Green Baggins

Mark Horne has replied to some of my posts on Jeff Meyers here. Aside from calling me a Satanic, non-sanctified, non-academic, non-intellectual, discipline-averting (internet vs. church courts), wickedly insinuating troubler of the PCA, Mark and I appear to be getting along just fine. Wow. I wonder why he even reads my blog at all, sometimes, if he thinks I’m that dumb. But, of course, name-calling is not logical argumentation. He simply asks people to compare Meyers and my statements, claiming that I have no answer. I wonder where Mark learned logic. He doesn’t seem to be demonstrating very much logic here. Jeff responded on my blog saying that he believed in the imputation of Christ’s righteousness (though not in the IAOC). I said I believed him. Evidently, Mark is not willing to extend credibility to such statements. But Mark did not answer the argument concerning Meyers’s statement on the mechanics of justification (how Christ’s death and our justification are related). That remains utterly unanswered. Furthermore, my point about imputation was that some FV’ers do not believe in imputation. Jeff’s statement allows them free reign, whatever he himself believes.

Point 23 is a non-answer, since Mark confuses the term “conditional.” He thinks that he can make covenantal election unconditional simply by affirming God’s sovereignty. But since God’s sovereignty can include sovereignty over the conditionality in the covenant, he hasn’t answered the point.

Regarding 25 and 26, I can only say that I am not willing to steal the committee’s own thunder. I have a perfectly good explanation for the Wilson misquotation. But a committee member specifically directed me not to explain it, so that it can be explained on the floor of GA. So, once again, Mark’s assumptions get him into trouble, and GA will certainly vindicate me on this point.

I note that Mark Horne has started blogging about my responses. I will pay some attention to them when I get back from vacation (next week). Right now, I only have time enough to finish my critique of Meyers’s 30 points. Point 27 is about definitive sanctification and the question of justification. The problem with Meyers here is that he commits a sort of reverse fallacy. By saying that a passage can be talking about more than one thing, that is not the same thing as saying that justification itself has more than one thing involved with it. Ferguson’s quotation from The Christian Life cannot be made to say such a thing, either. Ferguson is talking about the passage, not about justification per se. About being set free from sin, that happens in sanctification, not justification. Meyers is conflating two categories, as is Leithart. Sanctification, as Calvin has told us, happens concurrently with justification, but is distinct from it. Distinct, but inseparable. I am really quite at a loss to know why Meyers and Leithart have to play loci musical chairs by putting deliverance from the power of sin under the category of justification. This happens in sanctification. Furthermore, Meyers misinterprets the WCF. He interprets “acceptance” to mean moral renovation. This is not the proper interpretation that phrase. The proper interpretation of the phrase is that we have a right to eternal life based on the imputed righteousness of Christ. That is what the WCF means by “acceptance.”

On point 28, this is really about the same points that have been brought up before about the level of authority this report will have. It has moral authority. It does not have confessional authority. It provides guidance to presbyteries, and it will provide guidance to the SJC as they make their deliberations.

Point 29 is simply rubbish. First of all, it is not a judicial sentence. It has the same kind of weight that the women in the military report has, or any other report. Secondly, the SJC is already dealing with Steve Wilkins. They were dealing with the issue before the study committee was even formed. And they are the final court of appeal, not any presbytery. If the SJC cannot trump a presbytery’s decision, then we have lost one of the three marks of the church on the national level. If the SJC cannot deal with someone who is outside the bounds of the WS, and rule on that, then there is no church discipline in the denomination as a whole. Why do all FV guys seem to think that presbyteries are the final court of appeal? That is simply not the way our courts are set up.

Point 30 also seems to forget that considerable amounts of dialogue have already taken place. Secondly, if something is not in accord with the Standards, then it needs to be firmly escorted off the grounds, not allowed to split the church in the future. This is why the critics are keen on passing this report: the critics see the FV as outside the bounds of the WS. Therefore, they need to go elsewhere.

 Point 23 has to do with covenantal objectivity and the difference between NECM and ECM. This does get at the heart of the debate, and at the heart of what I have been saying on this blog for quite some time. Meyers again lapses into the incoherent when he argues about the “requirement” clause in the Report. Meyers can say, on the one hand, that the baptized are in covenant with God. Presumably, this would also include the corresponding negative, “non-baptized people are not in covenant with God.” We must further say that it is Meyers’s position (along with most other FV’ers) that baptism into covenant constitutes “covenantal election.” So, how can Meyers say that baptism is not a requirement for covenantal election? If baptism differentiates between those who are in covenant and those who are not, and the covenant is covenantal election, then baptism marks the sine qua non. Why then, is the report wrong in saying that the FV holds that this kind of election has a human requirement? If a parent refused to baptize their child, then that child would remain outside the covenant, wouldn’t it? What Meyers does here is conflate the two definitions of election. It is a characteristic of decretal election that it is unconditional, and with this statement FV’ers would agree. But it is not the same with covenantal election, since a parent can have yea or nay on whether their child enters the covenant (and therefore covenantal election). That is all the report is saying. The thing is, the Report does know the difference in FV writings between “decretal election” and what the FV calls “covenantal election.” And this very paragraph is a demonstration of that awareness.

