Green Baggins

I drove up in front of Van Til’s home in an old faded blue 1966 Peugeot that I had bought for $400 from a fellow WTS student, Greg Reynolds, who had graduated and moved to New York (as many of you may know, Greg is now the editor of the OPC magazine Ordained Servant). The floor board had rusted out and plywood now served to conceal the road from appearing under your feet. Van Til was sitting out on the porch waiting for my arrival. I jumped out of the car and shouted, “Are you ready?” He waved and got up and slowly made his way down the sidewalk to greet me. “You got a good Reformed automobile there!” he exclaimed. “Huh?” I puzzled out loud. “I’ll tell you all about on the way,” he said, as we climbed in to make the short trip over to Faith Theological Seminary in Elkins Park. Peugeot, as Van Til went on to explained , was founded by a Reformed Christian, Armand Peugeot, and Peugeot donated many a car to Reformed ministers in France. He had no more finished telling me this interesting tidbit then we arrived at our designation. Faith seminary occupied the old Widener estate at the time. The estate, built early in the twentieth century, looked like something out of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, “The Great Gatsby” – but it had seen better days. The once neatly trimmed hedges that surrounded the mansion had the disheveled appearance of having been tended to by one disinterested seminarian after another for many years. Weeds sprouted up through the cracks in the parking lot, and the grand fountains out front had long ceased to function. Still, it was an impressive place. Marble floors, Greek columns, flying arches, tall double doors, all served as reminders that this was once a magnificent palace. The chapel originally had been a majestic ballroom with fine walnut walls and mounted chandeliers. Around the top of the walls were moldings of little angelic cherubs peering down. But the most impressive thing were the paintings in the ceiling. The center one, the largest of them all, depicted in classical style a Greek scene involving Venus. Surrounding the huge center painting were four smaller paintings depicting the four classical elements of earth, water, air, and fire. But we had not come on a sight seeing tour. We had come to hear Gordon Clark lecture in that spectacular chapel on Empiricism, particularly its dangers.

Dr. Clark, like Van Til, was in his 80’s, but was in fine form that night. Van Til and I sat in the front and he nodded frequently in agreement, as Clark lectured. After the lecture was over, Clark came over and the two of them shook hands and posed for pictures – one with me in between the tall Dutchman and the diminutive Clark. We lingered for over an hour listening to Clark field questions and then said our goodbyes and climbed back into my Calvinistic chariot and drove to Van Til’s home. I was chattering like a magpie asking question after question. Then there was silence. I looked over at Van Til. He had nodded off to sleep!

Late that same week, Gordon Clark had dinner with my family. He was a delightful conversationalist and spent a good part of the time discussing mathematics, when he discovered that my wife had been a math major at San Diego State University. After dinner we retired to the living room for coffee and dessert. Clark spoke highly of Van Til and mentioned that he even used Van Til’s apologetics syllabus when he taught back in the late 30’s and early 40’s at Wheaton. Above all Clark said that CVT treated him kindly all through the now famous Clark case. Ned Stonehouse, he declared, was the guy in the black hat. I asked Dr. Clark if he would sign about a half-dozen or so books of his that I had in my library – which he did. I took the books back to my study and returned to the living room to find that Dr. Clark had nodded off to sleep in the wingback chair in which he was sitting!

Given the significance of the Clark/Van Til controversy, I am going to focus on this in Part II and Part III of my review. Chapter 4 in John Muether’s biography of Van Til is entitled “Reformed and Evangelical” and gives us a blow by blow account of the now famous Clark/Van Til controversy. But, as pointed out in Part I, this cannot be understood in isolation from Van Til’s identity as Reformed Apologist and Churchman. Muether’s provides us with this context in the first three chapters. He traces Van Til’s background as a child of the Afscheiding in the Netherlands and the influence of Abraham Kuyper. From here Muether details Van Til’s family migration to the United States and Van Til student days at Calvin College and the various theological controversies that embroiled the Christian Reformed Church during his formative years.

Van Til’s determination to pursue seminary training at Princeton stemmed, to a large degree, from the desire to leave the confines of Grand Rapids and broaden his horizons in the foremost Reformed seminary in the world. In this part of the chapter, the decisive influence of Geerhardus Vos and J. Gresham Machen on Van Til is delineated with the kind of attentiveness that Boswell bestowed on Samuel Johnson.

