RSSThe Combination
Think of FV this way. For whatever reason, we have stumbled into a situation where the whole is bigger (or more explosive) than the sum of its parts. There is no one component in the FV that you cannot find as an honored element in another portion of the Reformed world (although disputed or suspect in other corners). This issue has become a big deal across the contemporary Reformed world, but not because any of the positions that we hold to couldn’t (if detached from us) resume occupancy in its quiet residence on a elm-shaded street in Reformedville.
But take a denial of the covenant of works (PRC), then an affirmation of the lordship of Jesus over the civil realm (RPCNA), soak liberally with postmillennialism (Banner of Truth), add robust psalm-singing (RPCNA gets a twofer), question the universal usefulness of visible/invisible church distinction (John Murray), insist on absolute predestination (WCF), return to a higher view of the sacraments than Americans are usually comfortable with (Calvin, Nevin), teach that God conveys assurance through His established means (Luther), work through some of the chronological nuances of the ordo and its relation to union with Christ (Gaffin), and a few other eye-of-newt sorts of things for the Reformed cauldron, what do you get? Kaboom and kablooey.
There may be something doctrinally volatile in this particular mix, or (more likely, in my view) there may be something sociologically explosive in it. But it seems apparent to me that we are not going to understand what is happening in the Reformed world by taking it all apart again and examining the pieces. All the pieces are inert. You affirm WCF 11.1-3? Really? Go on to the next one and the same thing will happen. But put them all together . . .
D Hart
September 21st, 2007 at 8:40 pm
Doug, this is a useful point and I can appreciate why from your side the reaction may seem odd. But from over here — at least on this side of the Mississippi — FV seems to be a string of eccentricities without some basic vanilla to hold it all together. This is why Caleb’s question of tradition is important. If I sensed that FV was on board with the Reformed tradition (whatever it is for the moment), I’d feel more comfortable with the chocolate chips and white-chocolate covered almonds. But again, from what I’ve seen from folks here so far, I have no sense that FV can say, “isn’t the Reformed faith grand.” Instead, what I sense is “the Reformed faith is bland so lets make it more exciting.”
Justification is a case in point. I’ve replied to Peter’s recent post about justification and forgive the repitition. But the few things I’ve read by Peter on this are most discouraging. Rather than trying to restate what the tradition has stated, I see an effort to say a lot more, and the more is in my view hardly an improvement.
P. Andrew Sandlin
September 21st, 2007 at 9:33 pm
As someone routinely (and wrongly) identified as FV who nonetheless is sympathetic to some of your distinctives, let me commend your line of thinking above, which to reasonable souls should tend to lessen the alleged innovative character of your theological program.
Let me also offer a comment or two on what I deem omissions that might help explain some of the widespread hostility you’re understandably combating.
First, and less important — you write: “There is no one component in the FV that you cannot find as an honored element in another portion of the Reformed world (although disputed or suspect in other corners).†I am not certain you were thinking of paedocommunion when you wrote this line. This distinctive (which you and I both practice with glee) has no place whatever in the original Reformed tradition. It is however one that is a chief distinctive of the FV, the driving force in fact in the minds of some of its advocates, so committed is the FV to the unity of the covenant family in worship. So, the FV’ers cannot say that on all points their paradigm is simply relying on the tradition — is not innovative. This is “one component in the FV that you cannot find as an honored element in another [significant] portion of the Reformed world.â€
More importantly, in your cogent second paragraph you seem to have omitted the view most odious to your (and my) critics — our construction of justification. As I understand it, you and I agree substantially on this issue (correct me if I’m wrong). We concur with Shepherd that sola fide, while preserving the unique role of faith in appropriating justification (as opposed to the synergistic merit theology of Rome and some of the Covenant of Works advocates), may not be used as shorthand for Clark’s and Horton’s definition of justifying faith as merely passive (“resting and receivingâ€). Justifying, and not merely sanctifying, faith (as if there were a difference!) is penitent, obedient, submissive faith. In short, we basically agree with Shepherd on this.
My own reading of the thoughtful opponents of the FV (there are a few) is that on issue of justification, Calvin’s “principal hinge of religion,†they believe you (me too) have deviated from both the Bible and the Standards in turning faith into something of a work, the sort of work that Paul and the Reformers would have excluded from the “instrumental cause†of justification. To them, this means we pollute the grace of God.
We disagree, of course. But it is hard to fault people who believe that the “principal hinge of religion†is under perfidious attack from their comrades for crying “foul.†When they label the FV heresy, they show their historical irresponsibility, but when they say we pollute the Gospel, their hostility, given their foundational supposition, is understandable, though wrong.
My point is that the issues of your second paragraph, controverted though they may be, are not the bottom-line focus of your (my) critics. You may truly find a particular FV distinctive in this Reformed denomination or that.
What you will not find (to my knowledge) as such a distinctive is the definition of justifying faith as penitent, obedient, submissive. In fact, the majority of these denominations have now make painfully clear that they do not hold this view.
It is this issue, it seems to me, not the ones you mention in your thoughtful second paragraph, that makes the FV “combination†combustible to our opponents.
DWilson
September 21st, 2007 at 11:59 pm
But Darryl, this brings us back to the point I made earlier about “emphasis heresy.” Nobody is denying the vanilla, to use your illustration. And some of us are exuberant about it — vocally on board with the tradition, as you put it. Not liking the mix it not a sufficient basis for the reaction we have gotten.
