baptism to a human work, this only means “elevate” in the fevered imaginations of those who would do such a thing. And yes, FVers are routinely accused of trusting in the sacraments in some kind of popery-jiggery way. Lane unfortunately misrepresents my views when he says: “That FV interpretation says that when the WCF says that the efficacy of baptism is not tied to that moment of time wherein it is administered, it means not a “delayed reaction” type of thing, but rather a “continuous effect” type of action.” I have made very clear that my view is that, for worthy receivers who are converted sometime after their baptism in water, the grace of baptism is a “delayed reaction” kind of thing. It is a “continuous effect” kind of thing only for those already converted, because the grace of baptism is, in addition to everything else, a sanctifying grace.

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But I was heartened to see Lane move closer to the Westminsterian position on baptism than other FV critics have been thus far willing to do. He repeats some of the qualifiers that the Confession gives (those to whom the grace belongs, in His appointed time), but he does appear to acknowledge that this baptismal grace is saving grace, and not just sanctifying grace. It is hard to do otherwise when the Confession says that the grace promised in the sign and seal of baptism (covenant of grace, ingrafting, regeneration, remission of sins, and commitment to walk in newness of life) is really exhibited and conferred on that group of people demarked by all the qualifiers. And for the record, I agree with all those qualifiers. I also agree with exhibited and conferred. Me and the Westminster divines, we’re like that. Lane then discusses our previous interaction, saying, “If one means faith as an instrument of laying hold of the righteousness of another, then Adam did not have faith.” But nobody ever said that the object of Adam’s faith would be the same that ours has to be. All we are saying is that the demeanor of trust in God has to be present at all times for all faithful creatures. The verb is not the direct object. Adam had to have preserving faith in God; we had to have saving faith in Christ. Nobody is saying that Adam had to have saving faith, or justifying faith. Just faith faith. You know, believe what God said faith. The verb is not the direct object. If God tells one man to hop on his right foot and another man to hop on his left foot, they both obey when they believe Him and do what He says. Same faith, different feet. I honestly cannot comprehend what is so difficult about this. We are not trying to get our direct object back into Adam’s Garden. What would possess us to want that? All we are saying is that if Adam’s obedience was the ground of his continued acceptance with God, then the ground of his acceptance was faithful obedience. And that obedience was the probationary requirement. If Adam had fulfilled it, that too would have been the gift of God. We are Calvinists, remember. But Lane said, “Faith isn’t the ground. Adam’s obedience was.” This obedience of Adam’s, was God just looking at the outside of it, not caring what was going on in Adam’s heart? How can you evaluate an action before God

728 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | NOVEMBER–DECEMBER 2008 without evaluating the motive force of it? That motive force would have to have been faith. Lane and I appear to agree on the organic development of notitia, and maybe we are getting somewhere.

LIFE AND EVIDENCE DECEMBER 13, 2008 In the Greyfriars ministerial program, the systematics course is structured around the Westminster Confession of Faith. This means that last Thursday I was teaching through chapter 16, and I noticed a little something.

These good works, done in obedience to God’s commandments, are the fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith: and by them believers manifest their thankfulness, strengthen their assurance, edify their brethren, adorn the profession of the Gospel, stop the mouths of the adversaries, and glorify God, whose workmanship they are, created in Christ Jesus thereunto, that, having their fruit unto holiness, they may have the end, eternal life. (16.2)

A good deal of the FV debate has revolved around faith and works, and the question, “What is the essence of faith?” and “What is evidence of that essential faith?” Or, put another way, what is faith like, all by itself, and what shows us that such a faith is there? As I have insisted on the liveliness of true evangelical faith, the comeback has often been to relegate this liveliness to the realm of evidences. Faith is what it is, and when it obeys, shows signs of life, etc. it is simply doing the good works that testify to the reality of that faith. And, in the main, I agree with that. But not the whole distance. Notice here that good works are the “fruits and evidences” of a “true and lively” faith. Liveliness in faith is not the evidence, but rather is something that needs to be evidenced. Put another way, those who separate liveliness from the essence of saving life, or who in any way make that life merely evidence, are out of accord with the Confession.

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ANYBODY KEEPING COUNT? DECEMBER 16, 2008 Steven Wedgeworth sent me a couple quotes from A.A. Hodge that I would like to pass on for your general edification.

Now, the covenant of works is so called because its condition is the condition of works; it is called also, and just as legitimately, the covenant of life, because it promises life; it is called a legal covenant, because it proceeded, of course, upon the assumption of perfect obedience, conformity in character and action to the perfect law of God. And it is no less a covenant of grace, because it was a covenant in which our heavenly Father, as a guardian of all the natural rights of his newly-created creatures, sought to provide for this race in his infinite wisdom and love and infinite grace through what we call a covenant of works. The covenant of grace is just as much and just as entire a covenant, receiving it as coming from an infinite superior to an inferior. (Popular Lectures, p. 195)

Now, it would have been an infinite loss to us, an inconceivable danger, if God had determined to keep us for ever, throughout all the unend- ing ages of eternity, hanging thus upon the ragged edge of possible probation, and always in this unstable condition, this unstable equilibrium, able to do right, and liable also to fall; and therefore God offered to man in this gracious covenant of works an opportunity of accepting his grace and receiving his covenant gift of a confirmed, holy character, secured on the condition of personal choice. (Popular Lectures, p. 197)

A couple comments. Hodge nails it here. It is called a covenant of works because its condition was one of works, not because its nature was one of works. The nature was of grace—coming as it did from God’s “infinite wisdom and love and infinite grace.” On this matter, the debate between FV advocates and our critics is not over whether Adam had to obey, or over whether his future happiness was

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conditioned on that obedience. It is really over the setting, and that question cannot be answered apart from an understanding of what God is like. Place the covenant of works in the wrong setting, and everything is out of joint. The words can be technically right, but they are not “fitly spoken.” “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver” (Prov. 25:11). Place it in the right setting, and everything is back in order. And is it all right to wonder how many of our fathers in the Reformed faith have been jettisoned by this point, and all in the name of preserving Reformed orthodoxy? Is anybody keeping count?

EXHIBITED AND CONFERRED IS NOT THE SAME AS “EXHIBITED AND EXHIBITED AGAIN” DECEMBER 17, 2008 Lane is continuing our conversation and so shall I. I’d like to begin with just a few quick answers and responses, and then spend the bulk of my time on the Westminsterian view of baptism—which is in sharp contrast to that of many American Presbyterians. First, we do believe that the Lord is present in the Lord’s Supper by means of the power of the Holy Spirit. That should have been mentioned in our statement, and it was not because of an oversight. Second, I would be happy to discuss paedocommunion with Lane when we are done with all this. Third, Lane says that he can envision theologies of connections between Christ and the visible church that are orthodox, and others that are heterodox. So can I, but the whole discussion of John 15 has appeared to revolve around whether there can be any kind of connection between the Lord and the reprobate covenant member (as illustrated by the Lord’s metaphor) which is orthodox and sound. I simply am maintaining that there can be. Fourth, Lane says there is zero biblical evidence to support the conclusion that believers are baptized into the Regeneration. My answer is that for worthy receivers, baptism ush- ers us into all of Christ, and all His benefits. That would include the Lord’s regeneration of the world. Fifth, I thank Lane for his clarification of what he said about the FV position on time lapse baptism.

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So much for the preliminaries. I want to concentrate on Lane’s astonishing statements about water baptism, because I am afraid that Lane has really put his foot in it. First, he dismisses as “frankly ludicrous” the suggestion that FV critics are nowhere close to the Westminster Confession on the subject of baptism. But it is only ludicrous when it can be shown to be so by appeal to the text of the Confession. But that won’t happen any time soon, as we shall see in a moment. Lane says, “My position is that the grace conferred in baptism is a signing and sealing grace, not a saving grace” and “it is a saving grace (in the sense of means of grace) in the sanctificatory sense.” Not content with this, Lane tries to demonstrate his position by saying this: “Rather, the grace exhibited and conferred is that the person now has a sign and a seal of all those things . . . It says that baptism is a sign and seal of the covenant of grace . . . Signs and seals are not equal to the things they sign and seal.” In response to all this, it is worth noting in the first place that the biblical phrase sign and seal comes from Romans 4, and here it is: “And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised: that he might be the father of all them that believe . . .” (v. 11). My question for Lane here is what does seal mean? I know what a sign does, but what does a seal do? Are non-elect covenant members sealed in their baptisms? The one time this language is used in Scripture it is used of Abraham, who already had the righteousness of faith. But the thing that flies in the teeth of English grammar is Lane’s statement above about what the Westminster Confession is saying. And it is unfortunate that he appeals to the grammar of the thing. “This is how the grammar of the passage works.” But here is the text in question—read it carefully, and read it all. Better yet, read it aloud slowly.

The efficacy of Baptism is not tied to that moment of time wherein it is administered; yet, notwithstanding, by the right use of this ordinance,

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the grace promised is not only offered, but really exhibited, and conferred, by the Holy Ghost, to such (whether of age or infants) as that grace belongs unto, according to the counsel of God’s own will, in His appointed time. (28.6)

Lane’s interpretation of this, sketched above, wants to say that the argument presented for the efficacy of baptism is actually arguing for the ineffica- cy of baptism. The divines are telling us under what circumstances the Holy Spirit uses a right use of this ordinance to accomplish His purposes, but Lane limits it to the Holy Spirit talking about His purposes, with the actual work being done by the Spirit directly elsewhere. But that is not what the Confes- sion says. Let me give the amplified and modernized version of the Confession.

The efficacy of baptism is not tied to the moment of baptism; but nevertheless, when administered properly, the grace promised in baptism is not only offered, but really exhibited, and conferred, by the Holy Spirit, to the elect according to God’s counsel and will, when the time is right. (28.6) The “grace promised” is not water baptism. Water baptism is what is doing the promising. If baptism were what Lane is saying it is, then the efficacy of baptism would be tied to the moment of administration. It only makes sense to talk about a difference of time between administration and reception of the grace promised if the grace promised is referring to what baptism signs and seals, what the baptism is pointing to. It is not the grace of having a sign and seal now, but rather the grace promised by the sign and seal. Lane shows that he is missing the argumentation of the Westminster divines entirely (and is therefore out of conformity with the Confession), when he says this: “And if baptism can be a delayed reaction type of thing (which Doug admits), then baptism does not confer regeneration on people.” But this is only the case if the Holy Spirit is limited by time. The grace of baptism is not a causal event in the world, like putting an eight ball in the corner

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pocket. The Confession says plainly that a man can receive the saving grace conveyed by water baptism, before he is baptized, while he is being baptized, or after he is baptized. The Holy Spirit is not so limited as to prevent Him from “conferring” salvation through the instrumentality of events still future. I gave an amplified version of this section earlier. Let me give a truncated version of it, showing the heart of the Westminsterian position.

The grace promised and offered in efficacious baptism is really exhibited and conferred upon the elect by the Holy Spirit’s use of that baptism in His due time. (28.6)

The words themselves are plain enough—they are just inconvenient for American Presbyterians who have accommodated themselves to the surrounding baptistic ethos. Not only are such Presbyterians out of accord with the Confession, but they have been out of accord for so many centuries that when someone just ups and tells them what their document is actually saying, they accuse him of being out of conformity with the Confession. “Ludicrous. Preposterous. Outrageous.” Okay, have it your way. But diagram the sentence in 28.6 first. Show me how it is saying what you claim.

WHAT DOES THE SEAL DO? DECEMBER 18, 2008 Before moving on to our next topic, Green Baggins has taken a moment to respond to my statements about his views of baptismal efficacy. Before I engage with him at this point, let me say again how much I appreciate Lane’s continued endeavors in all of this. Pete Myers, a judicious commenter both here and at Green Baggins, cautions me against making things worse with unnecessary sarcasm, and I certainly do want to take his cautions to heart. From time to time, I haven’t minded making a bit of fun of Gary Johnson’s magisterium, and silicon sister study commissions make it all but impossible to avoid being funny, but I really do take Lane’s efforts seriously, and I really do appreciate them.

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Ironically, the reason I take Lane seriously is that he has demonstrated a trait that Gary Johnson claims is absent in me—a willingness to correct and adjust when shown to be in error, and a willingness to admit that you have been wrong about something. My only problem with Gary’s application of the standard to me is that he wants me to prove I am willing to admit to wrong by admitting to wrong when I still think I am right, which I cannot do, however much I try. So to bring this opening section in for a landing, I do not fault Lane from continuing to see it his way. I don’t fault him for continuing to maintain that he is right when he genuinely believes that he is. And my hat is off to him for the times when he has made corrections despite political pressures not to. I have the same standard for myself, and I really do seek to live by it. Lane was concerned that I had not interacted with his actual argument about sign and seal. I thought I had, but I am more than happy to give it another whirl.

So, once more, THIS is my grammatical interpretation: the words “sign and seal” apply to all the items in the series: ingrafting, regeneration, remission, giving up unto God, and walking in newness of life. It would be exactly parallel to saying this: I believe that God is eternal, unchangeable, and infinite in His wisdom, power, glory, blessing, etc. The words ‘eternal, unchangeable, and infinite’ in the first series are intended to apply to all the attributes in the second series. This is what the FV has missed in its reading of WCF 28.1, and what Doug simply does not understand, or refuses to acknowledge.

Actually, I don’t miss this point at all, and, so far as it goes, I agree with it completely. Yes, baptism in water is all of these things. It is sign and seal of ingrafting, sign and seal of regeneration, etc. I agree. But to repeat my question here, what is a seal? What does seal of ingrafting mean? What does seal of regeneration mean? Lane quotes this:

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Sacraments are holy signs and seals of the covenant of grace, immediately instituted by God, to represent Christ and His benefits; and to confirm our interest in Him; as also, to put a visible difference between those that belong unto the Church, and the rest of the world; and solemnly to engage them to the service of God in Christ, according to His Word. (WCF 27.1)

And he comments on it this way:

So signs and seals represent Christ and His benefits, confirm our interest in Him, put a visible difference between the church and the world, and engage us to serve God. Notice that there is no confusion here between the sign/seal and the thing that is signed/sealed.

Yes, but Lane has still not answered my basic question, the hinge upon which all turns. Lane says rightly that “baptism does NOT do the same thing for all in the church.” This is true. So, is baptism in water a seal of anything for the reprobate covenant member? We agree that it is a sign in either case, but is it a seal? In the section just quoted from 27.1, the one clear description of a sealing activity is the phrase “to confirm our interest in Him.” When a reprobate covenant member is baptized, is his interest in Christ confirmed? Is it sealed? My position here is clear and simple. Christian baptism is a sign every time it is administered, regardless of the person applying it or receiving it. Christian baptism always signs the same thing and it says what God says it says. Christian baptism is also a seal, accomplishing (not just pointing to) its intended effect, in certain specified non-salvific ways—e.g., “putting a visible difference between the church and the world.” But Christian baptism is only a salvific seal with the elect, with worthy receivers, with those who have had all the graces that are signed by water baptism exhibited to them and conferred upon them—they are the ones who receive the seal. So my position is that a reprobate covenant member does not

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have his interest in Christ confirmed, sealed, or conferred. I still don’t know what Lane would say about this—he discusses sealing quite a bit, but this is really the essential question about it, one that he has not answered yet. He also quotes 27.2:

There is in every sacrament a spiritual relation, or sacramental union, between the sign and the thing signified: whence it comes to pass, that the names and effects of the one are attributed to the other. (WCF 27.2)

But this particular point is not germane to a discussion where sign and thing signified are both distinguished and out on the table. It applies when we say the Nicene Creed, and confess that we believe in one baptism for the remission of sin. We are speaking there of one thing in terms of the other, or with both of them together. Or when Paul was told to arise and be baptized, to wash away his sins, it makes sense to speak with this understanding of sacramental union in mind. But when we are talking about the sign and seal on one hand, and the reality that is signed and sealed on the other, we cannot do this. The sign points to the reality, the seal does . . . what? We don’t want to find ourselves with a seal that doesn’t really seal anything, where God becomes a divine huckster, offering unconditional guarantees that guarantee nothing.

For our purposes here, then, we can talk primarily about two parts: the sign/seal, and the thing signed/sealed.

Yes, but this is not the question. We agree on the relation of the sign to the thing signified. What is the relation of the seal to the thing sealed? And is the thing sealed sealed . . . follow me closely here . . . by the seal?

BRIEF RESPONSE DECEMBER 31, 2008 Green Baggins continues our discussion, for which I am grateful. This installment, at least from me, will not be very long. Just a few comments. First, the

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FV statement on “Union with Christ and Imputation” does affirm the central Protestant view of imputation, as opposed to justification by infusion. The second part of the statement distances us as a group only from “particular doctrinal formulations” of that doctrine. Some of us, like me, are comfortable with those formulations, while others, as we point out in the section on intramural disagreements, don’t want to affirm that doctrine “in its classic form.” But we all actually do affirm the doctrine in one form or another. We don’t affirm the infusionist view. On “union,” the word refers both to salvific union, only for those with true evangelical faith, and covenant union, for those who merely belong to the visible church. And last, I thank Lane for answering my questions about signs and seals. I think we are pretty close there. I do believe that condemnation is sealed for those who do not believe, but I also want to say that the salvation sealed in the seal is only for the elect. The cup of blessing is a curse for those who don’t believe, but the intent of the cup of blessing, obviously, is to be a blessing.

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WALKING LIKE A TWO-YEAR-OLD WITH HIS CHIN UP AND HIS CHEST OUT JANUARY 4, 2009 Lane does a good job summarizing my views on law/gospel applications, and my rejection of a law/gospel hermeneutic. Now I have no problem in accepting that the historic Reformed, particularly in early years, accepted the law/ gospel distinction. As do I. But where is the distinction? In my view, it is not to be found in the texts themselves, in a Lutheran sense. Turn this around for a moment. According to Lane, or Scott Clark, what have the Lutherans gotten wrong about the law/gospel issue? What don’t they get right? What is the differencebetween the Reformed and the Lutherans on this issue? Lane has a little fun at my expense with “golawspel,” as though I were the one confounding these categories. Well, let me have a little fun in return. Who would best be described as a golawspel preacher? The man who says that the Mosaic economy was administration of the covenant of grace, with him maintaining this robustly, just like the Westminster Confession of Faith tells him to, or the fellow who says yes, that may be true in some sense, but the Mosaic economy must also be understood as a recapitulation of the covenant of works? Who is the hot golawspeler now? The Westminster Confession says that the administration under Moses was gracious, and that it was administration of the covenant of grace. So I take this (since me and the Westminster divines, we’re like that), wrap it around my neck, and go walking down the road like a two-year-old with his chin up and his chest out.

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This means, incidentally, that if there really were a law/gospel hermeneutic, then the Westminster Confession requires us to take everything from the pen of Moses as an example of the latter, not the former. We are confessionally bound to say that our hermeneutical approach to all of Moses must be that the text before us offers grace. But of course, a hermeneutic that says that each verse is both, because of that handy-dandy recapitulation business, is what theologians of another era would have called “hopelessly confused.” But regardless, some people want to say that this administration of grace is tightly woven in with a covenant of works, like a Scandanavian shield-maid- en’s blonde braids, sheer law woven together with free grace, and there you go. What’s so hard to understand about that? And, then, to crown all these discussions, the people who want to intertwine these two covenants, one of grace and the other of works, want to accuse me of coming up with some kind of mutant golawspel. Heh. And, as Paul might say, were he here, again I say heh. To reiterate my view. For the regenerate heart, it is all grace, nothing but grace, grace from top to bottom. All God’s words, all God’s intentions, all God’s promises. For the unregenerate, it is all demand, all law, all “do this and live.” Now, who understands God and His Word rightly? And who distorts it? Correct, the regenerate man understands it all correctly. But God anticipates and uses the incorrect understanding, and He uses it to bring people to Him- self. The Law works them over, and Christ saves them. There are a couple other things that need to be addressed. Lane says this:

On the one hand, there is no condemnation for the believer who is in Christ. On the other hand, outside of Christ he is still condemned. As Q 97 of the WLC specifically states, the first use of the law is common to the regenerate as well as to the unregenerate.

What kind of sense does this make? “On the one hand, there is no drowning for the one who has been hauled out of the pool by the lifeguard. On the other hand, back on the bottom of the pool, he is still drowning.” One problem though—he is no longer on the bottom of the pool. That is where this argument seems to fail, at least as I see it, though I could be wrong. The

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WCF application of the law this way to the believer makes sense only as a hypothetical. I know that if I were outside of Christ, if I were left to my own devices, I would be condemned. I was, by nature, an object of wrath, just like the rest. I was, before having been rescued, on the bottom of the pool. But I am not there now, and it is sheer unbelief to talk as though I were. Lane wants me to respond to this, and I shall in a moment. But let’s hear him out first:

Let Doug respond to this argument (as a test case for one of the saving benefits) that so far has gone unanswered by any FVer: 1. Forgiveness of sins requires the forgiveness of all sins. 2. Original sin is part of all sin. 3. Therefore the forgiveness of sins requires the forgiveness of original sin. The two are inseparable. 4. Forgiveness of original sin implies regeneration. 5. Therefore forgiveness of sins implies regeneration. 6. Therefore, anyone who has their sins forgiven is also regenerated. 7. Therefore, anyone who is not regenerated does not have their sins forgiven. 8. The non-decretally-elect are never regenerated. 9. Therefore the non-decretally-elect never have their sins forgiven, even temporarily. Thus, there are no temporary forgiveness benefits for the non-decretally-elect. They never have their sins forgiven in any sense of the word. What more important benefit is there of Christ’s death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and enthronement than forgiveness?

And I respond to it this way—the reprobate covenant member is unforgiven. He does not have the root of the matter in him. He is a tare, not wheat. He is a cleaned-up pig, not a lamb. He is son of Belial and the devil too, not in that order. He is damned and going to hell. His baptism places greater covenantal condemnation on him, not lesser. The only kind of forgiveness he could possibly have is a forgiveness that is consistent with the common operations of the Spirit, whatever those are. Last issue. Lane asks:

The question that is still unanswered is this: how come the first paragraph seems to affirm the IAOC (which is more specific than

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imputation in general), while the second paragraph and the “Some Points of Intramural Disagreement” seems to disaffirm the IAOC? It feels a bit like doubletalk here.

The disconnect that Lane is struggling with is, I believe, this. I believe that it is fair to say that all FVers affirm the heart of imputation, and the substance of what is aimed at with the IAOC. Where we have our intramural disagreements and discussions is over the mechanisms by which this forensic reality might be accomplished. What we all agree on is that the mechanism is not God infusing righteousness into us, and then pronouncing that He finds that it has been infused to adequate levels.

KEEPING WORKS AND GRACE DISTINCT JANUARY 21, 2009 I need to get caught up with Lane, being two behind. This is a response to his post here. Three points: The first is that Lane points out an apparent contradiction between me and my friend Steve Wilkins, and asks “which one is correct?” The answer, of course, is that I am. Seriously, the quote from Steve that Lane offers is one that I differ with at face value. But my understanding is that Steve later qualified his views on this in his interactions with the PCA, acknowledging that the difference between how the elect and non-elect covenant member is a qualitative difference, and not just a difference in duration. That in my mind is the essential issue. But whether or not Lane has understood Steve at this point is a separate issue—he has certainly understood me and my insistence on the absolute necessity of the new birth in order to receive everlasting forgiveness of sins (the kind the truly converted receive). But if Lane’s complaint is that Steve appears to use “forgiveness” equivocally, sometimes attributing that condition to those who are not among the elect, I suggest he take his problem up with one who equivocates on a much grander scale (Matt. 18:21–35). The second point is on the imputation of the active obedience of Christ. I said that FV all affirmed the heart of this doctrine, while we were divided on the mechanism whereby this might happen. Lane said that this was as

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“clear as mud.” He wants to know what I meant by “the substance” of what is aimed at by the IAOC. What I meant is that we are justified by the righteousness of another credited to us, and not by our own righteousness. That is the substance. The differences arise on the mechanisms of imputation—is it a forensic declaration as traditionally affirmed by the Reformed (some of us, including me, say aye), or might it be a function of union with Christ? All of us reject any notions of infusion. While a “not guilty” verdict is imputation, so also is “I now pronounce you husband and wife.” The third point is that Lane denies that the view that the covenant of works is republished flattens the two covenants. I guess my only respond here is that it must be Lane’s turn to be clear as mud. He says, “Nevertheless, to the extent that OT Israelites had the faith of Abraham, they belonged to the CoG. The CoW was an overlay in the Mosiac economy.” But look at what Westminster says in contrast this:

V. This covenant [of grace—DW] was differently administered in the time of the law, and in the time of the Gospel: under the law it was administered by promises, prophecies, sacrifices, circumcision, the paschal lamb, and other types and ordinances delivered to the people of the Jews, all foresignifying Christ to come; which were, for that time, sufficient and efficacious, through the operation of the Spirit, to instruct and build up the elect in faith in the promised Messiah, by whom they had full remission of sins, and eternal salvation; and is called the Old Testament (WCF 7.5).

An OT Israelite who did not have the faith of Abraham was abusing the covenant of grace. He belonged to the covenant of grace, so that if he did not have evangelical faith, this meant that he was a covenant breaker. One additional point. Lane says this: “However, the aliveness of faith is not the reason that it lays hold of Christ.” But of course the liveliness of the faith is the reason it lays hold of Christ. If it weren’t alive, it couldn’t do that. What Lane should have said here (and what I do say) is that the aliveness of the faith is not the reason that Christ lays hold of me.

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WESTMINSTERIAN ASSURANCE JANUARY 22, 2009 In his most recent post on assurance and apostasy, Lane frames the question of assurance this way: “Can a believer be absolutely assured of his own salvation in knowing that he is decretally elect?” In this, as with so many other details of our controversy, what Lane says is suspect when you hold it next to the plain teaching of the Westminster Confession. Lane says that I am assured of my salvation in knowing that I am decretally elect. In other words, decretal election with my name on it is in the premises, from which I derive the conclusion that I am saved. No. It goes the other way. Incidentally, I would agree with Lane’s statement if it read this way:” Can a believer be absolutely assured of his own salvation, knowing that he is decretally elect?” Just drop the word in and we’re good. Confidence that you are decretally elect is the conclusion, not the premise. And this is what Westminster teaches. This is the Christian receiving assurance—“being enabled by the Spirit to know the things which are freely given him of God, he may, without extraordinary revelation in the right use of ordinary means, attain thereunto” (WCF 18.3). We cannot know the decrees without extraordinary revelation (Deut. 29:29). The Confession says, quite rightly, that we do not come to an assurance of salvation from any kind of revelation like that. This does not mean that I cannot have assurance, or that I cannot know that I am decretally elect. Of course I can know that. It wouldn’t be assurance if I didn’t. But my decretal election is what I know; it is not how I know. See, I underlined it. Hardly ever do that. I can know that God in fact elects His people by name because that is revealed. But the list of names is not revealed, and my particular name is not revealed to me. So if my name is not revealed to me as being there, then how can I know that it really is there? Again the Confession. The Spirit enables me to know the things given to me, and this knowledge grows in me through a right use of ordinary means. The “ordinary” here contrasts with the “extraordinary” of revelation; it does not mean, for example, that the Westminster believed preaching to be earthly and mundane. It is just that you can see and hear the preacher, and you cannot read the decrees. So this is referring to the means

744 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | 2009 of grace that God has established for us. As I read the Bible, and pray, and worship with God’s people, and improve my baptism, and come to the Lord’s Table, the Spirit enables me to see what I have been given in all these means, and, as He enables me, I through this right use of ordinary means, come to the conclusion that I am decretally elect. The Spirit enables me to see Christ in the sermon for me, Christ in the baptismal waters for me, Christ in the bread and wine for me, Christ in the passage I read this morning for me, and so forth. The Spirit enables me to look through all these means to see Christ, and, as a consequence, my eternal election. When he gets to apostasy, a simple mistake about terminology trips Lane up again. He says of us that “they use the term ‘Christian’ of someone who is baptized, not of someone who is decretally elect . . . One gets the distinct impression that that use is the only use they want to use.” But of course, we want to use the term both ways. I did that in RINO, at the very beginning of this controversy, and I will be doing it next Lord’s Day in a message entitled “The Absolute Necessity of the New Birth.” Not all Israel are Israel. Not all Christians are Christians. Not that hard to follow, people. I won’t interact a lot with the section on John 15 because we have already flogged that quite a bit, other than to say that Lane says the vine is the visible church. I am fine with that so long as he is good with Christ identifying Him- self with that visible church. Jesus said, after all, “I am the Vine.” One other thing, a quick question. Lane says, “To say that anyone has temporary saving grace and then loses it is Arminian.” Lane, are you willing to say that Augustine was an Arminian?

COVENANT SUNGLASSES AND THE DECRETAL SUN JANUARY 27, 2009 My thanks to Lane for working through our Federal Vision statement. This response of mine should tie that one off with a bow, and so it will be off to the next thing. Perhaps paedocommunion if we can work out a system. I agree with Lane that IAOC is not the same thing as imputation in general. And I agree that imputation proper appears to be at stake in some FV

745 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | 2009 writers. But this is not the same thing as saying that it is at stake in the FV position itself. Neither is it the same as saying that the substance of what imputation points to is at stake. I say this as one who affirms all forms of imputation as understood by the classic Reformed theologians—active, passive, and around the block three times imputation. Let me put it this way. Lane says, “If one disagrees with the transfer sense of imputation, one automatically exits the entire Protestant camp.” It is not that simple. If someone rejects the Roman teaching of infused righteousness being the basis for justification and says that the way we are credited with the righteousness of another is like a marriage, then I don’t see the basis for Lane’s statement. All the goods of the husband legally become the possession of the wife when they are united, and this happens even if there is not a forensic declaration concerning the property. Now I still believe that logidzomai includes an important forensic element, as when the foreman of the jury reads the words “not guilty,” but I don’t know that to use the union/marriage analogy instead of the courtroom analogy is enough to unProtestant somebody if the substance of an “alien righteousness” is still there. I have been the foreman of a jury, and we found the defendant guilty of murder. I have also been the presiding minister at many weddings, and have many times announced that the man and woman are now husband and wife. In the first instance, it is was forensic declaration simpliciter, and it was directly aimed at the one point at issue. In the latter instances, there have been many forensic ramifications, which are very much there, but are nevertheless backgrounded. He kisses the bride, and the ceremony does not include going through her bags to see what he got. This is not to agree with the union-imputation emphasis necessarily, but simply to point out that a union-with- Christ model of justification does not necessarily (depending on how it is framed) exclude complete dependence on the righteousness of another. On the covenant of grace and covenant of works, Lane acknowledges (and I acknowledge that he acknowledges) that the Mosaic economy is “part of the Covenant of Grace.” But he limits this drastically, saying it is true “regarding the ordo salutis.” He then refers to the “CoW aspect of the Mosaic economy”

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perhaps having to do with Israel in the promised land. Two problems. The first is that according to the Westminster Confession (7.5), the entire apparatus of the Mosaic economy was an administration of the covenant of grace. The West- minster divines say the covenant of grace was administered through “promises, prophecies, sacrifices, circumcision, the paschal lamb, and other types and ordinances delivered to the people of the Jews,” and Lane says that it has reference to the ordo salutis, something conveniently invisible. Once again, Lane needs to take an exception and notify his presbytery. The second problem is that you have two different covenants (works and grace) intertwined in quite an unbelievable way. It is not enough for Lane that Steve Wilkins affirms a qualitative difference between the elect and reprobate covenant members—Lane demands that Steve tell us exactly what that qualitative difference is. So turn about is fair play, and the measure with which you measure you shall be measured. I would like to ask Lane precisely what the boundary line is between the respective covenants of grace and works in the Mosaic economy. What is it? Where is it? And please keep the distinctions confessional—on this point, a train already missed. On the living nature of saving faith, Lane and I agree that living faith is a sine qua non of justification. We also agree (though Lane doesn’t see it) that the living nature of faith is not a cause of justification in the sense of being a ground or basis of that justification. Fine. But it is Lane who has some categories confused. He says, “the instrumentality of faith is in laying hold of Christ.” Correct again, but actions like “laying hold of” are not actions performed by dead things. It is as though Lane were saying that the right fielder extended his glove and caught the ball, and the instrumentality of that catch was the “extending of the arm.” And I say, trying to be helpful, that “he couldn’t have done this without being alive at the time.” But Lane objects to this simple and obvious qualification as some kind of intrusion. Extending your arm is a lawful instrument, but extending a living arm isn’t? If this keeps up much longer, I am going to give up theology altogether. I am glad for Lane’s qualifications on assurance of salvation, and I apologize for misreading his earlier statement. His paragraph on assurance here is quite good, and I agree with it. Knowledge of decretal election is what we come to

747 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | 2009 know when we come to assurance by a right use of the means of grace at our disposal. And this, please note, is one of the central themes of the FV. We look at the decrees through the lens of the covenant, and not the other way around. And when we are faithful in our use of these covenantal means, we do make our calling and election sure. We can see the decrees, but only if we don’t try to see them directly. On Augustine, let me make my question more specific. Lane said earlier that to maintain the possibility saving grace could be lost was Arminian, even if you believed in decretal election. Well, that was Augustine. He believed in sovereign election, obviously, but he also believed that true regeneration was reversible. So then, according to the standard set for us all, was Augustine an Arminian?

LOOK AWAY, MARTIN SAYS JUNE 16, 2009 In Torgau a wretched little woman once came to me and said, “Ah, dear Doctor, I have idea that I’m lost and can’t be saved because I can’t believe.” Then I replied, “Do you believe, dear lady, that what you pray in the Creed is true?” She answered with clasped hands, “Oh, yes, I believe it; it’s most certainly true!” I replied, “Then go in God’s name, dear lady. You believe more and better than I do.” It’s the devil who puts such ideas into people’s heads and says, “Ah, you must believe better. You must believe more. Your faith is not very strong and is insufficient.” In this way he drives them to despair. We are so constructed by nature that we desire to have a conscious faith. We’d like to grasp it with our hands and shove it into our bosom, but this doesn’t happen in this life. (Martin Luther, Table Talk, p. 453).

ALL I HAVE AROUND HERE IS KINDLING JULY 4, 2009 Not sure what the cause of my lollygagging was, but I just now got around to reading Scott Clark’s gentle rebuke of John Piper, for the sin of having anything to do with me. You can read that rebuke here.40

40 Looks like the original post was removed and replaced later with this one..

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If you want, you can slog through all the comments (which I didn’t quite get done). If you do, take particular note of Frank Turk’s questions. Turk and Piper have enough distance to actually examine the arguments and implications, and interact with them. They are not distracted by any supposed need to defend their turf. I won’t go through the thing point by point because you don’t need to split the same cord of wood twice, and I have done this three or four times already. About all I have around here is kindling. But there was one thing that jumped out at me that I did want to respond to.

Had Wilson been examined by Classis Southwest US in the URCs or some other orthodox, confessional assembly that exam might have more significance.

If this is an invitation, then I accept it. I would be happy to set aside any time deemed necessary for a real theology exam. If presented with such an official invitation, I would be there with my hair in a braid. It would surely be untenable to say that my examination by the CREC was a toy exam and didn’t count, and yet refuse to administer a real exam when asked. Wouldn’t it? Those who have followed this controversy for any length of time know that I have been unable to get any of the Defenders of the Faith to agree to a public debate where they could, you know, actually defend the faith. In the book of Acts, when the Spirit descended the apostles spoke the Word with great boldness. We are in a different dispensation now—when the Spirit falls today, the heirs of the apostolic gospel become Coy and dig a hole in the carpet with their toe. But it does not need to be a debate. I would happy to be examined by my URC brothers in Classis Southwest US. I would be happy to be examined by a committee of the whole, or by an assigned committee. You ask the questions, and I will answer them. You can ask as many as you want, and with all due allowances for bathroom breaks, for as long as you want. No questions

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are off limits. The only condition I would have is that the whole thing be recorded, and that I get a copy of the recording. Deal?

TAKING THE BUBBLE WRAP OFF TRUE FAITH JULY 10, 2009 I am going to file this one under Auburn Avenue Stuff, even though it is part of my paedocommunion discussion with Lane. This is because in the second half I am going to address a few things that came up in the comments over at Green Baggins. But first let me address Lane’s questions about paedocommunion. I think that Lane is right—there is a goodish bit of common ground here, more than we are used to. Lane is right that covenantal representation is big when it comes to the question of baptism. You could even say that this is one of the differences between presbies and baptists—all Christians of course believe in “covenant baptism,” but for the baptists the relationship is between the individual being baptized and the covenant itself, Christ Himself—that’s what makes it a covenant baptism. But for the presby, other people are involved. If I am going to baptize a baby who cannot speak for himself, then I have to have some sort of warrant to do so. There is no way to say that I am authorized to baptize this baby (but not that one) without appealing to the covenantal reality of that family’s place within the new covenant. So Lane and I agree there. But how could the covenant of the family be so essential in the administration of one sacrament, and non-existent in the other? One commenter said that this kind of representational thinking in the Lord’s Supper amounted to Judaizing, which I cannot see. Might not be right, but if it isn’t, I don’t think it is that kind of error. If a small child is admitted to the Table, then he needs to be brought. And those who bring him need to have the authority to do so, being the same ones who brought him to his baptism. And those who receive him need to receive him on the basis of that authority. Appealing to that child’s baptism as the sole basis for admission to the Table just pushes the problem back a step, and by this time all our baptist friends are hooting and throwing popcorn. So what I am saying is that the

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organic structure of the biblical family is a new covenant reality. It is not the only reality, and I am not urging a patriarchy that trumps the new family that God has created in the Church. But it is very clear that the family household is not a new covenant nullity either. Now this means that if a church existed where the small children were not coming to the Table, but everybody (including them) knew and understood that they were participating through the representation of their father, I would disagree with this, but would not believe that this practice would create the same “assurance of salvation” pathologies that are routinely created when children are excluded and not partakers of the Table at all, and they are excluded because the spiritual authorities are not yet adequately assured of their individual regeneration. Lane says a couple of other things that I should comment on. “Never- theless, we still have to stress repentance and faith for each person. What is required for being present at the Lord’s Table?” Well, first you have to be a nobody. The kids qualify—just like the rest of us! But that wasn’t Lane’s point. He wanted to know if I believe “faith is necessary for proper partaking of the Supper.” Absolutely. Anyone who comes to the Table without true faith is dishonoring it and harming his own soul. The question here though is a little more subtle than that. Granted that true faith is necessary, how does this faith arrive? If it is genuine faith, how does it get here? One view says that it is shipped, and it arrives in a box. You open the box, take the bubble wrap off, and hold it up so the elders can see if it is the same kind they got. The other view of faith is that it grows. Timothy had the same faith that his mother and grandmother had (2 Tim. 1:5). Now, if true faith can grow from a seed, those guarding the Table must know what it looks like at every point along the continuum—first the blade, then the ear, then the full head. My toddler grandchildren coming to the Table have true faith—but it is blade faith. We’re not anywhere near done. If you read down through the comments at Lane’s blog, you will see that the discussion got off on what “sign and seal” means. One commenter posted an outstanding quote from Bob Godfrey that I would like to begin with. Godfrey

751 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | 2009 said this at a conference in 1997, back in the times when it was still possible for Reformed theologians to mention their Reformed theology in public.

I am more and more convinced as the years go by that the genius of Reformed theology is the way in which it balances the issues related to regeneration with issues related to covenant—and that the danger that Reformed theology faces is that it can put to much stress on regeneration and undervalue to covenant, or, put to much stress upon the covenant and undervalue regeneration. And in a revivalist world that’s worried about formalism, Reformed theology, I think, tended to get skewed into thinking a great deal about regeneration and saying over and over again, “Our children are not automatically regenerated. We have to worry about the spiritual state of our children. We have to get them converted.” Now let me be clear, our children need to be regenerated. And there is some legitimate concern that Christian parents should have about their children . . . those concerns need to be maintained. But I think they go too far when we conclude because we’re not sure that our children are regenerated, we must treat them as unregenerate, and strangers to the covenants of grace, until we’re sure they are regenerated. And I’ve known some very consistent Baptists, thankfully not many of them, who won’t let their children pray, who won’t let their children sing “Jesus loves me, this I know,” not because they’re exclusive Psalm-singers, but because they don’t want their children involved in formalistic exercises that may not truly reflect the state of their heart. Now the danger on the other side has sometimes been manifested in a hyper-covenantalism, occasionally occurring amongst the Dutch, but amongst Presbyterians too, where parents just blithely assume that because they’re their children they’ll be fine, they’ll grow up to be good Christians, and if they run amuck as teenagers, well, boys will be boys. That’s a very dangerous attitude. That’s a kind of hyper-covenantalism. . . . But then, how are we to think about children? How are we to relate to children? And there, I think, baptism stands at the very heart

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and center of what the Lord is saying to us and how we ought to think. . . because baptism says, “I will be a God to you and to your children. You are in covenant with Me. I have made promises to you. . . and you don’t need to have any doubts about that.”