The decision to leave Princeton to help establish Westminster Theological Seminary is likewise dealt with by Muether with the meticulous care of someone who has combed through the archives at Westminster. Of particular interest was this juicy morsel: “As early as 1928, Machen saw Van Til’s potential when he observed that “Van Til is excellent material from which a professor might ultimately be made.” If some interpreters exaggerated the affinities between the two by suggesting that Van Til prompted Machen’s movement away from evidential apologetics, others have less ground in proposing that their differences were irreconcilably great. Allan MacRae, an early member of the faculty of Westminster, maintained that Machen privately told him in the ‘the strongest language’ that he ‘stood with Warfield and against Van Til.’” Machen, MacRae recalled, was too busy during Westminster’s early years to address the “harmful effects” of Van Til’s teaching. Had Machen devoted the time to studying the matter, he would certainly have asked Van Til to leave” (p. 68). Muether hints here and elsewhere that MacRae’s recollection is difficult to reconcile with Machen’s attitude towards Van Til as well as Machen’s own deep suspicions about Premillennialism – especially the dispensational kind that MacRae embraced. For instance, MacRae later served as one of the contributors to the Revised Scofield Reference Bible. Secondly, not only Van Til, but John Murray also had serious issues with premillennialism and MacRae’s disconnect with the Westminster Standards on this very point. A year after Machen’s death MacRae would side with Carl McIntire and Oliver Buswell and split off to form Faith Theological seminary and the Bible Presbyterian Church. Interestingly, the first thing this group did was to revise the Westminster Standards so that Premillennialism could be explicitly affirmed. Thirdly, Van Til was actually relieved that the MacRae/McIntire faction broke away. In light of this I am of the opinion that Machen would have preferred that MacRae and not Van Til leave Westminster. Like Machen, Van Til wanted very much a confessional Reformed seminary as opposed to one that was more broadly Evangelical and less distinctively Reformed. I well remember one Thursday night gathering at Van Til’s home when he became very animated and in a stentorian voice declared,” You are not Evangelicals! You are Reformed! There is a big difference. Do you understand?” There was some muttering and the like from some of the fellows who had come out of a Campus Crusade for Christ background, but Van Til pressed his point with even more forcefulness. One of the front burner issues at the time was the ‘Joining and Receiving’ overture between the PCA and the OPC. Van Til was very much opposed to it and let it be known whenever he was asked. He had some well-founded doubts about the makeup of the PCA and that denomination’s broad evangelical background, i.e. churches that had left the old Southern Presbyterian Church as well as the Reformed Presbyterian Church Evangelical Synod (that had split earlier from McInTire and MacRae’s Bible Presbyterian Church).

This aspect of Van Til the churchman factors prominently into the developments that gave raise to the controversy with Gordon Clark’s ordination in the OPC as Muether writes, “The debate over the ordination of Gordon Clark, therefore, was part of a larger battle over the denomination’s Reformed character. Clark was an instrument in the agenda of a faction in the Church that was discontented with its Reformed identity. Ultimately, what was at stake for the likes of Robert Strong (a Clark supporter) was whether the church’s ecclesiology would be Reformed or evangelical.”(p.107). I will return to this in Part III of this review-which will extend beyond the scope I had intended.

Posted by Gary Johnson

I have gone through the entire Joint Federal Vision Profession (hereafter abbreviated JFVP). An index to the entirety of the discussion can be found here (second paragraph of links). For those who are incredibly lazy, the previous discussion of the Preface can be found here. And the JFVP itself can be found here. That should be enough preliminary, prefatory, introductory, forwardary links to get on with (and I even managed to end the sentence with two prepositions that time! Except for this parenthesis).

My thoughts on the matter have not changed much. I have not found the FV any more teachable than before. If anything, less so. I still have yet to see any major retractions of doctrinal error on the part of any one of the FV “conversation partners.” This is no doubt due to the massively non-existent evidence that no one in any of the major Reformed denominations (nor the denoms themselves) has amassed demonstrating the error of any single points of the FV. At least, to the FV thinking, anyway. We shall see.

