In my previous Auburn Avenue post, which had to do with the concept of merit, a good discussion broke out. But in the course of the comments a couple stray points were raised near the end that I really wanted to get Lane’s response on. And because the recently re-published work of Robert Rollock had been highly commended at Green Baggins, this point began with him. Here are the relevant sections:
Lane,
Robert Rollock doesn’t think he has to agree to merit:
“It is a question here, whether in the first creation, good works in the covenant of works, were required of man as meritorious for the promised life? I answer, not so. But they were due in the creation as pledges of thankfulness in man to his creator, for that excellent work of his creation, and to glorify God his creator.” [Treatise on Effectual Calling, London, 1597]
Now I am still curious, are the FV men heretics for thinking Adam owed thanks to God? On the question of Adam meriting eternal life, can the FV men answer, with Rollock, “not so”, without the heresy charges flying? Can there just be disagreement on this issue without the anti-FV crowd crying heresy? Lane? This is not a rhetorical question, I want to know. — katecho
To this, another insightful commenter added:
Now what Katecho’s efforts (among others) show is that, even if there are real differences between FVers and anti-FVers, those are no greater than the differences between former divines and beloved Reformed doctors. The fact that FV critics are invincibly ignorant to this, thus causing them to misread and misuse the confessions, ought to disqualify them from any ability to make accusations. Sorry to be snarky, but some folks are just not even in the game . . . In other words, the “odd errant blips” on the Reformed theological radar include, Bucer, Calvin, Musculus, Bullinger, Zanchius, Vermigli, Ursinus, Knox, Rollock, Craig, John Forbes, Robert Bruce, Cornel Burgess, John Davenant, Hooker, Gataker, Vines, Twisse, Polhill, and of course Baxter, Edwards, and Murray. — Steven Wedgeworth
Let me state the point this way. I was recently talking with a friend about his perception that a certain portion of the Reformed world has an Anglican drift going. If that is going on, I have to confess that I am not a part of it, but also, equally important, if that is going with some other folks, I don’t really mind. Biblical Anglicans have the 39 Articles, which is a dang sight better than what a bunch of my fellow evangelicals are running around with. And my hero John Knox served as an Anglican chaplain for six years, and was offered the bishopric at Rochester, and he still managed to reform my motherland, none the worse for wear. When I mentioned this to my friend, he said that he didn’t agree with Knox on everything. Yes, quite. Me neither. But how is it possible to disagree politely with giants in the faith on doctrine x, but when doctrine x appears in modern garb, denounce it as heresy? That is the problem. Of course, the fact that Calvin, and Knox, and Bucer, and so on held to certain things doesn’t make them true. But it certainly should mean that to hold such positions in common with them is within acceptable bounds? There has always been plenty of room for theological debate and disagreement within the thatched walls of our Reformed mead hall. Sometimes voices were raised, and sometimes chicken bones were waved under the noses of others in unseemly ways. But we got along well enough, for all that. In this last generation, some have taken to chopping heads off — demanding that their particular bench in the hall be recognized as the entire hall. In the name of being Reformed, they are conducting a purge. And no, not just Murray. Keep going back.
We can’t claim to be Reformed and in the next breath reject half our fathers in the faith as heretics and scoundrels. And so we don’t reject them outright — we keep their names carved in marble in places of honor, and we keep their books on our shelves, and we reprint these commemorative editions in to keep them in honorific libraries (without intending to actually read them). One of the central points that I made at the infamous Auburn Avenue conference was something I had learned from my Banner of Truth edition of John Murray’s works, which set had been given to me as a gift of gratitude by certain saints who now view me as a heretic — for having read and believed what they gave me as a present. Ah, well.