You can’t hear me, because this is just an ordinary website, but just imagine me singing a three-fold amen. I believe in the objective value of baptism but hold that it is only a means of grace for those with true, living, evangelical faith—that being the only kind that God gives His elect. I reject the kind of ex opere operato efficacy that many of my adversaries reject, and I do so for the same reasons. No hyper-covenantalism for me. But I also reject the teaching of the wet dedication baptists. According to Westminster, baptism is a “sign and seal” not “sign or seal.” Signs signify. Seals do more than that. When we say that baptism is a sign and seal of the covenant, we are saying more than that baptism is a “sign and another kind of sign.” Of course, this sealing is for worthy receivers only, those who have lively, evangelical faith. Those who have the reality that is signified, and only those, also have that reality sealed. But it is sealed, according to Westminster, by the water of their baptism. The grace signified (sign) by their baptism is really exhibited and conferred (sealed) at God’s appointed time, in the power of the Spirit. This is not a place where I have to take an exception to Westminster. I would be happy to do so and have taken an exception to the Westminster Confession at other places. But I don’t have to do so here. Their position is mine. Is there an objective reality to baptism if we are talking about someone who is reprobate? Well, yes, it means something, and it obligates him to the kind of repentance and faith he is failing to exhibit. But this objective reality is not, at the final day, a gracious reality at all. The common operations of the Spirit within the covenant are like a ramped up common grace. Real gifts are given in the present, but because they are spurned, they grow into greater judgment. The quote from Bob Godfrey above was posted in the comments section at Green Baggins by Jack Bradley. You could head over there now to hear him denounced for his “heresy,” but you will be disappointed. The only thing you will hear when you get there is crickets.

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FAIR MINDED CRITICISM JULY 18, 2009 This is what fairminded criticism of the Federal Vision looks like. I have some (fairminded) quibbles here and there, but in the main I think the criticisms are accurate. FV men need to take these criticisms seriously, and if they prayerfully decide there is something to them, take them to heart.

FOR THE MOST PART AUGUST 15, 2009 For those who still care about these issues, allow me to point out what Calvin says in the course of today’s reading. He says that in order to understand the biblical phrase “many are called but few are chosen” we have to realize that there are two kinds of call, general and special. The general call comes to all indiscriminately, even to those who hate it. The special call is the inward illumination of the Spirit. Now, here comes the curve ball. Is this special call for believers alone? Calvin says, “for the most part.” There are a few who are illumined only “for a time.” But God subsequently “forsakes them on account of their sheer ungratefulness and strikes them with even greater blindness” (Institutes 3.24.8). This is Calvin at his best, honoring the text of Scripture before the demands of a system. Does he have a system? Of course. Is that system Calvinistic? Heh. Is his system more or less nuanced than the system of some of his modern followers? Guess. Is he going to be cast out by these modern followers? No, for two reasons. First, because he is dead and we really don’t have to read his stuff anymore. Second, we have already named too many things after him.

SPITTING SIXTEEN PENNY NAILS SEPTEMBER 11, 2009 An evangelical newspaper in the UK has printed an excerpt from a book entitled Risking the Truth in which Ligon Duncan says some creative things. I am quoting the section that deals with me by name, and my commentary is interspersed.

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Douglas Wilson of Moscow, Idaho (perhaps the best-known advocate of the FV), highlights the following as concerns of the FV:

Notice that I am introduced as the “best-known” advocate of the FV. I am also represented as highlighting the “concerns of the FV,” with the clear implication that these are my concerns, as in, my positions. The print version of the newspaper did not footnote the sources for this summary of mine, and neither did the web version. Given what follows this lead in, I would be most interested in being allowed to have a look at those footnotes, supposing them to exist.

(1) to articulate and practice a more consistent view of the place of children in the covenant community and in relation to the promises of God [this often translates into the practice of paedo-communion in FV circles];

This first one is a good start. It’s a fair cop. (2) to use language more biblically than has been the case, in their opinion, in traditional Reformed dogmatics, as well as its desire to subject traditional, confessional systematic theology to a rigorous scriptural re-think [this often translates into FV proponents’ dissatisfaction with confessional categories, formulations and boundaries];

But, as I have maintained, clearly I do not want to substitute biblical language in for confessional language. I want confessional language, believing it to be necessary and edifying in its place. What I object to is the restriction that has been placed on using biblical language ever. So the question is not whether we use biblical language or confessional language. The issue is when we are to use each, because we must use each. The preamble to the Joint Federal Vision Profession notes that many of the signatories (including me) are “confesssionally bound” to the Three Forms of Unity or the Westmin- ster Confession. I am confessionally bound to the Westminster Confession, and happily so. I like it. Every other year I teach through the Westminster Confession to our ministerial students. It is a practice I commend to some

755 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | 2009 of our critics. There are some lost valleys in there that no white man has ever seen.

(3) to co-ordinate the doctrine of union with Christ, with the doctrine of the church, so as to correct what it sees as an errant distinction between (or at least an unhelpful deployment of the idea of) the visible and invisible church in traditional Reformed ecclesiology [this sometimes results in FV proponents wanting to say that all members of the visible church are elect];

At some point in the discussion Wilson began to spit sixteen penny nails. He maintained that this was necessary to keep him from swallowing them. Are all baptized Christians decretally elect? Of course not. Should all of them put on tender mercies as the elect of God? Of course. Are both of these points important to maintain? Absolutely.

(4) to recover truths that the original Reformers had discovered but which have been lost due to the influence of the Puritans and the Great Awakening, not to mention revivalism [FV proponents tend to view Puritanism and the evangelical Calvinism of Whitfield and the Great Awakening as roots of numerous problems in the modern church];

What’s with mushing the Puritans and Whitefield together? And why am I being treated as a critic of the Puritans when I have spent a lot of time defending them? You know, as in Douglas “Puritan fan boy” Wilson. Whitefield was the source of some of our contemporary problems, but he was still a great blessing to the church, and a hero of the faith. He did a lot more good than bad, and was far better than your average 18th century Anglican. So where did this criticism come from?

(5) to recast the doctrine of faith and obedience in more scriptural language and categories [because the FV does not think that the New Testament entertains the kind of opposition between faith and obedience that is often articulated in evangelical explanations of the relation between law and gospel, between faith and works].

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This one is not so much wrong as incomplete and confusing.

Thus, FV advocates often express an interest in and concern for (a) sacramental efficacy, (b) the centrality of the visible church, (c) the importance of a living and active faith in Christ, and (d) something they call “real covenantal union with Christ”.

And last, in sum, (a) yes, but only Westminsterian efficacy. You know, the good kind, (b) centrality of the visible church compared to what? The visible church is not central in the decrees, for example. What circle are you drawing? (c) there is a problem with having a living and active faith in Christ? Somebody is against this? (d) yes, but only in the sense meant by John 15 and Romans 11. Whatever those passages mean, that’s what we mean.

THE NUMBER OF CHICKEN BONES IS IRRELEVANT DECEMBER 3, 2009 Some have been wondering what I am up to in this recent jag about the absolute necessity of the new birth, and some are happily wondering if at last I have come to my senses and am returning to my evangelical roots. Well, I would be happy to return to them had I ever left them, but since I didn’t, I won’t. In chapter three of “Reformed Is Not Enough, I went out of my way to make clear that I was, am, and continue to be, an old school historic evangelical.

Simply put, the objectivity of the covenant does not mean that a man does not have to be born again. (p. 33)

The corporate regeneration of the people of God in no way lessens the need for individuals to be born of the Spirit of God. How could a call for omelettes be taken as opposition to eggs? (p. 35)

First, the new birth is a reality. To be born again separates those who love darkness and those who love the light. (pp. 35–36)

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When the word regeneration is being used in this sense, we are talking about an invisible operation performed by the Spirit of God, who does what He does when and how it pleases Him. And when we are talking about what might be called this ‘effectual-call regeneration,’ we have to repudiate every form of baptismal or decisional regeneration. (p. 39) Many have been baptized and have not known the reality offered in that baptism. The problem is not that they have the baptism, but rather that they do not have the faith. For a man must be born again if he is to see the kingdom of heaven. (p. 40)

These commitments of mine continue down to the present. I have gone through enough theological paradigm shifts to know when it is happening. I used to be Arminian, and now am Calvinist. I used to be baptistic and now am paedobaptistic. I used to be premill and now am postmill. I have learned to recognize it when the scenery changes outside the car window. But I was brought up as a evangelical Christian, I am an evangelical now, and if the doctrine of perseverance is what I take it to be, I will die an evangelical. Bottom line, this means that I hold that a man must be born again, must be given a new heart, in order to see the kingdom of heaven. I don’t care how many chicken bones the priest threw into the air at his baptism. If he is not converted to God in His heart by the glorious gift of the Spirit, then he is going to Hell. Having said this much, let me distance myself from a standard evangelical error at this point, a mistake that evangelicals have been prone to. On the strength of the bibical doctrine that the new birth is necessary for salvation, some have made the mistake of thinking that regeneration was relatively easy for them to see and identify. David Brainerd was kicked out of Yale for saying that a certain professor had no more grace than “this chair.” Gilbert Tennent, one of the Great Awakening’s sons of thunder, did a lot of damage for preaching on the dangers of an unconverted ministry—for which he later apologized. Now the problem is this. In my last post on this subject, did I not say that a bunch of evangelicals and their ministers, needed to be born again? Yes, I

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did, and I stand by it. But how is that not trying to peer into hearts? How is that not the classic evangelical mistake, which is that of pronouncing on the eternal destinies of men who, unlike you, don’t wave their arms when they preach? After all, that is what Tony Campolo thinks an evangelical is. Now I quite agree that we ought not question the salvation of orthodox Christians whose liturgies are different from ours, or who differ with us on less important doctrinal points, or whose style of preaching is not as full of vim and enthusiasm as we would like. The Spirit of God has done too many glorious things in too many different places, moving when, where and how He pleases, for us to lay down rules for Him, such that they would make Him into the Spirit of Sectarian Evangelicalism. I am a catholic evangelical. Which means what? It means non-sectarian. “And opposition to the mainstreaming of homosex is not sectarian,” he said mildly. So this is why I said what I did about getting evangelicals saved—and it has nothing to do with trying to peer into hearts. Further, it is not a sectarian judgment—I have two thousand years of faithful churchmen behind me on this one. As it happens, I don’t have the zeitgeist of the eddykated North American church scene behind me though, which some want to represent as a problem. Evil fruit demonstrates the evil nature that produced the fruit. Regeneration cannot be understood apart from the doctrine of generation. And if a person is of their father the devil, that is their problem of generation, which can only be addressed by means of a glorious regeneration.

Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. (Gal. 5:19–21)

Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor

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effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Cor. 6:9–11)

Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father. (1 John 2:23)

So then, these earlier statements of mine are not a function of any ability I have to peer into hearts. They are a function of me having been taught how to read in the first grade.

760 2010

AND IN A MASTERPIECE OF BAD TIMING . . . JANUARY 29, 2010 Congratulations to my colleague Peter Leithart, who has been appointed to a two-year lectureship for the Association of Reformed Institutions of Higher Education (ARIHE). You can read more about that here , on the blog of Roy Atwood , president of NSA. Meantime, in a masterpiece of bad timing, some of the gnats-stranglers in the PCA, resolved to make the denomination look like a collection of rubes and cornpones (which it is not), have continued to go after Leithart. You can read about Rob Rayburn’s assessment of their work here . I have the highest respect for Rayburn—not a partisan in the FV debates at all, but one who knows a bum’s rush when he sees one.

MAJOR AND MINOR DECEMBER 5, 2009 Yesterday Dr. David Field gave the final Calvin lecture in NSA’s commemora- tion of the 500th anniversary of the birth of that great reformer. And what a lecture it was—the video will be available on line sometime, and I will let you know when and where. In the meantime, the lecture jabbed some thoughts of my own that had been lounging on the couch and told them to go get a job already. The title of the lecture was “Calvin’s Catholicity and Birth of English Non- conformity,” with particular emphasis placed on the courageous stand taken

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by John Howe. The only foretaste of the lecture I will give here is that the definition of sectarianism has nothing to do with the size of the sectarian body, but rather with the size of that body when compared to the size of Christ’s body. The latitudianarians receive as Christ’s those who are manifestly not Christ’s and the sectarians reject those who manifestly are. In the meantime, here is a related comment that I would add. A minor issue is a minor issue unless it is treated by the one who holds it as a major issue—then the minor issue becomes a major issue, and it may be treated as such by those for whom the minor issue is not a major issue in itself. To major on minors is a major issue, even though the minor issue being majored on is not in itself major. Say that someone holds a peculiar eschatological position, and the Church can certainly accommodate it. Nothing new here, right? But suppose he says that holding this position is the sine qua non of salvation—he has made his minor a major, and that is a major issue. And this is where I must point out a distinction of major importance. I have been saying that regeneration is a sine qua non of salvation. A man won’t see the kingdom of God unless he is born again. But this is not the same thing as saying that a man cannot see the kingdom unless he agrees to Wilson’s particular formulations of what it means to be born again. There are born again people who would argue with me, long into the night, about my belief that regeneration precedes repentance and faith, for example. They deny it, and they deny it hotly. But what matters is that this person is one in whom regeneration actually did precede his repentance and faith (as I believe), which is not the same thing as saying that it is necessary for him to believe that. It has to happen to him. He doesn’t have to know what happened to him. There are Lutherans who don’t agree with me on what it means to be born again, but that’s all right because they are born again. At the end of the day, I don’t care what they say about it. And there are Reformed evangelicals who would say exactly the same thing about it that I would—the only problem being that they are not in fact born again themselves.

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Now when I say that I don’t care “what they say,” that sentiment has to be placed in context. I would care very much what they say about it at a presbytery exam for ordination. But when it comes to receiving them to the Lord’s Table, I don’t care at all. It is the Lord’s Table, not mine, and my job is to receive the same people the Lord receives, to the best of my ability. A minister is like a licensed electrician. He has to wire the room so that the lights work. But a child can flip on the lights. I want high standards for the theological electricians because this is the house of the Lord, and we don’t want it to burn down. I want low standards (work with me here) for the people who live in the house. I want every three-year-hold with curious fingers, and a rudimentary knowledge of cause and effect, to be able to reach that light switch.

WHACK THEE UPON THE MAZZARD MARCH 22, 2010 The final report from the Standing Judicial Commission on the Leithart case is now out, and I just now finished reading through it. The judgment of the commission was that the complaint against the Pacific Northwest Presbytery was “sustained, and the case is sent back to PNW with instructions to proceed according to the Reasoning and Opinion of this Decision”—the Reasoning, capital R, the Opinion, capital O, and the Decision, capital D. The decision relies on the nine declarations adopted by the 35th General Assembly of the PCA, which have been discussed in this space before. The first requires bi-covenantalism, and I am bi-covenantal. The second requires us to hold that someone’s “election” cannot be lost and, if we are talking about decretal election, of course not. But if they mean something else by putting “election” in scare quotes, we shall have to inquire further. But decretal election cannot be lost or altered in any way. The third requires the view that Christ is a representative head “whose perfect obedience and satisfaction is imputed to individuals who believe in him,” a view which I loudly, consistently, and enthusiastically have affirmed. The fourth requires the language of merit be used when referring to the imputation of Christ’s obedience to

763 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | 2010 us, which I am certainly willing to do, especially when singing hymns. The fifth requires us to reject the idea that union with Christ makes the idea of imputation redundant, a rejection that I have argued in favor of for years. The sixth requires that water baptism and covenantal union be rejected as setting up a parallel soteriological system alongside the decretal system of Westmin- ster, a rejection that would have to be affirmed by anyone who understands that a man can’t go to Heaven and Hell both. I certainly understand that. The seventh says that effectual union with Christ includes perseverance, to which I say, “amen, and amen.” The eighth says that regeneration and justification necessitate perseverance, which I also teach. And the ninth says that justification in the sight of God cannot be based in any way on our works, which I also affirm. So, what does this have to do with Leithart? I can’t answer questions on his behalf. I am not a member of the Pacific Northwest Presbytery, and I am not the one being brought to trial. Well, just this. I am a leading spokesman of the FV, and was the one who drafted the Joint Statement of the FV. I gathered substantive input from the other men and was the editor of that document. In the narrative that is being spun about all this, I am one of the chief culprits. And while I would want some of the nine declarations to be less ambiguous (I would rather affirm election than “election”), I certainly agree with the substance of what they are affirming and denying. It follows, therefore, as night follows day, that Peter Leithart is being attacked for failing to agree with a leading FV spokesman. I search in vain for any other explanation. This SJC decision that I read through indicates that 17 men voted for this decision, with 2 dissenting. The foes of the FV have been trying to warn the Church for years that this insidious movement was infiltrating the Church everywhere, but to think that they could get 17 of their number onto the SJC is a feat without parallel. Man! Talk about deep cover. Special note: the previous paragraph was facetious, tongue-in-cheek. I take the precaution of saying this explicitly because years ago Jim Jordan wrote a satirical piece on how to split a church, which was then used against a friend of mine (seriously) in a PCA trial. The charge was not that my friend had

764 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | 2010 a book in his library that contained a literary genre that his accusers failed to understand, but that’s what the charge should have been. I mention this because just within the last week, I saw that same charge about Jordan’s piece floated yet again. I also mention it because I just wrote a facetious paragraph which, to be perfectly clear, was the paragraph right before this one. It will therefore not be to the point to misunderstand my point, and then appeal to a determination by the General Assembly that says the ninth commandment should be honored at all times. So it should, but this includes those who ordinations did not provide them with a magic decoder ring that enables them to understand theology when it gets over their heads. I don’t know what the Pacific Northwest Presbytery will do. But this is what they were told to do:

PNW may counsel TE Leithart that the views set forth above constitute error that is injurious to peace and purity of the church and offer him pastoral advice on how he might recant and make reparations for those views or, if he is unwilling or unable in conscience to do so, that he is free to take timely steps toward affiliation with some other branch of the visible church that is consistent with his views.

If this is not pursued, or if it is pursued and fails to achieve “Leithart’s recanting or affiliating with some other branch of the visible church before Fall Stated Meeting of PNW,” then the presbytery has been instructed to bring charges against Leithart. They only allow for these two options prior to a trial because they have found that, with regard to Leithart’s views, there is “a strong presumption of guilt.” In other words, the presbytery was not given the option of having Leithart give a satisfactory explanation of how his views comport with the Westmin- ster Standards, or with 9 Declarations of the General Assembly. That is not on the menu anywhere. The SJC (from which there is no appeal, for many come down but few return to the sunlit lands) has determined that there are three possible options: 1. Leithart recants; 2. Leithart leaves, or; 3. Leithart is tried

765 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | 2010 by a presbytery that has been instructed to get a satisfactory verdict. We all know what is meant by “satisfactory,” don’t we, boys? What is that sensation welling up in my throat? Must be envy or something.

Behold, I have taught you the BCO, even as the General Assembly hath commanded me, that ye should do so in the land whither ye go to possess it. Keep ye therefore the determinations of the 22 member SJC; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the denominations, which shall hear of all these procedures, and say, “Jeepers,” and run for the tall grass. For what denomination is there so great, who hath rules so nigh unto them, as these procedures that in all things we resort unto them? And what denomination is there so great, that hath convoluted procedures so arcane as they which infesteth the BCO, which I set before you this day? Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy rules diligently, lest thou forget the SJC which meeteth in secret, and hath the authority to whack thee upon the mazzard, lest you forget what thine eyes have seen, and lest the fear of these procedures, from which there be no complaint or appeal (BCO 15–5), depart from thy heart all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons’ sons, that they might know who to stay on the right side of. (Deut. 4:5–9)

SWEET COMPLIANCE MARCH 29, 2010 On a previous occasion, Green Baggins had said that I was okay on sola fide but has now come to the end of a chain of reasoning that requires him to say that he no longer believes this. His full post can be found here. And, although I believe him to be confused on the point, his manner toward me continues to be gracious, as it has consistently been in the past.

It gives me no pleasure at all to write this post, first of all. To come to this conclusion means thinking worse of a person’s theology, which person has at the very least commanded my respect, and has been very courteous to me throughout our debates.

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Here is his argument in a nutshell.

I have come to the conclusion that the law/gospel distinction is essential to preserving sola fide . . . If there is no distinction in the text of Scripture between law and gospel (that is, if the difference between law and gospel is only in the application, and not in the text), then all the discussion of faith in the New Testament is both law and gospel, which we’ll call Golawspel. This means that, even in the apostle Paul’s most rigorous separation of faith and works, which occurs in his discussions of justification, Paul is not really claiming that law observance is separate from faith within the structure of justification. For the definition of faith itself must fall prey to the Golawspel muddlement. If faith, therefore, is not opposed to works in justification, then justification is no longer sola fide . . . This means that every proponent of the Joint Federal Vision Statement denies sola fide.

And here is my brief reply, beginning in the form of a question.

For we are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish: To the one we are the savour of death unto death; and to the other the savour of life unto life. And who is sufficient for these things? (2 Cor. 2:15–16)

What smell repels those who are perishing? What aroma do they find repulsive? In the text, the aroma is that of Christ. But what is Christ, who is He? Is He law or is He gospel? Christ is both. He is the end of the law (Rom 10:4) to everyone who believes. And Christ is gospel—in Him all the promises of God are yea and amen (2 Cor. 1:20), again, we insist, to all who believe. So no, I don’t call it Golawspel—that sounds like a semi-Pelagian muddle. There is no impersonal point of integration, no theological intersection where we can mush all this together.

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But there is a place of integration, a point where everything hangs together. In Christ, do law and grace meet in perfect harmony? If someone hates Christ, repelled by His aroma, do they recoil from both law and gospel, or from just one? In Christ, what do law and gospel do? According to the West- minster Confession, they do “sweetly comply” with one another. If Lane’s chain of reasoning is correct, then not only are all the signers of the FV statement deniers of sola fide, but so also the Westminster Assembly (for calling the law of Moses an administration of the covenant of grace, golawspel forsooth!), and let us throw in Robert Letham, author of The West- minster Assembly: Reading Its Theology in Historical Context (pp. 230–233), along with the editorial board of P&R for publishing him, thereby denying sola fide as recently as 2009.

THREE REASONS WHY THE KEEPERS OF THE REFORMED FLAME DON’T UNDERSTAND THEIR OWN TRADITION MARCH 31, 2010 Something of an extended discussion has broken out over at Greenbaggins, and this discussion revolves around whether acceptance of the law/gospel hermeneutic is necessary in order to be faithful to sola fide. Looking at that discussion, my son-in-law commented that it was like watching junior high boys, down in the rec room, arguing over the rules of an electric football game. And I agree that it certainly does resemble that in uncanny ways, but something greater really is at stake—these men really are in positions of ecclesiastical responsibility. They actually are guardians; they are not pretending to be guardians. The tragedy is that they don’t understand what they are guarding or why. Let me explain why and conclude with the three reasons referenced above. In the historic Reformed tradition, we affirm the three uses of the law. They are the pedagogical, where the law is understood as a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ (Gal. 3:24). There is also the civil use of the law, where the law is given to man so that we might restrain the lawless and disobedient (1 Tim. 1:9). The third is the didactic use of the law, where the law informs the

768 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | 2010 regenerate individual, already justified apart from works, what love looks like in action (Rom. 13:8-10). Note that all three uses of the law describe what the law can do, depending on the situation, and do not describe what the law is. The law is an embodiment of the character of our righteous God, which cannot be isolated from the embodiment of His grace, found in Christ. Therefore, the Reformed tradition (the real one) holds that when describing what the law is, in all its parts and relations, we are talking about totus lex. And totus lex has a subordinate and honored place within the covenant of grace. The Reformed historically have not held to a kind of radical dualism, with law over here in stark opposition to grace over there. That is, we don’t hold to this dualism when we are talking about what the law is. We may talk that way when we speak of what the law sometimes does—to a rich, young ruler, say. When the law is considered in isolation, and put to a particular use, the pedagogical use mentioned above, this is described as nuda lex, raw obligation. When the law is used in this way, it drives us to Christ. The man who does these things shall live by them. Do this and live. But I can’t do this. Exactly. That is a particular use of the law, deriving its current function from the nature of the person it is working over. In Pilgrim’s Progress, Moses knocks Christian down because that was what was called for in the moment. But that’s not who Moses is. Now I have been accused of denying sola fide, and so why do I think those who make the accusation are out of conformity to the tradition they think they are defending?

1. They think that nuda lex is totus lex, which is a staggering confusion. They have confounded a use of the law with the definition of the law. They have confused a part with the whole; 2. They generally belong to the Escondido tradition, a small creek on the edge of the Reformed bayou, which cannot find a coherent place for the civil use of the law. And a tradition let out on the edge which

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effectively denies one of the three uses of the law ought not to be making accusations against someone who accepts all three. 3. The accepted language in the Reformed tradition, that of the three uses of the law, invites us to speak in terms of the law’s relationship to creatures. We are therefore not outside that tradition when we say that the real division between law and grace lies within the human heart, not in the text itself. Think of it this way. Can the same law (thou shalt not steal, for example) be used both pedagogical and didactically? Sure. And which use is it in the text? In the most immediate sense, that depends on the heart of the person reading it, right? If we step back and ask about totus lex, then the Westminster Confession tells us that this law, along with all other laws, is part of the administration of the covenant of grace. That is what it is. But when I say that this is what it is, I am told that I denying sola fide?

So these are the keepers of the true flame, that’s their job. No one begrudg- es this, actually. The problem arises because some of us made the mistake of referring to heat, fuel and an oxidizing agent, and their eyes got squinty. Oxigeezing what? And when I essay to explain, I find myself brought up on charges. The keepers of the true flame never heard of such a thing.

IN WHICH SCOTT CLARK LOSES HIS GOLF BALL APRIL 3, 2010 The use of the law assumes a context, and that context has to include people. The three uses of the law are not possible if the Bible remains closed. If the text says, “thou shalt not steal,” but the text has never been read by any man, then none of the three uses of the law are in play. The civil use is to restrain evil men, and if righteous men do not read “thou shalt not steal” and decide to hire cops to keep unrighteous men from stealing, then that use of the law has not been put to use. If no thief has ever been confronted with his sin of stealing through this law, and no preacher has ever declared it in such a way that thieves are convicted, then the pedagogical use has not been used. If no

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Christian has ever read the Bible in a manner to discover that love regards his neighbor too highly to disregard his right to his property, then the didactic use of the law has gone unused. So . . . what’s the use? If we insist that every text in the Scripture is either law or gospel, and that we could in principle come out with a red and blue edition of the Bible, with each category carefully marked, then we quickly encounter trouble, and a need for more colors. That verse we just marked as law, thou shalt not steal, is it civil? Yes. Is it pedagogical? Yes, depending, obviously. Is it didactic? Yes, Christians read the whole Bible and discover that love respects the property of others. But if we mark that law the didactic law color, it then turns out, to the dismay of the Escondido Illuminati, to be the same color as the gospel verses. Because didactic law is part of totus lex, law in the context of God’s broader designs of grace, and so we have to color it blue. Now if we step right up next to that verse and squint, we can consider it as nuda lex, as a law which in a limited and stipulated context condemns the sinner, and which is the bad news which stands opposed to the good news of the gospel, which means we can keep the bare law color. But what color the verse is depends upon the use we are putting it to. This means the colors on the pages have to instantly change depending on which person buys that Bible, and we don’t have the technology for that yet. But this means that we do not have a law/gospel hermeneutic, but rather a specific law/gospel application. So what does saving faith do (WCF 14.2)? Oh, I don’t know. Let’s go see. The italics will indicate some of what I have found.

By this faith, a Christian believes to be true whatsoever is revealed in the Word, for the authority of God Himself speaking therein; and acts differently upon that which each particular passage thereof contains; yielding obedience to the commands, trembling at the threatenings, and embracing the promises of God for this life, and that which is to come. But the principal acts of saving faith are accepting, receiving, and

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resting upon Christ alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life, by virtue of the covenant of grace (WCF 14.2).

So, saving faith yields, trembles, and embraces. It yields obedience, it trembles at threats, and it embraces promises. But its principal acts are accepting, receiving, and resting upon Christ alone for justification. These are indeed its principal acts, but saving faith does other things. It hunts down the red law passages and yields obedience to them. It comes across passages which threaten divine displeasure, and saving faith trembles at these red law passages also. But what is saving faith doing responding to the law passages at all? Don’t the law passages just beat you up? No—in the broader context they are part of God’s saving intention for us. They are gospel. They are totus lex, part of the covenant of grace. Consider this from another angle. Strip away from every law passage all three uses of the law. Those uses are not in play. They are not being considered. Now, are you able to determine what color that verse should be? No, because without those uses, you don’t know what is going on yet. And any law verse can be put to any of the three uses. Put another way, the Reformed do not treat law and gospel dialectically. They make a distinction between them, and Scott Clark is quite right to say that the Reformed make a distinction between them. But distinction is not equivalent to a dialectical war, and once we get past that simple distinction Scott Clark is in the deep weeds and has clearly lost his golf ball. The Federal Vision statement says that is scriptural and fully appropriate to see the law of God work a sinner over (nuda lex) and prepare him for the gospel. This is a proper use of the law. But it is not what the law is. It is not the definitionof the law. One use of the law cannot be made the over-arching essence of that law—because that would make it impossible to employ the other uses. Far better to say that God is righteous, holy and good, and that the law represents that character perfectly. That character, when recorded in a law, restrains these sinners over here, convicts those sinners over there, and teaches these saints back here again. But these three uses are not what the law is. Aren’t you glad it is so simple?

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JUST SOUTH OF WICHITA APRIL 4, 2010 I am afraid I have some more bad news for the defenders of the faith over at Heidelhoneyhut. The rot of heresy is spreading. The FV leprosy was not addressed promptly enough, and has begun to spread retroactively through the body of all church history. And you know it is a really bad factory that can send its pollutants upstream. This, just in, from Turretin’s Institutes:

The Mosaic covenant may be viewed in two aspects: either according to the intention and design of God and in order to Christ; or separately and abstracted from him. In the latter way, it is really distinct from the covenant of grace because it coincides with the covenant of works and in this sense is called the letter that killeth and the ministration of condemnation, when its nature is spoken of (2 Cor. 3:6, 7). But it is unwarrantably abstracted here because it must always be considered with the intention of God, which was, not that man might have life from the law or as a sinner might be simply condemned, but that from a sense of his own misery and weakness he might fly for refuge to Christ . . .The law is said “to be not of faith” (Gal. 3:12), not as taken broadly and denoting the Mosaic economy, but strictly as taken for the moral law abstractly and apart from the promises of grace (as the legalists regarded it who sought life from it). (2:267–68)

The law is not administered without the gospel, nor the gospel without the law. So that it is as it were a legal-gospel and an evangelical-law; a gospel full of obedience and a law full of faith. (2: 268)

So, then, in a more serious vein than my first paragraph, with regard to justification, nuda lex does nothing except condemn a sinner. When this use of the law is under discussion, we have to guard the fundamental distinction between law and grace. But when saving faith comes, we then realize that we

773 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | 2010 are distinguishing things that cannot be separated—provided we are considering them in Christ, and not in abstraction. This lack of separation is not as dangerous as it sounds—height, breadth, and depth cannot be separated but a child can distinguish them. So once saving faith comes, with regard to the broad intention and design of God, the believer principally rests in Christ alone, as He is offered in the gospel. But saving faith also understands the parts and relations of law to gospel, and sees God’s overarching gracious intent. He sees totus lex. This is why he can now tremble at the threatenings without that trembling being an example of unbelief. This is why he can render obedience to the laws without that obedience being a form of works-righteousness. In order to have the pedagogical use of the law and the didactic use of the law functioning at all, it is necessary that a man be able to transition between them. That transition is called getting saved. Now join with me in a little thought experiment. Imagine that second quote above had appeared without attribution on the blog of Peter Leithart or Jeff Meyers. Right, that quote about a gospel full of obedience, and a law full of faith. That one. Do you think that we could get a couple dozen men who do not understand their own theological tradition to write a stern letter to the appropriate presbytery demanding that immediate steps be taken? Lane over at Green Baggins has said that I deny sola fide (which I emphatically affirm), and he has made this claim on the basis of his own failure to make the most basic distinctions that someone with a Reformed theological education should be able to make. If the Reformed tradition were the Missis- sippi River, these river boat pilots have managed to get their vessel grounded just south of Wichita. As I put it in a recent comment elsewhere, I really don’t understand why the C students think they get to grade everybody else’s papers. But stumbling over a right understanding of the law is not a new problem. Let the apostle remind us of a few things.

Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned: From which some having

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swerved have turned aside unto vain jangling; Desiring to be teachers of the law; understanding neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm. But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully. (1 Tim. 1:5–8)

A PASCHAL BLESSING APRIL 4, 2010 As many who read this blog know, it has a been a season of controversy. But fortunately, it is also the Paschal season. The Lord is risen; He is risen indeed. We have been brought up from the dead, and our present possession is life, just as our final destination is life. Newness of life now, eternal life now, and life everlasting. This life is sheer unadulterated gift—we cannot do anything to merit it. Salvation is all of grace. And this means that it has to delight my soul that God loves those on the other side of our particular theological divides more than I have ever loved anything or anybody. It needs to delight me that we will all spend eternity together, as it does. And so I pray God’s blessings on the resurrection celebrations of all God’s children, and I pray for a double blessing on the celebrations of my adversaries. This resurrection life is a powerful thing, and gets into everything . . . even our disputes. Happy Easter, then, and may you all stand in the overflow of God’s abun- dant blessings.

OVER AT FLINGPOO.COM APRIL 11, 2010 A few weeks ago I posted, and responded to, Bruce Waltke’s video in which he was urging us to believe in evolution—evolution or spiritual death was the alternative as he presented it. Since that time, and because of that video, he has resigned his position at RTS in Orlando, and has now been hired on at Knox Theological Seminary. More links and info here. But here is where it gets a bit more tangled. Dr. Waltke handed in his RTS cafeteria card because a video clip embarrassed the seminary, and not because

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he had been dishonestly keeping his views secret. Those views are in print as early as 2007. The apparent problem is that evangelical theologians are supposed to keep their views within the covers of big, fat books that rank 68,000 at Amazon, and not air their views on video clips that can be circulated out there in public where seminary donors can see it. The politicians have had their own rough time adjusting to the new YouTube realities, and the same thing might be happening now to the theologians. So now Waltke is at Knox. Like Enns at Westminster, this situation reveals how much the conservatives have been out-maneuvered as they have been playing Machen-and-the-liberals in their mama’s backyard with little wooden sticks. Even though it is good news that incipient liberalism is being dealt with here and there (albeit messily), the conservatives have nevertheless spent the last few years conducting internecine purges of other conservatives and, in the process, showing how truncated their theological education was, and how difficult it is for them to follow certain lines of argument. Like the boy who cried wolf, when the time comes to deal with real theological problems (which these things really are), they find that half their men are gone, and other good-hearted people are not disposed to believe anything they say because of how poorly they have been behaving. If there is one thing you can count on a discernment blog to do, it is to show very little discernment. Discernment blogs are often little more than “bottom-of-the-monkey- cage” blogs, which can usually be found at flingpoo.com. The word discernment, used in a more biblical fashion, does not come to mind. Presbyterian pastors have been so busy shouting down Calvin’s view of the sacraments as heresy that when someone else pops up and says that Darwin- ism is orthodoxy, they set up a hue and cry over that too, but who wants to listen to these guys now? And note that Waltke lost his job at an evangelical Reformed seminary over this. And note also that he had another job at another evangelical Re- formed seminary within the week. And he teaches that evolution will save us from spiritual death. Good thing we have sharp-eyed guardians in the presbyteries going after Leithart and Meyers!

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If someone right before the battle of the Alamo had exiled Davy Crockett for having too long a rifle, and Bowie for having too wide a knife, the situation would be about comparable.

THE FLIGHT ATTENDANTS ARE LYING APRIL 15, 2010 I have noted before that one of the things that the fundamentalist mindset does well is identify the logical trajectory of an idea fifteen minutes after it is first stated. In contrast to this, there is a sophisticated and nuanced academic mindset that likes to fiddle, discuss, analyze, count, and try on different readings of, whatever idea it is in the discussion. The weakness of this latter approach is that the discussion gets frequently wrapped up in everything except what the actual point of the discussion is. It is like a guy who is very concerned to count the reading lights above every seat on the airliner, but who doesn’t know where the plane is going. The fundamentalist is a get-to-the-bottom-line kind of guy. He knows where the plane is going, and he knows that right away. His mistake is that of thinking that wherever the plane is going must be the place where the plane is already. He thinks that everyone in the world sees the implications of an idea just as quickly as he does, and that if they embrace an idea that naturally leads to x, then they must be self-consciously embracing x right now. If they deny this, then it just goes to show their mendacity in addition to their heresy. But there are many Christians who are better Christians than they are logicians. And, sad to say, and more germane to the point I am making now, the church also contains a number of logicians who are better logicians than they are Christians. Throw into the mix the additional variables of dumb fundamentalism and dumb nuance and you have yourself a real interesting situation. The former gets the trajectory all wrong and insists that the plane to Geneva is actually going to Rome. The flight attendants are lying to him. The latter would rather hold a seminar on the seat cushions than sit on them. Sitting on them would involve the fundament, which is too close for comfort. It

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would also involve stowing his luggage in the overhead bins, which strikes him as pretty simplistic.

SCRATCHING THEIR WATCHES MAY 7, 2010 I was recently asked by a friendly fellow in the URC to read and comment on the URC report on the Federal Vision, which I have now done. Having read through it, I can only say that it appears to be the work of extraordinary animus, or extraordinary ignorance, and perhaps sometimes both. Update: Since first writing this, a third option occurred to me—that of ordinary fear. A man might see all these things clearly, have no animus toward us, and yet know that his position is such that if he says so, he makes himself a target. With regard to their treatment of my positions and statements, the word that comes to mind is grotesqueries. I have been badly and baldly misrepresented. The distortions are numerous and breathtaking. Adding insult to injury, the statement concludes with the statement that we “failed to guard the gospel of free justification on the basis of Christ’s work alone from serious error.” We are called upon to “repent” (“Report of the Synodical Study Committee on the Federal Vision and Justification,” hereafter URC, p. 58). Keep this context in mind throughout. The Joint Federal Vision Profession (hereafter FV) was quoted twice, which shows that this committee did in fact know of its existence. But the two quotes were neither here nor there (pp. 12, 14), and in a number of other places, where quotation from that statement would have been thought a screaming necessity, it was ignored with a serenity that would have been a credit to the Buddha fifteen minutes after his enlightenment. They did this, despite the fact that they said their “mandate was to study the doctrinal formulations of the FV” (p. 6). So . . . why didn’t they? Instead of taking statements that all the leading men in the FV signed off on, they took hold of numerous seemings, tendencies, summaries and so forth, which they culled from “some” or “many” FV authors. Bob and weave. Make us say what you think we are probably saying.

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The accuracy of the results is therefore not surprising. Let us pair up some quotations. Fer instance . . .

Proponents of the FV reject any distinction, however it is expressed, between those members of the ‘visible’ church who may truly be members of Christ by faith and those who are only ‘externally’ members of the covenant people of God. (URC, p. 11, emphasis mine) At some time in the earthly life of each person so chosen, the Holy Spirit brings that person to life, and enables him to persevere in holiness to the end. Those covenant members who are not elect in the decretal sense enjoy the common operations of the Spirit in varying degrees, but not in the same way that those who are elect do. (FV, “The Divine Decrees,” emphasis mine)

When you are done chuckling, here’s another one:

FV proponents are unable to maintain clearly that those whom God elects in Christ will unfailingly be granted the fullness of salvation in unbreakable communion with God. (URC, p. 23, emphasis mine) We deny that any person who is chosen by God for final salvation before the foundation of the world can fall away and be finally lost. The decretally elect cannot apostatize. (FV, “Apostasy”)

But wait, as they say on the teevee, there’s more.

Though FV emphasis upon the importance of the sacraments is laudable and not out of accord with the Confessions, it often leads FV authors to neglect the indispensability of faith to the appropriation or reception of the grace communicated in the sacraments. (URC, p. 33, emphasis mine) This baptism obligates such a lone to lifelong covenant loyalty to the triune God, each baptized person repenting of his sins and trusting

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in Christ alone for his salvation . . . Baptism apart from a growing and living faith is not saving, but rather damning. (FV, “The Sacrament of Baptism,” emphasis mine)

And to conclude, here is just one example of the egregious distortions of the positions held by your humble correspondent.