There seemed to be a desire on the part of the signatories to say that they had no desire to present a “moving target.” I have found the FV to be an extremely moving target. The minute one has a logical argument against a position that has been written down, I am told that that isn’t their position. It was their position just a minute before, when what we had was written documentation. However, what always seems to happen is that I am told that I am a dolt, an irresponsible nincompoop, who cannot even understand plain English. Of course, not everyone in the FV camp has been doing this to me (Wilson being an example, though he doesn’t think I have proven one single aspect of any FV thinker’s theology to be out of bounds).

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. 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 to the JFVP. The PCA has decided that this is not going to be an allowable exception to the Standards. And this is only one example. Others will come later.

The long awaited fourth volume is finally available.

Ephesians 6:17

4/20/2008

Audio Version

The citizens of Feldkirch, Austria, didn’t know what to do. Napoleon’s massive army was preparing to attack. Soldiers had been spotted on the heights above the little town, which was situated on the Austrian border. A council of citizens was hastily summoned to decide whether they should try to defend themselves or display the white flag of surrender. It happened to be Easter Sunday, and the people had gathered in the local church. The pastor rose and said, “Friends, we have been counting on our own strength, and apparently that has failed. As this is the day of our Lord’s resurrection, let us just ring the bells, have our services as usual, and leave the matter in His hands. We know only our weakness, and not the power of God to defend us.” The council accepted his plan and the church bells rang. The enemy, hearing the sudden peal of bells, concluded that the Austrian army had arrived during the night to defend the town. Before the service ended, the enemy broke camp and left. The hope of salvation is so powerful. It is a helmet for us in the time of trouble. It protected the people of Feldkirch, and it will protect us also.

Paul continues on in his description of the armor of God, coming now to the helmet. We have seen that every piece of armor is vitally important if the believer is to fight Satan properly. The helmet is no exception. After all, a helmet protects the head. Most people generally want to keep their heads. So, if that is so, then we must cling to salvation literally for dear life. Now, a helmet is a very easy piece of armor to understand. There really isn’t anything I need to explain about how a helmet works. It has always worked the same way through the history of mankind. It protects the head. The only thing remaining is to explain the term “salvation,” and then examine how it protects us. It does not somehow protect our logical mind. Ancient people did not think of their mind as being in their head, believe it or not. They believed that their “brain” was part of the chest. So, we should not be looking for some kind of mysterious way in which salvation protects our minds, although it certainly does do that. It is another part of the armor that is essential, because it protects an essential part of us.

Salvation means two things in the Bible. Firstly, salvation refers to that point in time when we come to faith in Jesus Christ. At that point in time, we are justified by God’s grace when He declares us not guilty, and also declares that we are heirs of the kingdom of God. This happens because Christ’s righteousness is reckoned to be ours. Furthermore, God adopts us as His children, and implants the Holy Spirit in us so that we will become more and more holy throughout life. So, our sins are all forgiven when we come to faith. In this sense, we will never be more saved than we are right now.

However, that is not the only way that the Bible uses the term salvation. We only have to go to 1 Thessalonians 5:8 to realize this: “But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.” The hope of salvation indicates something that we do not fully have yet, since no one hopes for what he already has. In this sense, the Bible means the whole Christian life from conversion all the way through life, through death, and including resurrection from the dead. That is something that we do not have, at least in its fullness. We must keep in mind these two definitions of salvation, because great confusion can happen if do not keep them distinct. For one thing, when we think of salvation as that point of time when we come to faith, we have to exclude all works of any kind from that salvation. In that salvation, works play no part whatsoever. However, in the broader sense, which includes our whole lives, our works do play a role. They are essential, as a matter of fact. So, are works necessary for salvation? No, in the first sense, yes in the second sense. If we include works in the first sense, then we have to do something to obtain favor with God. The Bible everywhere condemns such thinking. However, excluding works from the second sense would mean that it doesn’t matter what we do.

However, we must be even more careful, because we cannot say that our works are done in our own strength, nor can we say in any way that eternal life depends on them. Our good works earn rewards above and beyond salvation, but they only earn those rewards because of God’s grace. As one writer puts it, God crowns His own gifts to us. Ultimately, they are to be for God’s glory, and not our own. However, God has promised that He will reward us for those good works.

So, it is this understanding that helps protect us. How does it protect us? Well, for one thing, Satan is always seeking to attack our salvation. There are a myriad of ways he does this. He will seek to get us to be afraid that we have sinned our way out of salvation, or that because God has hidden Himself, He has abandoned us. Or, that we are just a little bit better than our neighbor. The answer to all these things is still to come back to the Gospel.