Could it be that some people detest the white-chocolate covered almonds so much that it becomes impossible for them to recognize that there really is a half gallon of vanilla in that carton? Just like the other cartons that could use a little jazzing up?
D Hart
September 22nd, 2007 at 8:23 am
Doug, not to try to separate you from your the FV brethren, but I do see a different note in your work than in Peter’s for instance. As I understand your “personal profile,” like me you came to the Reformed faith from Baptist provinces. I have detected several times a general excitement about being Reformed. Other FVers seem to have started within the fold, or weren’t as excited about the Reformed faith when they learned it, and so are less clear in affirming the vanilla on the way to the rocky road. (For what it’s worth, some of the excitement of being Reformed stems from understanding our history. Most of the Reformed seminaries with the exception of a certain school in the West fail to help students appreciate either the late medieval and early modern context for doctrines like justification, or the 20th c. controversies that led to our existing conservative denominations. For instance, I had to go to Harvard Div. School to learn what a swell guy Machen was.)
Peter’s formulation of justification is an example the need for more vanilla. His effort to say “more” about justification strikes me as someone tired of vanilla (or someone whose tastebuds are so shot as not to be able to appreciate how rich the old doctrine of justification is).
James Jordan
September 22nd, 2007 at 9:26 am
Andrew’s points are very helpful, and this chapter in the discussion seems to be making more progress. Yes, paedocommunion is a sticking point because it recasts the notion of faith. Faith becomes presuppositional rather than intellectual-propositional. A baby’s trust in his mother’s arms becomes the primary analogy for faith, as Jesus taught. As we grow, our understanding matures, and we expect mature faith to have lots of notitia and assensus; but fiducia is the foundation. It’s the Clark controversy with feet on it.
On justification, during the Shepherd controversy at WTS, it was shown time and again that Calvin and Bucer and various Scottish Seceders (part of Shepherd’s background, with the Covenanters) and Dutch theologians had all said exactly the same thing. The faculty and the OPC both examined and exonerated Shepherd. There’s no doubt but that Shepherd’s doctrine of justification is the Reformed traditional doctrine. But it is not the American evangelical doctrine, and that’s why the more broadly evangelical (largely Southern) bloc in the presbyterian churches could not fathom it.
Buy to Darryl, on excitement about being Reformed: I’m not excited about it at all. I think excitement about being Reformed is grossly sectarian. Jesus did not die to make me Reformed, and going around tooting a Reformed horn compromises the gospel, in my opinion. My theological understanding is thoroughly Reformed; within that broad stream. But I’m not of Paul, Apollos, or Reformed. And if that’s part of what’s offensive about the FV, so be it.
Beyond this, as one FVer, speaking at this point for some of “us” but not all of “us,” I’m very happy to let the Westminster Standards out of my warm living fingers if we could come up with something that is not shot through with spatial analogies and terminist nominalism. This was fine stuff for that time, but it definitely reflects its time and the limits of that time, and we know now that there are better ways to say some of these things, and we know the dangers of spatial thinking. Four hundred years have gone by, and for the health of the church (our pastoral concern) I believe the fruits of that 400-year conversation should be integrated into what we set forth as central.
DWilson
September 22nd, 2007 at 9:42 am
Andrew, thanks for the kind and helpful comments. You are right, I was not thinking of paedocommunion when I wrote that, and I take your point. That is a distinctive, not contrary to the Reformed faith (in my view), but certainly not native to it.
But on your second point about living faith, I would take the idea of mere passive faith as the innovation.
D Hart
September 22nd, 2007 at 11:04 am
James, time and time again folks at WTS and in the OPC showed that Sheperd was wide of the mark on justification. That the OPC and the faculty at WTS did not have the stomach to dismiss or reject Murray’s hand-picked successor is another question. But the OPC’s recent report on justification is explicit in repudiating Sheperd.
Thanks, btw, for your acknowledgement that you are unexcited about being Reformed. I have sensed this all along not simply from you but from other FVers. It is good for someone finally to admit it.
But I’m not sure how this helps you avoid being sectarian. Because without the Reformed tradition as your point of orientation, FV becomes the narrowest of Protestant expressions, a complete reinvention of the wheel. Why you don’t see that some sense of loyalty to and excitement about the tradition is valuable is incredibly befuddling to me. Until FV comes up with its own creed, liturgy and polity as a body of believers, the Reformed tradition looks a whole lot more catholic. Talk about disembodied.
James Jordan
September 22nd, 2007 at 11:39 am
I’m not going to fight about Shepherd, but I’ll reiterate that his views are those of the Swiss Reformers and are completely orthodox and the same as that in the Westminster Standards. It’s never been shown otherwise. The Klineans don’t like Shepherd, of course, the Kline’s views are completely and totally outside the whole Reformed tradition.
I’m not admitting that I’m not excited about calling myself Reformed. I’m proclaiming it and always have.
I’ve already explained that I respect the tradition and am fully Reformed. I don’t see the need to say all that again. I’m fully embodies in the tradition. But I don’t crow about it. I crow about Jesus and the Bible.
D Hart
September 22nd, 2007 at 4:44 pm
Well, James, I am excited about the Reformed faith and wish you were.