Similar unqualified statements of the efficacy of the sacraments, especially the sacrament of baptism, can be found sprinkled throughout the writing of FV authors. See, e.g., Douglas Wilson, ‘Sacramental Efficacy in the Westminster Standards,’ in The Auburn Avenue Theology: Pros & Cons, p. 236 . . . .”(p. 18, emphasis mine)

But on that same cited page, here is a small sampling of some of my qualifications about sacramental efficacy. I could multiply such qualifications, but to do so would be tedious. And besides, the people for whom such qualifications are made appear to be steadfastly refusing to read them. They can ignore them faster than I can type.

Let us grant that the Catechsim here is not maintaining that all those who are baptized with water are automatically and inexorably saved. Let us grant that it is not saying that individuals are watertight jugs and that baptism pours an “effectual call fluid” into each and every one of them. Let us grant that those who are baptized but who remain in unbelief are worse off for having been baptized, not better off. Of course theConfession is not teaching baptismal superstition (and, incidentally, neither are we). The Confession is talking about worthy receivers, who in the broader context of the Confession should be understood as the elect. (p. 236)

So, I teach sacramental efficacy in an unqualified way? I make no qualifications! I can only conclude that the members of this committee must have spent a good deal of time winding their rear ends and scratching their watches.

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A LIMERICK FOR THE URC JULY 31, 2010 There was a conservative and Dutchy denom That passed a report41 with indignant aplomb. But we never bleed, If our critics can’t read, And so here’s to a missing-the-point pheenom.

. . . I don’t believe I have ever footnoted a limerick before, so here you go.42

THREE REASONS WHY THERE HAS BEEN AN FV CONTROVERSY AUGUST 16, 2010 A young Reformed believer heading off to college should be able to learn the five solas of the Reformation—yea, even the six ordinary days of Creation. But this requires further development. Over the last number of years, since the eruption of the FV controversy, we have of course been involved in the public back-and-forths that such a controversy involves. Much of it has been the doctrinal interaction, and the rest of it has been (mostly unsuccessful) attempts to clarify what we are in fact saying. But for some, these latter attempts are just like rubbing the spot on the wall—it just won’t clarify. Take, for example, Scott Clark’s most recent foray into fog. His summary of our position is this: “Get in by grace, stay in by cooperation with grace.” Forsooth, and double heh. But throughout the course of this controversy, I have frequently been asked why the controversy exists, and why it has continued. This question comes from people who hear our qualifications and note (accurately) that we are within the historic Reformed mainstream, and yet they have good reason to respect and take seriously those voices that are calling for our ouster from the historic Reformed mainstream. And so the question that most naturally occurs to them is why.

41 Now here. 42 No, here you go.

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I have hesitated to answer the question in a public setting (like this one) because I have not wanted to look like I was impugning private motives, which only God can see, and I did not want to actually be guilty of impugning motives. I certainly did not want to impugn motives in a backhanded and sneaky way (“I am not saying that FV opponents are motivated by a secret problem with embezzlement . . .”). But there nevertheless is a public side to this question of motive—think of it as a matter of public strategy, and less a matter of personal motives. Where are the pieces on the chessboard? I am happy to acknowledge that there are many opponents of the FV who are better Christians than I, and better Calvinists, and in that order. But this is quite different than conceding that I am not a Christian at all, or not a Calvinist at all. Those are questions of record and are matters about which I might have something relevant to say. All that said, here are three “pieces on the chessboard” explanations of why this controversy continues to play out. First, the commitment of the historic Reformed groups to the doctrine of six-day creation has gone wobbly, and the FV controversy has had two beneficial side effects for those who are cool with that wobbliness. The first is that the FV folks are, taking one thing with another, much more conservative on these questions of creation. For just one example, consider Jim Jordan’s Creation in Six Days. To bring the most likely critics of the wobble under suspicion on other grounds makes the denominations free to continue in their wobbly ways. The second side effect is that if you chase people out of your denomination for “denying the gospel of justification by faith alone,” that sure looks like something a conservative would do. So the people doing it must be “conservative”—even though they have in effect given away the store on the question of origins. For those who have the time and inclination, which I do not necessarily share, you can look at some of the relevant issues about creation and the Re- formed denominations here, here43, here, and here44.

43 https://heidelblog.net/2010/01/revisiting-the-urc-creation-decision/ 44 http://www.opc.org/GA/creation.html

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To sum it up, can you name any confessionally Reformed college, other than New St. Andrews, where students will be shaped and formed by the oneness of God, the two sides of the antithesis, the three Persons of the Trin- ity, the four Gospels as true history, the five points of Calvinism, and the six ordinary days of Creation? A related and parallel point could be made about the whole question of women in office. The problem is not that the “conservatives” in the Reformed denominations are protecting the historic Christian faith. The problem is that they are making a great show of doing so, while leaving untouched the principal encroachments of modernity in their midst. It is a conservatism that fails in its principal office—it does not conserve. The second reason why this is happening—in the chess pieces sense, remember—is that the twenty-first century is going to be the Reformed century in the North American church. So who will be allowed to be an acceptable representative leadership voice within that movement? Because we are evangelicals and don’t have an established church hierarchy that includes us all, or a college of cardinals, we have to do this thing on an informal basis. So instead of a college of cardinals, we have an informally established speakers’ bureau for our big national conferences. In other words, what the Catholics do in their back door internal Vatican politicking, we Protestants try to do on the world wide web. These are ecclesiastical politics, and it might help to think of these as the final days of a particularly nasty and brutal campaign. The good news is that God is not constrained by this kind of thing at all. He uses different tools and instruments entirely. When the various controversies came raining down upon our heads eight years ago, along with a few dead cats, Nancy asked me, “What is this?” What I said to her then has only been confirmed by repeated and numerous blessings that could not have come to us in any other way. The last eight years have been a time of unparalleled blessing. I told her that this was my big promotion, and it was. The last reason for the controversy is that here in Moscow we are teaching, urging, arguing for, and living out the logic of a renewed Christendom. Our secularist society is on its last legs, and the court prophets for that secularism

783 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | 2010 are in something of a panic. Napoleon once said that he would rather meet ten thousand men, well-generaled, well-disciplined, and well-victualed, than one Calvinist who thought he was doing the will of God. Culturally engaged Calvinism is a world-shaping force. It is potent. It has built more than one civilization and is going to do so again. There is more than one seminary professor who likes to write learned monographs about what this particular giant used to do before it went to sleep, but who is extremely wary about any attempts to wake the giant up. That might make a mess, and the secularists might then revoke our library privileges. So we here in Moscow are leaning against the widespread tendency to reduce the Reformed understanding of the world to a mere denominational distinctive within a broader secularist context. We do not believe that secularist context should be our axiomatic given. We don’t believe in it. Jesus is Lord, which means He is Lord of everything. This is simply classic Kuyperianism. But, you might say, the powers that be in the Reformed world acknowledge that Kuyper is within the mainstream. Sure they do, and that is a point to consider, certainly. But they only do this because . . . he’s dead.

ORTHODOXY IN A BOX AUGUST 23, 2010 The Pilgrim’s Progress is one of my perennial Sunday morning books, and this morning I was reading along, minding my own business, when one of the characters tried to deliver a confessional blow to my Federal Vision sympathies. He said, and I quote . . .

For to talk of such things is most profitable; for by so doing, a man may get Knowledge of many things; as of the vanity of Earthly things, and the benefit of things Above . . . by this a man may learn the necessity of the New Birth; the insufficiency of our Works; the need of Christ’s righteousness, &c. Besides, by this a man may learn what it is to repent, to believe, to pray, to suffer, or the like: By this also, a Man may learn what are the great Promises and consolations of the Gospel, to his own comfort. Farther, by this a Man may learn to refute false opinions,

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to vindicate the Truth, and also to instruct the Ignorant . . . Alas! the want of this is the cause that so few understand the need of Faith, and the necessity of a work of Grace in their soul, in order to Eternal Life; but ignorantly live in the works of the Law, by which a man can by no means obtain the Kingdom of Heaven . . . For a man can receive nothing, except it be given him from Heaven; all is of Grace, not of works: I could give you an hundred Scriptures for the confirmation of this.

Fortunately, another character came to my rescue, and said, just in the nick of time . . .

Heavenly knowledge of these is the Gift of God; no man attaineth to them by human industry, or only by the talk of them.

So, then, three guesses as to who said what.

LIFE OUTSIDE THE CONFESSION OCTOBER 6, 2010 The hurly-burly of life is exasperating to the tidy-minded, and the tidy-minded always want to carve out a niche where that exasperation can be ameliorated. That carved out niche is an artificial world where the rules can be enforced— as they can be enforced in a chess game. For Reformed Christians who are tidy-minded in this way, the confessions present a temptation to turn them into something they were not intended to be. A summary of some of the great themes of the faith is very helpful, and if someone subscribes to these confessions honestly, this means that such a summary would serve very well as their own summary. Having such confessions is essential, and they are quite helpful. But the temptation runs this way. Instead of seeing the confession as a summary of Christian doctrine, the uber-confessionalist sees the confession as “the rules of the game.” Not only that, but people of such a mind often seek out a vocation where they can play that game all the time. Over time, they come to believe that their game is life.

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Now, for the one playing chess, while he is playing chess, there is nothing to be found outside the rules of the game. For the one playing football, the sidelines are important because the game occurs inside the sidelines. It is all there, on the field. The problem is that life has no sidelines, and the confessions (treated as the rules of the game) do. So someone goes to order a filet mignon at his favorite restaurant, and finds himself flagged by an overzealous ref for delay of game. He is not in the game, all the time, and the ref is. When they get into an argument, as they might, the hapless steak-orderer may find himself accused of despising the rules of football, when he was doing nothing of the kind. He loves football. He just doesn’t think that the rules of football govern absolutely everything. I am bound confessionally to the Westminster Confession, and I think that is one of the coolest things in the world. My attitude is not slavish, for I have taken a few exceptions here and there, which proves that I did not drink the KoolAid. At the same time, I have been accused of “striking at the vitals” of the Reformed faith. Wherefore and hownow? It is because I think there is life outside the confession. It is because I believe there is life in the Bible outside the confession. The fact that Westminster is an accurate summary of the doctrines of our holy faith does not make it an exhaustive summary of everything biblical, soup to nuts. And it does not mean that the fine theologians behind that document ever thought about some of the modern heresies that rampage through the halls of our seminaries.

PRESSURIZED TWO BY FOURS OCTOBER 18, 2010 And I can’t let this one pass by. In the course of his argument, Carl Trueman mentioned an oddity that he had noticed—that men who are conservative in their theology, and capable of great precision and nuance, turned suddenly simplistic when it came to political analysis. Hey, worth thinking about, right? But the theological context he used to make this point was this one, and a howler it was too.

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There has been an understandable reaction in recent years against the kind of theological proposals coming out of movements such as the emergent church and, closer to home, the Federal Vision. Debates with these groups have taken place on a whole variety of fronts, but one of the central bones of contention has been theological precision. (p. 79)

While conservative theological types (among whom I number myself) are often very concerned about theological precision, we can tend to think in rather simplistic, black-and-white, cliched terms when it comes to politics. (p. 80)

Two points. Just two. Dos. One, “debates with these groups have taken place on a whole variety of fronts,” except for the fronts where they ought to have taken place. As I have mentioned before, oh, about three hundred times, when it comes to arranging for a fruitful debate on these issues, I can’t get arrested. And second, “precision” is fully capable of being simplistic. Let me assure Dr. Trueman that the technology is certainly available for that. I myself have been colliding for a number of years with men who think the Westminster Confession of Faith was built out of pressurized two by fours, and Trueman sets them forth as champions of nuance? Heh.

NOT THE CLERK OF SESSION NOVEMBER 4, 2010 I am currently teaching an elective on Jonathan Edwards at New St. Andrews, and something we recently covered made me realize the ways in which historic evangelicals need to speak and be heard, and need at the same time to listen carefully. The Reformation was a revival of true gospel preaching, and such gospel preaching always comes down to the point of decision. Good preaching is aimed at the will; all good preaching aims at conversion. If the people are not converted, they need to be. If they are, then a message aiming at true

787 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | 2010 conversion will encourage them, not beat them up. As Luther put it, we are called to a lifetime of repentance. Good preaching reminds every Christian soul that we live before the God who sees and knows the heart, and who will sift those hearts in the great day of judgment. The problem arises when the need for true conversion is moved from the declaration of the gospel to the membership interview. The former declares the truth with the understanding that only God can see the heart. The latter, in the name of God seeing the heart, pretends that the minister and elders can see the heart. If it is true that not every member of the visible church will be in glory, and it is true, then there must be a demarcation between those covenant members who are going to Heaven and those who are not. That demarcation is called heart conversion, or regeneration. All genuinely Reformed believers acknowledge the reality of this. The practical, pastoral issue concerns whether that true heart conversion is measurable by human beings. Can we detect it in a certain enough way to be confident that we are letting only the regenerate come to the Table (or, in baptistic churches, to baptism), and are successfully keeping the “not known to be regenerate” away from the Table? These questions go back to the Halfway Covenant, in the years before the time of Edwards. Now in the popular understanding, the Halfway Covenant was a downgrade of spiritual standards. In reality, it was an attempted upgrade, an upgrade that failed, one that backfired. This is how. In Calvinist churches on the Continent, membership was based on 1. a profession of faith in Christ and 2. an outwardly obedient life. For the first, you told everyone you believed in Jesus. For the second, you didn’t spend all your time in saloons and shooting out street lights. Here is John Calvin: “we recognize as members of the church those who, by confession of faith, by example of life, and by partaking of the sacraments, profess the same God and Christ with us” (Institutes, Vol. 2, pp. 1022–23). But by about 1636, some American churches had begun requiring some more than this (not something less). They wanted a testimony from each pro- spective member, a testimony relating their personal experience of salvation.

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The same would go for someone wanting to be a “full” member, in the sense of coming to the Table. Without that personal testimony, they were denied. But they had been baptized. And so what happened when they grew up (which happens more quickly than you might think) and married, and wanted their children to be baptized? What do you do? You have a baptized man and woman, professing faith in Jesus and in the truth of the Christian religion, who are living sober and decent lives, and who could join any Calvinistic church in Europe. They want to have their child baptized. What do you do? The Halfway Covenant said okay, all right already.

Church members who were admitted in minority, understanding the Doctrine of Faith, and publickly professing their assent thereto; not scandalous in life, and solemnly owning the Covenant before the Church, where they give up themselves and their children to the Lord, and subject themselves to the Government of Christ in the Church, their Children are to be baptized. (Halfway Covenant, 1662)

The minister before Edwards was his maternal grandfather, Rev. Stoddard. Now Stoddard was in some respects a protoliberal. Don’t make too much of that, but it should be noted. He was right about some things. He said, for example, “No man can look into the heart of another, and see the workings of a gracious spirit.” He leaned against the Halfway Covenant, adopting open communion in 1677. He believed that communion was a converting ordinance, and he was opposed to the idea of church covenants as being judicial in nature. He was therefore against church discipline generally. There he was wrong, and Edwards was right. Edwards was right that church membership brought with it certain judicial responsibilities, and he was very cautious in how he tried to bring the Northampton church back to a tighter line. But he was at heart a revivalist, which meant that the tighter line was still drawn in the wrong place, at the point of membership interview. A distinction should therefore be kept sharp between the preaching of the Word, and the shepherding of souls. The Word of God is sharper than

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any two-edged sword, but this does not mean that a minister can see hearts. When it comes to the division of soul and spirit, the Scriptures are sharper than a sword. But at the same point, fallible ministers can be as sharp as a pound of wet liver. But the fact that he cannot see this or that heart exhaustively should not prevent him from preaching the Word searchingly. We lean the opposite direction, to protect ourselves against the errors of that other guy, who is leaning the other way. Some men see tyrannical pro- nouncements over the hearts of others in membership interviews, and so they refuse to declare the authoritative word of God from the pulpit—unless a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Other men know that they should declare this searching word from the pulpit, and they therefore assume to themselves the same prerogatives in the pastor’s study. Oh, the vanity of man! When Scripture says that “all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do,” the “him” there does not refer to the clerk of session.

OR GRANGEVILLE MIGHT WORK NOVEMBER 19, 2010 Curses! Foiled again! What, oh what, can we do when these folks45 are so clearly on to us? Who among us is the spy for Escondido (2 Kings 6:11)? Who among us hath revealed our most secret stratagems and evil designs? There is is nothing for it now but to pack up and move down the road. Maybe to Riggins.

BEYOND SAD NOVEMBER 23, 2010 Last week I commented briefly on this post46 by Scott Clark. Since that time, I have thought about it some more, and wanted to make some follow-up comments. That the whole thing was about as out of line as it gets was revealed in how Scott Clark has handled the comments afterwards. When the original post appeared, it was plain that he was talking about Moscow, but he didn’t come

45 An updated version of this post is here. 46 An updated version of this post is here.

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right out and say that. Deniability was preserved. As the comments opened, one honest individual—no friend of the FV—asked if that was really necessary. Clark’s response revealed overtly that he was talking about Moscow, and shortly afterwards, the comments were closed. Now all the comments that had been previously allowed have been removed. But while the comments were up, Clark said something like this: whether or not his cautions and warnings applied to me straight across was for “others to say.” In other words, Clark is not competent to say that I am to be compared to a mass murderer. He is, however, competent to insinuate it. He also knows how to turn the comments feature off on his blog—he doesn’t like being called to account for his words there any more than he would be willing to debate a proposition of theology—that is, if it were the kind of debate in which the other guy was allowed to talk. So we see that when it comes to cultural analysis, Clark is auguring in. For Westminster West the whole thing is beyond sad.

HERMENEUTICAL FUNNY BUSINESS DECEMBER 9, 2010 So here are some true facts in a skewed narrative. The author of this report, Stephen Welch, is lamenting the demise of Knox Theological Seminary, his alma mater. Allow me to provide a bit more perspective. Back in the heyday of Knox being more to the writer’s liking, he wants to say there was no hermeneutical funny business.

James Kennedy died on September 5, 2007, and his funeral service was on September 13. Almost immediately after he was buried the Seminary began to depart from its vision. Reports came to the dean of students complaining about statements that professor Warren Gage made in class.

However, comma. I was a participant in the Knox Theological Seminary Colloquium on the Federal Vision in August of 2003, four years prior to this. We had periods

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of round table discussion, with men from both sides presenting papers. We shared meals together, and taking one thing with another, it was one of the few moments in this whole sorry controversy where things were basically being done right. One of the great ideas that Knox had was to have a series of devotional lectures, unrelated to the topic of our controversy. These lectures were presented to us by Warren Gage, courtesy of Knox Seminary. The lectures were great—I didn’t buy everything necessarily, but the lectures were great. We were delighted with them, and the lectures were brought to us, hosted by, delivered to us in the name of, the old orthodox seminary. Some of the things that Welch objects to in this article were part of those lectures. So the intimation that the death of D. James Kennedy was the signal for “the heretic” to show his true colors is false. It would be more accurate to say that the death of Kennedy was the signal for somebody to mount a complaint about something that the seminary had been doing out in the open for years. There. The record is straight now.

MORE TO THEOLOGY THAN ADMIRING THE CAPE DECEMBER 27, 2010 I have made a great theological discovery. It’s a really hot one, worthy, it seems to me, of an honorary Th.D. or something like that. We have many worthy seminaries in a position to grant this honor, and so once I have published it here in just a few minutes, I will wait a couple days, and then go out to hold vigil by my mailbox. But lest you think I have gotten above myself, whilst I am holding vigil, I will not be holding my breath. Now some of the paragraphs after this one will be tightly reasoned, or, as we theologians like to call it, “turgid,” and so I will give you the basic thesis here, to hold your interest through the rough patches. Here it is. Those who hold that the covenant of works was not gracious must, of necessity, deny the imputation of active obedience of Christ. There, that should do it. One of the bones of contention in the FV controversy has been over the “works” in the covenant of works with Adam. When Adam fell, did he do so

792 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | 2010 by rejecting the grace of God, or did he do so by failing to accomplish, on his own steam, the task assigned to him? Now I have maintained that the covenant of life, as I prefer to call it, was a covenant dependent upon Adam’s obedience. But the word obedience, unlike the word works, reminds people that there is a relationship involved. There is someone on the other side who has required the obedience and provided the resources necessary for it. The context of all true obedience is grace. The context of works, as some are arguing for it, is autonomy—raw conformity to a raw standard. Now I understand that in the history of the Reformed tradition, many who use the language of “works” here have been careful to define this as gracious, which makes it what I am calling obedience. I would not quarrel over words, lest I then come to be accused of being anti-Semantic, thus adding to my troubles. And so here is the problem. If we must have raw merit imputed to us, and this raw merit, as a result of Christ’s sinless life, atoning death, and justifying resurrection, is imputed to us, what happens when we are confronted with undeniable evidence that the life that Christ lived on our behalf was not “raw” at all, but was empowered by the Holy Spirit sent from the Father?

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised. (Luke 4:18)

And John bare record, saying, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him. And I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost. (John 1:32–33)

Got that? Everything Jesus did through the course of His ministry was gifted to Him through the empowering of the Holy Spirit. That means that if

793 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | 2010 raw merit is essential to whatever gets imputed to us, the life of Jesus cannot be imputed to us. And conversely, if the life of Jesus is imputed to us, as I affirm heartily, with my hair in a braid, then what is imputed to us is the obedience of a faithful man, in faithful relationship with a gracious God. Good and necessary consequence can be a bear. Here is the cash value of this point. Anyone who says that grace is not a consideration in the covenant of works is also saying (whether he wants to be saying this or not) that the active obedience cannot be imputed to us. Now I am aware that there is another discussion on the other side of all this. There are some who say that they are FV who deny the imputation of the active obedience of Christ. They say they can get the same result by pointing to the great justification of Christ in His resurrection from the dead. Since He rose from the dead, everything He did is entailed in that, and so all that is His is imputed to us. But there are three problems. First, to appeal to Christ wholesale is to speak more broadly than Scripture does. It is more of an American “bottom line” approach than it is a scriptural one. Scripture shows us Jesus, the new Israel, coming up out of Egypt, and doing it right. It shows Him getting baptized, and being a beloved Son in that baptism, with whom the Father was well-pleased. It shows Him resisting temptation in the wilderness, and actually doing so faithfully. Finally, an Israel that stands, an Israel that is obedient. We are Israelites, and so that obedience is ours. He, the new Israel, invades Canaan, and conquers it. He dies, and rises, and in all of this, in every detail of His life, He is living obediently on our behalf. All of it, out to His glorification, is ours.

Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are yours; Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; And ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s. (1 Cor. 3:21–23)

There it is, the active obedience of Christ, along with everything else. Keep in mind that the active obedience of Christ is an incoherent concept if we try to separate it from His passive obedience on the cross. To do that would

794 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | 2010 be as silly as saying that we have imputed to us the obedience of Jesus on even numbered days, as well as, in a separate category, His obedience of odd numbered days. Second, to center everything on Christ’s resurrection sidesteps the great problem in all “union with Christ” arguments. The resurrection and ascension are the crowning moments of all that Christ did. This is the time when Christ can be said to have persevered. The resurrection is nothing if not the glory of Christ’s perseverance. But what of those who are united to Christ covenantally who do not persevere (John 15:1–8; Rom. 11:20–21)? Those in Christ who do not persevere cannot have as their only point of entry the perseverence of Christ. This needs to be developed a lot more, and I have been concerned with how easily it just gets ignored in an Olé! kind of way. It reminds me of N.T. Wright playing matador to the pointed horn on the raging bull of John Piper’s central point. But there is more to doing theology than admiring the cape. And third, just as a denial of the basic FV insights requires (logically) a denial of the imputation of the active obedience of Christ, so also a denial of the imputation of the active obedience of Christ requires (logically) a rejection of the basic FV insights. I have shown above that the former is necessary. Perhaps someday I will be able to devote some time to that, when it is time for another honorary Th.D.

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SOME HEARTENING FV NEWS JANUARY 10, 2011 Our friend Jeff Meyers has been cleared on all counts by the Missouri Pres- bytery. Six doctrinal allegations had been made against him, and he was exonerated across the board. You can read more about it here.47

FULL REPORT JANUARY 13, 2011 I mentioned the other day that the Missouri Presbytery of the PCA has cleared Jeff Meyers of all the doctrinal allegations that had been made against him. For those interested in pursuing it, the full report is available here.

THAT LEAVES NO REMAINDER MARCH 17, 2011 Faith is the sole instrument by which a person may receive the blessing of Christ’s righteousness imputed to him. Now when we say “sole instrument” we do not mean that no other instruments are involved, but that no other instruments are involved in the way that faith is. Faith is the capstone of all instruments, and it is the only capstone. This is what that means. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. How shall they hear without a preacher? So, is preaching therefore an instrument of justification? Yes, a secondary instrument. This means that there is not a one-to-one

47 Or maybe here.

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correspondence between hearing a preached message and justification. Bap- tism in water is a secondary instrument, meaning the same thing. Lots of baptized people die and go to Hell. Lots of preached at people die and are lost forever. The only instrumental cause of justification that leaves no remainder is faith. Every person who exercises the God-given blessing of faith is justified, and will be glorified at the last day, head for head. There is a one-to-one correspondence between those who trust in Jesus as a result of the effectual call and those who are saved. No one is saved who did not exercise that faith at some level in some way, and everyone who exercises that faith in that God-given fashion will be preserved to the last. This is what we mean when we confess sola fide. Faith alone is the instrument of justification. There is a vast hierarchy of instruments below that—many bricks come below the capstone. But there is only one capstone. But none of those lesser bricks, lesser instruments, result in salvation necessarily. True evangelical faith does. Preachers, books, seminaries that train preachers, baptisms, tract publishers, church services, evangelistic beach trips . . . none of them are 100% effective. But when the Spirit creates faith—that is 100% effective. Faith is the active agent. Faith is the catalyst that makes any of these other things worthwhile. The word preached does nothing unless mixed with faith (Heb. 4:2). If you baptize someone who is faithless, you have a faithless wet person. That faithless wet person is now covenantally obligated to not be faithless, but his obligations to not be faithless are not synonymous with actually being faithful. And you cannot be faithful apart from, you guessed it, faith. For those who are following this, and who want to know what the FV fuss is about then, consider it a function of evangelical suspicions about one secondary instrument (baptism), suspicions they do not have about another secondary instrument (preaching). I am equally suspicious of both, if faith is absent, and equally willing to whoop in favor of both, if faith is present. The problem of the TRs at this point is not that they are too suspicious of secondary means, but that they are not suspicious enough.

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The Bible contains warnings, true enough, about sacramental obedience that has been detached from heart obedience—circumcise your hearts, the prophets tell us. But the Bible also gives us warnings about great preaching conferences. The one who hears the word proclaimed but does not do it deceives himself (James 1:22). And the more that the conferences preachers thunder like Whitefield, or Spurgeon, or Bunyan, the worse the deception gets. Doesn’t it?

BANNER OF TRUTH WEIGHS IN APRIL 12, 2011 The ordinances are called the ordinary means whereby Christ com- municateth to us the benefits of redemption, because the Lord hath not wholly limited and bound up himself unto his ordinances; for he can in an extraordinary way bring some out of a state of nature into a state of grace; as Paul, who was converted by a light and a voice from heaven; but the ordinances are the most usual way and means of conversion and salvation, without the use of which we cannot, upon good ground, expect that any benefit of redemption should be communicated to us . . . the chief ordinances of the Lord’s appointment are the Word, sacraments, and prayer . . . the ordinances are made effectual for salvation to the elect only. (Thomas Vincent, The Shorter Catechism Explained from Scripture, Banner of Truth Trust, p. 234)

ACTIVE OBEDIENCE AND BOUNCE RATES JULY 8, 2011 Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify thy name. Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again. (John 12:27–28)

If you will bear with me for a moment, I would like to make a bald assertion. Here it comes. This verse is talking about the same thing that Reformed

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theologians are talking about when they refer to the imputation of the active obedience of Christ. Still with me? Is this going to affect my bounce rates? In the gospel of John, whenever God glorifies the Son, we are talking about some aspect of the salvation of men. We see this glory principally in the crucifixion (which is what Jesus is praying about here in this passage), but the Father explicitly says that He had glorified His own name (in and through Jesus) already. He would do it again in the cross, but the work of glorifying the Father’s name through the priestly work of Jesus was already in process. How do we know that Christ’s perfect life as the new Israel was imputed to every true member of the new Israel? We know it because—given what the Father says from Heaven here—it really would glorify the Father’s name if it were true.

LIKE ANNIE OAKLEY DOING TRICK SHOTS JUNE 1, 2011 The Bayly brothers have rendered us yet another service through this analysis of the contemporary politics of the PCA. I wanted to take a moment to register my agreement with the post generally, and to add a few riffs of my own. Here and there I might demur slightly, hopefully without simpering. Out of all the verses I don’t understand at all, my favorite is this one: “And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force” (Matt. 11:12). Like I said, I don’t know what it means, but I think it must figure in here somehow. How would I apply this? Not sure. Since I am simply responding to this and that, as the whim seizes me, this post might have a grab-baggy feel to it. C’est la whatever. So I want to begin by adding some demographic observations of my own. Whenever you are dealing with a new movement, identification of what that movement is all about is a lot trickier than, say, analyzing some fossilized denomination. With the latter, all you have to do is read the little inscription next to the glass case, and you know exactly what they stand for. But when

800 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | 2011–2012 something new is happening, it can take a bit of time for the whole thing to “set up.” For example, when the emergent thing was first happening, there were some good people involved. But after it began to set up, and it became clear that missional was going to be mushional, people like Driscoll bailed. Second, when something starts to happen, all kinds of people are attracted to it, for various reasons. Not surprisingly, they want to help steer the movement in a direction consistent with why they showed up in the first place. But people are coming from all directions, including from some good directions, and this is why it takes some time for the whole thing to sort out and set up. Complicating the set-up period is the arrival of pistol-fanning heresy hunters, acting like they were Annie Oakley doing trick shots. Unfortunately, buying a gun is not the same thing as learning how to aim it, and waving the Westmin- ster Confession overhead is not the same thing as reading it. Third, the point the Baylys were making is not that every last TR has the responsibility to attack every error on the continent, all the time. The point was that a sense of proportion would dictate that you would have the greater portion of your troops where the greatest threat was. The fact that the TRs don’t, in fact, deploy their troops in this fashion tells us that they don’t know what the greatest threat is, or they are afraid of the greatest threat. In either case, they are failing in their self-assigned duty as watchmen. And by the way, the Baylys are not just making an easy critique from the balcony of their blog—they are TRs who practice what they preach. They have a true sense of proportion, and they do far more than just “blog about it.” They have also labored behind the scenes in some remarkable and effective ways. What it boils down to is that Green Baggins doesn’t know what Strider could possibly be doing out there in the woods so much. When it comes to the claim that FV is “fracturing” into two camps, “good” and “bad” respectively, I would want to put it a bit differently. It is quite true that different emphases and strategies are developing as the FV thing “sets up.” One group wants to emphasize full continuity with Reformed and evangelical tradition and the other doesn’t care about that so much. I think that is fair to say.

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Not surprisingly, I differ with the idea that FV is declining in influence, but I do agree that the form this influence takes could be unpredictable. For example, when the reconstructionist reactor melted down, that was that, or so some people thought. But since that time, the whole Reformed world (R2K excepted) has been exuding a noticeable radioactive glow. From worldview seminars to every form of cultural engagement, the Reformed have been greatly affected by something they pretend has had no influence to speak of at all. This has happened despite the fact that, except for some mutants living in the crater, there are hardly any people today calling themselves reconstructionists. When I say this influence of ours could be “unpredictable,” I should add that I am aware of some things in development now that will probably make the Reformed establishment get all wee-weed up, as the expression has it. In other words, I am in a position to predict some of this unpredictable stuff, but I am not going to. A good half of the fun is in the surprise. One last thing, an important quibble: the CREC is not formally FV. Rath- er, the CREC is formally on record that the differences surrounding FV (thus far) need not be a barrier to fellowship within the CREC. Thus, a church need not be FV to be in the CREC, but FV churches are welcome. So are non-FV churches, and so are different kinds of FV churches. How’s that? Enough for now.

THE LADY IS A WELTERWEIGHT OCTOBER 8, 2011 The Siouxlands Presbytery of the PCA has found Greg Lawrence not guilty of the Federal Vision charges brought against him. You can read more about it here.48 In related news, the Northwest Presbytery of the PCA has found Peter Leithart not guilty of the Federal Vision charges brought against him. You can read more about that here.49 This is good news on both counts. It is not yet clear to me whether the acquittals were based on the de- fendants not holding the views they were alleged to be holding, or if they

48 Updated link.. 49 Or perhaps here.

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found that they did hold to them, but that those views are within the pale of confessional orthodoxy. I suspect the former, but we will have to wait for more information. In the meantime, I do not propose that we do what our opponents did when various pronunciamentos were released by various Reformed denominations, denouncing what they thought were the tenets of what they thought was something called the Federal Vision. What that tactic was consisted of announcing that the whole thing was now settled, that all legit Reformed denominations were taking this stand, united in the true gospel, and that the only thing for us troublemakers to do was to shuffle off, suitably abashed. That wasn’t legitimate for them to do then, and it is not legitimate for us to do now. The only lady who has sung to this point is a welterweight. We need to wait to see if these decisions are appealed and, if they are, to see what the national PCA does about it. But as this works its way out, we are at least now within shouting distance of a truly odd resolution—which is that a few years ago, the PCA fought off a serious heretical challenge to sola fide, a heresy that turns out to be held (in the PCA) by no one in particular. We shall see.

SOME THEOLOGICAL BACKGROUND OCTOBER 22, 2011 I am pleased to introduce a guest post of sorts from my friend Jack Brad- ley. He collected some relevant quotes (think: Leithart trial) from Leonard Vander Zee, Christ, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Here they are:

In ordinary language the two words sign and symbol are used nearly interchangeably. In fact, they have quite different meanings. A sign, according to the Oxford English Dictionary is a “mark or device having some special meaning or import attached to it, or serving to distinguish the thing on which it is put.” A sign, like a road sign, for example, merely points out the meaning of that to which it points. A symbol is a more complex idea. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it

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“stands for, represents, or denotes something else. . . especially a material object representing or taken to represent something immaterial.” Etymologically, symbol comes from Greek words which mean “together” and “throw,” thus, to bring together. Symbols do not merely point from one thing to another, they join two things. . . . Brian Gerrish helps us to understand how Calvin and Zwingli could seem to be talking the same language of religious symbol but each be saying something quite different. For Calvin, God uses sacraments as a means to communicate what they symbolize. He constantly reiterates that God does not deceive us when he offers the sacramental gifts to us. For Zwingli, on the other hand, it was precisely the “symbolic” language of the sacraments that enabled him to use the biblically realistic language without meaning it realistically. Zwingli tells us that no one can speak so grandly of the sacraments as to give him any offense, provided the symbolical language was taken for what it is, and no more. For him symbols were always merely symbolic. Calvin’s position is exactly the opposite. Because God uses sacraments as symbols, they therefore bestow what they symbolize. “More correctly, because sacraments are divinely appointed signs, and God does not lie, therefore the Spirit uses them to confer what they symbolize.” (Institutes 4.17.3) . . . When the New Testament writers do speak of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, they speak of them in surprisingly powerful and active ways. Baptism often functions as a virtual substitute term for regeneration or salvation. In Romans 6 for example, Paul confronts the real question that since Christians are freely forgiven by grace in Jesus Christ, might they therefore sin with abandon? Paul replies, “Don’t you know we were baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection?” . . . In Galatians 3:27–28 Paul makes the remarkable claim that in our baptism we are now “clothed with Christ” and therefore part of a new community. . . Through baptism God redefines us, telling us who we are, and making us who we are.

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. . . Historical Christian orthodoxy, going back to the early church fathers, is convinced that in the sacraments God is doing something through these ritual signs. They are truly means of grace. . . . Sacraments accompany the word because faith is not strong enough to be sustained by the word alone. Sacraments confirm, convey, and apply the word in ways in which the word by itself cannot do. . . . in the sacraments we get Christ in a way that is particularly suited to our humanity. We get Christ through water, bread and wine. . . . God has chosen certain physical objects—in the case of baptism, water—to convey the sign and seal of his grace to us. By God’s word and promise, baptismal water carries with it the blessings of our incorporation into Christ, our regeneration in him, and our forgiveness from sin. The water of baptism is instrumental in effecting these things in the lives of believers and their children. . . . Water is the sacramental sign, the visible word by which the Holy Spirit, through faith, brings us into union with Christ. Of course, water by itself, even in the setting of the sacrament, has no independent efficacy. In baptism the Holy Spirit uses water to help evoke faith and assurance. . . . It is everywhere assumed in the New Testament that baptism calls forth faith. Baptism, all by itself, does not confer our incorporation into Christ. Like grace itself, it always acts “through faith” (Eph. 2:8). As important as faith is to baptism, baptism is not merely a reflection of our own faith commitment. The danger of understanding baptism as an expression of our faith is that we are thrown back on our own subjective experiences, actions and decisions. The function of faith is precisely to turn us away from depending on our own resources and toward depending on God’s grace in Jesus Christ. But if baptism is an expression of the vitality of our faith, we are only left with our own heart’s motivations, slippery and fickle as they always are. . . . The New Testament understanding of the relationship of faith and baptism is that we are incorporated into Christ in baptism, and

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faith responds to it. Baptism is not primarily a response and follow-up to faith; faith is our response to baptism. We believe through and in our baptism. . . . Because baptism is a once-in-a-lifetime event, the response of faith continues on from the moment of baptism. No matter when it takes place, we spend the rest of our lives believing through our baptism. Just as faith receives the gracious gift of baptism in the first place, so faith returns to baptism over and over, taking new strength through it. . . God has given us this physical sign and seal, this landmark on our journey, precisely so that our faith might cling to it. Of course, we are not depending on baptism itself, but on Christ with whom we are united in baptism, and with God’s word of promise, which gives baptism its validity. But baptism is a God-given handle by which our faith embraces Christ.”

A DECENT SANDWICH IN NEW YORK JUNE 4, 2012 Jason Stellman, author of Dual Citizens, and prosecutor of Peter Leithart in his trial in the Northwest Presbytery of the PCA, has tendered his resignation from the ministry of the PCA. You can read his letter here.50 The two cited reasons are his loss of faith in sola Scriptura, along with his abandonment of sola fide. First, as is so common with such things, he fails to state accurately the position is supposed to be abandoning. He says, “I have begun to doubt whether the Bible alone can be said to be our only infallible authority for faith and practice.” But of course, that is not the formulation of sola Scriptura at all. Protestants hold that Scripture is the only “ultimate and infallible” authority for faith and practice. There are true spiritual authorities in this world that do not occupy the highest place, and the Northwest Presbytery of the PCA is one of them. But Stellman is showing by this action that he values his own personal thought processes over true ecclesiastical authority, rightly embraced.

50 Also published here.

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With regard to sola fide, he is quite right to see the very narrow position he was nurtured in as contrary to the teaching of the New Testament. The righteousness of Jesus Christ is imputed to sinners, and the instrument of a God-given faith is what receives that gracious gift. But the gift received is that of living faith, breathing faith, loving faith, the only kind of faith the living God bestows. It is sola fide, not nuda fide. Stellman was wrong to identify his previous narrow view of sola fide as the doctrine of sola fide itself. But he is correct about one thing. Given the errors he has embraced, the action that follows makes perfect sense.

Due to the fact that these disagreements strike at the very core of the system of doctrine set forth in our Standards, I feel that I have no other choice than to tender my resignation from the ministry of the Presbyterian Church in America.

But there is a bigger issue. At the end of his letter, he also says this.

My sincere hope is that the fathers, brothers, and friends I have gotten to know here will keep me in their prayers, and forgive me for any offense I may have caused during my involvement in the case against TE Leithart, as well as for any offense I may be presently causing by breaking my ordination vows.

If he has sought the forgiveness of Peter Leithart personally, then of course the forgiveness he seeks generally should be extended by others (Luke 17:3– 4). But a shift like this does not happen overnight, and if he was afflicted with these doubts while he was engaged in prosecuting Leithart (as it seems he had to have been), he would have done far better to have sought Leithart’s counsel instead of seeking his head. People do this kind of thing, of course. They are strident opponents of the very thing they are most afraid of falling into. This is telegraphed beforehand when the opposition is moralistic, tight-shoed, and brittle. But the fact that people do this doesn’t make it right.