So what do you do when you have sinned, and you feel guilty about it, and are afraid that God has given you over to your sin? Maybe it is a sin that you have committed many times, and cannot seem to get over it. What do you do? You remember your helmet. Salvation is not something that you can take on and off. In that respect, actually, it is not like a helmet. However, when we remember that we are always at war, then the parallel becomes exact again, because as long as we are at war, we need to have our helmet on. I remember a scene from a war movie where a surgeon was not wearing his helmet. The commanding officer told him that he had to wear a helmet. The surgeon said that he couldn’t use his stethoscope if he wore his helmet. The general told him to cut two holes in his helmet so that he could. We like to put up excuses for not wearing this helmet in wartime, but the fact is that always having it on is the wisest course of action. So, back to our question, what do you do? Remembering your helmet means that you remember what Christ has done for you. You remember that you are now a temple of the Holy Spirit. You remember that God will always forgive a penitent heart. There are no exceptions to that. A penitent heart God will not despise, says the Psalmist. We need to come back to the Gospel. Our forgiveness once for all is dependent on what Jesus has done for us. When that happens, we are forgiven of all our sins past, present and future. However, that is not the only kind of forgiveness we need. That kind of forgiveness saves us from the wrath of God. However, when we sin as Christians, we incur God’s fatherly displeasure. That means that we need to ask forgiveness every day for our offenses. That is why we pray in the Lord’s Prayer “forgive us our debts.” That is, forgive us our sins, forgive us what we owe and cannot repay. After you have asked God for forgiveness, then you need to pray to the Lord for help and strength to resist that temptation better the next time it comes around. This is extremely important to remember, because victory on the battlefield of sin is a cumulative thing. The more battles you win by God’s help, the less that sin will have any hold over you. It is always an uphill battle, but there is increasing victory that you can have.

Now supposing your particular problem is not a particular sin, but rather that you doubt your salvation. This helmet is impervious to Satan’s attack. If you are in fact truly saved, then the helmet will not come off. Comfort for doubters can be found in the promises of God. Remember this, that if you have ever truly experienced the grace of God, you cannot lose it. God may be hidden from you right now, but that is only to make you seek Him more. It is never to make you doubt. Only Satan wants those doubts. God wants you to trust Him more. These promises will enable us to doubt our doubts. Salvation is not temporary. Salvation is permanent. The story is told of the great Englishman Oliver Cromwell on his deathbed. He asked the ministers there (John Owen and Thomas Goodwin, both renowned Puritans) if we could be sure of salvation. They responded by saying that if he had ever experienced true grace, then he could be sure that it had never left. On hearing that, Cromwell was happy, and he said that he had no fears then, for he knew that he had received grace before. Fortunately for us, grace is not dependent on our feelings. Just because we feel something wonderful doesn’t mean that it is grace. So also, just because we don’t feel wonderful doesn’t mean that grace is absent. Grace makes itself known in strange ways sometimes. Grace always makes us grow, and that is a hard thing for us to learn.

And so, whether our problem is a particular sin, or whether it is doubt, we need to put on our helmet of salvation, which is sure to protect us from Satan’s blows.
 

At long last, this book on Calvin’s soteriology is out. This is a very controversial book, touching at issues that divide Westminster East from Westminster West. Very important reading.

“Therefore, holy brethren, sharers of the heavenly calling, carefully consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession: Jesus, who is faithful to the One who appointed Him, as Moses also was faithful in His entire house.”

We have seen that Jesus is superior to the prophets (1:1-3), and He is superior to the angels (1:4-2:18). We might think that Paul has proven everything that he needs to prove. However, there is one even greater (according to Jewish thinking) than the angels. Paul needs to prove that Jesus is even greater than Moses. Here is what an ancient Jewish rabbi said about Moses: “God calls Moses faithful in all His house, and thereby He ranked him higher than the ministering angels themselves.” So, if Jesus is even greater than Moses, then there is no one greater than Jesus. That is what Paul is now going to prove in chapter 3.