On point 24 (which overlaps a bit with point 23), to deal with the difference between NECM and ECM takes more than Meyers’s say-so on this. He asserts that there is a difference between NECM and ECM. He asserts that the difference is perseverance, and that perseverance qualitatively modifies one’s participation in the ordo salutis (quoting the full context of the Lusk statement). Here’s the problem: the Lusk statement still assumes that NECM’s participate in the ordo salutis! This is precisely the point. The Reformed position is that only the decretally elect participate in any whatsoever in the ordo salutis. This is crystal clear from many places in the WS. Just a few are listed here: WCF 3.6, 15.1-4, WLC 65-77. The difference is NOT that the ECM perseveres and participates in the ordo salutis fully and completely, while the NECM does not persevere, and thus only participates in a partial way in the ordo salutis, as Lusk implies. The difference is that the ECM participates in the ordo salutis, while the NECM does not. This gets at the fundamental problem of the FV: ordo salutis benefits are being ascribed to the NECM. And this is the fundamental difference between the NECM and the ECM. One has the ordo, and the other does not. The Lusk quotation only proves the Report’s point. By saying that perseverance is the qualifying difference, Lusk (and Meyers) allow the possibility that justification comes to the NECM. This breaks the categorical equality of the ordo salutis benefits described in Romans 8, where all the justified are glorified (plainly implying perseverance). Again, the question is not whether Lusk affirms at some point that there is a qualitative difference. The point is that the rest of Lusk’s theology vitiates such a claim. It is methodological double-speak.

Point 25 can be dealt with by saying that the modified report is the current report, and that there is a perfectly good explanation of how the Wilson misquotation happened. This will become clear on the floor of GA.

Point 26 is a rehash of previous arguments, except for the “covenantal efficacy of baptism” bit. Therefore, I will only respond to that part of it. His claim is simply that the Report did not define the term. I would answer quite simply that the phrase constitutes a summary of the Report’s conclusions on baptism. Anyone who cannot see that is a dunce. Is it really such a hard phrase to understand? Is it really hard to understand that they mean it as a summary of the FV position? I think that is enough said. I will try to finish the 30 points next post.

Point number 20 is very interesting to me. Is it any accident that imputation, which is the heart of justification, is not mentioned? Is it any accident that the mechanics of how Christ’s death benefits the believer are said to be indifferent? Pardon me, Jeff, but the mechanics of how Christ’s death and the believer’s justification are related constitute the entire debate of the Reformation on justification. How is Christ’s righteousness given to the believer? Both the Roman Catholic Church and the Reformers believed that Christ’s righteousness became ours. Both the Roman Catholic Church and the Reformers believed in union with Christ. Both the Roman Catholic Church and the Reformers could say “saved by grace.” The debate turned precisely on how Christ’s righteousness becomes ours. Does it come by an infusion of grace, such that our good works form part of justification (Roman Catholic belief), or is Christ’s righteousness imputed to us when we come into faith-union with Christ? Debate over these mechanics is the main hinge on which our religion turns. It really makes one wonder if Jeff has read any substantive account of the Reformation doctrine of justification. Has he read John Owen? Buchanan? Edwards? Burgess? My guess is probably not. Otherwise, he would not be making such breathtaking claims about the mechanics of how Christ’s death and our justification are related.

Point 21 is about the Leithart quotation, and then it morphs into a discussion about covenant and election. Firstly, let me interpret what I think the committee’s intention was in quoting Leithart here. They quote Leithart as saying that Leithart challenges the Reformed world in some way. They then turn that quote rhetorically to their advantage to say that the FV challenges the Reformed world in the very thing that makes the Reformed world Reformed. I seriously doubt that the committee was intending to state that Leithart would have agreed with the paragraph immediately after the quotation, nor that the following paragraph is what the FV proponents would actually come right out and say. The rhetorical effect of using this quotation is something like this: PL: “The FV challenges the Reformed world in some aspects.” Committee: “Yeah, it challenges the Reformed world in what is distinctively Reformed, and therefore constitutes an abandonment of Reformed orthodoxy.” In other words, the committee is using the quotation against him in a rhetorical manner. I think that Jeff probably missed this in his effort to manufacture misinterpretations on the part of the committee. With regard to these two boundary markers, I will repeat what I have already said before: saying that Israel is elect, but that some will be cut off is not the same as saying that every individual has this covenantal election wherein he is justified, sanctified, adopted, etc., which he then loses because of his apostasy. The properties of the whole are simply not the same as the sum of the properties of the individual members of that whole. To say that it is is called the fallacy of composition. I will reiterate the chemistry lesson in simple terms: sodium is a poison. If you put it on your tongue, it will burn a hole through it. Chloride is also a poison. So, we might think that the combination is even more poisonous than each component by itself. But the chemical combination sodium chloride is table salt. Much less poisonous than sodium or chloride by itself. We use the same argument in defense of capital punishment. When Jesus says “Judge not,” He is talking to individuals, not to a nation, as is obvious from the context, where the applications are all to individuals. Therefore, the nation has the right to judge, as is obvious from Romans 13. Private judgment and public judgment by the state are two different things. We are saying that the properties of an individual are not the same thing as the property of the aggregate. The same thing is true of “corporate election.” God’s choosing Israel out from among the nations has no bearing on whether each individual Israelite has “covenantal justification, sanctification, adoption, etc.” It simply does not bear on the subject. I am not denying that there are benefits that come from being part of the chosen nation. But that is different from saving benefits: not all Israel is of Israel. This plainly proves my point.

On point 22, Jeff must have missed the reference to Ralph Smith’s book on the Trinity and Covenant, which most certainly was referenced. No footnotes or citations? Footnote 17 doesn’t count as a reference? This is poor reading, Rev. Meyers. The last part of the paragraph constitutes an example of the first part of the paragraph. Meyers makes a further error when he claims that because there are differences in the FV position between the Adamic administration and the Covenant of Grace, that therefore the FV men are bicovenantal. this does not follow. I can say “the difference is that one was made with Adam and one was made with Christ.” That does not make me a bicovenantalist. The key principle in the bicovenantal schema of the WS is the works/grace distinction. If that is not affirmed, then one is not a bicovenantalist, whatever other differences may be asserted between the first and the second covenants. The works/grace distinction is clearly the operative distinction between the two covenants in chapter 7 of the WCF.