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In this case, Stellman was unable to squeeze as much church authority as he personally wanted to have over him out of a godly ministerium, and so it looks as though he is hunting down a magisterium to suit him. He will, of course, do this as an individual, thinking his own thoughts about the Bible in his own head. The genius of the Roman system is its pragmatic syncretism, which allows folks to bring all kinds of things in with them, from South American animism to North American protestant individualism. This is why a lot of the Protestant converts to Rome didn’t really convert—they are as individualistic as ever, only now they get to play dress-ups. In the meantime, I wish Jason Stellman well, and consequently I earnestly pray that—before he does one thing or another Tiber-wise—he seeks out godly counsel from more expansive and robust Protestants than he has been accustomed to, including men he once thought of as adversaries. The Protes- tant faith is a great city, not a tiny village. He doesn’t want to be the guy in New York who didn’t have a sandwich shop in his neighborhood, and so he moves to New Orleans because he couldn’t get a decent sandwich in New York.

NO HOPE WITHOUT IT DECEMBER 18, 2012 In an oral exam yesterday for one of our grad students, the phrase “faith of Jesus Christ” came up (Gal 2:16; 3:22), along with the question/debate of whether this refers to Jesus Christ’s faith or to our faith in Him. I have generally taken it as the former, but that is not my point here. The point here has to do with what comes along with that—what has to be part of that package, for those who read it that way. First, there are multiple other passages that teach plainly that we are justified through faith in Jesus Christ. This is the instrument of sola fide, so that doctrine is not at stake in this discussion. But if we take it, in this instance, as “the faith of Jesus Christ,” another doctrine is at stake. This means that the apostle Paul is bluntly teaching us the doctrine of the imputation of the active obedience of Christ.

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This debate concerns whether our justification is secured by the Lord’s suffering on the cross and His resurrection alone (known as the passive obedience of Christ), or whether we also have imputed to us the sinless, faithful life of Christ (His active obedience), throughout the course of His life. Those who would echo the words of Machen on his death bed, when he spoke about the active obedience of Jesus (“no hope without it”), have available to them, on this reading, a knock down text. How so? This is because there would be no basis in this text for partitioning off the “faith of Jesus” to that time frame when He was on the cross. This is an expansive phrase. This is the new Israel, finally obeying God, finally walking through all the events of their history, and doing so in faith. Christ at His baptism, Christ resisting temptation for 40 days in the wilderness, Christ in- vading Canaan, and so on. Contrasted with the faithlessness of the old Israel, this is the faith of Jesus Christ. All of that is the “faith of Jesus Christ,” and all of that is our obedience now, our justification now, because it has been reckoned to us. No hope without it.

FEDERAL VISION CONTROVERSY, R.I.P.? APRIL 5, 2013 For those who have been following the case, Peter Leithart was tried and exonerated by his presbytery (Pacific Northwest). There was a complaint about it, and so now the SJC of the entire PCA heard the case, and Peter Leithart was found to be teaching within the boundaries of the Westminster Stan- dards. There is a round-up of the affair (from a critic’s perspective) which you can find here, here, and here. I have just several observations. The first is an exhortation to anyone identifying themselves as FV, particularly the “oatmeal stout” variety of FV. The second observation is for the critics. First, the SJC, while finding Leithart to be orthodox and Reformed, did admonish him to be careful in the future to be less provocative in his handling of key theological terms. In short, they wanted him to take care to qualify how and in what ways his teaching and vocabulary are consistent with the Standards.

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In light of our conclusions, we urge that Pacific Northwest Presbytery continue to encourage TE Leithart to take care that when he uses standard theological terms (such as baptism, justification, sanctification, efficacious, and arrabon) in non-standard ways that he make clear those differences in use and that he continue to clarify how his views in key areas are not in conflict with the Standards.

For this reason, I believe it would be extremely ill-advised for FV partisans to take the vindication that the SJC has provided, and yet not take to heart the caution stated here. This is a body which has determined, in effect, that Leithart was falsely accused, and yet that the false accusations were provoked, in part, by teminological carelessness. We should take the vindication in hand, and take the caution to heart. The second point is just a comment to the diehard critics of the FV, most of whom are in the PCA. These are the men who have stoutly maintained that this is not a matter of semantics, or of provocative language that can be adjusted or clarified, and so forth. No, for them it is a matter of substance, and it revolves around justification—the article of a standing or a falling church. I would ask you to consider your position now, and if you take my point, reconsider your position, if you know what I mean. I am a minister in the CREC, a communion which has never formally pronounced on the doctrinal matters involved in this dispute. The closest thing was my exam that was conducted at my request—which you can listen to here. But you all are ministers in the PCA, and, if you accept my distinction between FV amber ales and FV oatmeal stouts, you now belong to a communion which has formally determined FV dark to be within the reformational pale. Your choices are to double down on the rhetoric, in which case people will wonder why you remain within a church that has now decided, at the highest level, the “wrong way” on the article of a standing or falling church, or you can also take the SJC’s admonition to heart, accept that loose words (provocations and counter-provocations) were a big part of our problem, and

810 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | 2011–2012 resolve to work with those FV men who are happy to labor within the system of doctrine taught by the Westminster Confession, with us (for our part) making our conformity to that Confession clear. We do exist, and we would be happy to take this as an opportunity to bury the hatchet.

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HOW SCOTT CLARK IS UNCONFESSIONAL JULY 11, 2013 Scott Clark takes on “legal preaching” and the “good fellows” of Moscow here. As I read through his post, I am struck by how unconfessional his basic approach is. He dissects legal preachers and preaching, and he does so while by-passing the confessions entirely. He objects to the following sorts of errors. The legal preacher “majors in” the law, and he does so “to the neglect of” the gospel. But how can a man know whether he has fallen into this error? Clark began his post by insisting that the law must be preached in its first and third uses. So in order to be confessional, a man must preach law more than 0% of the time, but less than . . . what? What are the margins? Clark says that it is not enough to “every so often” mention “grace and faith.” Okay, so what is the threshold past which I am not doing it “every so often”? Since the confessions don’t tell us how many yards of law to use, or how many pounds of grace must be included, this means that we cannot judge on the basis of touchy-feely emphases. And so this drives Clark to insist that such an error must be found in a corrupt intent of the preacher’s heart, or as Clark put it, “he isn’t really enamored with the gospel.” Now the fact that I agree with all three uses of the law, and I agree with them in the standard and ordinary way, without fooling about with definitions or anything, and can still be tagged as a “legal preacher” is interesting. This can only be done if Clark peers into my heart and finds out that I am

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“not enamored” with the gospel. The most striking thing about this approach is how unconfessional an approach it is. Pietists can discern the thoughts and intents of somebody else’s heart at 50 yards, but confessionalists? In the old-fashioned world I live in, the way you would demonstrate someone to be unconfessional would be by pointing out that the confession says “x,” and the unconfessional guy says “no, no, not x.” Say, for example, a preacher refuses to say from the pulpit that the civil magistrate has a responsibility to ensure that “the truth of God be kept pure and entire, that all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed, all corruptions and abuses in worship and discipline prevented or reformed, and all the ordinances of God duly settled, administrated, and observed” (WCF 23.3). He refuses to say anything like that because he disagrees with all that stuff, and because he teaches at Westminster West. That really would be unconfessional, and it would be fair to say that it was unconfessional because that is how confessions work—with words, affirmed or denied. But let us pretend that Clark affirmed that hedid actually believe the Confession at this point. And then suppose I called him unconfessional anyway because I didn’t think he meant it deep down in his heart. Now what? Well, somebody should point out that my heart-reading is probably about as accurate as one of those bad-lip-reading videos, and that my reading of hearts like this is about as unconfessional a way of proceeding as you can imagine. Having said this, let me return to the general problem that Clark identifies. I can agree with him here—I know what that kind of suffocating preaching sounds like. The third use of the law places applications, like nails that hold the board up. A bumbling use of the law creates a heavy blanket over the congregation that is entirely exhausting. All exhortation makes Jack a dull boy. But I can only agree here because I think “high confessionalism” is not all of life, and when attempted, it ends, as I have argued above, with a functional rejection of the confessions at the very place where confessions were designed to operate. I entirely agree that it is our job to preach Christ, and not our petty moralistic lists.

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And it is undoubtedly a chief defect in the sermons even of evangelical pulpits, that there is not enough of Christ in them . . . Flavel was right: “The excellency of a sermon lies in the plainest discoveries and liveliest applications of Jesus Christ.” (Fish, Power in the Pulpit, p. 6)

ALL OVER THE MAP SEPTEMBER 24, 2013 One of the things that modern Reformed Christians have trouble doing is arguing and maintaining tight distinctives without breaking fellowship. This inability is projected back onto the period of the Reformation, on the assumption that from Poland to Wales all the Reformed marched under the five banners of the five solas, all five banners snapping smartly in the breeze. The problem is that it is just not true. But as soon as this is brought out, it is assumed that the writer of such sentiments (in this case, me) must be some sort of a latitudinarian, wanting to melt down all our reformational distinctives into gray lead compromise. But this is not true either. It is possible to have decided convictions (believing them to be important) and also to have a catholic spirit. Take one example. I am currently reading A Puritan Theology by Beeke and Jones—a wonderful book—and they make it plain that for the Puri- tans, the covenant of works had “very much of Grace and Favour” (p. 28). “In other words, perseverance in the garden would have been a supernatural grace given to Adam” (p. 29). I am with them in this—I am not a “monocovenantalist,” and yet believe that both covenants had this something in common. I believe in a covenant of creation and a covenant of grace—and I believe that the grace of God suffused both in different ways, like it suffuses everything. This puts me at variance with all kinds of modern folks, from the radical divide held by the men at Escondido to the monocovenantalism of some of the oatmeal stout Federal Vision men. But that should be all right, and saying we should be able to talk about it without descending into chaos is not to say that the subject is unimportant. Why do we so often measure importance with decibels?

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Take another set of examples. The Westminster Assembly contained delegates who denied the imputation of the active obedience of Christ—and they were accommodated. The Synod of Dort graciously received men like Dav- enant, who was a hypothetical universalist—a four-pointer. And Baxter was in a similar position. It wouldn’t be unheard of today for a publishing company to exist in order to publish the works of some Reformation-era theologian, and also to have that theologian be unable to sit on the board of that company. At the second Auburn Avenue conference on the Federal Vision, Morton Smith defined heresy as anything out of accord with the Westminster Con- fession. But this only makes sense as a tool to deal with opponents on the other side of an intra-denominational fracas. It doesn’t help us at all with understanding doctrinal movements at large. Wherever people go, you will have significant differences of opinion, and when it is religious people, those differences will be doctrinal. Within the Federal Vision movement there are significant differences—for the sake of not being pejorative, let us call them puritan and lutheran—and there is no reason fellowship cannot function alongside those differences. If I am allowed by Escondido to be friends with a Lutheran, why can’t I be friends with a lutheran? Of course, at a certain point, when differences get to a certain point, you must break fellowship—when the issue is Arianism, or Mormonism, or postmodern liberalism. But it is a mistake to think that ruptures with the heretics are something you can practice for by conducting ruptures with the saints.

A FEW HEIDELJINKS NOVEMBER6, 2013 A friend wrote, drawing my attention to this and, with regard to the one statement of mine that the OPC report took issue with, asking me if I meant it. I would prefer to divide that into two questions—first, what did I mean by it, and second, did I mean it? I can answer what I meant by it generally right now, but I am on the road right now and away from my books. When I get home I will post some context from the essay quoted to establish what I meant by it at the time.

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But here is a general statement. At the moment of the effectual call (normally something that happens because of the preaching of the Word—as the OPC rightly notes), God’s gift of faith to an individual is what enables us to call him a worthy receiver. Without evangelical faith, there are no worthy receivers. If that worthy receiver had previously been baptized, the teaching of the Confession is that the grace represented by the baptism came to be exhibited and conferred at the moment of true conversion. Second, Clark quotes this, and it was a bit rich, coming from him.

[The Arminians] rejected the judgments of the Synod and refused to answer the points in question in an equitable fashion. No admonitions of the Synod, nor resolutions of the honorable deputies of the States General, nor even the illustrious members of the States General themselves could make progress with them.

I forget how many times and how many ways I have offered to meet with Scott Clark. But let me reiterate. I will fly down there at my own expense, I will debate with him publicly, I will meet with him privately, and I will even buy a special membership card that will allow me to comment on his blog. If we are drawing historical parallels, the only one being coy here, and refusing to engage in a theological exchange is Clark. So here is the offer put another way. Why doesn’t Scott Clark do for me what he says here what the divines at Dort did for the Arminians, and see what happens? And third, filed under “just sayin,” I note that Scott quoted this portion of the OPC church report on the FV.

Foundational to FV ecclesiology is a tendency in FV to deny the inner/ outer aspects of the covenant along with the visible/invisible aspects of the church.

So, let me do two things here. First, I affirm the inner/outer aspects of the covenant, and I affirm the distinction between the visible/invisible church.

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But second, let me note that the R2K teaching, equating the two kingdoms of the Reformation with church and state actually poses more of a threat to the inner/outer distinction than anything I have said about the historical/eschatological church distinction (which I learned from John Murray, remember). Anyhow, more later.

NO SPEEKEE NOVEMBER 7, 2018 In the comments on this post over at his blog, Scott Clark threatened to cut off comments if people persisted in asking why he wouldn’t meet with me.

Why is it curious that I should refuse to meet personally with the leading proponent of the corruption of the gospel?

Well, it is curious because in the post just above these comments, Clark had made quite a point about how the Arminians would not meet with the men investigating their views. It is curious because all these Reformed bodies denounced “a thing” called Federal Vision, the characteristics of which thing I also denounce, and they did this without ever once meeting with me—despite my cheerful willingness to meet with any or all of them.

This is not a personal matter. This is a matter of truth.

That is correct. It is not a personal matter. It is a matter of truth. And Scott Clark persists in perpetuating palpable falsehoods and will not allow the legitimacy of any venue where those falsehoods might be demonstrated to be such.

His views are well known. I can read English.

The blunt answer, which cannot really be softened, is “no, he cannot read English.” Let me take one example that Clark likes to use. He says that FV teaches that baptism puts everyone in a state of grace, which is then maintained by the believer through his own covenantal faithfulness. Is that not a

818 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JANUARY–NOVEMBER 2013 fair summary of what Clark says I teach? Well, here is some English for Clark to read. I think that such a doctrine is bad juju. I believe that it would be what theologians of another era might call a lie from the pit of Hell. I hope that one day I might be privileged to soak this doctrine in lighter fluid and set a match to it. If I ever found this doctrine on a sheet of paper in my office somewhere, I would run it through the shredder. Prior to my weekly dump run, I search my house for any traces of this doctrine so that I might throw it in the back of my pickup truck in order to take it out to the landfill along with all the bottles, empty ice cream cartons, grapefruit rinds, and coffee grounds. So the next time you read Scott Clark saying that I teach some form of this, you should probably say to yourself, “Hmmm. No speakee.”

Further, as I’ve explained many times, the churches (most particularly mine) have spoken. Did the Synod negotiate with Episcopius? No. They issued canons. So now, the churches have categorically rejected the FV. It’s a gross doctrinal error.

These churches have not rejected the teachings of Douglas Wilson anywhere. They have denounced, as grievous error, a number of errors that I also denounce. Now what? It is as though Clark pointed out that all the NAPARC churches had solemnly denounced various baptistic errors which, Clark maintained, included me. This is why I want to arrange a meeting with him, with somebody bringing along a covenant child under the age of six months, so that I could baptize that baby with the cameras just a going. If Scott Clark and I were to meet, in some place where there was genuine accountability, I have the highest confidence that I could demonstrate my faithfulness to the Westminster Confession to the satisfaction of virtually everyone in the room within the course of one meeting. And that is why I think Scott Clark doesn’t want to do it.

I only want to hear these words: I repent of the Federal Vision errors (i.e., the entire program) and then I want to see evidence of repentance, dismantling of the empire, and submission to a real church and

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discipline for all the damage done (e.g., demission from the ministry) and reparation to all the victims.

And he wants to see my house bulldozed so that the ground can be adequately salted. And all without a trial, or any opportunity to ask or answer any pesky questions! How utterly unlike the treatment of the Arminians by the stalwarts at Dort!

A ROMANS 11 OLIVE BRANCH NOVEMBER 16, 2013 I would like to thank Shane Lems for his post at The Aquila Report for his post on the FV as it relates to union with Christ. The reason for this is that he quotes from the Joint Federal Vision statement, which is very rarely done. I really appreciate it—that is what the statement was for. The upshot of his article is that FV views union with Christ as something a Christian can lose, while the Reformed confessions view it as a permanent reality. “The Federal Vision movement says it is loseable while Reformed theology says it is an eternal union.” To illustrate the latter point, he cites the Larger Catechism.

The union which the elect have with Christ is the work of God’s grace, whereby they are spiritually and mystically, yet really and inseparably, joined to Christ as their head and husband, which is done in their effectual calling. (WLC 66)

But the Catechism here says that union with Christ is not losable for the elect. This is exactly right. There is nothing in FV theology that is contrary to this. The union with Christ that the elect have is a union they cannot be separated from. So the issue is not whether the elect can lose their union with Christ—everybody agrees that this is impossible. So the real issue is whether the non-elect covenant member has any kind of union with Christ (a kind of union which can be lost). If he does, it is not

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the same as the union with Christ that the elect have, because he can lose it, and the elect cannot. So the only issue here has to do with the non-elect. Another way to say this is that the question is one of ecclesiology, not individual soteriology. We agree on soteriology when it comes to the elect. The question is this—does the visible church have union with Christ? If it does, then we have to give an account of the non-elect members of the visible church. But if the visible church doesn’t have union with Christ, what is it? And what are we all doing on Sundays? For the sake of peace in the church, I would like to offer my little olive branch. I got it off the Romans 11 olive tree, which brings up the same issue from another passage. But here it is. I would be more than happy to stipulate that the theological phrase “union with Christ” applies to the elect, and only to the elect. But there is a price that I would exact from my discussion partners in this—what shall we call it when non-elect covenant members (the only kind that can apostatize) are joined with, connected to, and part of Christ? What did they “have” prior to their removal from it? We need a phrase that is true to these texts:

I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. (John 15:1–2)

If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. (John 15:6)

I would be happy for the sake of peace and clarity to never again use “union with Christ” in reference to a non-elect covenant member. But we still need a biblical way to describe them and their relation to Christ, and that description cannot be the opposite of the biblical description. Christ has non- elect branches, and they are ______(what?) to Christ.

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MESSING WITH THE VERB NOVEMBER 24, 2013 I recently wrote about how catholicity begins at home, which you can read here if you missed it. Jim Jordan was kind enough to comment in the thread below that, but because the conveyor belt of time won’t slow down, his comments were kind of buried. I wanted to bump them up to the top again, and then quickly respond to just a few things. I appreciate Jim’s interaction on this.

Well, I for one welcome your interaction with the Driscolls and Pipers of our age. As for “evangelical,” you define it as absolute necessity of a new birth “down in your heart.” I’m happy to sign on to that as well. That is, those who persevere in the faith (good soil believers) participate in the new birth of humanity in the resurrection of Jesus, which means they are individually born again also and do not commit suicide along the way. The “down” heart stuff, being a metaphor, is fine with me also, though from an exegetical standpoint, I’ve never gotten clear precisely how what the Bible means by “heart” fits with what most Christians think it means today. I’m happiest knowing that the Heart of my life is not inside of me, but is Jesus, who will never let me down.

So let me note three quick things in response. The first thing has to do with how we should categorize it if we cannot come to agreement about these issues. Let’s hope we agree, but what if we don’t? One of the disservices that came out of the early FV controversy is that Morton Smith defined heresy as anything out of accord with the Westmin- ster Confession. This, in my view, confused the difference between the early creeds of the Church—which distinguished Christian from non-Chris- tian—and the confessions of the Reformation era—which distinguished Reformed from Lutheran, and so on. There is no such thing as an “in-house” heretic. Heretics ought to be rejected by every Christian communion, and not just by one or two of them. So I do think that these are quite possibly confessional issues, but I don’t believe these confessional issues touch on basic

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Christian orthodoxy. I am unconfessional at certain points also—I subscribe to the Westminster Confession, but my views on the sabbath are only par- tially Westminsterian, for example—which is fine if the exceptions are duly submitted to the appropriate ecclesiastical body and authorized by them. That is what I would envision as a good end point of this discussion—a church officer who differs with what I have been calling “effectual call regeneration” should take—again, in my view—an exception to the Confession, and then we would all know where we are. Nothing could be simpler, and universal harmony and peace would break out all over. Second, to the theological point. Jim says, “That is, those who persevere in the faith (good soil believers) participate in the new birth of humanity in the resurrection of Jesus, which means they are individually born again also and do not commit suicide along the way.” I could sign off on this if we mess with the verb a little. How’s this?

That is, those who persevere in the faith (good soil believers) show they have participated in the new birth of humanity in the resurrection of Jesus, which means they are individually born again also and do not commit suicide along the way.

The reason for stating it this way is that a theological dilemma is created if we postulate that every baptized Christian is given all of Christ, in the same ways and in the same respect, and that some of them “commit suicide.” If this is the case, and if some covenant members can in fact commit that spiritual suicide, then this has to mean that Christ is not our perseverance, and that it has to come to us (if it comes to us) in some other fashion. If it comes from within ourselves, then this pushes us in an Arminian direction. If it comes from God, then God is doing something salvific for the elect apart from Christ, which would create a separate cluster of problems. The only way I can see that extricates us from this dilemma is to opt for the classic Reformation understanding of the new birth—that there must be a qualitative distinction in those who are saved, a distinction separating them from unsaved covenant members. They are not all Israel that are of Israel (Rom. 9:6).

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The reason this is necessary can be seen in the third point. I appreciated Jim’s emphasis on the ground of our salvation being extra nos, outside of ourselves. But this just illustrates how this problem won’t go away, wherever we locate it. This is not really about what a spiritual biopsy of the new heart would look like under a celestial microscope. The answer to that question is “I don’t know.” The Jesus who saves brings us to the Father and is the basis for making God our Father. The new life I am talking about consists of a Father transplant. Now the Father is outside us; this is an objective relationship. But there is a fundamental distinction in the nature of that relationship to the Father between different kinds of covenant members. Certain covenant members have God for their father in one sense (John 8:37), and the devil for their father in another (John 8:44). Other covenant members have only God for their Father (John 8:42). If God is your Father, in this sense, then you love Jesus, pure and simple, and the devil is not your father in any sense. I appreciate Jim taking the time to interact on this point. If he wants to respond to anything I have written here, I would be happy to link to it. In my view, discussion of these issues in this manner would be most profitable.

THAT’LL PREACH NOVEMBER 27, 2013 In the comments below this 51post, Jeremy Sexton explains an objective, outside-the-individual way of understanding the qualitative difference between a persevering covenant member and a non-persevering covenant member. I appreciate Jeremy’s contribution. In line with my previous comments, I don’t have any difficulty seeing this as a position that an orthodox Christian could take. The fact that someone holds to this position would present, to my view, no barrier to fellowship whatever. At the same time, I have four major difficulties with this explanation, in descending order of importance. Here they are: One of the central methodological moves we made in the FV controversy was this. We understood the controversy as a question of whether we would

51 The November 24 post above.

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be allowed to speak to God’s people as the Scripture speaks, without being constantly constrained by a priori theological considerations. I believed that such a stand was appropriate then, and I believe it now. But this criterion does not just apply to the language of apostasy. It also applies to the language of true heart conversion. It applies to everything Scripture addresses, and Scripture constantly speaks of the problem of false hearts saying true things. The Scripture routinely speaks of the difference between true saints and sons of Belial as being a difference that is internal to them. I cheerfully grant that the biblical way of speaking of “the heart” may differ in some respects from the modern English-speaking way of talking about it—but our modern heart is a lot closer to the ancient Hebraic heart than either of them might be to the secret decrees of God. Here is just a small sample. True circumcision is inward, of the heart (Rom. 2:29). The heart dictates what the mouth will say, independent of the person’s covenanted baptismal status (Matt. 12:34), and it is this that determines the true and final status of the individual. In both the Old Testament and the New, God rejects those who come to Him with mouth and lips, but whose hearts are far from Him (Matt. 15:8) The Father will not accept anyone who has not forgiven others from the heart (Matt. 18:35). These are all indicators in this life that reveal the decree, but they are not the decree itself. You can be of Israel in one respect, but not in the other—and we are repeatedly taught that this distinction within Israel applies to the Church. The work of the kingdom contains both wheat and tares. In John 8, Jesus granted that His adversaries had Abraham for their father, but in the sense that really mattered, they had the devil for a father. So the language of true heart conversion is the language of Scripture, not primarily the language of systematics. It ought to be a routine part of our language also. The second thing is a practical and pressing question. One of my central concerns about doctrine, right after “is it true?” is “will it preach?” Our nation is in desperate need of a reformation that will make historians want to call it, if it occurs, the Great Reformation. Anything less than that and I think we are hosed.

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But the engine that will drive any such Reformation will have to be a Spir- it-anointed declaration of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, followed on hard by a call to action. How will they hear without a preacher? That call to action will be an appeal to do something from the heart (repent and believe) and they won’t be able to do so unless the words of life they are hearing are, in addition to everything else, offering them a new heart, born all over again. That’ll preach. Like I said above, a difference over this is not a fellowship breaker at all. But it does affect who you ask to do the preaching. Maintaining fellowship between disparate doctrinal opinions should be one of our objectives, certainly, but the mission is to bring the nations to Christ. In order to do that, we need preachers who are looking for the harvest here. The third issue is a confessional one. Depending on which Reformed confession you subscribe to, I believe that locating the distinction in the decrees is quite likely a distinctive that would require an adherent of it to take an exception. “The grace of faith, whereby the elect are enabled to believe to the saving of their souls, is the work of the Spirit of Christ in their hearts . . . .” (WCF 14.1). I do not say that this is the only possible position for a Re- formed man to take, but I will say that this is the standard Reformed view— internal heart conversion is the sine qua non of historic evangelicalism, and this historic evangelicalism is clearly represented in and by our confessions. This is what I mean by classic evangelicalism, and, speaking frankly, a horse doctor dose of it is the need of the hour. And last, the fourth issue is the theological problem, which we tend to make more complicated than it actually is. We tend to make things murky by trying to sort it out by looking at gray area cases. But the structure of the problem is thrown into higher relief when we look at the black and white cases, and it shows the actual issues much more clearly. Why debate this by discussing a guy who sat quietly in the back pew for forty years, never making a pastoral disturbance of any kind, but who never showed any real spiritual interest either? He assumes he is saved, whatever that is, and who are we to say any different? I grant this is a hard way for us to judge the efficacy of baptism.

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We sometimes get tangled up in the distinction between the persevering covenant member and the persevering-for-a-time covenant member. We focus on the good wheat and the wheat in shallow soil, and not on the wheat and the tares. So what about the covenant member who never persevered in anything good at all, not even for a little bit? So why not look at the flaming hypocrite in order to test our views of objective covenant membership? Outside he is a whited sepulcher, but inside (note that pesky spatial metaphor again) he is full of bones and every unclean thing. He is baptized, and his membership papers are all in order. He is the chairman of the pastoral search committee, is the third largest tither in the church, and his mistress is better looking than anybody else’s. He is outside sweet and inside foul. What is his status? This is an easy case—this man is a baptized reprobate. But because it is an easy case, it shines a spotlight on the pastoral question we are seeking to answer. Why? He is lost simply because he is unregenerate. You can’t fit an unregenerate peg in a regenerate hole. So his baptism isn’t the issue. The number of sins he has committed isn’t the issue. The biblical answer, as we seek to reach such people, is that he is lost because of who his father is. He is of his father the devil, as evidenced by the family resemblance. And that family resemblance is down here, and not up in the decrees. If you want to read more about these issues, this topic is what Against the Church is all about. We should have it back from the printer in about ten days.

THE CENTRAL SQUARE OF REFORMEDVILLE FEBRUARY 10, 2014 Earlier today I tweeted this: “God comes to us in three books—nature, law, and gospel. Read plainly, we read God above us, God against us, and God with us.” I have been asked for additional explanation, and so here it is. The responses ranged from huh? what? to “You sound like Michael Horton.” But this thought is actually a reworking of something I read from Matthew Henry,

827 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JANUARY–NOVEMBER 2013 and shows how, once again, I am sitting on the edge of the fountain in the central square of Reformedville, just swinging my legs. First, the Scripture: “And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses; Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross” (Col. 2:13–14). There are differences between Lutherans and the Reformed on the three uses of the law (usus legis), but the differences are not over whether there are three uses. There is a use of the law that convicts us of our need for Christ. If the basic message of the gospel is preached by evangelists whose message is “repent and believe,” this creates the obvious question—“repent of what?” That question cannot be answered without a standard, and the standard in Scripture is the law of God. This use of the law is essential in evangelism—more rich young rulers need to go away sad. A big part of the disagreement between Lutherans and Reformed has to do with the normative use of the law in the Christian life. There should be no disagreement over whether sinners are convicted by a holy law which is against them.

This difference between the Lutherans and the Reformed arises out of the dialectical relationship of law and gospel in Lutheranism as opposed to the simple distinction of law and gospel within the one foe- dus gratiae held among the Reformed. (Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms, p. 321)

MAKING SENECA CRACK-UP AUGUST 1, 2014 My friend Garry Vanderveen has been kind enough to suggest a side-by-side comparison52 of what Jim Jordan and I teach on the subject of regeneration,

52 https://theopolisinstitute.com/article/regeneration-and-lettuce

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coming to the conclusion that we are not all that far apart. I commend that post to you, with the exception of whatever was going on when they justified the right margin. As Peter Leithart put it a couple years ago53, everybody in the room is a high predestinarian, which surely should count for something. I want to keep myself quite open to the possibility that what we are saying is not that far apart, and I certainly believe we are not as far apart as some might like us to be. And that said, however far apart we are—is it lettuce/ arugula or is it lettuce/cabbage?)—I don’t believe these issues in themselves are issues of heresy. But with that said, in this postmodern climate, heresy is never that far away from anyone who graduated from seminary in the last several decades, whatever the presenting issue might be. So don’t get cocky, kid. If you don’t believe that the laws of thought are attributes of God, then peril is crouched by your door like sin stalking Cain. To maintain that lettuce and cabbage are the same thing represents a profound capitulation to a view of the world that turns absolutely anything into heresy. There are important issues here that require careful definition—catholicity and confusion should not be considered dialog partners. We can define things carefully, and distinguish things that differ, without slinging careless accusations about. But we have to debate like (charitable) 17th century divines who believed in absolute truth, and not like pomothinkers, whose soft- ness of head is rivaled only by their hardness of heart. So whatever you call this particular issue—lettuce/cabbage, amber ale/ oatmeal stout, Puritan/Lutheran—keep in mind that we are distinguishing for the sake of maintaining good fences between good neighbors. But if this in fact were the case, and Jim and I have been saying almost the same thing all this time, then I would be content to retreat from the discussion, fully abashed. Here I have been, pleading words and names and our own law, just begging Gallio to drive us away from his court. I never want to be the guy who hands Gallio a ripe story capable of making Seneca crack up at the next family reunion. I mean, who wants to be that guy?

53 http://www.patheos.com/blogs/leithart/2012/06/changes-of-nature

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But . . . and you knew that was coming, right? Garry summarizes Jim Jordan’s position on regeneration thusly:

Wilson insists that in regeneration, God gives us a new “nature.” Jordan, however, insists that in regeneration, God gives us the Holy Spirit now and forevermore.

Now if this were a complete summary, I would confess myself entirely satisfied. As I’ve stated repeatedly, I don’t want to get hung up on the terminology, particularly the terminology of “nature.” What I care about is the substance of the doctrine. But also, if this is an accurate summary, I would also need to confess that I have been entirely befuddled this entire time. True, it has been a special kind of befuddlement, a theological befuddlement, a theofuddlement, if you will, but there you go. So, say it again, emphasis mine this time:

Wilson insists that in regeneration, God gives us a new ‘nature.’ Jordan, however, insists that in regeneration, God gives us the Holy Spirit now and forevermore.

But, as I understand it, this is precisely what is at issue. I understand Jim to be saying something quite different. I understand him to be saying that in regeneration He gives some covenant members His Holy Spirit for the present, and others He gives His Spirit now and forevermore—and that apart from the content of God’s inscrutable decree, there is no difference between the man who has the Spirit for the present and the man who has the Spirit “now and forevermore.” In this view, He gives both kinds of people regeneration, and to the decretally elect he gives perseverance in that regeneration. In short, regeneration is reversible. In another place, Garry states the differences in such a way as to make them appear not all that different.

Jordan also wants us to understand clearly that not all who are in the covenant (i.e., baptized) are elect (i.e., regenerated), and he wants to

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make the same pastoral exhortations as Wilson (i.e., to trust and obey, for there’s no other way!), but he formulates his position somewhat differently. To those in covenant (i.e., the baptized), he says, “I don’t know if you will persevere or not [i.e., I don’t know if you are elect/regenerated], but I know this: God has chosen you before the foundation of the world [i.e., to be part of the covenant] . . . .”

I have no real difficulty with the doctrinal content of what Garry is saying here, and everything I have ever read from Garry on the subject strikes me as nothing other than mainstream Reformed orthodoxy. But is it really true that Jim distinguishes baptism from regeneration like this? And is it really true that he identifies regeneration with decretal election? I know that I distinguish baptism and regeneration, and if Jim does too, then great. We’re good, and never mind, everybody. But if he doesn’t—as I believe he doesn’t—that doesn’t make him an orc, or a heretic. It would simply put him outside the Reformed mainstream (which is not the same thing as being outside the Reformed tradition). There were voting representatives at the Westminster Assembly who were outside the mainstream, but (obviously) not outside the tradition. So am I saying that I am more in the mainstream of Reformed theology than this or that member of the Westminster Assembly? Well, yes, I am. I am looking at you, Twisse. I am saying that the Reformed world ought to look more like the West- minster Assembly than it should look like the caucus of congregationalists at the Assembly. I am fine with the Reformed world having edges and am fine with people living there. But it should follow from this that I am also fine with the Reformed world having a center. And on this issue of regeneration that center is summarized very nicely by our confessions—and if the historic Reformed view of regeneration is Kansas, then I live in Topeka. I don’t live on an island off the state of Maine, but if I did, I would still be an American. But as an American, there on my island, I wouldn’t be saying things like, “That’s the way it is, here in the heartland . . .” One other thing. In the course of his discussion, Garry linked to an old post by Peter Leithart that came to a similar conclusion, i.e., that Jim and I

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are not that far apart in our views of this. Like I said before, that would make me happy if it were so—but also as I said before, if we are three feet apart instead of three inches, that is not cause for a flame war.

There are still differences, which I think have mainly to do with Jim’s Rosenstockian insistence on thinking in temporal and not static, spatial categories, and Jim’s instinct to think in personal rather than substance categories. For him, the life of the newborn child of God is a life of constant, personal responsiveness to the life-giving Spirit. What maintains the Christian’s new life through life is not an inalienable de- posit in the soul but the continuing, persistent, relentless work of the Spirit with the elect. Despite these differences, if the reasoning here is sound, then I don’t think my two friends are as distant from each other as it might appear.

I actually want to expand on this point a bit, because it is one of the central points of confusion. And I admit that part of the confusion is the result of that pesky word nature. But I would want to argue that I am not depending on substance/nature at all, but rather a concept of paternity/nature. And paternity/nature is a relational thing. Throughout all my discussions of this issue I have insisted that the central question is the central relational question. In short, who’s your daddy? The same kind of thing goes for temporal categories, as opposed to static and spatial ones. In other words, when God changes the “nature” of a human being, what He is doing is providing a father transplant. When God changes me in regeneration, what He is turning me into is a human being. Prior to that moment, I was not a static, spatially bound human being, sitting there like a triangle with three sides. Rather, I was a disintegrating human being. I was created in the image of God, but parts were falling off. This is because of the temporal aspect of who I was. I was by nature an object of wrath, which means that I was in the process of circling the drain of damnation. I was headed somewhere bad, and I was headed there because the

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devil was my father. So was Cain. So was Belial. That whole bad business was temporal and relational. In effectual call regeneration, that fundamental identity (who my father is) is transformed. This transformation was entirely relational. So I am talking about who’s-your-daddy-nature, not triangles-have-three-sides-nature. Now if it is possible for covenant members in good standing to continue to have the devil for their father, and Scripture is plain that it is, then what this means is that there has to be some substratum reality going on that is distinct from (not independent of) the sacraments. There is no way to tie this reality to the sacraments without tying yourself up in knots. And the fact that there is obviously much more to say does not mean that I am going to say it now. Sorry to disappoint, but I believe you have other things to do today. Me too.

PLAYING PURITANS AND LUTHERANS AUGUST 7, 2014 So this is a bit behind the curve, but I wanted to say a few things about this post by my friend Tim Bayly. He posted this just a week after I was there in Bloomington for their Salt & Light conference, and so you would not be far off if you thought my visit might have had something to do with it. And now it has something more to do with it. Some of what I say here will simply reinforce what Tim is saying, and some of it will consist of “but what about this factor . . .?” Good fences make good neighbors. Good labels can do the same thing, which is bad news for a generation that “hates labels.” Just as liberalism was a rot that got into every denomination extant, so the postmodern vibe is doing the same thing to us—largely through the death grip that academia has on pastoral training. Just as it was very difficult to tell the difference between a liberal Methodist and a liberal Presbyterian in the late fifties, even when the light was good, so also it is difficult now to tell the difference between a Kellerite soul patch and the other kind.

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True ecumenism requires precision of thought, and precision of language, but we have gotten to the place where every attempt at careful definition is dismissed as a run up to war. Postmodernism does to theology what leaving a watercolor out in a downpour does to the painting. True ecumenism requires oil painting in the Mojave, where the blue stays blue, and the brown stays put. So let’s assume that all our discussions of these issues have the same understanding of Schaeffer’s “true truth.” Wecan draw straight arrows from the signifier to the thing signified. We really care about the truth, and we want to learn and affirm as much of it as we can. We have trouble being patient with those who say “no creed but Christ, no law but love” because what they just said is, when you come down to it, a very fine creed, and it isn’t Christ. The CREC requires each church to adopt into their standards The Apos- tles’ Creed, The Nicene Creed, and The Definition of Chalcedon. After that, they have to choose from an array of reformational standards—the Ameri- can Westminster, or the original Westminster, or the 3 Forms of Unity, and so on. The furthest distance of one from another, from wing tip to wing tip, would probably be the 3 Forms and the London Baptist. That is, to be perfectly frank, quite a span. Now I don’t know if it would be possible to do the same kind of thing with our puritans and Lutherans, but if it were possible, the CREC is uniquely situated to make the attempt. I am in favor of making that attempt—provided the evangelical center is preserved. But—some staunch presbyterians might argue—why should we even make the attempt? Why shouldn’t we leave it the way it is? Well, I would argue that to isolate presbyterianism is in effect to deny it. Historic Presbyterian and Reformed thought (of which I am a cheerful advocate) is anti-sectarian in its DNA. From Calvin on, the earnest desire of the Reformed was to establish some kind of formal concord with the Lutherans. But it was not to be, and I am not so big a fool as to think that it was all because of misunderstandings. There were and are big theological issues involved, and they do need to be worked through. See my earlier comments on the need for charitable precision. But with that said, to simply dismiss the Lutherans out of hand is way too . . . Lutheran. I am not trying to be rude here, but the unnecessary

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obstacles to Reformed/Lutheran amity were usually thrown up on the Lu- theran side. So those who don’t want to be Lutheran can start with that. Now I have already mentioned my caution about how relativistic thinking turns everybody’s theology into mush, but I should also add here my agreement with Tim that sometimes the same effect can appear because people are in transition. The postmodern Lutheran affirms the truthiness of the Augs- burg, while the crypto-Lutheran in transition can sound mushier than he actually is. By the way, I really am not using the word Lutheran in a pejorative sense—even though I myself have been accused of being a crypto-Lutheran on more than one occasion. It was no fun at all—as my therapist could well tell you, if I would just sign that release. And I would sign it for him too, but I am afraid he would write a book about everything. So while it is true that Luthero-presbyterians are creating pressure to alter the historic Reformed understanding of the sacraments, we need to remember that they haven’t gotten away with it yet. But, on the other end, the bapto-presbyterians have gotten away with their reinterpretations. They think that sacraments that really “exhibit and confer” what they signify is popish superstition, which would startle the good divines of Westminster. This creates the sorry spectacle of the Lutheros thinking that the puritans are baptists, and the baptos thinking the puritans are Jesuits. Oh, well. This is a very complex math problem, and that is why we should make sure we are loving each other, and are showing our work at every step.

A HELICOPTER ON THE FRONT LAWN NOVEMBER 17, 2014 This last week my friend Peter Leithart did some musing out loud about some problems that he identifies as resulting from an emphasis on the “legal status” of righteousness. One post, “How to Say, ‘I Am Righteous’” is here54, and another related post on Luther and imputation/infusion can be found here55.