Paul starts by saying that Christians are holy (set apart from the world). “Brethren” here includes women. Paul tells us that we are sharers in the heavenly calling. Jesus is in heaven. Therefore our minds should be on the things of heaven. The next two words “carefully consider” are full of instruction. I am convinced that one of our greatest problems in the Christian life is that we will not delve deeply into who Christ is. We are a very superficial people, oftentimes, thinking that we know everything about Jesus that we need to know. These two words “carefully consider” mean that we should contemplate with a long and searching gaze who Jesus is. When we do that, we will find out that He is the Apostle of God, and He is our High Priest.

The word “apostle” means a person who is sent by someone else. Jesus is sent by God to accomplish the will of the Father. This is the only time in the New Testament where Jesus is called an apostle. What was He sent to do? He was sent to be our High Priest. He is the One who offers up the sacrifice (which is also Himself!) to the Father, that we might not have to suffer wrath. And, He is even now in heaven interceding for us.

This Apostle and High Priest is faithful. Utterly faithful. He was faithful to the One who appointed Him Apostle and High Priest (who is the Father). In fact, He was even more faithful than Moses was. Moses was a faithful Mediator. He interceded for the people even when it was inconvenient, even when, if he hadn’t interceded, he could have had blessing from God. Jesus is the same for us. And Jesus is also greater than Moses because Moses was a created being, whereas Jesus is the God-man. Is He your High Priest?

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? By the way, (totally off-topic!) you might be a red-neck if you’ve ever been accused of lying through your tooth.

Update: See Wilson’s post for his answer, and also my comments in the combox. I have closed this thread. We will move on.

Charles W. Baird, The Presbyterian Liturgies: Historical Sketches, 1855; reprint, Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2006, paperback, 266 pages, no index, reviewed by Barry Waugh.

Worship is a hot topic for contemporary Evangelicals and Reformed Christians. C. W. Baird’s book is concerned to show “from the history and teachings of the Presbyterian Church, what may be considered the proper theory of its worship, and to compare that ideal with our prevailing practice” (1). His method for achieving decent and orderly worship is to recommend the “discretionary use of written forms,” which he believed is “abundantly” warranted by the Westminster Standards and the history and practice of the Presbyterian Church (5). For the author, the Directory for Worship “minutely and definitely” contains regulation of prayer and the other aspects of worship “without rigid confinement to set words and phrases” (3). The regulations provided by the Directory for Worship, he says, do not exclude the use of written forms, but neither do they prescribe the use of forms.

During the course of Dr. Baird’s book, he presents the order of worship of several churches including Calvin’s Geneva, Knox’s Scottish order, Richard Baxter’s liturgy, and the “liturgy of the Palatinate” or the German Reformed. Common to each of these liturgies are the singing of Psalms, the reading and preaching of the Word, prayers in various locations of the order, confession of sin, the use of the sacraments and the use of a benediction. Essential to each liturgical order is the Bible, whether its text is the lyrics for singing, the words read for hearing, the subject matter of the sermon, the words used for the confession of sin, the passages used for administering the sacraments or the benediction—the service is a service to God using the words he has given for his worship. The orders of worship Dr. Baird describes are very simple, so simple that readers of this book might think that he left some things out. For example, there was no collection of the offering, it appears that there were no announcements, no greeting of the visitors, no special appeals from the leaders of special groups and ministries in the church for attendance at their functions, and there were no presentations appealing for a building fund. The liturgies were simple in that they were centered on the Word of God, but they were also elegant because the majestic language of God’s Word was used for adoration, supplication, blessing, and obeisance. Such Scripture centered liturgies would appear strange to many today since nearly all the scriptural elements of the Protestant liturgies either are minimalized or absent from many present day worship services. Sermons are often just devotional snippets that might be published in a self-improvement meditating guide; prayer, if present at all, is limited in the scope and gravity of its supplications and thanksgiving; if there is a Bible reading it is as brief as the sermon; and if hymns are sung, they are limited to a few stanzas. One thing that can be said about the present scene is that the Psalms and other Bible texts sometimes constitute the lyrics of popular choruses.

