The Nine Declarations Versus Wilkins, part 3

July 20, 2007 at 10:02 am (Federal Vision, Heresy)

Next up is Wilkins’s read of Ephesians 1 and 2. This has been discussed on this blog before. He thinks that his point is proved by appealing to the proof-text of Ephesians 2:19 for the WS’s definition of the visible church as “the house and family of God” (WCF 25.2). The imperfection of the visible church is not really in dispute by anyone in this debate. However, I would argue that its implications are very important for understanding how the divines understood the definition of the visible church. Firstly, it consists of those who profess the true faith. They pointedly avoid using the word “possess.” Secondly, the imperfection of the visible church is notable in this phrase “out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation.” Notice the force of the word “possibility” in that phrase. They do not say it the way the Catholics do. The Catholics say it as an absolute: “Outside the church there is no salvation.” So, inside the visible church is the ordinary possibility of salvation. These two ideas contextualize the phrase “house and family of God.” The house and family of God is the place where there is the ordinary possibility of salvation, and, furthermore, the house and family of God is that body of people who profess the true faith. Further contextual study reveals that the visible church is “more or less pure” (section 4). This is how the proof-text works, therefore: the divines mean to emphasize that the citizenship of which Ephesians 2 speaks is of the visible church, not of the invisible church. They are fellow citizens of the visible church together with the saints. Paul is not saying that all the citizens of the visible church have been savingly adopted. What the proof-texts are saying is that by name, the visible church can be called the family of God by judgment of charity. That is one of the main benefits of being part of the visible church. But neither the proof-text nor the WCF says members of the visible church are savingly adopted (whether allegedly “decretal” or allegedly “covenantal” adoption is in view).

5 Comments

  1. Tom Albrecht said,

    July 21, 2007 at 9:00 pm

    I think you ought to recheck your premise regarding the “no ordinary possibility of salvation”. While you seem to be correct in your analysis regarding the Catholic position (even though it seems Catholics don’t believe the Catholic position anymore… but let’s say that it did apply in the late 17th century), I think you’re incorrect in what the opposite of “no ordinary possibility of salvation”.

    “The visible Church, which is also catholic or universal under the Gospel (not confined to one nation, as before under the law), consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion; and of their children: and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation.”

    The word “possible” only applies to those outside the church, in this case, the negative. We could rewrite the end of the sentence “out of which there is ordinarily no possibility of salvation”. But, ignoring the rest of the WCF (and scripture), this sentence would not conflict with the hypothetical sentence “Everyone who is baptized into the church is saved” (I’m not arguing that this is the case, obviously… I’m merely pointing out that WCF 25:2 is not taking any position on the eternal state of those in the church.)

    Let me put these two sentences together to illustrate:

    1) Everyone baptized into the church is saved.
    2) There is no ordinary possibility of salvation apart from being baptized into the church.

    Those two sentences do not conflict with each other. By using the word “ordinarily”, the authors of the WCF were leaving a possible out for extreme cases of salvation outside the church (thief on the cross, etc.). But the entire clause at the end of WCF 25:2 has no logical implications for those who are in the church, nor can one apply the word “possibility” to anyone who does not fall into the category mentioned, i.e. those outside the church.

  2. Tom Albrecht said,

    July 21, 2007 at 11:28 pm

    Let me clarify, because I didn’t make myself clear, and I finally found the formal logical flaw. You’re arguing the that inverse is always true.

    Let P be the statement, “Bob is outside the church.” and Q is a separate statement “It is ordinarily impossible that Bob is saved.”

    The confession tells us “If P, then Q”. That is, “If Bob is outside the church, then it is ordinarily impossible that Bob is saved.”

    Logically, we can make the following conclusions:

    The contrapositive, “If not Q, then not P” does follow. If it is ordinarily possible that Bob is saved, then Bob is not outside the church.

    But, the inverse is not necessarily true, and does not follow. That is, “not P” does not imply “not Q”. The statement “If Bob is not outside the church (i.e. he is inside the church), then it is ordinarily possible that Bob is saved” while it could be true, does not logically follow. In fact, nothing can be concluded about Q based on “not P”, that is, based on the statement “Bob is in the church.”

    It’s important to understand that the clause at the end of WCF 25:2 is not making any statements about those who inside the church. One could argue that everyone or no one in the church is saved, and not affect the argument, as the argument is _only_ making a truth statement about those outside the church.

    Again, I’m not arguing about the status of those inside the church. I just wanted to point out that your logic does not hold up. You might want to check out the following article.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse_%28logic%29

  3. greenbaggins said,

    July 22, 2007 at 3:13 pm

    Tom, welcome to my blog. You raise a very interesting point that has me thinking rather hard. Let’s look at the logic itself again.

    If O (outside the church) then no OPS (ordinary possibility of salvation). This is logically equivalent to saying that if one denies the “no OPS,” then one is affirming also “not O.” This is one of the things that you said.

    If O, then no OPS. If OPS, then not O. But the latter is saying that the ordinary possibility of salvation exists only inside the church. This is not the same thing as saying that if one is in the church, then he has OPS, which would be affirming the consequent. But what I actually said was this: inside the visible church is the ordinary possibility of salvation. All OPS is not O. These statements are the same. So, if Tom has the OPS, then he is inside the church. What must then follow is a definition of OPS. Ordinary possibility of salvation is not the same thing as salvation itself. Therefore, if Tom has OPS, he is not necessarily saved. But if he has OPS, then he is certainly inside the church. I think this is what I was trying to say.

  4. Tom Albrecht said,

    July 23, 2007 at 1:37 pm

    “If OPS, then not O.”

    This is correct… If there is the ordinary possibility of salvation, then they must be inside the church (not outside the church). However, I don’t think this implies any imperfection in the visible church (not that there isn’t). I think your argument was much strong about the word “profess”, and then compare that Christ’s warnings about not all who say “Lord, Lord” will enter the kingdom of Heaven.

    BTW, you’re starting to see what happens when anything is written by a committee. I can just see the men who wrote this composing WCF 25:2, and then someone making a motion to append the phase “out of which there is no possibility of salvation”, to which someone made a friendly amendment to insert the word “ordinary”. The motion then accepted the friendly amendment without debate, whereupon the amended phase became the motion on the table. It was then debated, and finally adopted as written. Purely hypothetical, but entirely reasonable. We’re then left with a some rather hard language to chew on.

  5. pduggie said,

    July 24, 2007 at 9:00 pm

    Let me see if I get this:

    1. we all agree that everyone in the visible church is a citizen of the kingdom of God.

    2. Lane is claiming that no divine would believe that everyone in the visible church is adopted savingly by God.

    If (1) is true, though, wouldn’t we also have to agree that everyone in the visible church is a member of the house and family of God too? 25:2 said they were in the kingdom and we all accept that, because the kingdom is a governmental entity. Buta mere comma separates the kingdom from the house and family of God language,a dn defines the visible church as much as the word “kingdom of Jesus Christ:”

    So we should all affirm that the visible church IS the family of God. So the members of it, head for head, are family members.

    Now usually, we use aoption language to talk about a legal family bond being created. But we can’t talk about “saving adoption”, for obvious reasons.

    But we’re left with the visible church = the family at the same time.

    Aren’t we?

    Or shouldn’t we back away and say that saying the visible church is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ is *also* just a judgment of charity?

    “Paul is not saying that all the citizens of the visible church have been savingly adopted. ”

    Why not? I thought Ephesians to the non-FV was addressed solely to the elect, and that if you read it and were reprobate, you were reading mail addressed to someone else. That totally preserves the continuity of Paul’s thought on the church in Ephesians

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