54 In case that doesn’t redirect. 55 Up-to-dater link.

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In response I have some questions, some hesitations, some suggestions, some objections, and some exhortations. Here we go. Peter argues that we hesitate to speak the way the psalmist sometimes does because of unbelief. Peter says that to say that I am legally righteous and existentially sinful is dualism—a dualism “fed and nurtured by Protestant preaching and teaching that treats the ‘legal me’ as righteous while consigning the ‘real, existential me’ or ‘my nature’ to the realm of sin.” First, what is dualism exactly? I don’t think we can say that it occurs just because we have distinct nouns for distinct things. Sun and moon are two, as are heaven and earth, but do not represent dualism, and to affirm that God created mankind as male and female is not dualism either. So it seems that dualism occurs when two distinct things are put into an unbiblical relation to one another, or one thing that should remain as one is broken in two. So justification and sanctification could be understood dualistically, just as a misogynist understands sex dualistically. But that is his rebellion, not a design feature. In a very non-dualistic way, the Westminster Confession sings justification and sanctification together in a very sweet harmony. It is certainly possible to differ with Westminster here (although I do not), but impossible, I think, to charge the Confession with dualism.

Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and His righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification: yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but works by love. (WCF 11.2)

This sanctification is throughout, in the whole man; yet imperfect in this life, there abiding still some remnants of corruption in every part; whence arises a continual and irreconcilable war, the flesh lusting against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh. (WCF 13.2)

This means that any Protestant preaching that consigns the “real me” to the realm of sin, to drown there in tubs of depravity, would be preaching that is, in addition to being unbiblical, radically unconfessional. As long as I have been Reformed I have been instructed on the distinction between reigning

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sin (which is no more) and remaining sin (which must be addressed and dealt with by faith, in the whole man, on a daily basis). I have also been instructed, over and over, on the distinction between justification and sanctification, coupled with their inseparability. As I said before, this could all be wrong, but it seems to me that battalions of Reformed theologians have taken exquisite pains over the course of centuries to not be dualistic on the point. But this leads to my central question. Having said all this, I do not dispute that Peter has seen the kind of disjunct that he describes. I don’t doubt that he has seen it because I have certainly seen it. There are more than a few Protestant preachers who wouldn’t recognize the Westminster Confession if it landed in their front yard in a helicopter. There is a functional dualism that is certainly out there. But what causes it? Well—and this is my preacher side coming out—sin causes it. The world God actually created is harmoniously integrated, and unregenerate hearts refuse to treat it that way. The teaching of Scripture is harmoniously integrated, and unregenerate hearts refuse to read it that way. The body, soul, and spirit of the Lord Jesus were perfectly integrated. But in an unregenerate man, these aspects of a man are all disjointed and dislocated. So dualism occurs when men separate what God has joined together. And this is why I think Peter’s proposed solution to this actual difficulty won’t really get at the root of the pastoral problem at all. He says, “If, by contrast, we renounce the dualism of inner and outer and take justification as a fundamental redefinition not just of my status but of who I am, then we have a stronger basis for assurance.” In contrast, I would argue that we can never surmount this problem by rearranging the words or bringing in extra adjectives. It does not matter what words of renunciation you give an unregenerate man, he will always manage to carve some sort of dualism out of them. If he is an old guard confessional unregenerate man, that dualism will be between his legal status of justification and his actual lack of sanctification. Or if he goes Peter’s route, it will be between his fundamental redefinition of who he is, and what he is actually acting like over the breakfast table to his wife.

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The problem here is that “my old Protestant status” and this new fundamental redefinition of “who I am” are both descriptions of my basic formal status, just using different words. But if a woman were despondent over her weight, would we try to cheer her up by having her translate the same weight out of pounds and into kilograms? A person who accepts this fundamental redefinition of who he is will still have a series of discipleship choices the following Monday morning. An essential part of that discipleship is striving to have those choices align with who we are called to be in Christ. The Bible teaches us two realities—who we are in Christ and who we are called to be in Christ. If these two do not align, as sometimes they do not, we have a problem—a discrepancy between our calling in Christ and what we just said or did. This discrepancy is to be expected in a world like ours, and we are supposed to teach true Christians what to do when they encounter it.

If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: For which things’ sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience: In the which ye also walked some time, when ye lived in them. (Col. 3:1–7)

I wouldn’t want to accuse the apostle Paul of dualism because he says that my life is hid with Christ in God, and also that my life might have some toxic weeds in it that need to be nuked by the Spirit. Now any professing Christian who refuses to deal with such things is confronted with the conclusion of a practical syllogism that plays pretty rough. “Those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.” Scripture frequently tells Christians that they aren’t really. We sometimes speak as though

838 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | JANUARY–NOVEMBER 2013 lack of assurance were the only possible problem. But assurance is a problem when someone has it who shouldn’t, and lack of assurance is only a problem when someone doesn’t have assurance who should. We should always care more about the presence of the truth than the presence of assurance. In short, I believe the old categories and the old formulations (re: justification, imputation, sanctification, infusion) are fully biblical and therefore sufficient to deal with this practical pastoral problem. As Chesterton would have said, had he only thought of it, historic Protestantism has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found difficult and not tried. I believe the difficulties that Peter is trying to solve by thought experiments with the early Luther, or with various forms of ecumenical nuance, are difficulties that actually have elegant solutions in our own largely untapped tradition. And this unfolds into my final concerns. Peter is concerned about a particular pastoral problem among some Protestants. But to muse out loud about untested possible solutions that appear to directly challenge older Protestant solutions to the same problem—solutions that have been road-tested for some centuries—is going to generate a broad range of brand-new pastoral problems. This is especially the case if the challenged Protestant solutions concern central issues like the relationship of imputed righteousness to infused righteousness. Peter summarizes the older problematic Protestant view in a way that seems to include the tradition itself, and not just a few unconfessional preachers falsely representing it. He says, “a legal declaration is not like a way of life; a man declared innocent is innocent, and there is no double jeopardy.” But then he adds, “Compelling as this may be in some ways, the implied dualism can only undermine assurance.” First, I would want to know what ways this older construct is compelling, and why we are not then compelled by it. But then also, is he saying that the Reformed tradition itself has this implied dualism in it? Or just some preachers who didn’t get the confessional memo? This legal declaration is not a legal fiction. My “legal me” is Jesus, and I am genuinely united to Him by faith. How could it possibly be dualism to be united to Christ?

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In short, there is no implied dualism in the historic Reformed view of this at all, and therefore we do not need to take any drastic action to fix the consequences of such an implied dualism. The implication is not there at all, and so we do not need to head it off. But does Peter believe that we need to amend our confessions at this point? If so, is he clear in his own mind as to what form such amendments should take? What specific language would he propose? But if we are not yet at a point in these discussions where there is language ready to debate and discuss, then it seems to me that these questions are large and weighty enough that we shouldn’t really be speculating about them in public this way, however tentatively. This is closely related to another issue. When the Federal Vision controversy erupted over a decade ago, there was a great deal of confusion involved in it. More than a few Girardian elbows were thrown, some folks jumped into the fray who couldn’t be troubled to read a book, or pick up a phone, and there was at least one troubled anti-FV prosecutor who was in the process of poping himself. From where I sit the responsibility for the lion’s share of those confusions rested with the accusers. But if that controversy ever heats up again, I am concerned that preliminary sketches and speculations like these recent posts could shift responsibility for the confusion to our side of the aisle. If we care about the peace and purity of the church, we must cultivate the virtue of theological clarity. So clearly, the Protestant world has to go into the future, right along with everybody else. But as we do, we have a fundamental choice. We could take our responsibility as being defined by our own mini-eschatology, by pious guesswork on what the Spirit is going to be doing next, or we can take our guidance from making sure we have genuinely understood what the Spirit has already done. The latter is the course of action that I believe is pressing and urgent. It is the course of evangelical resourcement, and I believe it is the best way to address all Peter’s legitimate concerns and then some.

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FUTURE GRACE DECEMBER 19, 2014 The evangelical hinge is not whether sacraments accomplish the blessings they speak of. The issue is whether they accomplish every blessing they speak of. The sacraments, like the Scriptures, like the gospel itself, like the very existence of the Church, are eschatological. The words of baptism are future-oriented—from that moment forward, the baptized person is to be reckoned my brother or sister. The words of institution at the Supper are future words. “For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come” (1 Cor. 11:26). We baptize and we commune leaning forward. Every Lord’s Day we break bread toward the end of the world. In the meantime, the Church is God’s salvation community in the world, and there are two ways to come into this community. The first is real conversion. When someone is truly converted, and he comes into the Church, he receives all that the Church contains, or ever will contain (which is to say, Christ). Faith—and only faith—enables a person to inherit this complete future. Listen to Paul talking about this very thing when speaking of the riches of a true heir—“whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s” (1 Cor. 3:22–23, esv). If I am Christ’s, and Christ is God’s, then everything is mine. That includes—in Paul’s express words—the future. This means that if my future

841 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | DECEMBER 2013 is not salvation future, then at some foundational level, my present is not salvation present. From this simple reality, all evangelical theology flows. The second way to come in is by the various shifts of false conversion. Now a person with temporary faith may in some sense be “saved,” but scare quotes were invented for just such a circumstance as this. Temporary salvation is something to be terrified of. I should rather have my fingernails pulled out than to be any part of God’s salvation “for a time.”

For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entan- gled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning. For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them. (2 Pet. 2:20–21)

Someone who was “saved” or delivered for a time is in far worse shape than someone who had never heard of Jesus Christ. The good news is that for someone who is truly converted, truly born again, such a wreck at the end is an impossibility. God has guaranteed against it. Present salvation is not the only kind of salvation we can know, because every true form of present salvation is consumed with the future. Things present and things to come are a package. So for someone to come into the Church, and rest content with being saved “for the present” is to dangerously miss the way the new covenant community thinks and speaks.

Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. (Phil. 3:13–14)

For the true saints of God, the future is always in their hearts and in their mouths. We need to exhort one another against sin’s deceitfulness, constantly,

842 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | DECEMBER 2013 because the only thing that matters is being found in Him at the last day (Phil. 3:9). If I am not found in Him at the last day, then my temporary salvation can go straight to Hell. Right along with me. We run, not to make sure each foot lands in its proper left/right/left/right order, but rather we run to attain the prize. But running to attain the prize is a “bottom line” approach, and it is a future-oriented approach that the Bible positively requires of us.

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom. 8:38–39, esv)

Glorious things of thee are spoken, Zion, city of our God; God, whose word cannot be broken, formed thee for his own abode. On the Rock of Ages founded, what can shake thy sure repose? With salvation’s walls surrounded, thou mayst smile at all thy foes.

DOWN AT THE POOL HALL JANUARY 7, 2015 Warfield’s little book The Plan of Salvation is one of the few books that I have read three times. The first time was in 1988 when I was first becoming a Calvinist, and it was no doubt part of that bumpy but wonderful process. I read it again the next year. I read it a third time just a few years ago, and this leads to a needed retraction. I interact with that book in several of my own. The first book is “Reformed” Is Not Enough, published over a decade ago, and the second is Against the Church, published late in 2013.

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In RINE, my assessment of Warfield is fairly critical. “But I do want to argue that Warfield was being inconsistent here . . .” (pg. 86). And then a bit later I say this:

According to Warfield’s definition, to have the covenant dispensed in ordinances and to have them be spiritually efficacious, is sacerdotalism. But this is the Westminster Confession, which he claims is anti-sacerdotalist. And so it is, but the inevitable conclusion is that there is something wrong with Warfield’s definition. (pg. 88)

When I first read this book by Warfield I really appreciated it. But a little over a decade later, when the Federal Vision controversy was heating up, I had picked up a more jaundiced view of him on this point from my circle of friends down at the pool hall. Before letting that jaundiced view show up in RINE, I ought to have gone back to review Warfield’s book more thoroughly than I did. Then, a few years ago, when various events conspired to make me go “wait a minute,” I went back and read Warfield through again. My retraction is this. I don’t believe that Warfield was being inconsistent with the Westminster Confession on this question of sacerdotalism and his view of “immediate” grace. I don’t believe that I was being inconsistent with the Confession either, in either of my books, but I do believe that I was not being fair to Warfield in RINE. And so what you see in Against the Church is my attempt to vindicate Warfield against his critics on this point—which is obvious enough if you read that section. What is not obvious, unless you have a better memory than I did, and what should have been obvious to me, was that in print I had been one of those critics. There should have been a footnote or something in Against the Church, issuing a retraction then. And so here are two retractions. I do not believe my assessment of Warfield in RINE was accurate, and I also believe that this retraction ought to have occurred in Against the Church, not a year later in 2015. My apologies.

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21 THESES ON ASSURANCE AND APOSTASY JANUARY 8, 2015 1. There are only two final destinations for human beings after the day of judgment, those two destinations being the final damnation of the old humanity in Adam, and the final salvation of the new humanity in Christ. 2. Throughout all history, God has kept a visible covenant people for Himself, intended to declare, model, test drive, instantiate, train for, grow toward, and otherwise approximate that final redeemed humanity. 3. Depending on location and era, that visible covenant people has ranged between a grotesque parody of that final redeemed humanity and a genuine approximation of it. As history grows toward its glorious consummation, the historical progress toward that final eschatological goal will be more and more unmistakable. 4. But in either case this means that the rosters of names involved, those of the visible covenant people, and the final redeemed humanity, the elect, are not identical rosters. 5. God has always given His visible covenant people visible covenant markers. In our time of the new covenant, these markers are gospel and sacrament. God is sketching His preliminary drawing of His final redeemed humanity in charcoal—Word and water, bread and wine. It does not yet appear what the final oil painting will be like. 6. The visible covenant people therefore necessarily contains two kinds of people, regenerate and unregenerate—lines that will be used in the painting forever and lines that will be erased. 7. Christ is always present and offered in His gospel and through His sacraments. When an unregenerate covenant member does not close with Christ, the issue is his absence, not Christ’s. With their lips they approach Him, but their hearts are far away. Christ was not far away, they were far away. 8. When covenant members who are not elect are erased from the preliminary drawing, this means there was something wrong with their

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presence there from the beginning. God is all wise, and so their presence was no mistake. At the same time, that presence does not function at all like the presence of the elect. 9. Because the covenant markers can be abused by unregenerate covenant members, these covenant markers cannot be a ground of assurance. True evangelical faith can and should use them as a means of assurance, but never as the ground of assurance. 10. Covenant markers can never be a ground of assurance because unbelief and/or apostasy can be hidden and secret. Countless hypocrites have had all their external papers in order. If externals were a ground of assurance, then hypocrites could have true assurance. But a true Christian is one inwardly, and real baptism is of the heart, by the Spirit. 11. Believers who struggle with assurance should constantly be encouraged by pastors, family and friends to look to Christ wherever He has promised to be—in the proclaimed Word, in His people, in the sacraments, in the reading of Scripture and prayer. 12. When such believers continue to struggle, they need to be strongly encouraged to repent of and abandon false and unbiblical notions of what a “true” conversion must look like. If God had wanted everyone to have a Damascus road experience, He would have given everyone sandals and a horse. 13. When a professing believer comes to question his assurance, and his life is one characterized by drunkenness, fornication, a foul mouth, bitterness, backstabbing, out-of-control parties, pot smoking and the like, questioning his assurance is exactly what he ought to be doing, and about time. It is not pastoral care to try to squelch questions that have been a long time coming. People who live that way will not inherit the kingdom of God, and should not be allowed to think they are going to. 14. To repeat, for such persons, we ought not to ask why Christ didn’t show up in the covenant markers for them. Christ was always present there. Somebody else didn’t show up.

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15. A person who shows up physically to the covenant markers with habit- ual and characteristic sin in his life, of the sort that Scripture repeatedly says is inconsistent with inheritance of eternal life, does not need to be told to “believe.” He needs to be told to “repent and believe.” 16. When they are genuine, repentance and faith are two descriptions of the same motion, considered from two different vantage points. Sin and salvation stand opposite one another, and so to turn away from the former and toward the latter can be described as two actions—either as repentance or as faith—while being at the same time the same motion. 17. This means that repentance and faith are inseparable. One cannot be removed without simultaneously removing the other. 18. Therefore, faith in the presence of sermons or sacraments that does not result in actual detestation of sin is not the kind of faith that can derive any grace whatever from any of the available means of grace. 19. Wise pastoral care does not want to in any way encourage this kind of impotent faith. It is not a faith that gets it part way right, not in any meaningful sense. A corpse is not partly resurrected, and dead faith is not most of the way there. 20. It is possible to encourage weak believers who have a true but waver- ing faith and simultaneously disrupt the hypocritical assumptions of those who want to hide from God by dint of great noise and obser- vances. Sound preaching is good for both of them, and the same kind of preaching is good for both of them. 21. The new birth is the one thing needful. It is the only reality that creates repentance and faith together, which is the only way any of this makes any sense.

NOTHING COMING DOWN THE PIKE JANUARY 12, 2015 The question of assurance is a subset of epistemology. And that means Chris- tians today who struggle with assurance are dealing with an extra factor that previous generations of Christians (usually) did not have to deal with. We live

847 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | DECEMBER 2013 in a skeptical postmodern age, and so the question of knowing that you are saved is related to the question of how you can know anything. This becomes even more challenging when we are talking about our own faith five years out. In Scripture, genuine faith in God now is necessarily related to faith in God in the future. Baptism binds the future.

Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ: that whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel; And in nothing terrified by your adversaries: which is to them an evident token of perdition, but to you of salvation, and that of God. For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake; Having the same conflict which ye saw in me, and now hear to be in me. (Phil. 1:27–30)

Paul says that when Christians respond to persecutors with a calm and like-minded spirit, this freedom of terror is a token, a proof, a demonstration. The word is endeixis (ἔνδειξις—pardon—just testing WordPress fonts). When God gives such supernatural grace, it is a token, a sign, an indicator, that this group is going to be saved, and that one is going to be damned. This is not something that should be classed as infallible revelation (a persecutor might repent, and one of the Philippians might apostatize), but it should be classed as genuine knowledge. So we are not talking about any kind of assurance that by-passes the need for perseverance. We cannot be assured of anything the way God is assured of things. God knows what He knows absolutely, and all our knowledge is contingent. All our knowledge is creaturely. But there are more options than having to decide between “knowing as God does” and “knowing merely that I am saved for the present moment.” The Spirit works into us true knowledge about the future, not just the present. We know this future as we know anything else, as creatures, but we do in fact know it. This is why the Bible speaks of the Spirit as an earnest, as a

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guarantee (2 Cor. 1:22; 5:5; Eph. 1:14). But what good is a guarantee that guarantees nothing in the future? This is why we are encouraged to know that He who began a good work in you will complete it in the day of Christ Jesus (Phil. 1:6). And this is why Paul piles up challenge upon challenge, threat upon threat, in order to teach us to taunt those challenges with the knowledge that nothing coming down the pike can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:37–39). In short, we need two things in this, and as I see it the FV dark beers thus far are only affirming the first of the two. The first is that as we work through the New Testament, we must find a class of Christian for whom it is absolutely true that nothing can separate them—whether things present or things to come—from God’s love for them in Christ. Because they affirm decretal election, the dark beers do affirm this, unapologetically. The dark beers have been repeatedly and slanderously wronged by those who maintain they are denying this. That mistake is made because people believe this controversy has to be an old issue in new clothing. No, it really is a new issue, and needs to be treated as a new issue. It needs to be worked through patiently, asking and answering the hard questions. So the second thing we need is this. We must also find that it is possible for this class of chosen Christian to know this fact to be true about themselves, and to draw real assurance from it. And this, thus far at least, is what I believe is missing from this new proposed paradigm. And the ramifications of what we need to work through here extend from soteriology up to epistemology. It is a big issue, and a complicated one. As for me, I hold that an essential part of our confession of faith has to do with our place in the future of God’s people. “And of this community I am and always will be a living member” (HC 54).

ONE KIND OF BAPTISM MEANS TWO KINDS OF CHRISTIAN MARCH 17, 2015 In my stack of books being read, there are a handful of writers that are always in there somewhere. I make a constant point of always having a book by

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Chesterton, Bunyan, Lewis, Thomas Watson . . . and, to come to our point this morning, Jonathan Edwards. I am currently in Volume 12 of his Collected Works (no, I am not that far along—I jump around), and therefore have recently begun reading his Humble Inquiry. This is the book Edwards wrote defending his attempts to walk back the communion standards established by his predecessor Solomon Stoddard (also his grandfather) at Northampton, and which eventually led to Edwards getting the sack. Stoddard believed that the Lord’s Supper was a converting ordinance, and therefore did not want to limit access to the Table to those known to be “truly converted.” Edwards was seeking to establish some kind of process that would enable the church to inquire as to the true heart condition of the person seeking to become a communicant. In his opening to Humble Inquiry, Edwards is his usual lucid self, and is quite formidable. He begins, as we all ought to, with Scripture. He demonstrates that the Bible uses the word saints, Christians, and disciples, in two distinct ways. His treatment of the word Christians is debatable, in my view, but his handling of how the Bible speaks of saints and disciples is incontrovertible. Saints are visible saints by profession, where the usage is found “in very many places,” and which Edwards says is acknowledged by all. They are too numerous to cite. But then you have the saints who are truly saints—e.g., when the Lord shall come to be glorified in His saints (2 Thess. 1:10). The same is true with the word disciples. “There were disciples in name, profession, and appearance; and there were those whom Christ called ‘disciples indeed’ (John 8:30–31).” So far, so good. Among the many professing followers of Christ we have two categories. If you try to limit it to one category only, you will either become a sacramentalist or a member of the airy-fairy invisible church, the one nobody ever has to tithe to. At this point, Edwards goes on to advance a very clever argument, but one which in my view misses the point. “Real saints or converts are those that are

850 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | DECEMBER 2013 so in the eye of God; visible saints or converts are those who are so in the eye of man” (p. 185). He then says this:

To say a man is visibly a saint, but not visibly a real saint, but only visibly a visible saint, is a very absurd way of speaking; it is as much to say, he is to appearance an appearing saint; which is in effect to say nothing. (p. 185)

His illustration of this is the example of gold:

There are not properly two sorts of saints spoken of in Scripture: though the word “saints” may be said to be used two ways in Scripture, or used so as to reach two sorts of persons; yet the word has not properly two significations in the New Testament, anymore than the word “gold” has two significations among us: the word gold among us is so used as to extend to several sorts of substances; it is true, it extends to true gold, and also to that which only appears to be gold, and is reputed gold, and that by appearance or visibility some things that are not real gold obtain the name of gold; but this is not properly through diversity in the signification of the word, but by a diversity of the application of it, through the imperfection of our discerning. (p. 184)

And this is why I believe the great Edwards fell prey to a category mistake.

“Visible” and “real” are words that stand related one to another, as the words “real” and “seeming,” or “true” and “apparent.” (p. 184)

What Edwards is doing is treating this problem as though it were a problem of chemical analysis. We have this thing that looks like gold, but it might not be. And when it comes to the question of our heart regeneration, he’s exactly right. This is true as far as it goes. If a professing Christian has a heart

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attack, he’s going to wind up in Heaven or Hell, and because we live in a world where professing Christians do both, Edwards is absolutely correct that only true disciples will be saved. He is in this sense a historic evangelical, and all Christians who want to be biblical must be evangelical in that same sense. But when we are comparing gold with fool’s gold, we are dealing with an inert substance which is either gold or not. There’s nothing wrong with this kind of illustration, so long as we remember not to take just one illustration as the sum total of all possible illustrations. On this point it is the same as if you compared the Last Day to men who are sorting out good fish from bad, or angels doing the same (Matt. 13:47–50). To illustrate the problem, let us expand the illustration and assume that both the gold and fool’s gold are now animated creatures with eternal souls, and have both taken covenant vows binding themselves to be true gold. Now what? Now you have something more like a “true husband” and a “false husband.” An adulterous husband is not a “seeming” husband, to take Edward’s language from above. If he were only a seeming husband, then he wouldn’t be adulterous. The adulterer is as much a husband (in one sense) as the faithful husband is. He is not at all a husband like the faithful husband in another sense. In short, we have to remember that there are two things going on. On the one hand we have the distinction between true Christians and false Chris- tians, as determined by their heart condition, which only God ultimately knows. On the other hand, we also have common bond between true Chris- tians and false Christians, which would be their shared obligation (as seen in their baptismal vows) to live lives of true repentance and evangelical faith. So there is a substantive difference between gold and fool’s gold, but there is no substantive difference at all in the vows that both of them take. Out of all the people I have baptized, I know I have baptized people who were false in their profession and who fell away. But they didn’t fall away because I used a different set of vows on them. They didn’t fall away because they were under a different standard. Where Edwards stumbled was here—he failed to take into account the very personal sign of the covenant, baptism, which he himself had

852 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | DECEMBER 2013 administered to many of his people. If Edwards’s reasoning here stands, then infant baptism has to go. If infant baptism remains, then Edwards’s reasoning fails. And if we want Edwards’s reasoning to fail, but we want to remain evangelical, staying out of the sacramentalist swamp, then we must have one kind of baptism, and two kinds of Christian.

A BUCKET WITH NO BOTTOM MAY 20, 2015 I am currently reading A Humble Inquiry by Jonathan Edwards, in which he explains the reasons why he was putting some doctrinal daylight between himself and his predecessor, Solomon Stoddard. And since these basic issues, being what they are, cannot ever go away, and because in addition they have become deeply embedded in the American psyche (even our pagans are evangelicals), let me say just a few necessary things about the practice of child communion in the CREC and the doctrine of regeneration. Edwards had a high level of respect for Stoddard, and this was possible, I believe, because both were evangelicals, as opposed to the formalists. Stod- dard believed that communion was a “converting ordinance,” but he did so believing that there was such a thing as conversion, and that there were visible communicant members of the visible church who needed to be so converted. The debate between Edwards and Stoddard was over how best to get the people from here to there, and not over whether there was a here or there. When you come down to it, Warfield’s distinctions really are helpful.56 Formalism represents a plug-and-chug approach to divine things. The naturalistic formalists are the liberals, and if you are going to be religious at all, such formalism becomes something of a necessity. The supernaturalist temptation to formalism is very strong whenever you have an ex opere operato approach to the sacraments. If you think that the sacraments dispense grace the way water goes through a garden hose, then you might believe that the other end of the hose is in Heaven, making you a supernaturalist, but you

56 There’s a nifty chart on page 10 of B.B. Warfield’s The Plan of Salvation. It was in the original post, but can’t be included here.

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also believe that we have full control of the nozzle down here, making you priest-ridden. Now because the formalist impulse is very strong in the human heart, it is even up to the challenge of trying to co-opt Warfield’s evangelical options. This cannot be done without contradicting the actual teaching of those options, but it can be done. I prayed the prayer. I signed the card. I filled out the form in the back of that Gideon Bible. I threw the pine cone in the fire at youth camp. This is supernaturalist, because the other end of the hose is in Heaven, but our nozzle is plain and undecorated, making us Young-Life-cabin-counselor-ridden. Now there is a sharp distinction between a formalist approach to paedocommunion and an evangelical approach to child communion. Assume the communing of young children, and then ask yourself if there could be different reasons for doing so. Sure—child communion can be practiced all the way across Warfield’s chart, from right to left. But there is a world of difference to be found in the reasons. A naturalist formalist, a postmodern liberal, could commune children for the same reason he would commune a Buddhist. We are all ascending the same mountain although we travel by different paths. He retains the form of religion but denies the power. A different sacrament was involved, but this reminds me of a John Gerstner story. He was a visiting preacher at a church, and they asked if he would officiate at an infant baptism that morning. He said sure, and they took him down to the font to check him out. There was a white rose there, and he was told that their practice was to dip the white rose in the water, and use it to sprinkle the baby. What’s the white rose for? Well, it is to symbolize the innocence of the child. Oh, Gerstner said. What’s the water for then? Eastern Orthodoxy is robustly supernaturalist, and they commune children. But they do so with a view of the sacraments that sadly blurs the evangelical imperative—you must be born again. There are many reasons we don’t want to go in that direction, but that is another subject for another time. An evangelical and covenantal approach (call it modified Stoddardite) requires a credible profession of faith, but sees each administration of the

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Supper as an opportunity to profess that faith, and an opportunity for children to learn how to profess their faith, from the heart, with sincere evangelical conviction. When such a profession proves false, and a twelve-year-old boy in the church proves himself to be a congenital liar, he should be subject to the discipline of the church. Evangelicals who do not commune little children can debate whether that is a credible statement of faith, and this is a debate that should happen, but it is an intra-evangelical debate. It is an intra debate because of the shared assumption that regeneration is an absolute necessity. It is not an absolute necessity for membership in the visible church, as all non-baptists would acknowledge, and it is not an absolute necessity for communing in the visible church, as all child communionists would acknowledge, but it is an absolute necessity for anyone would see the kingdom of Heaven. The covenantal and evangelical approach to child communion is distinguished from the ex opere operato approach in this way. It is a matter of direction. In the ex opere understanding, the grace is going in. In the covenantal and evangelical understanding, the grace is working its way out. A converted person works out what God works in, but an unconverted is never in a position to do so. If the bucket has no bottom, it does not matter how long you run the hose. What about the Edwards option? I will keep you posted as I continue to work through A Humble Inquiry, but I cannot see any logical stopping point between what Edwards is arguing for and the baptistic position. I say this while recognizing that worse things than that can happen, but I still feel constrained to give a solemn warning . . .

NO NEED TO COUNT THE BARNACLES JUNE 14, 2015 In a previous post, I alluded to the important matter of the marks of the church. Historically among the Reformed, these have been considered as Word and sacrament. Some have added a third mark, that of discipline, but I think this represents a small but significant confusion. This is a fallen world,

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which means that if you don’t have discipline you won’t have Word and sacrament for very long, but you can have them. Word and sacrament are what constitute the garden—discipline is the fence around the garden. To use the classic terminology here, discipline is part of the bene esse of the church, not the esse of the church. If we try to make it the part of the church’s esse, we can make trouble for ourselves. Discipline, by its very nature, focuses on boundaries, fences, gates and doors. Lettuce grows in the middle of the garden, and the fence edges the garden. The only thing the fence cares about is marking the line between the deer zone and the no deer zone. Of course, we must discipline. The edge is important. It is the duty of a priest to guard the perimeter of the sacred space. But we must not be all about discipline—lest we find ourselves with a garden that is nothing but fence posts from one side to another. If we are all about discipline, we become consumed with the exact edges. But as Paul Avis points out in his fine work, The Church in the Theology of the Reformers, we do not recognize our friends by trying to determine the precise end of their shoe laces. If we are trying to recognize someone, we always look at their face. Define from the center out. What is a Christian church? The answer is wrapped up in Word and water, bread and wine—faithfully preached, faithfully administered, faithfully received. But notice that this just pushes our problem back a step. What is the Word? What is a sacrament? We don’t get very far if we try to find the edges of those and work our way in. Go the other way. Try to answer these two questions. What is the gospel? What are the edges of the gospel? I can answer the first—Christ crucified for sin, buried in accordance with the Scriptures, and raised again for our justification. What are the edges of the gospel? Are the Arminians in or out? The Jansenists? What about the monophysites? All this is preliminary to a point that the New St. Andrews statement of faith raises. Let me quote a chunk of it, and then go back and quote the key sentence.

The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are our only infallible rule of faith and practice. The Lord Jesus Christ committed these

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inspired Scriptures to His Church (1 Tim. 3:15). We therefore defer to the witness of the historic Christian Church as a genuine but fallible authority, subordinate to the Scriptures themselves, in discerning what the Scriptures teach. Because they faithfully witness what is taught in the Word of God, we receive the great creedal statements the Church has affirmed throughout the ages: The Apostles Creed, The Nicene Creed, and the Definition of Chalcedon. Moreover, we believe that the reformational confessions of the 16th and 17th centuries (including the Westminster Confession of Faith of 1646, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgic Confession, and the Canons of Dort), of all historic statements, most fully and accurately summarize the system of orthodox Christian doctrine revealed in Scripture.

Take particular note of that last sentence:

Moreover, we believe that the reformational confessions of the 16th and 17th centuries (including the Westminster Confession of Faith of 1646, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgic Confession, and the Canons of Dort), of all historic statements, most fully and accurately summarize the system of orthodox Christian doctrine revealed in Scripture.

At New St. Andrews, we strive to instruct our students in the light of a faith that is thoroughly Trinitarian, solidly Protestant and Reformed, and robustly evangelical. We do this because we believe these emphases to be true. When we want to identify Word and sacrament in a Protestant way, which is to say that we want to identify the church in a distinctively Protestant way, we look at the face. We do this by confessing that the historic Protestant statements are the best available summaries of what Scripture teaches. So we start there, working our way out, constantly checking our work against the template of Scripture. This does not bypass Scripture. This does not diminish the authority of Scripture. This in no way violates sola Scriptura. If you believe that it does

857 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | DECEMBER 2013 necessarily bypass sola Scriptura, then you are a restorationist and not a historic Protestant. In other words, you think the true church died with the last of the apostles and did not reemerge until the early 19th century somewhere in Kentucky, in possession of a mysterious black leather-bound book that had come from places unknown. By way of contrast, a historic Protestant view of church, of Word and sacrament, is truly liberating. We can see the church of Jesus Christ sailing down through the entire course of church history, and we can recognize it as His beloved ship. We don’t have to count all the barnacles first. Neither do we have to deny the existence of the barnacles.

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PERSEVERANCE AND TIME JANUARY 13, 2016 What are we to make of the question of perseverance and time? Some might want to say that God gives Himself in the present, and only in the present. A gift, by definition, has to be received in the present in order to be a gift, right? No, not if we want to speak biblically. Of course, I don’t experience the full blessing of the gift until the full gift is manifested. But the Bible still speaks of us as having already received such things. I am in present possession of certain things that are not yet revealed in their full glory. The unfolding of the gift is not yet complete—but the possession of the gift is settled. The gift is given. Among them would be gifts like eternal life. Eternal life is a gift, and it is too big a gift to fit into the present. I can possess eternal life now, which means that my hands have to be able to hold the future—because eternal life encompasses the future as much as it does the present. And I can have it now. “And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son” (1 John 5:11). Another would be glorification. In Romans 8:29–30, Paul speaks of every spiritual blessing in Christ, and he places them all in the past tense, including the ones that will not be revealed until sometime in the future. Foreknown predestined called justified glorified.

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Not only can I be given saved and called with a holy calling before my life is over, I can be given such things before my life even begins (2 Tim. 1:9). My salvation, not by my works, but by God’s purpose and grace was given to me “before eternal times” (pro chronos aionion). I was saved before the world began. Of course it was not revealed to the world before there was a world, and it was not revealed to my people before there was “my people.” But that just means that my salvation was settled without reference to time. Another gift that can be given in the present would be the future. I can be given the future in the present. “whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours” (1 Cor. 3:22, esv). What is mine now? In Christ, the future is mine now. When the apostle Paul launches into his glorious flyting tirade against anyone or anything that would come to lay a charge against God’s elect (Rom. 8:33), he does so with a grasp that includes all future events. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ (Rom. 8:35)? When he tosses aside all the potential threats to the perseverance of the elect, the money quote is this one—”nor things present, not things to come” (Rom. 8:38). Nothing in all creation—which includes time, history, and all my future stupid choices—can separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus. These are staggering promises, and it is easy for the flesh to doubt them. That is why God gave His Spirit as a guarantee, as an earnest payment (2 Cor. 1:22; 5:5; Eph. 1:14). An earnest payment is given so that, if the deal doesn’t go through, the buyer forfeits the earnest money. So if someone is given the Spirit in this way, that means that if he is ever lost and goes to Hell, the Spirit goes there with him. God gives Himself to His elect in the person of the Spir- it, and that is all the perseverance that anybody could ever need. Now of course this is irrelevant to a man who was never included in the love of God in Christ. A debate over whether a man can lose a fistful of diamonds is of no practical interest to a man who never had any diamonds. But according to the New Testament, there is a gift of God in the present—call it eternal life, adoption, glorification, the Spirit’s guarantee, and so on—which cannot be lost. A man who loses “this” never had it. A man who loses Jesus in this sense never had Him.

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This is because the question is not really whether a true Christian can lose Christ. If that were true, I certainly would have done so by now. The real question is whether Christ can lose a true Christian. And He has promised not to (John 10:29). If I could lose my salvation, I most certainly would. But will Christ lose my salvation? Ha. So to argue that I have every spiritual blessing in Christ right now, but that perseverance is not among these blessings because perseverance cannot be contained within the present moment is to speak the language of a system, a particular theology, and not the language of the Bible.

TWO KINDS OF CHRISTIAN MARCH 16, 2016 https://vimeo.com/158763665

A REJOINDER TO PETER LEITHART OCTOBER 17, 2016 Introduction In a recent First Thingsarticle 57, Peter Leithart has continued to develop his recent emphasis on the “end of Protestantism.” He has a book coming out on the subject, and so this is not the firstprécis he has offered on the topic. The topic is on his mind, and that is why it is on mine also. I am sure that others will be responding to his arguments in greater detail, but I wanted to register some basic concerns, which have to do with the outlines or the general structure of his project. I am not objecting to Peter’s answers so much, but rather to the way he frames the questions in the first place. Grant the questions and the answers generally follow. But why these questions, and why now? The questions are structured in such a way as to gather into themselves much that is misleading and confusing, and that will result in many confusions for others. A number of years ago, Nancy and I were flying somewhere, and Nancy got pulled out of the jet way line for some security questions, and so I waited

57 Now a not-so-recent Patheos article.

861 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | 2016–2017 for her just a few feet down the jet way. I waited and waited, and then went back up. No Nancy. It turns out it was a double jet way, and when they were done with their questions, which were few, they sent her down the wrong one, and so she naturally boarded the wrong plane. It all got sorted out eventually, but not before I obtained my illustration. It doesn’t matter very much if you find the right seat if you are on the wrong plane. Peter’s Protestant boarding pass is all in order. It is for the right plane. He really is seated in 5E. He believes in many of the right doctrines. But he is nevertheless on the wrong plane, which means the wrong 5E. There are three basic reasons for thinking this.

Mere Ecumenism The first is that we need to recognize that in all ecumenical discussions a certain assumption of antecedent unity drives the pursuit of future unity. In other words, in order to lament the disunity of the church, you have to have a Protestant doctrine of the church. If you have a Roman doctrine of the church, you can’t have church disunity, by definition. The church is unified by definition. If you are a Protestant, you need to figure which are rooms in the house, which are run-down rooms in the house, and which are outbuildings. No sensible person thinks that the existence of the JWs or the LDS means that the “seamless garment” of Christ has been torn. A certain kind of disunity is not only not lamentable but is rather laudable. Protestants need to have a debate and discussion about where they locate Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy, but we do have principles that could govern such a debate. The doctrine of mere Christianity is a Protestant doctrine, and so a Protestant ethos must figure out where the boundaries are. As Lewis points out, the phrase comes from Baxter, a Puritan. At the beginning of Mere Christianity, Lewis describes the Christian faith as a large mansion with many rooms. He describes the rooms as various communions, and he includes Rome, which is distressing to some ar- dent Protestants. Why do they get a room? But it is equally distressing to

862 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | 2016–2017 any Roman Catholic who knows his onions. Why aren’t they considered the whole house? Now what this means is that in order for the kind of ecclesiastical unity that Peter describes to take place, both Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy would have to abandon, repent of, repudiate, and utterly reject, their understanding of themselves as the one true church. This repentance would be an earth-shak- ing development in historical theology. It will not ever happen off to the side, or as an afterthought. Moreover, the kind of unity Peter describes means that Protestants generally would not have to give up anything essential to their identity. They could largely carry on just as before. Protestantism is not characterized by “one- true-churchism.” A handful of splinter Protestant sectarian groups do think that way, but the vast mainstream of Protestant churches do not. The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches do define themselves in that way. To abandon this particular distinctive would be to abandon something right at the heart of their current identity. When they abandon that, a great Refor- mation will truly be under way. And if they abandon that, such a reformation will be cheered on by all Christians of good will. Incidentally, I do believe this will happen. It is just that it is not happening now. Postmillennialism is all well and good, but we must not let it get all muddled up with over-realized wish fulfillment. So this means that Peter’s urgent rhetoric is entirely wrong-footed. The title to his article asks if Protestantism has a future, but what he is describing is a scenario where Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, considered as such, cannot have any future at all. Peter acknowledges this as a technicality but does not recognize the gargantuan import of what he is saying. Quoting Ephraim Radner, who was speaking of Catholic and Protestant, Orthodox and Pentecostal, Peter says this: “But their exclusive finalities have been clearly subverted.” The ecclesiastical problem with this is that the only ones with the “exclusive finalities” were Rome and Constan- tinople, not Geneva, not Wittenberg, and not the last place they held the Southern Baptist Convention.