Dr. Baird ends the book with a concluding chapter, pages 251-266, where he presents his thoughts regarding the history of Reformed liturgy and its relevancy to his contemporary situation. He appeals for “a reverent approach to the Divine Majesty” by means of appropriate language being used to approach the throne of grace. He comments that the same “solicitude” should be used to approach God as one might use to approach “the great and honored among men.” He believed that the historic use of the Westminster Standards by the “Calvinistic Churches of Great Britain and the United States” faced a cross-roads between continuing to follow the Directory for Worship and its historic liturgy, or following the path of rejection of its standards and each minister creating his own liturgy. In the face of the trends, Dr. Baird called for the use of liturgical forms noting that Great Britain and America were the only Calvinistic churches without a liturgy. Dr. Baird went on to propose measures to be taken to turn the tide of worship practice in his own era. The church must begin anew to use the “Scriptural and Apostolic Elements of Worship,” such as the benediction, the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the Apostles’ Creed.” The author goes on to call for “the regular and continuous reading of the Holy Scripture, at every religious service.” Baird believed that the limited use of the reading of the Word in his own era was due to the disposition of his contemporaries to depreciate “regular and prescriptive…rites of religion.” The key to achieving this rediscovery of reverent worship, according to Dr. Baird, is a stricter adherence to the Directory for Worship.

There is nothing new under the sun when it comes to irreverence. Just as C. W. Baird was concerned for the decline of worship in his own era, many are concerned today about casual, man-centered, unregulated services. Is it just the thinking of this reviewer or is it not absurd to think that Christians could really believe that they can define proper worship apart from Scripture or by picking-and-choosing which liturgical elements to use? Could it be that the erosion of the fundamental elements in some of today’s worship—prayer, reading the Bible, preaching the Word, confession of sin, and singing the Scripture—is due to the ever present Edenic tempting desire to rule one’s self? Concerned parents do not allow their children to define right and wrong for themselves; good parents teach their children to believe God’s Word and follow his commands for righteousness. Good Christian parents exercise authority and tell their children what is right and wrong because God has given them that responsibility, but when it comes to worship, the Christian’s most exalted and edifying experience, people many times choose to define worship for themselves. Some will argue that the depreciation of worship in our era is due to the influences of Schleiermacher, or maybe post-modernism, or possibly the “me-ism” of American individualism, or the anti-organized religion descendants of the Jesus Generation, but worship degenerates into human exaltation when it is designed to appeal to the worshipper rather than God and any philosophy or theology that exalts humanity at the expense of God will affect worship. Charles W. Baird’s book is a helpful reminder of where worship doctrine has come from and a warning to beware of self-indulgence in worship.

For those interested in more study of the doctrine of worship, the following books may be found helpful: first and foremost is the Westminster Assembly’s Directory for the Public Worship of God, which can be found in several editions including those of the Westminster Standards published by the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland (my copy is from 1976); the two important books by Horton Davies, The Worship of the American Puritans (Soli Deo Gloria reprint, 1999), and The Worship of the English Puritans (Soli Deo Gloria reprint, 1997); Sean Lucas, On Being Presbyterian (P&R, 2006), particularly 117-21, though the whole book is helpful; D. G. Hart and John Muether, With Reverence and Awe: Returning to the Basics of Reformed Worship (P&R, 2002), which is an appeal for Scripture regulated and confessional worship; the Anglican theologian, P. E. Hughes, Theology of the English Reformers (1965, 1980, 1997), the discussion of worship begins on page 153; and any of Pastor Terry Johnson’s several worship titles (here, here, and here).

I could no longer find any way of contacting the Reformation 21 Blog. So, I’ll lob up my request, and hope that someone who can do something about it sees it. I know that they are in the midst of some face-lifts, and so I am willing to be patient with that. However, there is a difficulty that needs to be addressed. Previously, in reading the feed, the feed would tell me who the author of each post was. With the new feed, that is no longer the case. I really like to know who wrote what without having actually to visit the site, as I read almost all blog posts in my Google reader.

Before addressing the Joint Federal Vision Profession (again), I need to answer Doug’s latest post.

The basic claim could be boiled down (hopefully without attenuation of the actual argument) to this: Rollock and several other theologians (such as the ones Steven Wedgeworth mentions) argue that Adam owed thanks to God, and that Adam’s works could not have merited eternal life. Since this is the core of what the FV wants to say about the Adamic situation, then why are they getting arrows thrown at them? Is this not within the acceptable boundaries of debate? Hopefully this is an accurate representation of Doug’s argument. He makes the point about Murray, as well.

