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 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 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 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.
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 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.