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Protestant Dress Ups While Peter denies the status of “one true church” to Rome, he still grants them (and EO) the liturgical center of gravity. His proposal is NOT that we should submit to the pope as the vicar of Christ on earth. He doesn’t believe that and is not going there. His proposal is more like saying that we should act as though we had. But this is simply the scratch-n’-sniff Anglo-Catholic approach—all the cute outfits, and no actual obedience or submission necessary. This is how Peter puts it.

Protestant churches that ignore the riches of tradition should learn to treasure those riches, all of them. Protestant churches that believe the church disappeared from the earth between 500 and 1500 AD should mine the wealth of medieval Christianity, east and west. Non- or anti-liturgical Protestant churches should adopt liturgies that more closely resemble the Roman Mass or Lutheran or Anglican liturgies. Non- or anti-sacramental Protestant churches should start having weekly communion, and nurture Eucharistic piety, and confess without any mental reservations what the Bible teaches about baptism. Protestant churches who refuse to consider any but the literal sense of the Bible should learn to read typologically and cultivate an allegorical imagination. Free churches that see the church as a voluntary gathered community should give way to churches formed by ecclesiologies that incorpo- rate public and visible dimensions of the church. Protestant churches that have no theology of orders or ordination should acknowledge the goodness of ecclesial authority.

Just to be clear, I don’t disagree with everything here. At Christ Church, we have weekly communion, and I do acknowledge the goodness of ecclesial authority. There are places were the text demands a typological reading—I’m looking at you, Hagar and Sarah. But again, this emphasis is just wrong-footed. When Peter urges us not to ignore the “riches of tradition,” and that we should learn to “treasure those riches, all of them,” does he really mean all of them? Or does he mean just those things which actually are riches, buried

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under mountains of refuse and idolatrous offal? If he means only those things that actually are riches, as opposed to pretend riches, then we need a scholastic and very Protestant hermeneutic that will enable us to sort through a pile like that. But here is the odd thing. That work has already been done. It was done on such a vast scale that historians have a name for it. It was called the Reforma- tion. We possess a vast library of Protestant resources that worked through all these issues, all of them that mattered anyway, and there is a significant movement among educated Protestants today dedicated to the task of resourcement—bringing those resources of our very rich heritage down to the present. For another example, the Wenden House project at New St. Andrews is translating into English works from the Reformation that have never been translated before. Why not start our ecumenical labors with that? And also, at the same time, if we are pursuing catholicity in every direction, then why is Peter’s proposed drift all in one direction? Why not also say that we need to learn how to preach with the energy of Reformed Baptists, or sing like Mennonites or Welsh Methodists?

Two Kinds of Unity And third, the last thing to consider is why this kind of thing is so attractive to some. At the very least, it is attractive enough that the problems that are manifestly right on the surface are not being examined very closely. The reason for all this is, in my view, an over-realized eschatology. Peter is impatient for unity now, but it is the kind of crowning unity that Paul describes as the end of the historical process. There are two kinds of unity in Ephesians 4. The first is a unity that we already have and are commanded to preserve. The second is a unity that by God’s design we do not yet have, which means that we are not supposed to try to grasp it early. If we try to grasp it early, we are not going to gain the future but rather will lose the past. The unity we already have is supposed to be maintained by means of things like humility, gentleness, and patience—“endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:3). This is a unity that is a base line

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gift to all Christians, and the thing that disrupts it is personal sin—not institutional divisions. Two brothers, a Baptist and a Presbyterian, can have this Spirit-given unity (and frequently do), and they can have it regardless of the fact that their two churches do not have formal, fraternal relations. They don’t care about that—they are too busy being brothers in Christ. This is not to say that unity between churches and denominations is unimportant. It is important, so important that God sets it before us as a teleo- logical goal. There is a Christian unity for the churches and the Church that is the goal of all human history. Just a few verses down, Paul says this:

And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. (Eph. 4:11–13)

This is a unity we cannot have yet. We are not supposed to have it yet, for the same reason we don’t have roofers pounding away at the shingles when the concrete trucks pouring the foundation haven’t left yet. On a road trip of two thousand miles, we are the kids in the back seat. We relate properly to the first kind of unity by not squabbling and pinching in the back seat. We relate properly to the second kind of unity by refraining from asking, when scarcely two miles down the road, “are we there yet?” But Peter thinks that this final institutional unity is the way the world will know that the Father sent the Son, which is locating the persuasive power of true unity in the wrong place. The thing that nonbelievers will find persuasive is our tangible and palpable love for one another, not our joint committees. And this is what Jesus says, expressly.

A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men

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know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. (John 13:34–35)

And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me. (John 17:22–23)

I don’t see any reason for taking these words as a directive on institutional unity. It could well be a comment on certain reasons for institutional disunity, but the mere fact of living in different communions presents no barrier whatever to an exhibition of the kind of unity Jesus is referring to. The Wesleyan can love the Calvinist who lives on his left side, and the Baptist can love the Presbyterian on his right, and the new age Buddhist who lives across the alley can see all of it and feel it. I see no reason for assuming he would be impressed if the Baptist started wearing a white surplice when he officiated communion. What wearing a surplice would most likely do, however, is inaugurate a church split among the Baptists, which would result in all the nastiness that is likely on such occasions, and that would disrupt the first kind of unity in Ephesians 4, the kind that Jesus said would be compelling. In other words, we ought not to do things to demonstrate unity with our distant cousins if doing them will initiate a nasty fight with our brothers and sisters. Maintain unity at home first, and the means for this is humility, gentleness, and patience. Peter thinks that liturgical unity is evangelistically compelling, but, if I may quote that papist von Balthasar, no doubt in senses he would find objection- able, love alone is credible. This is why I think that Peter’s assessment of our evangelistic impotence is misguided on another level, a very practical level.

If not, we’re in trouble, because that perichoretic unity is, Jesus says, the way the world will know that the Father sent the Son. If we are never going to be one, then our evangelistic efforts are pretty well doomed.

But surely this is odd? Why are our evangelistic efforts “pretty well doomed” because of the lack of realization for Peter’s ideals in ecumenism?

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I mean, we are two thousand years into the history of the church, and we have millions of Christians, all over the place. If lack of liturgical unity were going to doom evangelistic outreach, wouldn’t it have already done so? How have millions of people come to realize that the Father sent the Son when the ecumenical endeavor is largely in shambles? Going back to Ephesians 4, liturgical unity will not result in successful evangelism. Rather, successful evangelism, much of it conducted by the wa- hoo brethren who would not recognize a historically-informed liturgy if it bit them on the hindquarters, will eventually result in liturgical unity. But it will do this centuries from now. Rather, if I might continue to mine the treasures of my own reading among the papists, Christopher Dawson once said that the Christian church lives in the light of eternity, and can afford to be patient. So the thing that will expedite evangelism today is humility, gentleness, and patience.

Conclusion Peter has many valuable things to say, about many subjects. I have read many of his books, and have done so with great profit. To take just one example, his book From Silence to Song was one of the best things I have ever read. But on this subject (and a handful of others)—because he is so personally amiable, and because his BS detector is busted—his suggestions should simply be rejected. This can be done without attacking him personally. I believe that his boarding pass is entirely in order, and I have no complaints in that regard. But I think it would be a mistake to follow him onto that plane. Throughout this piece, I have been making it a point to quote papists, in part to illustrate my agreement with part of what Peter is urging. I am mining a rich tradition. Protestants can be decidedly Protestant without being bigots. And so I will conclude by citing my very favorite papist, G.K. Chesterton. He once said that you ought never to tear down a fence unless you knew why it had been put up in the first place. The resourcement project mentioned earlier is an effort to teach Protes- tants why our fences and boundaries exist in the first place, and why they

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are located in the places they are located. There are good reasons, multitudes of them, and expositions of those reasons are readily available. Prot- estants who follow Peter’s suggestions here without working through those reasons in detail are in my view exhibiting, not doctrinal fidelity, but rather a listless ennui. And that is not the need of the hour.

SWINGS LIKE A THURIBLE OCTOBER 19, 2016 Peter Leithart was kind enough to respond to my rejoinder here.58 So let us not just talk about ecumenism, let us all continue to display the ecumenical spirit that properly begins at home. I thank Peter for his interaction. In this rejoinder to mine, Peter issues a clarification, and then notes an irony, a misdirection, a leading error, and concludes by offering an invitation to buckle up. On the clarification, I am glad that Peter acknowledges that his proposal assumes a gargantuan surrender on the part of Rome and EO. But he wants to balance this by saying that we would have to give up a big part of our identity also, that of being “not catholic.” I am simply unconvinced of this. Most Protestant parishioners would have to attend a special Sunday School class on church history even to find out the rudiments of what is going on, and those who did not have to do so would be the ex-Catholics, whose reactions to their past would be largely personal, revolving around things like “Catholic guilt,” “somnolent worship,” or “mean nuns.” I know quite a few Protestants in this latter category, and the identity crisis threat does not seem to loom large at all. I do grant that a handful of Protestant theologians would be like an old-guard cold warrior after the collapse of the Soviet Union, unsure of what direction to point the guns. But enough about Scott Clark. The irony that Peter notes is that I am an all-over-tarnation activist, and so it seems odd to him that all of sudden I turn quietist if the topic of ecumenical activism comes up.

58 http://www.patheos.com/blogs/leithart/2016/10/on-flying-together

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If he’s zealous for holiness now, why be a quietist concerning catholicity and unity? Doug is a living refutation of the logic he applies to me.

My response to this is “do not awaken love before the time.” In other words, I try to limit my activism to things I can actually do, which includes doing things at the right time. I labor in my corner of the vineyard, and I hope I work hard, but if I tried to work the entire vineyard, everything would suffer. I would get in the way of others and would necessarily be neglecting my own duties. And to anticipate a point I will make a few paragraphs down, working in the vineyard means planting when it is time, tending when it is time, pruning when it is time, and harvesting when it is time. If you harvest during the time for tending, you are just damaging the plants—“a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted” (Eccles. 3:2, esv). To change the metaphor, I have no problem with someone doing research on Ancestry.com and discovering distant relatives in the old country. And I have no problem with a trip to the old country, and looking some folks up to say hey, in the Scottish Highlands, say. But if I take to wearing a kilt here in Idaho, and practicing the bagpipes every night after dinner, I am introducing far more disharmony on the local scale than bringing about harmony on the global scale. In other words, Peter’s proposals, assiduously followed, would have a far greater potential for disrupting existent Protestant unity than they have for actually bringing about a broader unity. Why? It isn’t time yet. The misdirection that Peter objected to was my use of the phrase An- glo-Catholic. I cheerfully grant that he did not use that phrase, but I still think his proposal amounts to that. If we acknowledge that Peter is entirely uninterested in granting the exclusive claims of Rome—which is the case—and we take his exhortations to mine the liturgical treasures of the medieval church seriously, then that leaves us adopting certain practices into our existent communions. We are still Protestants, but we are adopting medieval treasures, all of them he said, and which Protestant group is most like that? The answer that came to my mind was Anglo-Catholic. This is how Peter put it.

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Non- or anti-liturgical Protestant churches should adopt liturgies that more closely resemble the Roman Mass or Lutheran or Anglican liturgies.

Now the only group in recent memory that I know of that wanted to “go there” without actually “going there” was the Anglo-Catholic movement. If it swings like a thurible, and smokes like a thurible, and smells like a thurible . . . And by the way, while we are here, Peter says in passing that C.S. Lewis was a “real Anglo-Catholic.” That is, I am afraid, inaccurate. Lewis’s own view of it was that he was “a very ordinary layman of the Church of England, not especially ‘high,’ nor especially ‘low,’ nor especially anything else.”59 It would be more on point to say that he was a stout supernaturalist, and a conservative representative of a broad-church approach in the tradition of Baxter. He could coexist with the Anglo-Catholics precisely because he did not share their liturgical, ecclesiological, or doctrinal principles. Still, in the spirit of offering an olive branch, I will grant that Lewis was An- glican enough to give me the Presbyterian wim-wams. I wouldn’t want to introduce into our service things that Lewis was comfortable with—and the reason is that I wouldn’t want an unnecessary controversy over unbiblical innovations. To dispense with Peter’s irony, I am an ecumenical activist. I am actively rejecting an approach that I believe will result in far more actual disunity than unity. Peter suggests that my leading error is my use of “institutional” unity as some kind of a scary thing. But I don’t believe it is a scary thing at all. I believe it is the overarching goal toward which all our efforts should be bent. Institutional unity is not un-Protestant unity at all. As a postmillennialist, I do believe that a governmental and institutional unity for the church is in fact coming, and as an activist I am laboring toward that end. But it is not here yet. To return to an earlier image, to oppose harvesting the buds is not opposition to harvest. As far as the buckling up is concerned, I am happy to do so. Christ is taking human history right where He wants it to go. I am delighted to go there with all those He is taking with Him. All who are converted to God, confessing the name of Jesus, are going there, and amen. But we are not there yet.

59 From the preface to Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1960), 6.

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FEDERAL VISION NO MAS JANUARY 17, 2017 Introduction I have decided, after mulling over it for some years now, to discontinue identifying myself with what has come to be called the Federal Vision. It used to be that when I was asked if I held to the Federal Vision, I would say something like “yes, if by that you mean . . .” Now my intention will be to simply say, “No, I don’t.” This obviously requires explanation, which I hope to provide here. This post is simply an attempt at a more careful qualification of terms but must itself be carefully qualified. Most of all, I am trying to find a spot where all appropriate qualifications will be heard—by all parties. In what follows, I will offer observations about what this means, and in addition to that, I will try to add some careful statements on what it does not mean. It is never possible to say everything that needs to be said at one time, but on the essentials of this particular issue I hope to attempt it here. But every part of this needs to be balanced by the rest, and so I would ask everyone who reads part of this to make sure they read the whole thing. A part of this post taken as the whole would be grossly misleading. Follow up questions are to be expected, but I hope to make the general point clear. First, what do I intend to attempt? The first part of this consists of a set of retractions, not to mention an important sense in which I need to seek forgiveness. The second half concerns that which does not need to be retracted at all. I am trying to disentangle some old confusions, but I do not wish to entangle some new ones.

The Reason for Retractions When I first became a Calvinist, back in 1988, I spent a couple years after that point denying that I was in fact a Calvinist. My reasoning was simple: I hadn’t learned these things from Calvin, I did not want to participate in any Paul/ Apollos competitions, I just wanted to be biblical, etc. But I gradually came to the conclusion that the only thing I was really convincing anybody of was that

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I was being disingenuous, if not dishonest, and too clever by half. Everybody knew what a Calvinist was, and I was what that particular noun is supposed to describe. Denying it was communicating truth to nobody, except to communicate the possible truth that I was not to be trusted with the ecclesiastical silver. Something similar happened with the phrase Federal Vision, only running the other direction. Everybody knew (or thought they knew) what that phrase represented. Since I certainly owned the phrase, albeit with modifiers, and lots of energetic typing, what happened was that I was thought to be owning what people knew as this. But the more I typed that, the more it made people’s heads hurt. So one of the few things I have been successful at doing is persuading a number of people that I am a sly fellow, and one who bears close watching. Heretics are slippery with words, and since I have spent a lot of time trying to grease this particular piglet, I must be a heretic. So I have finally become convinced that the phrase Federal Vision is a hurdle that I cannot get over, under or around. The options are therefore limited. I could abandon my actual position and adopt what most people think of when they think Federal Vision, or I can continue my futile quest of explaining it just one more time, or I could abandon the phrase, and let everyone know that I have done so. The latter option is what I have decided to do. I am doing this in an attempt to communicate charitably and have no desire to obscure.

A Different Kind of Difference For years I have been trying to describe some of these distinctions involved in all this as “amber ale Federal Vision” as over against “oatmeal stout Federal Vision,” and have sought to identify myself with the former. But I have come to the conclusion that the phrase Federal Vision is itself a stumbling block that prevents far too many people from hearing what is being said, however many metaphorical adjectives I use. This is because—I am now convinced—it is not the case that there is this thing called Federal Vision, with how much of it you actually get wired up to a dimmer switch. I believe it is a false analogy to say that I am a 7 on this switch, and Jim Jordan, say, is a 9.

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Coming to this recognition does not mean that I am now disclaiming all commonality with my friends in the Federal Vision, even over against what many other believers in other traditions believe. Lutherans and Baptists both believe in the deity of Christ and in justification by faith alone—but Luther- ans are still Lutherans all the way down. The same goes for Baptists. Baptists are Baptists all the way down. A Federal Vision advocate is FV all the way down. I am something else all the way down, and I believe that the terminology is getting in the way of making important distinctions. So the views I hold to are a different kind of thing from what is represented in the common understanding of the Federal Vision, and the differences involved are connected to everything. They are a different kind of thing, not a lesser amount of the same thing. Thus when I speak of the objectivity of the covenant—which I will still continue to do—this is not a lite version of what someone else might mean by it. Now I do not say this because I am angry or upset with anybody. I say it because I think I have learned something.

On Seeking Forgiveness A great deal of the Federal Vision controversy was tangled and confused, and this certainly included many of those who were attacking the Federal Vision. But in retrospect, I have come to believe that there were also a number of critics of the Federal Vision who were truly insightful and saw the implications and trajectories of certain ideas better than I did at the time. I was wrong to treat all critics as though they were all more or less in the same boat. There were insightful critics and there were bigoted ones, and I should have given the insightful critics more of a fair hearing than I did, and I should have used the behavior of the ignorant critics as less representative than I frequently did. I believe I was wrong in this also. Not only were some critics insightful in their critiques, but they tended to be the ones who also were fair-minded about other things. Indeed, I think that those two things usually go together.

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Because there was a general melee, in the middle of it I did not want to say or write anything that would be twisted and used against me or my friends. But even in the midst of everything, I did find some things on the Federal Vision side of things worrisome, and in the same way as did some of our critics. I know that I acknowledged this at times, but I should have done a better job of acknowledging it. I should have acknowledged it with great clarity, and I should have been louder. In short, I should have done more than I did to distinguish critics who sought to be responsible from irresponsible ones. So that I do not float away into generalities here, some of the critics I have in mind who sought to be fair-minded would include men like Rick Phillips, Cal Beisner, and Richard Gaffin. I am sure there are others. In saying this I am not saying that (even now) I would agree with any or all of their criticisms—I am saying only that I did see a serious attempt at fair-mindedness. I am trying to pinpoint where I need to seek forgiveness, and this is a distinct operation from simply changing sides or turning coat. That is not what I am doing. So even while doing this, I want to continue to say that the insights of some critics were almost hopelessly obscured by rash accusations, bigoted political maneuvers within the church, and theological incompetence. I continue to believe that there were many instances where advocates of the Federal Vision were repeatedly and egregiously wronged in how they were treated. But it is not my job here to confess other people’s sins. My problem in this was that the incompetence on display on the other side provided a distracting way of muting the legitimate criticism. My tendency in this was simply to circle the wagons, defending myself and defending my friends. I have come to believe that my robust defense up and down the line contributed to the group-think that was going on. I believed at the time that I was fighting group-think, fighting the high sectarians, but in doing this I believe that I actually helped to polarize the situation. I also now believe that that polarization happened in such a way as to have the political borders (lines on the map) not really match the natural borders (mountain ranges, riv- ers, etc.). Now here we are, a number of years later, and I have become acutely aware of the fact that the political borders are not the natural ones.

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This problem was one I contributed to, and I am seeking to undo what I can. But in distinguishing myself from the Federal Vision, I am accusing no one of heresy. I am simply saying that certain views are not the same kind of thing as what I am seeking to teach. I am not trying to start a fight, but rather to own my portion of a fight that ought not to have gone on as it did. You could say (in my defense) that it is difficult, in the middle of a saloon brawl, to distinguish the motives of loyalty, manly principle, stubbornness, and cussedness. That it correct. It is difficult, but I still should have done a better job. I am responsible for not having done so, and thought I needed to say so publicly. If someone is encouraged by this statement, but thinks that I need to be more specific about a particular incident or exchange, please feel free to contact me about it. When we look into it, at the end of the day I still may not agree, but I am wanting to state here my willingness in principle to agree.

Trajectories We are a decade and a half downstream from the first Federal Vision explosion. Certain things have shaken out during that time, and incipient earlier differences have become very obvious differences. To take one example, Peter Leithart’s “end of Protestantism” project is going someplace where I am simply uninterested in going. Unlike some of his critics, I do not believe he is going to Rome, but I do believe it is a project, and it does have a destination. That destination is not mine. It is hard to reconcile his “end of Protestantism” project with my “Protestantism forever” approach. In saying this, I trust everyone will recognize that I am talking about the destination of our respective theological projects in this life. I am not talking about Peter’s personal destination, which is the resurrection of the body, and complete glory, a destination we gladly share. And to flip it around, my glad cheer-leading for the principled retrieval of historic, classical Protestant orthodoxy is not going where Peter is headed. We don’t need to hurl anathemas at one another over any of this—but neither do we need to be calling them by the same names. The hot persecution of Baptists by Anglicans was one sort of historical evil, one that afflicted another

876 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | 2016–2017 era. But calling different theological positions by the same name is an evil that is much more conducive to the fuzzy thought of our era, and nobody gets on very well. We are not all saying the same thing really.

What I Do Not Mean This statement represents a change in what I will call what I believe. It does not represent any substantial shift or sea change in the content of what I believe. I was, am, and will remain a Westminster Puritan within an irenic river of historic Reformed orthodoxy. I am making this lexical shift for the sake of clarity and communication—defining more precisely what was already there. Good fences make good neighbors, and so do good nouns and adjectives. This represents no change in my friendships or personal commitments, or denominational relationships. All my friends are still my friends. Although I am currently the presiding minister of the CREC, this statement is in no way a statement on behalf of that body of churches. What I am saying here represents my views only. I hope that it has a good effect elsewhere, but I am not speaking on behalf of anyone else. I trust that a proper development of doctrinal precision can be matched by a corresponding zeal for doctrinal charity. Charity and clarity should not be at odds. They even rhyme. I would still want affirm everything I signed off on in the Federal Vision statement, but would also want to point out two things about that statement. First, it was a consensus document. I would now want to go further in some directions with that statement while other signatories would almost certainly want to go further in other directions. And that brings us to the second point. Some of those areas of divergence would be highlighted in the postscript to the statement, and the tension that exists there in that section does require some sort of resolution. I am attempting that resolution here. In short, I believe the statement was fine as far as it went, but does not say everything that needs to be said. My proposal for a true resolution is to sign away all rights to the label Federal Vision. What I used to call oatmeal stout

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Federal Vision should now just be called Federal Vision. What I used to call amber ale Federal Vision should just be called . . . something else. I don’t care what you call me, just don’t call me late for dinner.

Three Branches I think it was Wolterstorff who observed that the Reformed tradition has three main branches—the pietistic, the confessional, and the Kuyperian. If forced to choose I would opt for the Kuyperian, but my real desire would be to work out a synthesis of all three. Within the Reformed stream, there are various “projects” under way, and I believe there is pretty much room for them all. About the only one I would exclude would be all the variations on postmodern mush. In fact it is tragically ironic that Wolterstorff himself recently surrendered to the goo thought of pomosexuality. If you get the definitions of male and female wrong, there are precious few other categories that will remain intact after that. But such relativism isn’t Reformed because relativism isn’t really anything. But among the believing options, I do not believe that we have exhausted all of them—in fact I am a firm believer in the Protestant ressourcement project under way in various places because I don’t believe we have even cataloged all the options that Reformed Christians have developed in the past. So this does not mean piety gone to seed, as in moralistic pietism. Nor does it mean the kind of confessionalism intended by some, where they don’t believe you can possibly understand the Heidelberg unless you can read it in the original Arabic. Nor does it flinch and hold back where Kuyper himself did, advocating a secular state.

Names, Names, Names What shall we call this endeavor? I don’t know yet, but I think continuing to use Federal Vision as a label for any part of what we are trying to do here is only confusing things. So there it is, whatever you want to call it. Whatever this is, it is Federal Vision no mas.

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STRAIGHT OUTTA CALVIN JANUARY 25, 2017 It is only natural that there are some Federal Vision questions. Of course there are. I have been asked a number of times what the response has been to my Federal Vision No Mas post.60 As best as I am able to gauge, there have been three visible responses. The first has been relief and gratitude. “Thanks much. I think this is a good move.” This comes, I think, from friends of our ministry who are grateful that they don’t have to start explaining an esoteric doctrine to their friends if they happen to commend something else we have said or are doing. Say that a student in their classical Christian school decides to come to New St. Andrews, and some concerned folks in the church start wondering aloud whether that is entirely wise, because they heard that they teach something out there called “Federal Vision,” and while they do not know what it is exactly, it sounds dubious. Our friend can now, without getting into the weeds, simply say no, that’s not true. This is not evasion because the concerns were pretty nebulous to begin with, and the answer addresses it at that same level. What do they teach there? We are Reformed evangelicals in the historic Westminster tradition. The second response has been something like, “I’m a Baptist, and all that stuff is kind of ‘inside baseball’ to me. Glad you guys worked it out.” To which I say, thanks. Appreciate it. The third response has been to raise specific questions. These come from folks who have followed the controversy and who, not unreasonably, have informed questions. Here is how I hope to approach that. I have said that the Federal Vision Statement was a consensus document and was laboring to bridge two positions that I have now decided can’t really be bridged in that way, at least not successfully. One of the things I hope to get to in the near future is the production of a statement of faith that runs parallel to the original Federal Vision statement (topic by topic) so that I can lay out my non-consensus-ified positions with as

60 The previous entry, January 17, 2017.

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much clarity as I can. Depending on the time demands, I may do this piece by piece, paragraph by paragraph, and publish it here as I go. As I do this, the two places that will require the most careful examination are the places that will deal with, respectively, paedocommunion and the objectivity of the covenant. Everything else will be pretty standard issue Reformed and evangelical. And even in those places that do need to be examined carefully, I will be seeking to locate what I believe within the historic Reformed continuum. And I am sure that there will be many out there who wish me the best of luck. Right, Lane? One other thing should be noted. There are other aspects of our ministry that can seem “radical” to outsiders but this is not because we are departing from the total world and life view of the Reformers, but rather because we are in the process of recovering that view. If Calvin were Compton, that stuff is straight outta Calvin.

DAMNATION AND DEFICIENT ALLEGIANCE MARCH 29, 2017 A few days ago, Peter Leithart published a brief summary61 of Matthew Bates’s book Salvation by Allegiance Alone. My musings here cannot be a fair rebuttal to Bates, since I have not read his book, and it is really not a rebuttal of Peter’s point either, because he largely limits himself to summarizing what he thinks Bates might be up to. Peter does say that Bates’s “provocative book contributes to a Protestant revision,” indicating that he does believe there is something promising and new here. So I can go as far as this: “a very ordinary layman of the Church of England, not especially ‘high,’ nor especially ‘low,’ nor especially anything else.”62 As far as the summary is representative of a proposed new take, there are reasons to be dubious. This is because a key question is left unaddressed. Protestants know and affirm that we are justified by faith alone, sola fide. But what is the qualitative nature of the faith that justifies? It is a gift of God,

61 http://www.patheos.com/blogs/leithart/2017/03/salvation-by-allegiance/ 62 Mere Christianity, 6.

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lest any should boast, and this means that the faith involved is the kind of faith that God only ever gives. When a man is justified by faith alone, it is never by a faith that is alone—it is “ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but works by love” (WCF 11.2). In short, justifying faith, a saving gift from the living God, is by definition not dead. Dead faith gets nothing in the stocking but coal. But that ought not to worry us, because God never tried to save any man by giving him dead faith. So as far as the word allegiance is concerned, there certainly ought to be no problem. For classical Protestants, nothing about this is new. Living faith is certainly qualitatively loyal. The historic Protestant handling of this teaches that the faith that justifies is composed of three elements of knowledge, assent, and trust—notitia, assensus, and fiducia. Fiducia certainly involves loyalty and allegiance. But there is certainly something in this to be wary of. Allegiance as a qualitative element in the gift of faith that God gives is not problematic. But if this is emphasized while also denying point-in-time justification and the classical, evangelical doctrine of the new birth, an enormous problem is created. Allegiance over time is a difference kettle of fish, a kettle that was not filled up from the catch that Peter hauled up from the right side of the boat. Qualitative allegiance is one thing, and performance allegiance is quite another. Performance allegiance (sanctification) is a fruit of justification, not a root of it. Performance allegiance is nothing other than the perseverance of the saints in holiness. Again, there is nothing new here. The emphasis in this portion of Peter’s summary is mine.

Jesus’ life and death was a life and death of utter fidelity to His Father, and the announcement that the faithful Jesus has become King is a summons to respond with fidelity to the God who has given His Son.

So everything rides on whether justification is punctiliar or not. Are we talking about justification over time? If we are, then the pressing (and suffocating) problem is this. How much fidelity? How far short of Christ’s utter fidelity can I fall, and still have my fidelity recognizably loyal? How much

881 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | 2016–2017 disloyalty in real time (i.e., sins) before my loyalty is just a hypocritical pretense? How much white sand can I put in the sugar bowl before it isn’t a sugar bowl anymore? If we answer this wrong, we have done nothing but clamber back on the medieval merit wheel, where we can run and run hard like so many caged squirrels. And so this is why the classic doctrine of regeneration is essential. True regeneration is punctiliar, just like the moment of justification. Notice I said moment of justification. At 10:15 am, Murphy is unregenerate and unjustified. At 10:20 am, as measured by William Perkins’s specialordo stopwatch, he is both regenerate and justified. The Holy Spirit quickened him, he repented and believed, and God justified him at that moment, totally and completely. As long as we have a robust doctrine of conversion, we have no problem seeing that allegiance is an essential part of the gift given at that conversion. Regeneration, justification, and conversion are words that represent different aspects of this moment, but let us put them all under the heading of “getting saved.” If we look at the faith Murphy exercised in that nano-moment, we see that it necessarily contained the quality of allegiance. How do we know that it contained the quality of allegiance? We know this because it was given by God, and that is the only kind of faith that God ever gives. It was therefore obedient faith before it had done any obeying. It was loyal before any allegiance was displayed in the real world, in real time. It had these qualities inherent in it because it was alive. If Murphy flakes later, if he apostatizes, if he ends his Christian walk in a giant fireball, then it is absolutely essential that we trace the problem back to his conversion, which we now recognize as spurious. “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us” (1 John 2:19). So, justification by allegiance? Obviously. Justification by allegiance? God forbid.

882 APPENDIX EMAIL CORRESPONDENCE WITH MEMBERS OF THE FORT LAUDERDALE GROUP

In 2003–4, a lengthy discussion on the Federal Vision was held on a private email list. The author’s side of the conversation is reproduced below. Because the exchange was not held in public, the names of the FV opponents have been redacted to first initials.

1 Dear C______, Thanks for your letter, and the obvious love and concern behind it. Just a few brief thoughts which I hope will set your mind at ease. First, please know that we are not looking for a fracas in Ft. Lauderdale. I have every expectation that the discussion will be collegial, so far as it is possible with us. I for one am not coming loaded for bear. The references you cite from the NPP booklet are a good example of how miscommunication can happen when trust has started to break down. What was seen as uncharitably painting with a broad brush (all who differ with me) was actually a case of me charitably refusing to state certain culprits by name even though I thought everyone knew who it was. E.g., John Robbins, Joe Morecraft, et al. Please remember how this controversy started—with a nationwide declaration of heresy backed by no specific evidence at all. To this

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day, no one on the other side of this hubbub (to my knowledge) has publicly condemned what was done there, or the manner in which it was done. Third, my booklet was aimed in two directions. But the central purpose was to provide a historic Protestant critique of the NPP because I believe some folks on my side of the aisle are not critical enough. You say that I have not “blessed any of your allies with the kind of rhetorical attacks you’ve aimed at your critics.” But C______, the whole section you quoted that ended with “little pink bottoms” was an example of just such an attack. Most of the booklet was aimed that direction, in one way or another. And last, in your role as moderator, please note that saying something “with grief” is not an ethical disinfectant, or a great equalizer. The fact that Joey said that Steve was a heretic reluctantly did not change the content of what was said. And also please remember that all four of us as ministers would serve the Lord’s Supper (gladly) to any of our adversaries in this controversy were they to come to our church one Lord’s Day morning. I am not sure that the reverse is true. There is a very important point here, which reveals the true nature of this disagreement. Foundational commitment to unity should be measured at the Table, and not in the use of adverbs like “sadly.” But to return to the first point, and your central concern, I do want to do everything I can to strive for like-mindedness at this conference. That’s why I agreed to come. I intend in my demeanor to be a perfect baa-lamb. Unless that eventually disgusts everyone and the moderator makes me stop. Please feel free to pursue any further demeanor questions with me further prior to the conference. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

2 Dear C______, Thanks for the response, and the feedback on the Calvin quote. I have no problem beefing up the argumentation there—getting feedback was part of the reason for sending it out. But please note that your response

884 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APPENDIX reinforced the point I was making with the quote. Since everyone knows that Calvin can’t be denying sola fide, they are willing to do the careful work of studying his work as a whole and taking quotes like this in context. This is precisely what has not happened with us. And that was my point. Calvin denied, in print, one of the solas. But we don’t slam the book shut and declare him a heretic. On the other front, please remember that one of the contentions on our side is that this is a foundational paradigm issue. Recall my comments at Monroe about paradigm bumper cars. We are not looking for a moderator “without a position” because that would be worse than useless. But please realize that you do have certain assumptions about all this (that were clear enough in your sermon on Norman Shepherd). You did not come to Monroe “unaffiliated” (like Ulysses in O Brother). Now these assumptions of yours do not disqualify you from being a superb moderator. The problem would come if you were unaware that you had them. We believe you to be an honest Christian gentlemen, which is why we were all willing for you to occupy that chair. But we do not believe you are (or could be) neutral. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

3 Dear C______, Thanks for the answer, and for the follow up. You don’t need to worry about how your comments came across—I know that I am not in the same league with Calvin and am not insulted that others know it too. But, and this is the point, I am in the same faith as he, and in the same office, that of an orthodox Reformed pastor. 1 Tim. 5:19 requires that a charge against any elder be established and proven in the mouth of two or three witnesses. In short, the case has to be conclusively made and independently confirmed. I should not have to prove that I am innocent. We can all point to a number of conclusions that folks have reached about my orthodoxy. Can you point to any place where the case has been made?

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Careful of blinders. When I said that Calvin in print denied sola fide, my point was not that he had not done so, but that a prima facie read could make you think that he had. I am not arguing with your interpretation of Calvin. You say that the first interpretation is a plausible one, until the context is examined. Exactly so. But we should not examine the context carefully with Calvin because he was a genius. We should examine it carefully because the Bible requires this of all Christians as they represent the views of all other Christians. Before a charge is made public, and accusations spread across the nation, a case has to be conclusively made. Please remember that I and my friends have already been hanged as heretics, and now, a year later, we are having a formal sit-down discussion in order to determine if there is material for an indictment. Ready, fire, aim! Cordially in Christ, Douglas

4 C______, I think resolution of this conundrum is exquisitely simple. You say:

I do understand the dilemma. We don’t want to tell anyone that they can have Jesus for their Saviour, but not their Lord. And an act of saving faith is to rest on Christ alone for sanctification (WCF XIV.2). But the point is to REST on Him for that, not call MY faith “obedient,” which just muddies the clear waters of free grace, IMHO.

To rest on Him is to do what we were told to do. It is obedience, the obedience of faith. To refuse to rest upon Him alone is disobedient; it is unbelief. The opposite of obedient faith is disobedient faith. I know that you do not believe that disobedient (dead) faith justifies. MY faith was gift from God, lest I should boast. But when God gives faith, He gives the genuine article.

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5 Dear C______, I am disappointed, to say the least. We were looking forward to spending time with you all. At the same time, I don’t want to say anything that will make your awkward position any more awkward. We had not incurred any expenses that I know of. At the same time, I want you to know that my esteem and respect for you is not at all affected by the position you are now in. Blessings on your ministry, and please extend my regards to your session. Men with such a pastor are no doubt good men, seeking to serve faithfully. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

6 Gentlemen, I have been trying to stay out of the e-discussions because I think it is perilously easy for us to the lose the ground we gained in Lago Mar. But then some questions occurred to me, and I think they might be a big part of what is hanging us up. It goes like this: we say “obedient faith,” and other folks get nervous, wanting us to say “faith that is subsequently obedient” instead—because obedient faith sounds too much like infused righteousness. And so here are my questions. We all agree that faith is given by God.

But is this faith infused? Is regeneration categorized under justification or sanctification? Is sanctification infused? Is regeneration infused? Is regenerate faith infused?

