A shrewd observer of my exchanges with Dr. Clark contacted me privately and made a point that I think is well worth repeating here.
I would urge anyone who needs the refresher to read through our respective posts, along with the comments. You can look through the Auburn Avenue Stuff on this blog for the last week, and look at Dr. Clark’s blog for the last week. Prior to our exchanges, one of the things that Dr. Clark was very adamant about was just how clear the issues were. The Federal Vision is plainly heretical, this was obviously headed to Rome, and so on.
When Dr. Clark agreed to our indirect debate, one of the things it did was put two representatives of these positions side by side, talking about the same issues. And all of a sudden the only thing that was clear was that the Federal Vision is not clearly heresy. This point does not depend on the FV being right. Let’s suppose for the sake of this illustration that FV is just one more mainstream Reformed mistake, like amillennialism — erroneous, but no way heretical.
Dr. Clark was maintaining that FV is slam-dunk heretical. Our reply was that if this is the case, a debate should make the clear even clearer. But we just had our debate, after a fashion, and in the aftermath of this debate everybody could plainly see that I hold to a Westminsterian soteriology, and that I wear the traditional Reformed ordo around my neck like it was a feather boa. Where did all the plain heresy go?
Further, by the end of the exchanges some of Dr. Clark’s supporters were calling on me to lighten up. To which I reply, please remember that every word I have written in this controversy has been on defense. We are responding to charges, we are not making them. We are defending our callings and vocations in ministry; we are not trying to challenge the ministry of our fellow ministers in the Reformed faith. This is the season when another slate of books attacking us have been, are being, or will be released. I was asked to remember that Dr. Clark has a doctorate from Oxford. Given his credentials, which I do respect, it seems to me that one of the things that Dr. Clark should know how to do is represent his opponents in a polemical exchange accurately and clearly. Read through our exchanges again. Has Dr. Clark represented my views fairly?
The exchange has made certain things very clear. But they were not the things that Dr. Clark maintained beforehand as plain and clear.