I wanted to promote something said by my friend Frank Turk in the comments section of a previous post. Frank is one of those baptists, and, as such, he sees the intramural presbyterian dust-up much more clearly than some of the participants do. Here is Frank, with one of the best observations that this whole fracas has produced.
On Dr. Clark, I know what he is -confessionally-. What he is arguing for overall in his remarks against FV and against DW specifically is that somehow FV is outside the bounds of the WCF and Scripture. Well, yes: it is outside the bounds of Scripture insofar as they baptize babies for the sake of adding them to the church — and all the consequences thereof. But Dr. Clark baptizes babies for the sake of adding them to the church. Just because he doesn’t add them to the church in practice doesn’t mean he’s not doing it in theory, does it? The FV guys — as they say in their recently-issued affirmation — are seeking to affirm “that God formally unites a person to Christ and to His covenant people through baptism into the triune Name, and that this baptism obligates such a one to lifelong covenant loyalty to the triune God”. Is that not Presbyterianism?
Yes. It is historic Presbyterianism. And the reason Scott Clark is tied up in knots is that he is trying to reject people who do in practice what he allows for in theory. He needs to get rid of our position (which is causing too much cognitive dissonance), but he cannot call our error by its historic name — “and we must forever banish this Westminsterian sacramentalism . . .” He’s got to call it something else — popery, say. But Frank sees, just as I saw for many years, that the essential “popery” here is infant baptism. And to be good with that and not with the rest of it makes about as much sense as jumping off the high dive at the pool and developing qualms, most of the way down, about getting wet.
Let me put it as bluntly as I can. Scott Clark has a baptist ethos, but he is stuck with a liturgical practice (infant baptism) which is a standing embarrassment to that ethos. This causes a great deal of cognitive unrest. Frank thinks it would be best if he dropped the paedobaptism. I think it would be best if he dropped the baptist ethos. But either way the gnawing would stop. Either one would be better than what he is currently doing. How long will you halt between two opinions?
This relates to another point. Scott Clark has a recent post, quoting Martin Downes, where he says:
“Men will always applaud an irenic spirit over against a polemical approach. But the sound of such approval can quite easily mask the noise of the destruction of confessional orthodoxy. Choices must be made and will do no good to cry “peace! peace!” when there is no peace.”
But my problem with Scott Clark is not that he has a gun, or that he is shooting it. Polemics is fine. Polemics is most necessary. Contending for the gospel is impossible without it. Where would I get off chastising someone for undertaking a polemical approach? My problem is that Clark is shooting at the wrong people. Here in the Army of the Lord, he is the master of friendly fire. For whatever reason, whether personal animus or incompetence, he is not capable of stating accurately the views he undertakes to refute. But this is a fundamental duty in biblical polemics.
For example, Mormons are heretics, but if a man seeks to refute them by claiming that they believe that the sun is a giant green mushroom god — “and how heretical is that!” — then that man is disqualified from any kind of apologetics ministry to the Mormons. And, lest anyone worry, to say this is not some kind of defense of the Mormons.
In another post, the complaint was made about “personally orthodox” folks who took the broad view when it came to others who were not so orthodox. That is how the mainstream denominations went liberal, with men like Speer and Eerdmans making room for heterodoxy. For example, the mainstream denominations accommodated themselves in various ways to the theory of evolution . . . okay, bad example. I mean, Westminster West does that, so how bad could it be? But the mainstream denominations did stuff like that, and Clark sees more orthodox-sounding guys (like me) carrying water for the evil Lusk.
In some ways, I am a latitudinarian. But the latitude does not extend at all in the direction Clark assumes — I am hostile (as in, ready for war) to the sexual egalitarians, the evolutionists, the high-placers, the gnostics, the statists, and the like. Although I differ with them markedly, I am not hostile to baptists or to the men who have picked up their ethos — which, incidentally, is why I would be willing to be at peace with Clark. He needs to put some things right before that could happen, but what he needs to put right is not his position, but rather his role in all the friendly-fire.