These are not trick questions. I believe there is a solid basis for agreement here. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

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7 I posted my questions, and then promptly got swamped. Sorry for the delay in responding to the responses. This is what I meant by my questions. In the tradition Reformed ordo, regeneration precedes repentance and faith, and faith is the sole instrument of justification. I think everyone would agree that it is problematic trying to measure these things with a stop watch, but at the least we would say that there is a logical priority of regeneration first. But, using the traditional categories, regeneration is a work in me, and it happens prior to righteousness being imputed to me. That is because faith is the fruit of regeneration, and that faith is the sole instrument of a subsequent justification. But this means that righteousness is infused (regeneration) prior to righteousness being imputed (justification). This does not cause works-righteousness problems for the traditional Reformed who hold to this way of expressing it because regeneration is not to be considered as the ground of my justification, and neither is faith. Now when we come along and use the phrase “obedient faith,” it sounds to some of you like we might be trying to smuggle a certain praiseworthy obedience into the initial faith, which could then be assumed to be the ground of our acceptance before God. But this is something which I would vehemently deny. The ground of every aspect of our salvation is Christ. Further, this should not cause any nervousness at all, because all the Reformed hold that good stuff (new heart, repentance, faith toward God) is infused into us before anything is imputed to us. Right? Why should it be a problem if part of that good stuff is called obedient? It obeys, doesn’t it? C______, you want to say “faith, then obedience.” But as I use it, obedient faith is a phrase that describes the quality of the faith, not the particular actions of that faith after the fact. For example, I can refer to an obedient child in two ways. The phrase can refer to the disposition of the child, which will result in actions in line with that disposition. But it could also mean a child was obedient because of an action or series of actions he

888 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APPENDIX had performed. Used in this latter sense, the tag “obedient” is withheld until the child is off probation. So when you see obedient faith, just read “new heart faith,” or “living faith,” or “not-disobedient faith.” You should not see a faith that has to perform a requisite number of actions so that it can earn its way into heaven. You should see obedient faith as the only kind of faith that God gives. It is obedient because it is breathing, just like it was told to. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

8 Gentlemen, F______is quite right. I want to take both James and Paul at face value without special pleading. And I think if we do, a lot of problems disappear. For C______: Of course I would equate faith and obedience, but we have to take note of the kind of terms we are using. I would not equate initial faith with a lifetime of obedience. But neither would I equate initial obedience with a lifetime of faith. I would equate initial faith with initial obedience, and ongoing faith with ongoing obedience. The reason we cannot equate “obedience” with “works of the law” is that the phrase “works of the law” in Paul describes those who tenaciously cling to their traditions rather than doing what God said to do. So clinging to the works of the law was not obedience, it was disobedience. So I do not have any problem saying that “a man is justified by obedience [doing what God says to do, the way He says to do it, and what He says to do is believe on Jesus Christ completely] apart from works of the law [disobediently twisting God’s words into a rabbinical pretzel that allows me to feel quite pleased with myself]” That is not contradictory at all. But I want to press the point I raised earlier. Do all you [non-Auburn] gentlemen affirm that God infuses an incomplete righteousness into us (new heart, repentance, trusting in God) prior to justification? In other words, do you affirm the logical and/or chronological primacy of sanctification over

889 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APPENDIX justification? And that the fruit of that sanctification (faith) is the sole instrument of justification? And that, in some fundamental sense, you would agree that sanctification is the instrument of justification? I am not trying to checkmate anyone here. I think this is the basis for agreement between us. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

9 Gentlemen, Steve asked someone else on his side to weigh in, so let me do so briefly. This may seem bold (or incoherent), but I agree with both Steve’s post and C______’s below, as stated. But there is a hidden reef here. In pointing this out, I am not saying that this is what C______is doing, but I have seen this kind of thing a lot. I think Steve has too, and perhaps this is what drives his passion on this subject. Suppose I am a father of a tender-hearted child. Every night she confesses her sins to me. “Papa, when mom asked me to help with the dishes, I didn’t obey as quickly as I should have. And then, this afternoon, several bad thoughts came into my mind, and I didn’t reject them as promptly as I should have. And on top of this, I don’t think I have told you enough how grateful I am for the food you bring home to us. I only thanked you for this three times today, once at each meal. I think I must be the most ungrateful daughter who ever lived, and you have every right to banish me from your home, and drive me out into the snow and darkness. Every night I cry myself to sleep thinking that you might have to do this, and yet, if it happened, it would be better than I deserve. Papa, will you forgive me?” And I would say, “Darling, it is true that you are sinning against this entire household, and against me, very grievously. But your sins are not what you think they are. Your sin is that you insist on doubting my love for you, even though I have told you many times that I would never banish you from my

890 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APPENDIX house. And yet you persist in talking this way. You do this, every night, in the pretense that you are being a dutiful daughter. But every time you bring this up—as I have commanded you not to—you are being defiant. Why are you so ungrateful?” C______is right. The law of God, the word of God is our standard, and it needs to drive us to Christ constantly. But drive us away from what sin? And drive us into what kind of embrace? By what standard do we evaluate our sin? The law of God should drive the children of God away from the kind of sin described above. And so Steve is right. Failure to believe what our Father has promised us is sin, and this sin is one we ought to heartily confess, and lament with tears. And then we should STOP IT. God has promised us a place in His household, together with our children. When we sin (when we fail to believe this) we ought to confess our sins, and forsake them. The daughter in the illustration above thinks she is doubting herself when she is actually doubting her father. There is a long and honored tradition within the Christian faith that commits just this sin over and over. We think we are condemning ourselves for our own sinfulness, when we are actually doubting what our Father said about the cross. Put another way, you gentlemen have probably all counseled melancholics and morbid introspectionists who are willing to confess any sin whatever, EXCEPT the one they are committing, right there in front of you. I believe that is something we are all prone to. We doubt God under the camouflage of doubting ourselves. And we are trying to quit it. This make sense? Cordially, Douglas

10 C______, I want to briefly answer the concerns you raised in your recent “reply to Wilson”. I want to do this briefly, but don’t want to appear brusque. I hope that I can restate in a short compass what I meant in my original post, and

891 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APPENDIX allay some of your concerns. I have just numbered the issues I think most significant, and with that, will have at it. Special pleading: this came off a conversation I had at one of our meals at Lago Mar. In that conversation, I wanted to assert that in James 2, James tells us that as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead (v. 26). I agree fully that works demonstrate faith (v. 18), but also wanted to assert that in the illustration as used by James, works are the animating principle of faith in just the same way that the spirit is the animating principle of the body. I want to avoid the special pleading of reversing James’s language, in which someone tries to make v. 26 say that faith is the animating principle of works, and not the other way around. I agree that James’s statement must be explained and interpreted; I just don’t like interpreting something by denying it, or turning it upside down. All explanations must do justice to the text as it stands, and if it appears to me that this is not happening (as in my dinner conversation), I want to caution us against special pleading. C______, you made a distinction between what something is by definition, and what something is by application. But I was saying initial faith and initial obedience are used interchangeably in Scripture, and so this ought to be one of the definitions for obedience. For example, take Romans 6:17–18a. “But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. And having been set free from sin . . .” Paul is referring to their conversion out of the world, and this liberation from slavery to sin is referred to as an obedience from the heart. This is converting obedience. Another scriptural name for this is faith. This means, by definition, and not by application, that Scripture describes the heart transformation of turning from sin to God as a motion of obedience. This is not the only scriptural definition of obedience, but it is one of them. You said that we should not say things like “faith is obedience” without qualification because people will grossly misunderstand. That is quite right, which is why in my post I qualified the heck out of my statements. I qualify my head off. They will carve on my tombstone: “He qualified a lot.” And I can almost hear Schlissel muttering at me from the background—“Actually,

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Wilson, you qualify these things far more than Scripture does.” But, to qualify again, to think a man can earn his way into heaven autonomously by any amount of choosing, willing, running, do-gooding, obeying, brownie-pointing, or whatever else a man may think up to take credit for, is false. Man-made traditions: C______, your quotations of our honored fathers was not really apropos of the point I was making. By “man-made traditions” I understand one of two basic approaches to the law. The first is to manufacture additional content for the law, which is the error of those who invent new standards of righteousness, e.g., “Don’t drink alcohol.” But there is another form of this tradition, far more insidious, which is that of using the law in a manner contrary to the use assigned to it by God. God commands us to see Christ in every aspect of the law (Rom. 10:4). So those who take a command of God, as it is, not adding to the letter, (e.g., Thou halt not commit adultery), but who then seek to commend themselves to God apart from Christ through their success in staying out of the wrong beds, are men who have adopted a soul-destroying tradition of men. We are not saved by “not committing adultery.” To think we can be, even if the command as stated is untouched, is a vain tradition of men. So I didn’t disagree at all with the central point that your citations were making. A legitimate and necessary application of Paul’s rejection of works of the law, by which all proud flesh shall hang themselves till dead, is to reject every form of human autonomy whatsoever. Whether that pride comes out in ceremonies, moralism, liturgies, confessions, or freedom from confessions matters not to me. Paul was talking about the 1st century Jewish forms of this peculiar vice, but heaven knows it comes in lots of other shapes and sizes. And may our gracious God damn them all. The primacy of sanctification in the traditional ordo: my point here was simply to show that any traditional Reformed guy (not just the Monroe guys) can be made to look suspect without very much difficulty, and not too much dishonesty. C______answered the question capably, and I think he did well in being “very careful.” I AGREE we must be very careful with such complicated issues. But suppose I were to blast C______publicly for saying there was any sense in which sanctification had primacy over justification. It would

893 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APPENDIX be very easy to muddy the waters, and it would be very easy to represent the traditional ordo in this way AS A THREAT TO JUSTIFICATION. I don’t think it needs to be such a threat at all, but keeping it from becoming that is a delicate operation, and those are the Lutherans you hear yelling at you in the background. Think:

Regeneration (definitive sanctification) Repentance Faith Justification Progressive sanctification

Done in me Done in me Done in me Done to me Done in me

You can shy away from calling this first infusion an infused righteousness if you want. And I agree that a different term could be helpful. But it is not imputed either. What is it? And if we rename it, because we have a different theological term for it (like definitive sanctification), we might come to think of it as a different species of animal than progressive sanctification, rather than the same critter a couple of seconds later. The first thing the new heart does is turn from sin (repentance). That same motion is a turning toward God (faith). God imputes righteousness to us via the instrument of faith that He graciously gave to us. I agree with C______that all this is probably simultaneous, but what does this do to the word ordo? And I could certainly make a logical primacy of sanctification obnoxious to my Lutheran friends in about 30 seconds. But I don’t do this to you all, constrained by both charity and honesty. We have to remember that regeneration, repentance, faith, justification, and sanctification are not five marbles bonking around in a sack.

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They are descriptions of what I do, or have had done to me. I receive a new heart. I repent. I believe. I have the righteousness of Christ imputed to me. I walk in newness of life. The traditional ordo has limitations, and because of these limitations, it is easy to misrepresent. Sort of like the complicated scriptural teaching on faith alone, obedience unto life, and the works of the law. It is easy to misunderstand, and so I would echo C______’s words again. We have to be very careful here. I said this was going to be short, but then I got to typing. Sorry about that. And then this morning I came in to send this, and C______asked for a brief statement from some of the rest of us on the salvation of our children. So here it is. R______is right about the conditions for children, to this extent. I trust God for the salvation of my children, as opposed to the children of the atheist across the street, because I have promises concerning my children, and the Scripture gives no promises concerning the children of unbelievers. My children are saints (1 Cor. 7:14), while their children are not. So the promise is to me and my children. My sixth grandchild was born two days ago, and in a matter of days, Lucia Linn Wilson will be baptized. My son and daughter- in-law, in presenting her for baptism, will be publicly asked if they believe these promises, and will be asked if they intend to bring this little girl up in a manner consistent with that profession of faith. So, yes, children of believers are promised to believers. This is the grace of God, not willing or running, or blood-lining. Being born in a covenant household is not the ground of salvation, any more than sending a preacher to preach the gospel is a ground of salvation. But how will they hear without a preacher? The preacher is necessary, but he is not the ground of the salvation which he declares. Neither is godly parentage the ground of salvation. Only the blood of Christ saves. At the same time, and for these reasons, infant baptism is not a crap shoot (“Baby needs to go to heaven!”). It only appears that way to many because they do not come to the baptismal font in the faith commanded. It is not a denial of SOLA FIDE to BELIEVE THE PROMISES.

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As I have watched my children’s children receiving baptism, I have believed God for their salvation. Why do I talk as though they are saved? Because of some work? Me genoito! Because we believe the promises. Two Sundays ago, another grandchild, Rory, came to his first observance of the Lord’s Supper. I know this is troublesome to some of you, but please bear with me for a moment. He is a year and a half old and doesn’t really talk yet. But he wor- ships with his family throughout our worship service, and he has a basic sign language catechism down. Where is Jesus? He pats his heart. Where is God? He points to heaven. Are you baptized? He pats his head. At the conclusion of our worship service, we all sing the Gloria Patri with hands upraised, which he used to do also. But as he began to notice the communion tray going by, and he didn’t get any, it began to distress him. About a month ago, he stopped raising his hands in the Gloria Patri, and just watched. When it was decided he could come to the Table, he was carefully instructed in the meaning of the Supper as he held the bread. When he partook, together with his family, one of the first things he did was pat the heads of everyone around him—mother, father, grandmother. We are all baptized, he said, discerning the body. At the Gloria Patri, his hands shot up in the air. Glory to God indeed. Just as we believe the promises, we teach our children to believe the promises. But you cannot teach them to believe by teaching them to doubt. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

11 I appreciated Jim’s input on this. John Barach playfully suggested that I could write such a paper in my sleep, which is not true at all. I have tried it, and during REM cycles, it turns out that I am a dispensationalist. Seriously, John questioned whether we needed a counterpart to J______’s paper at all. I think we do. At Lago Mar, we were all focused on one other person to interact with. But here the audience is quite different, and contains a large number of undecideds. I think there are many who could put a summary of our position in this book to good use.

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I would be happy to write it, but there is one significant argument against me doing so. I would very pleased to have any of the others write it also, but I think we need to make a decision, so that whoever it is doesn’t have to do it in three days. The argument against me doing it is that I think you would all agree that I am most comfortable with some of the traditional Reformed categories and terminology. I don’t really have trouble translating from one to the other, and this has the effect of reassuring some and confusing others. I wouldn’t want to summarize in such a way as to misrepresent any of your concerns. But I do think we should come up with a mechanism for deciding, and nominating one another serially does not constitute such a mechanism. Douglas

12 Gentlemen, When Steve wrote the “children of believers are saved” on the board, he was not making a categorical statement of the All P are Q kind. He was saying that he believed God’s statements and promises concerning covenant children, and thought that others should believe it too. Now these promises (in all our theological systems) have apparent instances of non-fulfillment. How are we to account for this? We all acknowledge that some of our children grow up and depart from the living God. To whom are the promises made? Who has to speak up and say they believe the promises at infant baptisms? The parents do, and we baptize on the basis of the parents’ willingness to profess this faith. God makes no promise whatever to my “theological system” that would enable me to say that “all children of duly baptized parents will necessarily go to heaven.” At the same time, the new covenant contains stipulations and promises that invite parents to believe. Some do and some do not. But according to our baptismal rites, all of them say they do. So promises are given to parents. Pastors (like Steve) are to speak and teach in such a way that parents in the congregation come to see that they are

897 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APPENDIX commanded to exercise this faith (faith that is warranted from the promises of Scripture) concerning their children. In the Reformed world, we insist parents must make this statement through our requirement that they present their infants for baptism. Imagine a service like this:

Minister: Do you believe that God has given believing parents covenant promises concerning the salvation of their children?

Father: Well, I don’t know exactly. Who’s to say if my kid is elect?

Minister: Just say yes.

Father: Yes.

Minister: Do you intend to bring up your child in the nurture and admonition of the Lord?

Father: Well, we will try to do the best we can. But I still don’t know if it will do any good.

Minister: Just say yes.

Father: Yes.

Etc.

Try to imagine composing a baptismal service that reflected your theology of covenant children, apostasy, conversion, etc. exactly. Would it look like the historic Reformed baptismal services? But a baptism service is personal. No one is being asked to affirm general propositions about the eternal destiny of all children in the covenant. The

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parent is being asked to appropriate the promises of God for one child. “Do you, Mr. Smith, believe what God has said about this child, Billy Smith?” If Mr. Smith does not, but goes through the motions anyway, then let God be true and every man a liar. But if he believes, the last thing I would want to accuse him of is denying sola fide. One last comment. R______, when you talk about infants of believers dying in infancy, you wind up defending (your phrase) “the general principle of sola fide.” But if the sola is only generally true, it isn’t sola anymore. I agreed with your reasoning about the infants, but I think you and Steve are both agreeing on the primacy of grace. Infants who die are saved by grace, but not necessarily by faith (in any detailed confessional sense). Cordially in Christ, Douglas

13 C______, There are two ways to take this, I believe, and still do justice to the promise. The first would be to say that the promise is a general promise, not an “all men distributively” promise. Thus, when parents believe the promise, overwhelmingly, God grants them the fruit of their faith. But not always. There are exceptions, because no one dictates to God, and the promises are made good to those atypical parents (à la Jeremiah Burroughs) in some other fashion. This is the same kind of reasoning that would avoid using Hosea as giving us the pattern of the ideal marriage. The second way would be to say that the promise is extended to all Chris- tian parents without exception, and that if their children fall away, it is because they did not believe the promise in the way that God intended. My take is actually a combination of the two. I do want to say that God is the Lord, and he can give corrupt sons to someone like Samuel, and a godly son like Jonathan to someone like Saul. At the same time, I think that far too many parents take refuge in such exceptions, rather than appropriating the

899 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APPENDIX promises for themselves and their households. When this happens, the tragic results are because the parents did not have the faith they were invited to have, and which they said at the baptism they did have. But regardless, my responsibility at my child’s baptism is to go for broke. God has promised me my children and their children after them. If God commanded me to jump through the wall without leaving a hole, my responsibility is to get a running start and to leave the ground. My wife and I trusted God for the salvation of our three children, as we are now doing for our six grandchildren. Can I look around in the covenant and see grieving parents and grandparents whose children have strayed? I sure can, but that is not where I was told to look. As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord. Douglas

14 C______, You have already distanced yourself from morbid introspectionism, and I for one have believed you. So comments like Tom’s ought not to be taken as a straw man critique of you or your positions. But this does not mean that to attack morbid introspection in itself is a straw man argument at all. Those folks are really out there, and our interactions with them have been part of the impetus of what we are saying. Reversing this to illustrate the point, if one of your team were to attack me for teaching baptismal regeneration in a sacerdotal sense, that would be a straw man argument—because I don’t hold to that position. But if one of you were to attack a sacerdotal view of baptismal regeneration as it is held by the RCs, that would not be a straw man argument, because there really are Roman Catholics out there. I do not see us FVers (!) as attacking you gentlemen who met with us at Lago Mar. I see us as seeking to explain to you our on-going critique of certain (very real) problems in the Reformed world. Recall Steve Schlissel’s citation of Joel Beeke’s passage on assurance at the 2002 conference. This is

900 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APPENDIX not an imaginary phenomenon that we made up. Remember Barach’s comments about the Netherlands Reformed Church. Where did that come from, and why? And some of the twist-in-the-wind testimonies that came out of the Great Awakening were really sad. Not only so, but the above was a logical argument! Cordially, Douglas

15 C______, God has declared His full and free forgiveness in Christ. We are in Christ. That full and free forgiveness is therefore ours. Now we also know (in the abstract) that some fall away, and the temptation caused by this reality is to make the philosophically inclined step outside the covenant and turn the thing into a math problem on the blackboard. How are we to distinguish spurious faith and covenant obedience from genuine faith and covenant obedience? But the answer to this question is determined from within the covenant, through the response of faith. We determine true faith by exercising true faith. God says these things. Those who take Him at His word live accordingly. When I am tempted to point to some other guy who is falling away, I should hear, “What is that to you? You follow me.” As I understand him, this is what Steve is saying. We are to live as though we believe the promises, because we do believe them. Then, later, when we are more mature, we can talk about the “theology of promise” concerning those who fall away. On a side note. I don’t have a problem with the notion of the law as a whip or a scourge, even for God’s elect children, with one important caveat. “And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?” (Heb. 12:5–7). The word “scourgeth” refers to the belt with hooks on it.

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I have spent many delightful times, listening to well-adjusted and loved children (including my own), regaling one another with spanking stories. For them, the rod really was a comfort, and they really love the one who administered that kind of love to them. But I have also had much pastoral experience with unloved and insecure children as well. And I have to say that much of the pietistic notion of “law as whip” belongs largely in this latter category. But again, in saying this, we are NOT accusing you gentlemen of holding to all the abuses that we are fighting. Cordially, Douglas

16 C______, If you recall, one of the first points I made in my paper for Lago Mar was that, according to us, all the positions represented around the table, as well as others not there, were part of the historic Reformed world. I cheerfully grant that the language of law/gospel dichotomy existed among the Reformed (think of Beza) as well as among the Lutherans. But a robust identification of law and gospel also existed, over against the Lutheran view. And you can find clear indications of all this in the consensus documents of our confessions. But a reminder of our context: none of this controversy has happened because we’uns have tried to drum anyone out of the historic Reformed corps. I am happy to accept Lutherans, Zwinglians, TRs, and Reformed Baptists as orthodox Christians. Moreover, their positions are not recent innovations. But I am also happy, not surprisingly, to accept my own position (sacramental Calvinism) as part of this historic Reformed mix. But the way the recent controversy has proceeded shows how the confessions have assumed the kind of authority they ought not to have. In principle, we can harmonize the teaching of Scriptures completely (whether now or in glory) precisely because the mind of Christ is throughout, and despite apparent discrepancies, they are not consensus documents. They are

902 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APPENDIX perfect and infallible, and there is a fundamental harmonization THERE to be discovered. But in a consensus document drafted by fallible men, the situation is different. I think the sections of the HC that you cite and the sections that Steve has cited can be harmonized. But they cannot be harmonized in the same way that different sections of Scripture are harmonized. They are the work of fallible men, who have erred, and do err. And sometimes, they avoided error by backing away a few paces and not “coming down” on something. How would I harmonize them then? By putting on tender mercies, the way the drafters of our confessions did, as they were striving together for like-mindedness. The men who wrote Westminster were at least as divergent in their doctrinal views as we are. How is it we cannot do what they did? We can publish a book highlighting differences, but are apparently unable to draft a consensus statement of faith. Therefore, we may assert their words after them, but have not imitated their historic Protestant (and catholic) heart. But if we were the children of Westminster, we would do the works of Westminster. Cordially, Douglas

17 C______, C______is right. We have been nice to each other. Popsicles for everyone! Just a few comments, with more agreement than I expected. Some of my comments are just kibbitzing.

C______said:

(As John Calvin put it in introducing his own comments on this parable, “First, let [the reader] remember the rule which ought to be observed in all parables; that we ought not to examine minutely every property of the vine, but only to take a general view of the object to which Christ applies that comparison.”)

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I agree. We ought not to examine minutely every property of the vine. But we can observe, perchance, that it is a vine. And when He refers to branches cut out, then so may we.

C______said:

So, yes, Doug, you’re right:

I agree!

C______said:

This means that biblically, being “in Christ” can mean different things, depending on the context.” In John 15, being “in [Christ]” (literally “in Me”) is covenantal language, and in Ephesians 1 it is decretive language. The branches of the vine in John 15 are really covenantally in Christ, all of them; but only those that “abide in” Him (and there are some that don’t) are really electively in Christ. There is a difference. And while all of the latter-each and every one of them-is going to wind up spending eternity in heaven, only some-not all-of the former will.

I agree that some parts of Scripture refer to the covenant, and others refer to the decree. Eph. 1:11 refers to the decree, John 15 refers to the covenant. But I also think there are some Ephesian references to the covenant. But we agree in principle here.

C______said:

Finally, an aside about what I have a hunch (nothing stronger) might be contributing to some misunderstanding. Starting a good while ago-if I remember correctly, I heard such language in the 2002 AAPC tapes, and perhaps it goes back before that-you FV brothers began using some figures of speech to describe an alternative view of John 15 to your own. You described those who disagreed with you as holding that the fruitless branches weren’t really branches but “tumbleweeds” stuck in the real branches, or (I’ve heard someone say something like

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this) ornaments (or something like that-maybe dead branches) taped onto the vine. My hunch is that perhaps you became so accustomed to those figures of speech to describe the views of those who disagreed with your interpretation of John 15 that you inadvertently transferred their application to others whose views they really misrepresent. Any chance this might be correct? And might what I’ve said above lead to reserving such descriptions to more restricted use?

Not quite. One of the things that stirred this thing up was the comparison made at Monroe (by I forget, but one of the non-Fvers), to a tree covered with ivy. I think it was in a quotation. But ivy on a tree and different branches in the vine are not illustrating the same principle. But if someone were telling a parable trying to parallel the wheat and tares, one actually could talk about a tree and kudzu. There it would be illustrating the same principle. Cordially, Douglas

18 Dear C______, I read through the essay as you suggested. But with two of his three major points, Pastor Ericson radically misrepresented my position. He anticipates that we might object to his treatment of our position this way by saying that the fault is ours for being unclear or ambiguous. Just one example will show that this is not the case. Consider his critique that I failed to note the scriptural illustrations that highlight differences between different kinds of covenant members in the light of my comments below. Pastor Ericson’s may not have known about our Ft. Lauderdale exchanges (but why not?). At the same time, you edited the essays in which these comments appeared, and you therefore knew that he was grossly caricaturing my position. This is just one egregious example of his paradigm bumper car bouncing against the wall. His essay should not be commended no how, no way. If I write that pigs can never fly, I will not take seriously any critique that maintains that I was saying that they can.

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This is what I said in response to F______.

On the other, we learn that the tares in the wheat field were always tares (Matt. 13: 24–43). The washed sow remained in some sense a sow (2 Pet. 2:22). The vomit may have been out of the dog but that didn’t keep the dog out of the vomit (2 Pet. 2:22). The workers of iniquity were told to depart, for the Lord had never known them (Luke 13:26– 27). Circumcised sons of Abraham are told that they are actually sons of the serpent (Matt. 23:32–33). Sons of Abraham could actually be sons of the devil (John 8:44). He that loveth not (covenant member or not) knoweth not God (1 John 4:8). Covenant membership does not automatically alter one’s spiritual ancestry.

Cordially in Christ, Douglas

19 Dear C______, Thanks for writing back. I fully understand how someone might not understand how I reconcile my views on vine of John 15 and my views on the wheat/ tares parable. But there are two distinct teachings there to reconcile. What I don’t understand is how people (if they are paying attention) can read what I write and say, “Wilson makes much of John 15, but he neglects to mention the wheat & tares parable” (as Ericson does), when I have written clearly and pointedly on wheat/tares type passages, have taken the teaching of such passages at face value, and have said essentially the same thing (so far as it goes) that my critics say. That is why I know the paradigm blinders are on and fully operation- al. Multiple pages of what I have written in this controversy address this issue. Let me say again here what I said at Auburn 03. Steve Schlissel says that when I qualify, taking care to translate what I am saying into traditional categories, I am wasting my breath. But I have continued to qualify what I say. Precisely what about Ericson’s essay does not fully confirm Steve’s exhortations to me?

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As I have said before, in print and everything, the pre-apostasy state of the non-elect covenant member and the pre-apostasy state of the elect covenant member differ in this. The former is unconverted and unregenerate and the latter is converted and regenerate. That is what Chapter Three of “Reformed” is Not Enough is all about. Not all the Regeneration are of the Regeneration. Some of the sons of Sarah are sons of Hagar. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

20 J______and all,

Doug, you say that pigs don’t fly, but then you turn around and say maybe they can. The first half of Reformed is not Enough you clearly affirm Biblical orthodoxy, but express yourself in the second half that seems to take away from what you say. Or as you say in your latest response “Not all the regeneration are regeneration.”

No, not really. While I think there are mysteries in all this, and I certainly can’t do the math to explain it, I am not affirming any kind of simultaneous A/not A situation. There are sons of Abraham in one sense who are sons of the devil in another sense. There are sons of Sarah in one sense who are sons of Hagar in another sense. There are Christians in one sense who are not Christians in another sense. This is simply a biblical way of speaking, and one which Paul is at pains to both use and defend. It was highly offensive to the Pharisees, who maintained that one could only be a son of Abraham in one sense. Which was manifestly false. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

21 Dear C______,

Come on, Doug. If you refuse to state that your position is contrary to Steve’s here and explain how it is, or else show why Steve’s position

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isn’t what the quotations here certainly make it seem to be, can you not understand why some readers of the four of you as a group find it awfully difficult to reconcile some of your own statements?

Rather than do that, let me simply tell you what I believe about this. Steve and I have had our own discussions about this, but you are asking for a public discussion of it. Since I know for a fact that my position is misunderstood and misrepresented, and because I would not like it if Steve denounced one of the extent caricatures that had my name on it, I don’t want to risk doing the same to him. It is a Golden Rule thing. Steve and Steve and John are friends of mine, and under the circumstances I am not about to put any distance between myself and them until I am confident that all those in the discussion are hearing us charitably and (therefore) accurately. That has not yet happened. Of course we differ about various things—the Auburn Ave- nue position/s is/are not monolithic. But until people get the basic facts right, they may feel free to associate me with what Steve is saying. To the substance. Persevering grace is a gift of God, and, like all gifts of God, it is a gift of God in Christ. Not all covenant members receive this gift of perseverance, despite their membership in Christ where all such gifts are present. Because of this, they fall away. The Bible teaches that they fall away because a sow that is washed goes back to its wallowing in the mire. A dog returns to its vomit. The tares were not wheat that turned into tares halfway through the process. So far, I agree with you guys (not to mention Peter and Jesus). AT THE SAME TIME, they were branches in Christ, they escaped the pollutions of this corrupt world through THEIR KNOWLEDGE OF OUR Lord JESUS CHRIST. They received sap from Christ. Here I agree with the Auburn guys (not to mention Peter and Jesus), and I disagree with you all. This sap is something which I like to call “the common operations of the Spirit,” a little phrase I coined. The common operations of the Spirit consist of more than bonking non-elect covenant members on the head. How do I reconcile both of these positions? I don’t. I never reconcile friends. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

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22 Dear C______,

I do not blow off highly trained theologians who differ with how I might harmonize the different elements of what I have said. I think that is a legitimate place for discussion, and one that I would be more than happy to conduct.

But C______, your highly trained cadre of theologians consistently IG- NORE half of what I say. If I say that Jesus is both fully God and fully man, I am happy to talk with someone who does not see how I could say both. Great. Let’s talk. But suppose that instead I found myself in a debate with someone who said, “Wilson keeps maintaining that Jesus is God only. What about the humanity of Christ?” Semi-peeved, I write to say that perhaps he should check out the article I wrote here, and that other one over there, defining and defending the full humanity of Christ. And suppose then the response came back that Wilson always thinks he’s right. Thinks he is beyond correction. Thinks he is smarter than all his critics all the time. I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. Huh. I am quite willing to admit that I could be wrong about many things. I am happy to grant that my position could be wrong. But I am not willing to grant that I don’t know what my position is. And as an aside, I think those who will not let me state what my position actually is are those who are least likely to be able to refute it. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

23 Dear C______, Thanks for the qualification on when Ericson’s article was written. That is helpful. As far as the question about “every spiritual blessing” goes, I appreciate Peter’s response. The intersection between the ultimate decrees and the life

909 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APPENDIX of the covenant is not a simple one. We are wanting to speak scripturally to our congregations, and that includes me speaking to them straight out of Ephesians 1. But that means I will say (and have said) certain things to our congregation that are not strictly speaking true in a distributive sense. But there are still true, and the Bible requires me to say them. On the issue of charity, this is how it went. Pastor Ericson attributed to me views that I do not hold. I objected, and pointed to language out of my response to F______(which you have found out he could not have known about). You asked if I had addressed this sort of thing elsewhere. I said yes, and listed the chapters in “Reformed” Is Not Enough where I had done that. Your reply to this was more than a little snarky, concluding that I believed myself to be infallible and beyond correction. You have now asked me to “stop leaning on the ‘charitable reading’ plea . . . it just doesn’t cut it.” I am very sorry, but it does. I am not reading minds, but rather am reading words. There are many plausible accusations to bring against me, but being unwilling to humble myself and change my mind is not one of them. In the course of my ministry, I have changed my mind about: Calvinism, baptism, eschatology, sanctification, textual criticism, church government, not to mention the exegetical evolution of some lesser fauna. The plausible charge to make against me is this: “Better watch what you say around Wilson. He’s unstable.” Your charge was rude, uncharitable, and wrong. I was not accusing you of misrepresenting Steve’s position. I was saying that Ericson had misrepresented mine, and that we are in the middle of a debate where misunderstanding are rampant, and feelings are running high. In that climate, I don’t want to uncircle the wagons, thank you. You think that Steve sounds more unorthodox than I do, and wanted me to distance himself from his position. But this is another place where the judgment of charity is lacking. Why is my lack of orthodoxy suspect (even though I affirm all the orthodox jots and tittles) just because I don’t condemn Schlissel or distance myself from Wilkins? Why doesn’t it go the other way? Why are they not orthodox until they condemn me, or distance themselves from me?

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For example: I affirm before God and all the holy angels that an individual can only be saved at the last day through faith in Christ, grounded on the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus alone, which faith is the sole, living instrument of that man’s justification, which faith is the gift of God lest any should boast. Whether he will be saved at the last day or not was determined in the secret counsels of God before the foundation of the world. In the meantime, we all live, and work, and baptize, and preach in the light of the things revealed, trusting in God to remove the fruitless branches from their place in the vine in His own good time. Why not ask everybody else to condemn me? When I say that a non-elect covenant member is as much a member of Christ as I am, I am simply saying that I am in the vine, and he is too. I am not a branch and he a bit of tumbleweed. We share something, and that something is inclusion in the vine. That shared inclusion means something. I know he was in the vine because he was cut out of it. I know I am in the vine because I am still in it. The thing I am emphasizing here is that Jesus teaches some kind of true connection to Him that the non-elect share together with the elect. At the same time, I am happy to say (as I have done multiple times already, not that it does any good), that there is a huge difference between us as well. I do not believe that this difference is “just” that he does not have persevering grace. Not having persevering grace is a much bigger deal than that. So, for the difference, not that it makes any difference: I also believe that the reprobate covenant member alongside me in the vine is a son of the devil, a son of Belial, a tare, an temporarily washed pig, a dog that has not yet returned to its vomit, one who does not know God, a hypocrite, a whitewashed tomb, a liar, a snake, a son of a snake, an adulterer, unregenerate, unconverted, and an all-round bad guy. Does such a dog share in all the spiritual blessings in Christ in the heavenly realms? Obviously not. Were there such dogs who were members in good-standing in the church at Ephesus, and to whom Paul also addressed these words? Yes. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

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24 J______, For the elect, those to whom persevering grace belongs, baptism and the Lord’s Supper are both effectual means of salvation. They are among the means of salvation, not the only means of salvation. For the elect who die outside the church, water baptism plays no role, but this is not what God usually does— because outside the church there is no ordinary possibility of salvation. For the non-elect outside the church, baptism does not play a direct role in their damnation. And for the non-elect within the church, their baptism defines them as a covenant breaker, and makes their approaching judgment that much more severe. But in the overwhelming number of “ordinary” instances of salvation, the Confession teaches that the sacraments are an effectual means of bringing that salvation about. And that’s what I believe. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

25 J______, You are welcome for the clarity. But I have no idea how you can think this departs from the historic Reformed faith. At his point, my language is far more confessional than yours.

1. Baptism is the point of entry to the visible church; 2. Outside that visible church there is no ordinary possibility of salvation; 3. Those who are saved are therefore ordinarily within the visible church; 4. Those within the visible church are baptized; 5. For the elect within the visible church, baptism is one of the effectual means of salvation

Since this is the sum of my position, which of the above is a departure from the historic Reformed faith? Cordially in Christ, Douglas

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26 J______, The efficacy of baptism is not tied to the moment of time in which it is administered. Nevertheless, by the right use of the sacrament, the saving grace promised in it is really exhibited and conferred to such as the grace belongs to (the elect). The Confession here is talking about conversion at God’s appointed time. The Confession is teaching us not to think that just because the baby was baptized in 1978 and that the man was converted in 2002, that his baptism had nothing to do with it. It did, because the efficacy of baptism (the washing of regeneration, which is the proof text used here) is not chained to the moment of time when it is administered. This means that all the elect who are baptized (which is most of them) are converted in part because of the efficacy of their baptism. This is not anti-confessional. This is high-octane confessionalism. I am as confessional as it gets here. This is jet fuel confessionalism. Your position, J______, is not heretical, not by a long shot. But it is unconfessional, and you really ought to take an exception here. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

27 Dear F______, I actually think the question in itself is fully appropriate, and that it is important. I have been pursuing it, debating it, discussing it within FV circles (and by this I mean well beyond the Auburn guys). In all my intramural debates within FV, my concerns are heard courteously and thoughtfully (and most importantly, they are accurately understood). And a number of times my central points have been granted and agreed with by men whose language and approach differs from mine. So while I am concerned about the differences, they do not come anywhere near the definition of heresy, and do not touch the question of association in gospel ministry. I don’t think Reformed Baptists are heretics either, and their position is further out of the Reformed

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mainstream than the FV. And yet I would still happily share the platform with a Reformed Baptist. But somehow this question has got everyone going, while the Baptists continue to exile their children and no one turns a hair. The other thing to remember is that we all happened to be teaching at a conference—we were not launching a movement. No one was more surprised than we were at the response. We are churchmen, not movement men. So I continue my fellowship with my friends on both sides of this disagreement. At the same time, I insist that the burden is on someone to show that this is heretical, and not on us to show that it is not. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

28 J______, Thanks for the interaction. Notice first that we have shifted to the next level. Now it is not only necessary for me to defend my position from the confessional documents, it has become necessary to defend them from the commentaries on the confessional documents. Farther and farther away from Scripture we go. That said, here are a couple comments anyway:

1. Remember T______’s post yesterday from A.A. Hodge. Remember also the mountain of Reformed writers that T______referenced in Ft. Lauderdale—and that the response at that time was the individual writers are not the confessional documents. Now citing the confessional documents, I am asked for individual writers. But whether we are talking about the confessional documents or our fathers in the Reformed faith, nothing should be plainer than that we are operating in one of the main currents of Reformed theology, from the Refor- mation down to the present. To say our views are “novel” is simply to confess that your theological acquaintances are provincial, and all live in one corner of the Reformed world.

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2. “The use of a sacrament, in reference unto Christ, and the benefits of the new covenant, is . . . 2. To seal and apply Christ, and the benefits of the new covenant.” —Thomas Vincent, The Shorter Catechism Ex- plained from Scripture 3. And even though Ridgeley is nervous about it, he still says it: “If so, we must distinguish between Christ’s benefits being conveyed, made over, exhibited, or applied, by the gift of divine grace, through the effectual working of the Spirit; and this being done by an ordinance, as an external means of grace. Accordingly, I am bound to conclude that, as the Spirit of God gives the benefits of redemption to believers who engage in a right manner in the observance of the ordinances; so this grace is represented, and God’s people have ground to expect, as far as an ordinance can be the means of it, that they shall be made partakers of these benefits.”— Thomas Ridgeley, Commentary on the Larger Catechism

Cordially in Christ, Douglas

29 R______, Thanks for the question, which really goes to the heart of this. Following Augustine, I have no problem saying that without the Word, there is no sacrament. The Word may be bare bones, perhaps even just the baptismal formula, or the words of institution, but in my view, the Word must be there. I also have no problem, in line with this confessing myself to be logocentric. So put a gun to my head and I would rather have the Word without the sacraments than the sacraments without the Word. For the Gentiles who kept the law, their uncircumcision was reckoned as circumcision. I would rather be an unbaptized person who loved God and my neighbor than a baptized person who hated both. Fortunately, there are two more options than this.

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But left free to apply the Word about the sacraments, in my own church in a free country, I believe they must be taken all together, as a unity. The only people who willfully separate signum and res are the hypocrites and the pietists. The hypocrites keep the signum and ditch the res while the pietists keep the res and ditch or disparage the signum. But evangelical obedience always strives to keep them together. When together, as the Word is used by the Spirit to convert, and the sacraments come to the aid of this process (in this subordinate role), they come in accordance with the nature of each particular sacrament. Baptism and communion are about entry and nurture respectively. God did not give us two sacraments of nurture, two sacraments for sanctification. One is the doorway, the other is life in the house. So when “it” is increased and strengthened, what is that “it?” It is the res corresponding to each signum. The “it” that baptism increases and strengthens is what baptism signifies—to wit, the covenant of grace, ingrafting into Christ, regeneration, remission of sins, and surrender to God. The emphasis of baptism is on the point of entry, and of course has ramifications for our subsequent life together with God. Communion is about our life together with God, but of course has ramifications for the point of entry. Hope this helps. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

30 F______, I appreciate that. Thanks much. What I see being “at stake” in the internal FV discussions is how best to state and formulate our concerns to avoid unnecessary misunderstandings. If we don’t guard against misunderstandings, then some will lurch away from us in a TR direction, and others will grab what we have said and run on “ahead,” where we were actually not going. Heresy charges and Rome are two solid indicators that people are not listening or we are not communicating effectively. Or both.

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As for our internal doctrinal disagreements on this, I don’t see any settled doctrinal disagreements. We are still discussing and debating and thinking out loud, while keeping our heads down due to the bullets whistling overhead. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

31 J______, I think it was John Barach that said three of us were not paedocommunionists. It is right that I am not a strict (just home from the hospital) paedocommunionist, but according to Rayburn’s definition (which is a reasonable one), I certainly am. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

32 J______and C______, J______, of course the “it” refers to faith—saving faith, converting faith, justifying faith. Baptism increases and strengthens faith at the entry, and the Lord’s Supper increases and strengthens faith throughout the course of our lives. Since baptism is the sacrament of conversion, it would be truly odd if it had nothing to do with conversion (making the res there have to fend for itself, while its signum is off helping the other signum deal with the other res). My personal sanctification is admittedly a problem, but not so much that the sacraments need to double-team me on it. C______, let me agree with R______indirectly by agreeing with the WCF directly. Justification is one of the benefits of the new covenant, and through a right use of the sacrament of baptism, the benefits of the new covenant are really exhibited and conferred. I do not hold that individual justification is attainable through a wrong (unfaithful) use of the sacrament. The sacraments are effectual means of salvation, and while I do not limit this to

917 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APPENDIX justification (taking salvation in the broad sense), we cannot ever understand salvation apart from justification. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

33 J______, Why do Ridgeley’s clarifications clarify, but mine confuse everybody? I AGREE that sacraments are signs to those who believe in a sense that they are to none others. It is a little thing I have developed called MY POSITION. The only reason I can come up with is that I am not dead three hundred years and am not published by Banner of Truth. But if I had assumed room temperature three centuries ago, all my clarifications would then be heard and quoted against my FV friends. And furthermore, against me. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

34 F______, If I may use shorthand, I think what is (potentially) at stake is the use of the word “evangelical” in its church history sense. If all branches, elect and reprobate, are equally blessed (differences not apparent to anyone including God until later), then this could lead to a significant difference on the doctrine of the need for individual heart regeneration. Taken this direction (not that anyone has), some FVers could cease to be evangelicals in the same sense that Augustine was not an evangelical. They would be Bible-believing Chris- tians, and not heretics (and therefore partakers of the evangel), but I would not call them evangelicals in the historic or denominational sense. Augustine believed that election could not be reversed, but that regeneration could be. So he was no evangelical—although a far better Christian than I. But I am an evangelical, and so taken in this other direction, other FVers like me could continue to insist that the evangelical emphasis on

918 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APPENDIX individual regeneration was an important contribution that our branch of Christendom has made to the catholic church. As I do. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

35 C______, Thanks, and I try. When I used the phrase “individual justification” I was trying to use justification in its recognizable, confessional garb. I affirm what the WCF teaches about justification when we are talking about an individual getting saved, giving up the booze and painted ladies. So then, an individual cannot be put right with God in the WCF sense through a wrong and unbelieving use of the sacrament. But Scripture uses the word justification in non-WCF ways, as in James. There a man is not justified by faith only, which either means that justification has more than one use, or that the WCF is wrong, or that the Bible contradicts itself. I opt for the first. The Bible uses justification in various ways. For another example, I agree with Peter’s treatment of this in the OT (Vindicate Me, O God! Is that the title?) And Jesus was justified in His resurrection. What does that mean? I am going to do my Zen Presbyterian thing again. Not all who are in the justification are of the justification. Not all Israel are of Israel. Not all in the regeneration are actually born again themselves. Some of the sons of Sarah have Hagar’s nose. Sons of Abraham can be sons of the devil. I would affirm your summary of Steve and Rich’s view if you allow me to add a third sentence.