Reformed authors such as Robert Rollock had one great enemy: the Roman Catholic Church. There were, of course, others. However, that early in the ball game, there weren’t Arminians floating around, and even the Anabaptists (which receive some attention from Calvin) were not nearly as high on the radar screen as the Romanists. From the previous sections to the one quoted, it is quite obvious that the enemy Rollock is fighting is the Papists (see pp. 31-32 of volume 1). Therefore, if the word “merit” comes into play as something rejected by Rollock, it is the term “merit” as understood by the Romanists, which means either condign or congruent merit. Pactum merit does not appear in so many terms. However, it can be inferred from Rollock’s words. In other words, the argument here is that Rollock was not directly addressing the question of whether there is an improper way to speak of merit in the case of Adam. He was rejecting merit in the sense that the Romanists wanted to use it. Here are some clear indications that Rollock would not have denied the idea of pactum merit:

The covenant of works, which may also be called a legal or natural covenant, is founded in nature, which by creation was pure and holy, and in the law of god, which in the first creation was engraven in man’s heart…he made a covenant with man, wherein he promised him eternal life, under the condition of holy and good works, which should be answerable to the holines and goodness of their creation, and conformable to his law…it could not well stand with the justice of God to make a covenant under condition of good works and perfect obedience to his law, except he had first created man pure and holy, and had engraven his law in his heart, whence those good works might proceed…the ground of the covenant of work was not Christ, nor the grace of God in Christ, but the nature of man in the first creation holy and perfect, endued also with the knowledge of the law…and so eternal life might be said to be given unto him, as justified by his works…works mere naturally good only are required as the condition of the covenant of works. So, then, by this condition, do you exclude hence faith in Christ? I do so. (pp. 34-35, emphasis added).

The conditionality of the obtaining of the promised eternal life excluded faith. Faith was not part of the instrument. Rollock even goes so far as to say that the ground of the covenant was not the work of Christ, but the works of Adam. This language parallels precisely the “ground” language of Christ’s perfect obedience in the covenant of grace. The language of pactum merit is not present in Rollock, but the idea most certainly is. Rollock is willing to say that the instrument and ground of Adam’s obtaining eternal life is that righteousness inherent in him and accomplished in obedience to the law given to him by God. That is denied by the Federal Vision. Rollock explicitly excludes faith from any kind of instrumentality in the CoW. That is also something that the FV denies. It should be noted that Rollock clearly adheres to a CoW layer to the Mosaic covenant, when he says, “repeat that covenant of works to the people of Israel” (pg. 34). There is not one aspect of this portrayal of the CoW with which TR’s would have a problem. In the light of the foregoing, Rollock’s rejection of merit in the CoW is clearly to be seen as a rejection of Adam having any kind of condign merit. But Rollock clearly adheres to condign merit in the case of Christ. He says, (the virtue of the blood of the Mediator is twofold)… “The second is, to purchase and merit a new grace and mercy of God for us” (pg. 38). So that blasts Wedgeworth’s argument that Christ did not merit eternal life for us.

Now, quoting a long list of names indicates one’s familiarity with a long list of names. But quite frankly, the positions of those divines need to be spelled out, not simply quoted in a long list of names, as if that is supposed to seal the argument. So, this is an invitation actually to consider what they wrote. Let the FV writers give us a quotation (in context, not the cherry-picking that they usually do), and let’s discuss what they wrote. Even Murray’s position is not clear. Murray is clear that the issue of Adam’s obtaining life was suspended on his obedience (pg. 49 of volume 2). His reasons for disliking the term covenant of works are not the same as the reasons the FV rejects it. Just because there are elements of God’s condescending favor does not rule out the appropriateness of the term (that is in chapter 7 of the confession already!). The concept of covenant can be there even without the term (and actually, the FV agrees with its critics against Murray that Adam was in covenant with God). This also nullifies Murray’s “redemptive” reason. For if the concept can be there without the term, then saying that the term only applies to redemptive situations simply begs the question. Murray does not say the same thing as the FV at all.

Consider also this argument: if the FV definition of “covenant” is true (as being the relationship of God and man), and Murray doesn’t want to call what Adam had with God a covenant, then doesn’t it follow that Adam had no relationship with God, according to Murray? Obviously, Murray would not agree that Adam had no relationship with God. Therefore, Murray’s definition of covenant differs drastically from the FV.