A) ALL the baptized have salvation in every respect except perseverance (initial justification) B) Only SOME of the baptized remain faithful in this salvation and thus go to heaven (final justification) C) Only SOME of the baptized (see B above) were ever justified in the WCF sense.

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And allow me to note that in A), not having perseverance affects what “have” in the first part of the sentence can mean. The elect and the non-elect covenant member “have” what they have differently. But what they have is the same. They share the noun and differ in the adverb. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

36 C______, No, my reference to “including God” had nothing to do with open theism. All the FVers I know are strong Calvinists, and hostile to open theism. What I meant was simply to underscore the idea that what the elect and non- elect covenant members shared was alike in every respect on Oct. 15, 2003, at 10:30 in the morning. And no, your summary misses what I was saying. All the FVers are strong monergists. Even if the branches are blessed all the same, they are only blessed the same until something changes, and that changed something comes from God, not man. The same goes for sola gratia and sola fide. No one I know holds that man contributes anything autonomously to his own salvation. It is all from God. My view is that vine in which both kinds of branches abide is the same vine. But, because of faith and unbelief, they abide differently. The adverbs distinguish, the salvation (as an objective noun) is shared. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

37 Morning, everyone, C______, I do not believe that there are no differences between the non-elect covenant member and the elect covenant member. I believe there are drastic differences between them, and have said this over and over, in every way I can

920 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APPENDIX think of. I do not understand why you will not allow me to agree with you at this point. I believe a non-elect covenant member has a sinful, unbelieving heart. I believe that an elect covenant member, post regeneration, has your a through e list. Why won’t you let me agree? And I can’t reconcile what you (plural) TRs say about paedocommunion, and what you, C______, (singular) say about paedocommunion. How do you reconcile them? You might say this is a difference between you and many of your partners in this debate, and hence no need to reconcile them. Exactly so. Why are you posing against me all the arguments I would pose against others? I just don’t get it. On the meaning of “abide,” I agree with you. Abide in John 15 means abide forever. Sorry for being unclear. In my language, I was using it the way Christ used it in John 8:35. A son abides forever. A slave abides not in the house forever. In the vine, the fruitless branches were in the vine for a time. The fruitful branches abide forever. The dead branches correspond to the slaves who thought they were sons until the day they were removed. The living branches correspond to the sons. So there is temporary “abiding” and genuine abiding, and that is what I meant. No need to grieve.

R______, Your question is quite good. You are right that the issue is perseverance, but perseverance is far more than the caboose on the train of salvation. Its presence or absence affects the very nature of the train (and not for systematic theologians—it is crucial for pastors). A man who is divorced after twenty years of marriage in 2004 and a man who has a wonderful relationship with his wife after twenty years of marriage in 2004 differ between them in far more than the “events of 2004.” Lack of perseverance always permeates the whole. For those who do not persevere, something was wrong from the very beginning. So in what sense can we say that a non-elect covenant member is justified? I would pick your option #1. Non-elect covenant members are justified apart

921 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APPENDIX from faith in the sense that they are members of a justified community. They are in the justification but not of it.

C______, I take Romans 8:30 to be referring to the elect, in the theological sense. And so, through the end of the chapter. The triumph that we see in Paul’s “who will lay a charge against God’s elect” is utterly unbecoming if we take the elect here to refer to simply covenant members (who are covenantally members of the Elect One.) What shall separate us? If we are talking here about covenant membership , pretty much anything can separate us. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

38 Dear F______, You quoted Steve as saying that he did not think that the Westminster Confession was the best way to summarize the biblical teaching. But in the same sentence, and the sentence before, he said that he understood the concerns of the Confession and agreed with the content of what they taught. This is what he said:

I will reiterate my view that I have no qualms about embracing the Westminster Confession’s declarations regarding election, regeneration, effectual calling, justification, sanctification, and glorification. I do not think this is the best way to go about summarizing the biblical teaching but I think I understand the perspective and agree with it.

Are we unorthodox if we think that improvement of the Westminster Confession is a possibility? Should ordination exams go beyond whether the candidate agrees with the system of doctrine taught in the Confession, and now ask if the candidate believes that it is the best of all possible Con- fessions? Could someone get your vote for ordination if he preferred the

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Three Forms, but was called to a Westminster church? He believes the doctrinal system of Westminster but thinks that the Three Forms put things more pastorally. Could a postmillennialist who believes in creedal advance get your vote? He might believe that 500 years from now the Church will speak with far greater maturity. Do I believe the system of doctrine taught in the Westminster Confes- sion? Absolutely. Do I believe that this confession is the doctrinal high-water mark of the Christian church? Absolutely not. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

39 F______, Sorry for missing your point. I’ll try again. Fred? Fred’s my closest friend in the world! How dare you? Oops. I’ll try again. I quite agree that you do not have to be convinced by our arguments just because we say that you should be. But in the Scriptures, and in Presbyteri- an polity, the burden of proof would be upon the one who said we should not take someone’s affirmations of the Westminster Confession at face value. Somewhere in this process, the rhetoric of this has gotten turned around. We are now in the position of having to prove our orthodoxy to the world, and for more on this, see below. And I believe those who put us in this position (by conducting a heresy trial on the cheap) have successfully poisoned the well of public discourse.

C______, Exegetically, Paul is doing two additional things in Romans that I do not see in Ephesians. In Romans, Paul is pushing the doctrine of election into every last corner and is doing so for purposes of pastoral comfort in the light of possible persecution. He does so in chapter 8 with such vigorous language that the only way the teaching could be true is if he is talking about the theological

923 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APPENDIX elect. Secondly, Paul gives us this teaching at the end of chapter 8 as he is preparing to discuss, over the subsequent chapters, in great detail, the elect who are elect, and the elect who are not elect. In Ephesians, Paul is simply stating to a Christian congregation truths that apply to the Christian church generally. The doctrine is the same in both places, but the blessings for the elect, and the curses for the non-elect covenant member are in much higher relief in Romans. Paul is spelling out more in Romans, and notice what this does. In chapter 8 he says that nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. Just a few pages later, he is warning the same Roman church to guard against covenant presumption, lest they be cut out of the olive tree as the Jews were. You don’t support the root; the root supports you. Who is cut out in chapter 11? What is the olive tree? It is not the tree of chapter 8 election. But it is the tree of chapter 9 election, the kind of election the Jews had and lost. And the Gentiles have come to share in that chapter 9 election. Right? But I am using the word election equivocally—because the Bible does. And it is not a contradiction of WCF XI.5 to say that the apostate can lose their forgiveness of sins if we simply acknowledge that the Bible has a broader range of theological vocabulary than does the narrower and more precise WCF. The apostate, according to Peter, can escape the pollutions of the world through the epignosis of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It would have been better for him not to have known the way of righteousness. There are all kinds of words here that, if they carried only one meaning, would bring St. Peter (not Steve!) into conflict with the Confession. Words like escape, and knowledge, and righteousness.

C______and everyone, C______, I quite agree that the interactions within this group have been generally helpful, with a few exceptions here and there. I believe that you all have labored in many ways to understand us. I am convinced that men of good will, honesty, and charity are on both sides of this debate. I appreciate it very much. What I am going to say here applies to the broader context we are in, and I am not saying that you gentleman are that context. We have been

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in (and are in) a firestorm much larger than the graciousness we experienced at Ft. Lauderdale. I have a flyer in front of me for the upcoming conference at Westminster Seminary California. The title of the conference is “‘The Foolishness of the Gospel’ Covenant and Justification Under Attack.” Attacking justification is bad, right? All of us have been standing under a cascading waterfall of this sort of thing for approaching two years now. Words like heretic, another gospel, roll glibly off many a Reformed tongue. I am not accusing you all of doing this to us. But many of your concerns are shared by people who are doing this to us constantly, and you can’t be surprised if sometimes (often?) a question of yours will hit a nerve. I am very sorry if any of my hit nerves have caused responses to you all that have been uncharitable (or seen as such)—I certainly don’t want to be harsh with the men who talk with us because of the men who won’t! But I have been in wading through a lake of this crap for so long I am thinking of buying a boat. Now why isn’t the conference at Westminster about something like: “Cov- enant and Justification: Nuances to Explore” Because that won’t get the blood boiling and would be no good at all in raising funds from donors. Justifica- tion being under attack is lots better for that. And last, I am really curious about why Tom’s A.A. Hodge quote just fell to the ground. Hodge is saying there just what we are saying. It is certainly liable to the same misunderstandings. It is susceptible of the same abuses. John Robbins probably would be willing to say that Hodge went to Hell, but virtually no one else in the Reformed world would. Why is that? Cordially in Christ, Douglas

40 R______, This is exactly the point. When using the word “justified” in the traditional soteriological way, I would not say he is justified either. In that sense, I do not believe that God ever justifies and then unjustifies. With this stipulated,

925 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APPENDIX theological sense of the word “justify,” I am happy to avow that it is inexora- ble and irreversible. Amen, and amen again. Problems arise because the scriptural use of justify is broader than this. It does not contradict it because the narrow sense is one of Scripture’s uses. But not the only one. On the “I never knew you” point, I have made exactly the same point, numerous times, in exactly the same way. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

41 C______and all, Let me see if I can make this clearer.

Q1. Does Wilson believe that baptism, as the sacrament of initiation, grants initial justification? A1. If by “justification” one means WCF, soteriological justification of an elect person, a WONDERFUL and SCRIPTURAL doctrine by the way, then the answer would be no.

Q2. Does Wilson believe that baptism, as the sacrament of initiation, grants initial justification? A2. If by “justification” one means other things taught in Scripture about the corporate nature of justification, the organic nature of the Church’s connection to Christ’s justification in His resurrection, then the answer would be yes, so long as it is remembered that such covenant justification would only serve to increase a non-elect covenant member’s condemnation.

Q3. Have you ever nailed jello to the wall? A3. What do you mean by “jello?”

Cordially in Christ, Douglas

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42 F______, I agree. In the scenario you describe, between brothers of good will, the innovator (actual or perceived) bears the burden of proof. And also, by the way, so does the excavator, the discoverer of A.A. Hodge quotes. But proof does not just involve logos, there is ethos and pathos as well. We, all of us, are situated in communities. We do not process proofs like doctrine machines, or logical analyzers. Much more is involved in this. That said, your point is taken, and happily granted. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

42.5 R______, I have no problem limiting my language to the language of the Confession for a particular purpose, such as the one I described in Angels in the Architec- ture. But to limit my language to unscriptural uses all the time is objection- able. Remember that I said that the language of creeds and confessions was like a iron fence, to guard the garden. But inside the garden, we are freed to use language the way the Bible does. As far as Gaffin and Vos go, it has been remarkable to me that I read Nor- man Shepherd’s book and thought something like, “Huh. I wonder what I think about that? It does not sound heretical to me, although I wouldn’t put it that way myself.” Richard Gaffin blurbs the thing ON THE COVER! So, who gets attacked as the heretic? Innocent little me, that’s who. Guess I don’t work at Westminster East. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

43 F______, Are you making a distinction between a system and a paradigm?

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And I, for one, have been arguing that I am departing from a pietistic, revivalist, individualistic reading of the WCF and returning to a pre-Enlightenment reading of the WCF. It is a paradigm shift, or a system shift. But not from the pristine WCF to something else, but rather as an attempt to read the WCF as though the democratization of American Christianity had never happened. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

44 C______, When you say below that there is no final forgiveness apart from the atoning death of Christ, you then make a logical misstep between #2 and #3. To say that there is no true forgiveness apart from the atonement of Christ is to say that the atoning death of Christ is the sine qua non of true forgiveness. It does not follow from this to say that whatever kind of forgiveness experienced by the non-elect covenant members cannot be from the atonement of Christ. For Smith to say that all the unlosable money he has was received from Jones does not prevent Jones from giving other losable money to Murphy. The fact that Jones’s bank account was the only possible source of unlosable money does not limit what Jones may do with what is his. With regard to the blood of Christ, we are told that those who were sanctified can trample it underfoot. Peter tells us that Christ as Despot purchased false teachers. With what? And by the blood of Jesus Christ, He reconciles all things to Himself. And assuming you gentlemen are not in the PRC, what is the foundation of common grace? Is it the blood of Christ? Cordially in Christ, Douglas

45 C______, No, you missed the point I was trying to make about Ephesians 1. No doubt the problem was mine. Here it is again, with some background.

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Paul calls the cup of the Lord’s Supper the cup of blessing. He does so even though a number of the Corinthians were sick or dead because of how they came to it. Uzza was struck down because he got a little too close to the mercy seat. God saved His people from Egypt, but then proceeded to fertilize the wilderness with a good many of them. Now, faced with this kind of thing, we do not abandon what we call it (we still say that it is the cup of blessing, despite the dead bodies), but we do have to nuance it, explaining it further. Applied to election, if the right question is raised (as it is in Romans), we can say, “Well, you have to understand that the word election carries two senses here. And not all the elect are elect. But for the elect who are, see the last part of chapter 8 again.” I take both Ephesians 1 and Romans 8 in the strong, decretal sense. That is what I teach and emphasize. I would have no problem going to Ephesians 1 to establish my black coffee Calvinist credentials. But if someone in the audience raised the question of covenant members who fall away, I would proceed to nuance the doctrine as Paul does in Romans. If they did not, I would proceed merrily on to Ephesians 5 and talk about reforming marriage. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

46 J______, Honestly, Hodge “seems” to be doing nothing of the kind. Here is the whole passage.

Mar Johanan, the Nestorian bishop, when solicited by high-churchmen to separate himself from non-prelatical Christians, exclaimed, “All who love the Lord Jesus Christ are my brethren.” Above all the narrow, mea- gre patriotism on earth is the large, free, ecumenical patriotism of those who embrace in their love and fealty the whole body of the baptized. All who are baptized into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, recognizing the Trinity of Persons in the Godhead, the incarnation of the Son and his priestly sacrifice, whether they be

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Greeks, or Arminians, or Romanists, or Lutherans, or Calvinists, or the simple souls who do not know what to call themselves, are our brethren. Baptism is our common countersign. It is the common rallying standard at the head of our several columns. It is our common battle-flag, which we carry forward across the enemy’s line and nail aloft in the heights crowned with victory. We will be confined in our love and allegiance by no party lines. We follow and serve on common Lord. Hence there can be only “one Lord, on faith, one baptism,” and hence only one indivisible, inalienable, “sacramental host of God’s elect.”

In what way does Hodge seem to be limiting his language here to the three or four Roman Catholics who might be regenerate? If that is his intent, he has gone about it in a way that can only be described as ill-advised. J______, if I spoke as Hodge spoke above, the pieces would still be falling out of the sky. And imagine if Schlissel had said it! Contrariwise (isn’t that a great word?), if you apply your skills in teasing out an acceptable orthodox meaning from the above to what I have written throughout the course this controversy, I would not only have a clean bill of health in no time, I would also be qualified to teach ST at Greenville. Frankly, although I am in sympathy with the above and agree with his intent, Hodge is clearly to my ecumenical left. Not that this makes him a heretic or anything. Lots of my friends are there. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

47 C______, Thanks for the reply. I do not have this all worked out in detail. All I know is that the blood of Christ works in various ways and is broader in its application than in just accomplishing the salvation of the elect. But it is sufficient for me to show that the Bible’s use is necessarily broader than the use of the WCF. And this illustrates what we are saying on other points quite nicely. I affirm that the blood of Christ is efficacious in the salvation of the elect. But this narrow (and quite biblical!) application is not the end of the story. The

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Scriptures talk about quite a bit more, which means that we have a lot of exegetical work to do. But if we restrict the use of this phrase to the narrow one, then we slam the door shut at places where God is revealing something to us. Let us live up to what we have already attained. But let us also do more than that. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

48 F______, Your comments were helpful. Not sure there is anything to respond to. But in going back to Westminster, pre-Enlightenment, I would still want to take exceptions, sometimes to doctrine, other times to language. I like “covenant of life” and don’t like “covenant of works.” Good example. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

49 C______, I’ll bet it was me. And if it wasn’t me, let me say it now. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

At 07:54 AM 3/23/2004, ______wrote:

Dear Brothers, Who wrote, “God . . . favors none but the elect alone with the Spirit of regeneration, and . . . by this they are distinguished from the reprobate”? (I assure you, by the way, that the ellipses remove nothing substantive to the sense of the statement. They just make it work grammatically apart from its grammatical setting.) In Christ, C______

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50 Those who are in the covenant can fall away. Those who are of the covenant cannot. Those who are in the Elect One can fall away. Those who are of the Elect One cannot. Those who are in Israel can fall away. Those who are of Israel cannot. Those who are in the predestined can fall away. Those who are of the predestined cannot. When we address the visible church (unless it is a church contemplated apostasy en masse, like Galatia), we are instructed to use the language of election and predestination, even though we may have grave pastoral doubts about Murphy there, second row from the back. Therefore, as the elect of God, put on tender mercies. We say this to everyone, including Murphy. If we are talking to a whole church toying with another gospel, we tell them that if they accept circumcision, Christ will be of no value to them at all. Why? Because they will have fallen from grace. So the first chapter of Ephesians does not obligate me to believe that the church at Ephesus had, at that time, no non-elect covenant members, any more than Romans 8 obligates me to think that Rome had no branches that could be cut out of the olive tree. If Ephesus was an average church, I believe that it did contain reprobate members. Paul warned them that from their own midst savage wolves would arise. Nevertheless, the letter is addressed to the entire church at Ephesus, and not to a secret society within the church at Ephesus. How are we to reconcile this? Now, this is the crucial point. Necessarily, this means that the church of Ephesus will be winnowed. Some will fall away, and some, those who are of the election, will remain. What is the winnowing fan? It is not an ability with deductive syllogisms, but rather faith. Paul says this to the assembled church at Ephesus, and the elect hear him and believe him. They do not look at the guy next to them, wondering about him. “What is that to you? You follow me.” Apostasy and perseverance are not parts of a math problem. If Paul had ended the book of Romans at the end of chapter 8, we could have thought that the whole church was elect in the strong sense. His language

932 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APPENDIX there is every bit as strong as it is in Ephesians 1. But we know that this was not true. I would have no more problem with Romans 11 being a subsequent chapter in Ephesians than I do with it following Romans 8. Hope this helps. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

51 R______, Thanks for the kind words in your previous posts. I would echo Tom’s words to the concerns expressed below, which is a real, live concern. We need men who will thunder the word, and charge the nominal, baptized church in America with an advanced case of covenant-breaking. We are in a position to preach prophetically to America—the widespread practice of baptizing infidels gives us the basis for bringing a covenant lawsuit. Baptism does not mean what all these scoundrels say it means. It means what the Bible says it means. And that means that we must grab such people by their baptism and shake them, hard. And I never thought, as the editor of Credenda, that I would ever be charged with being too lenient with regnant follies. But I will try to do better. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

52 J______, Suppose I meet a nominal Catholic, with a deep allegiance to his faith in an ethnic sense, but with no sense of the demands of the gospel or the covenant. Say he is in the Mafia, thinks nothing of fornication, drug-running, or murder. If I say to him, “your baptism is meaningless,” I have granted him something to take self-righteous pride in. He says to himself, “I may not be much of a Catholic (and should probably go to confession again soon), but at least I do not disparage my baptism the way this Protestant does.”

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What I would actually say to him would run along these lines: “Why do you show such contempt for your baptism? Because your baptism is not meaningless, but rather full of covenant meaning, it means that everything about your life is an insult to your baptism. This is because your baptism means that Jesus Christ owns you, and you do not own yourself. You must therefore turn to God in true, heartfelt repentance, you must believe in the gospel. You must believe in Jesus alone for salvation, because this is what your baptism obligates you to do. Furthermore, you cannot deny what I am saying without denying your baptism. Why do you insult your baptism the way you do?” Of course, if he really is in the Mafia, I would say all these things from an appropriate distance. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

53 C______, I don’t use head-for-head language in talking about all the blessings received by covenant members. I think it sucks us into the language and categories of distributed terms in logic, which I want to avoid in this scenario. Covenant members have more variables going on than “all triangles have three sides” do. At the same time, I do think all the blessings of the covenant are present for all covenant members, head for head, but I do not believe that all covenant blessings are received by all covenant members, head for head. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

54 R______, Let me say something here, not to horn in on your discussion with Rich, for we all have enough to go around, and not to make cheap debating points. Something crucial is at stake in the discussion of whether infants can have faith.

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Those of us who say that they can have faith are in a position to continue to affirm sola fide. There is no salvation for anyone except through the instrument of faith alone. Those who say that faith is not possible for an infant are left with two choices—either all infants who die in infancy are damned, or sola fide is not true and elect infants are saved another way. Scripturally, John the Baptist leapt for joy in the womb. Is not faith entailed in such a response? And the psalmist trusted in God from his mother’s breast. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

55 R______, Yes, but with one additional qualifier. When the Word is present to an unbeliever, it is geographically present and objectively there, outside the man. But when a man is baptized, it makes the gospel covenantally present. He has the mark of Christ’s ownership on him, which requires and demands a response of nothing but faith. The man is obligated to repent and believe, in a sense much deeper than the way all men are commanded to repent. And of course, if he rejects this obligation, then his condemnation is that much the worse. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

56 R______, There is no substantive difference here, but there is an apologetic/rhetorical one. When I appeal to his baptism, I am enlisting one of his idols in the cause, and it turns out that his “idol” is actually on Christ’s side. It is an idol because of how he thinks of it. But if he thinks of it the way the Scriptures teach, then he is required by his baptism to come to Christ. “Come now, you who know the law. Does not the law say . . .”

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“Come now, you who are baptized. I am not a lone fundamentalist, demanding that you repent and believe. Your baptism demands the same thing, that you repent and believe. I say that you must look to Jesus. Your baptism says the same thing, doesn’t it? So what’s the hold up?” In actual apologetic/evangelistic encounters, this is really potent. I was once talking with a young man, my son’s friend at graduate school. He was a lapsed Christian, and didn’t believe anything any more. He wasn’t “a Christian,” and had his head full of Enlightenment crap. The three of us were at breakfast, and it came out somehow that he wasn’t a Christian. I said to him, “Yes, you are.” It was as though he got slapped in the face. I said that he was not in charge of whether or not he was a Christian. That was the church’s responsibility. Perhaps his home church should have put him out, but they hadn’t, so he was still a Christian. “So why aren’t you acting like it?” I asked. It really shook him up, and he came back to the Lord. This is not one grand, baptismal schmooze. Covenant blessings and curses. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

57 J______, See my reply to R______. I only mean I am granting him a rhetorical point, rhetorical high ground. I don’t want him to have anything scriptural, particularly not his baptism in the triune name. Just like confronting a blasphemer with, “Do you talk to your mother with that mouth?” can be very effective, so here. Do you take your baptism to whorehouses with you? Why do you disrespect it like that? Cordially in Christ, Douglas

58 C______, Disagree is too strong because I hear and understand the qualifications they make. But I don’t speak the same way that they do at this point.

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I think everything in “the lists” applies in some way to every covenant member, head for head. But without faith, it is a photo-negative of the glorious salvation list. Unbelief makes it a covenant-curses damnation list. In other words, the lack of perseverance necessitates that something was qualitatively wrong with the non-elect covenant member’s connection to Christ all along. This being the case, someone might say, “Well, why didn’t you say so? Your language is really misleading.” To which I respond, it is misleading just like the language of the New Testament is misleading. Falling from grace, turning from the way of justification, etc. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

59 C______, You are right. I was doing the Zen Presbyterian thing. And I agree with you about the lexical use of the word predestination (at least in Paul). In fact, I think the narrowness in there is even stronger than you have made it. In Paul we are not predestined “to become Christians” (although that, too, is foreordained). We are predestined to the adoption as sons, which is the redemption of the body. We are predestined to ultimate Christlikeness, which is the eschatological conclusion to the whole process. So, yes, that is the way Paul uses the word. The reason I used that way in my ZP thing is that I have recently heard many strong defenses of systematic uses of a word that may not be the biblical use that I just got swept up in all the excitement. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

60 T______, I think the two quotations make my point. I have no problem with Cal- vin’s proviso, infants are renewed “according to the capacity of age.” I would

937 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APPENDIX see in there something that I would call faith, although Calvin perhaps would not. And Bullinger includes the infants in the company of the faithful. The point stands I think. If faith is restricted to voluntary assent to known propositions, then all dying infants are damned, or sola fide (faith defined as earlier) is wrong. I preserve sola fide by saying that faith varies according to the capacity of age. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

61 J______, I agree that it is a mystery. But if what you say is true, that means that sola fide is the ordinary instrument of salvation. (fere fide, ordinarily faith). I am happy to leave it a mystery, supposing that faith of some sort is involved. But for those who say strongly that infants do not have faith, and that infants can be saved, it follows by good and necessary consequence that sola fide is a generalization. And, depending on how many infants have died, and how many God has graciously determined to save, on these terms, sola fide might be the minority vehicle for salvation. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

62 C______, Sorry for piling in, but this is a perfect illustration of why we are missing one another. You ask Steve:

C______: Which covenant? Of grace? Of works? Of life? Of redemption? Of nature? Some other?

This presupposes that the covenant (of whatever) is an entity unto itself. But the covenant of grace should not be considered here as an abstraction, from which deductions can be made. The covenant is not a list of names. The covenant is the relationship between God and His people. And although the

938 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APPENDIX sovereign God could produce a list of elect names, this would be deducible from His knowledge of the covenant people (as persons) at the last day. We are not to make deductions about the people from a list of names (which we don’t have anyway). We are to generate the list of names from the people who will be there because of the grace of God. This means “the covenant” is short hand for the “covenant people.” Non-elect covenant members are members of the covenant people. They are not (if I may speak this way) members of the covenant eschatological decree. But then again, strictly speaking, neither am I. I am not in the covenant of grace because my name is on a list. Rather, my name is on a list because I have been united with Christ. So the covenant is a set of relationships between persons. Some of them are treacherous toward Christ, and others (by His grace) are faithful. God knows from the beginning who will be in which category. When someone asks me what covenant I mean, I would point around the church and say, “That one.” I also hasten to add that it will be a whole lot better looking someday. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

63 C______, The covenant people of God are all those who are baptized in the triune name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This means that they are in a peculiar covenant relationship, distinguished from others like marriage, employ- ment contracts, etc. As people marked with this sign commanded by Jesus Christ, they have one central obligation, which is that they must live lives of repentance and faith. To do so is covenant keeping. If they do not, they are covenant breakers. What covenant are they breaking? The new covenant. The covenant of grace. The covenant of baptism. All this is short hand for saying that they are being treacherous members of the covenant people. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

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64 C______, The covenant of grace (the new covenant, the covenant made with all who are baptized in the triune name) is a covenant that is kept between Christ and His elect alone. It is not kept by faithless covenant members, but the faithless covenant members are in a covenant that they are faithless to. Another way of addressing this is by asking whether the new covenant contains any covenant curses. The New Testament reminds us in numerous places that it does. This makes sense if the covenant people move through history. But if the covenant of grace is synonymous with election, then covenant breaking is impossible. But if that is the case, whose bodies are scattered across the wilderness? Cordially in Christ, Douglas

65 J______, I agree that we need to distinguish between the elect and the non-elect. I agree further that we need to do so clearly. The problem I have with the way you are making the distinction below is that it is not at all clear to me what is meant. I know what “in the box” means and I know what “out of the box” means. But I don’t know what “in the box with respect to the administration of the box” means. The administrators of your seminary do not exercise authority over Grey- friars students out here. It makes sense to say that those who are in something should be administered as though they were in that something. But this depends upon them actually being in. I do not understand how being administered could be in any way a diluting agent. How does this weaken the bonds at all? It is a question of jurisdictions. The administration of the covenant of grace is exercised over those who are in it. Those administrators, being godly, bless the faithful and curse the unfaithful.

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In the covenant, in or out is all that matters. “Next to” doesn’t matter at all. If a non-elect covenant member is “next to” the covenant, then he has no right his baptism. In contrast, I would say that the non-elect covenant member is in the covenant, and therefore has a right to his baptism. But what he does not have, given his baptism, is a right to his unbelief. This is because he is in. And if he persists in his unbelief, the administration of the covenant of grace will kick him out of it. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

66 C______and all, This should not surprise anyone, but with regard to your statement below, while I would want to say much more than this, I am happy to say no less than this. In other words, I have no trouble affirming what you have written here, and I am affirming this with my understanding of what you mean by it. The “more” that I would say I have said elsewhere, and simply see the larger discussion as us grappling with what Calvin grappled with when he distinguished between general and special election. And if you would permit a few editorial suggestions, I would suggest adding two words, in #7 and #9. I put my additions in all caps.

7) We agree, therefore, that to believe that ALL the blessings of Ephesians 1:3–14 are received by all members of the visible church and then lost by some, is to contradict and be out of accord with the WCF’s definition and doctrine of predestination.

9) We agree that the reprobate, by rejecting these blessings freely offered to them, aggravate their guilt and bring upon themselves a more severe COVENANTAL punishment than they would have received had they ever been joined to Christ’s church.

Cordially in Christ, Douglas

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67 Gentlemen, Just a couple questions. A few weeks back, I answered some doctrinal questions that had been posted by some of you all, and I believe from the response I got from some of you that the answers were satisfactory. I was wondering if you all, singly (or, even better) as a group would be willing to issue a public pronouncement that you know that I am not a heretic, and that I firmly hold to the gospel of grace. This will demonstrate is a clear and unmistakable way that it is profitable to answer such questions. I would appreciate it greatly. A specific question for R______. I just got done reading your address at the 2004 PCRT, and although I guess I should thank you for describing me as a “moderate” in our group, the inescapable conclusion was that I am moderate in my “propagation of a new and different gospel,” which is still not so good. My question is this. You say in your lecture that justification by works was a possibility for Adam before the fall, but that he by his sin made it impossible for us to be justified in this way. Had Adam not fallen, had he accomplished the work assigned to him by God, would he have done this work in an attitude of faith and trust, or an attitude of unbelief and distrust? Further, had he not fallen, would he have had any obligation to render thanksgiving to God for his deliverance? Thanks much. Cordially in the hyper-covenant, Douglas

68 Gentlemen all, Thanks for the responses. And here are just a few comments in reply. I do not know why the others did not affirm the statement you worked out. It might be weariness, the conviction that it would not do not any good, differences over nuances, or differences over substance. I don’t know. But whether you distinguish me from my friends or not, why don’t you drop a

942 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APPENDIX line to the folks at the RPCUS to let them know that you are convinced that they erred in pronouncing me as a heretic? If you do this, then perhaps it will encourage my friends to take another look at what you drafted. If you do not, then it illustrates that they are far wiser than I. And this is not a cute debating point. I really am asking you to do this. J______said that if Adam had obeyed it would have been out of faith. Moreover, he said that God would have given him the grace of obedience. Amen. R______says (albeit reluctantly) that Adam’s work of obedience would have been done in an attitude of faith and trust. Amen again. But notice what this does. I means that the radical juxtaposition that you all are making between faith and works needs to be qualified. Strictly speaking, it is not a covenant of works on the one hand and a covenant of grace on the other. It is a covenant of obeying the law (the requirement of God) by grace through faith and obeying the gospel (the requirement of God) by grace through faith. I agree that we sinners can’t work. But we can’t believe, either. That is why God must give the gift of faith. My faith is just as corrupt as my love. Despite this, just as I agreed with your formulations concerning Ephesians 1, I am grateful that you agreed with my “monocovenantal” formulation. This is what we have agreed upon.

God made a covenant with us through Adam, the terms of which were to be kept by him/us by grace through faith. God makes a covenant with us through Christ, the terms of which were to be kept by Him/us by grace through faith.

Cordially in Christ, Douglas

69 Gentlemen, Just for the record, I am not a monocovenantalist. I hold that there are two distinct covenants, pre- and post-Fall. But because I hold that both

943 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APPENDIX covenants had stipulated terms that were to be kept by grace through faith, and which R______, J______and C______agreed with, I have been called a “monocovenantalist.” Notice the quotation marks. For that reason, and on the same grounds, I am glad to include R______, J______, and C______in the ranks of “monocovenantlists.” Just as they were glad to include me in the ranks of the Ephesians 1 TRs. Just spreading the love. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

70 Gentlemen, C’mon, C______, quotation marks are used this way all the time. If someone wrote me to say he “had objections to our Greyfriars ‘seminary’ and my ‘subscription’ to the Westminster Confession,” I would not wonder who he was quoting. He would mean seminary and subscription, falsely so-called. This is standard usage. The same thing with my book, “Reformed” is Not Enough. Without the quote marks, Reformed is plenty, and I am as Reformed as it gets. But for those “Reformed” people who don’t know their own history, their confessions, or how revivalistic and dispensational they have become in the surrounding baptistic culture, no, that kind of “Reformed” is not near enough. Now, by monocovenantalist, do you mean one and only one covenant? Or do you mean two or more covenants, kept in the same manner, by grace through faith? If the former, then I am not one. If the latter, then you are “one,” together with me. Your discussion is missing the point that Adam and Christ are both federal heads, two distinct federal heads. Both federal heads represented all their people and were called to do so by God’s grace through faith. How the federal representative keeps covenant and how the represented keep it vary in the mechanics, although they do not vary in the demeanor of faith alone. Adam did not keep covenant, and Christ did. But two covenant heads require two covenants. Both were to be kept the only way that a faithful covenant keeper could keep them, by grace through faith.

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Had Adam stood, his descendants would have had to participate in him in some way, and they also would have done so through a way of walking by God’s grace in faith. The differences between the covenants are: 1. two distinct covenant heads, 2. the possibility of sin and failure in the first, and 3. the remedial nature of the latter. They are the same in that obedience always looks the same, by grace through faith. If you don’t want to be a “monocovenantalist,” then you must deny that Adam would have stood (had he stood) by grace through faith. Then your covenants could be different at every point. But then that would mean that Jesus (as an Adam) would not have faith in God as the source of His obedience. And then we are all justified by our faith in the Faithless One. Which is absurd. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

71 Gentlemen, C______, anything you might say on the Warfield list would be greatly appreciated—just as I appreciated R______’s comments.

C______, I am not sure it is helpful to use the word “justify” in a pre-fall context. Things are confused enough as it is. But I think I can answer your questions with my own vocabulary. At least I hope so. In the Bible, grace does not just mean kindness in spite of demerit. Since most of the recipients of God’s grace do in fact have such demerit, that is the most common use. But grace also means God’s favor. “And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him” (Luke 2:40). When grace is shown to those who have demerited God’s favor, the gracious nature of it is certainly accented and highlighted. But God showed favor to Adam before the fall, and to Christ. So this is what I mean by grace: God’s favor. The applications of such favor will vary

945 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APPENDIX widely, according to the rebellion or obedience of the recipient. Whether it is unmerited favor (as with Adam at the point of creation), or demerited favor (as with me at the moment of conversion), it is still God’s favor, and is still God’s grace. In the latter situation, grace has more to do, but it is the same heart that does it. Now, had Adam believed and obeyed God, that faith and obedience would have been reckoned to his federal descendants, just as his unbelief and resultant disobedience was reckoned to us. I, born 6,000 years later in an unfallen world, would have had to walk individually in the footsteps of my father Adam, and would have had to do so in the same demeanor of simple, trusting faith in the Word of God that Adam had displayed. My attitude of faith would be the same as that of my father. But the mechanics would be different in that I am not a federal head, and am not believing and obeying for anyone else. Christ has in fact believed and obeyed God, and that faithful obedience of His is the only possible ground of my justification and salvation. I am to trust God the same way Christ did (same demeanor); the Bible requires us to imitate Christ. But again, the mechanics (the content of what I am doing) are different.

1. Had Adam stood, he would have retained God’s unmerited favor toward him, and he would have done so by the grace and favor of God, appropriated through faith, and the resultant obedience would have been imputed to us. 2. Because Christ did stand, He obtained God’s favor for those who had demerited it, and He did so by the grace and favor of God, appropriated through His faith, and His resultant obedience has been imputed to us.

The thing tripping us up, in my view, is that you contrast the covenant of works as it was to be kept by the federal head with the covenant of grace as it is to be kept by the federally represented. But Adam should be compared to Adam, and descendant to descendant. You cite WCF 7:2–3 and say the condition of the covenant of works is perfect and personal obedience, and

946 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APPENDIX the condition (for those represented by Christ) under the covenant of grace is faith. But the condition of all covenants is faith. For federal heads, their faith supplies the ground for any blessing of the represented. For the unfallen, that blessing would have been preservation from sin. For the fallen, that blessing is salvation from sin. But in both cases, their faith produces obedience given to us. Our faith is the instrument for receiving that obedience. But every covenant head, and every covenant keeper, must have faith, all the time, no exceptions, as the motive force of everything. We are saved by faith, over faith, under faith, through faith, and to faith. And it is just this kind of ambiguity that has led some scholars, over and over and over again, to wonder about my commitment to sola fide. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

72 Gentlemen, With regard to the quotation marks, I am happy to defer to the testimony of two and three witnesses, and apologize for the confusion. I am not a monocovenantalist. I am, according to some, a “monocovenantalist.” And, to reiterate the point I was making, so are you. I agree that had Adam not sinned, the entire race would have been confirmed in holiness, and unable to sin. But this means that everything we thought, did, or said, would be BY FAITH. Saying that we would be unable to sin is just another way of saying we would be unable to do anything in unbelief. We would implicitly believe God in all things, just as we (in Christ) will believe God in all things in the resurrection. We would not have to do anything in order to enter into Adam’s obedience, but everything we did by faith would evidence our on-going and glad participation in Adam by faith. In one sense, I don’t hold to sola fide. I hold to tota fide. Or is that ambiguous? All faith, all the time. Sure. Two distinct covenants, but the second is not a start from scratch covenant. Your comments indicate, and I agree with them, that the once-broken

947 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APPENDIX but now-fulfilled covenant of life is rolled over (in Christ) into the covenant of grace. But, fundamentally, two covenant heads mean two covenants. One last comment. Someone a few posts back noted that we advanced our views in public, at a conference, and that has made everything more dicey to handle. This is a reasonable criticism if we were advancing anything novel, like a thirteen-day creation week or something. But ours is a position that is found in the first reformers, and has been a continuous element in reformation theology down to the present. There is nothing fundamentally new here. I am currently listening to a conference tape by on the sacraments by Robert Godfrey, speaking in 1997, which, had he delivered at Auburn Avenue a few years ago, would have put him in the same position we are currently in. Or perhaps it would not have—perhaps the whole thing would have been given a pass. Richard Gaffin can blurb Norman Shepherd’s book, and nothing happens to him or Westminster East. All I had to do was read Shep- herd’s book. Robert Godfrey can say that we should look to our baptism in faith for assurance. Can I say that? Cordially in Christ, “Douglas”

73 Gentlemen, I received this email this morning from C______. It provides the context for everything you will read from me shortly when I post to the whole group. Thanks much, and please pray. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

74 Gentlemen, One last clarification, although I probably ought to save my breath for walking uphill.

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I believe the covenant with Adam and the covenant with Christ are two distinct covenants, with two distinct covenant heads. They had different ends (the confirmation of righteousness and the reinstitution of righteousness, the avoidance of sin and the forgiveness of sin). They were different covenants, different in kind. However, I do not believe that the difference in kind was that of merit versus grace. I believe it would have been a federal head (Adam) rendering obedience through faith resulting in Situation A, and a federal head (Christ) rendering obedience through faith resulting in Situation B. Those covenantally represented by their respective federal heads would have had to trust God in all things and believe Him as He revealed to them the circumstances they were living under. Their role would be to trust God to have represented them well in their federal head. All involved, federal heads and those federally represented, have faith in common. They all believe God, by grace through faith. They differ in that all who are in the four different categories believe four different things—Adam, those represented by Adam, Christ, and those represented by Christ. The object of faith is the same (a gracious God), the instrument is the same (faith), the content of what is believed is radically different, depending on the circumstance. There are a lot of questions generated by this that are well worth discussing, but somewhat difficult to do while dodging bullets. I was grieved to read the comments that C______passed along, and concluded that the brothers on my side of the line have been wiser than I. They refrained from trying to agree with as many of your formulations as possible, and I did not. If you refrain, it is clear you have something to hide. And if you do not refrain, it is clear that you are a muddled cloth-head, or a word game impresario with an ego problem. I really enjoyed our time in Ft. Lauderdale, and have also enjoyed some of our subsequent interactions, which I thought were helpful. But I have been counting my little blue chips, and the net value of this venture no longer seems compelling to me. Time to deal me out. May the God of all grace establish you and keep you, and make His face shine upon you. May He prosper your respective ministries, and may He

949 THE AUBURN AVENUE CHRONICLES | APPENDIX confirm you in every good work, built on the righteousness of Christ alone, appropriated by faith alone. May God bless you all according to the riches of His grace. Cordially in Christ, Douglas

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