Bum-fuzzled, Pole-axed, Gob-smacked, and Bewildered

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Lane does not believe the chess game is over, as he states here. He says he is not going to “answer every point,” which is fine. I would be content if he simply answered the central one. He says this, “Quite simply put, our response to God’s command to come to faith is God’s doing, and therefore of grace, and therefore cannot be put in the same category as obedience.” This formulation really is problematic — our response of faith is from God because God monergistically gives us a new heart, but this repentance and faith is indirectly from God. God gives the fountain, and the fountain produces the water. But Lane is here claiming that God gives the faith directly, and since God is the one doing it, the words obedience and disobedience do not apply. Lane is quite right logically, of course — if God is the one fulfilling His own commands, then we are not responding to the commands in obedience or disobedience. And it is not our faith. If it were our faith, then we would be obeying, and we can’t have that!

But the Bible speaks of our faith as a possession of ours. The fact that it was a gift prevents boasting, but it does not prevent ownership.

“Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works” (Jas. 2:18).

“For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, [even] our faith” (1 John 5:4)

On the “aliveness” of faith, just a few comments. Lane says

“The point I am raising is that the aliveness of faith is not part of the justification mechanism itself. It is a sine qua non, but not a part of the cause” (emphasis mine).

But of course, living faith is part of the justification mechanism, and is part of the cause. I don’t know why Lane is so skittish about this, when we have vocabulary to guard the heart of sola fide. Faith (the kind of faith it is, living) is in no way the ground of our justification. But faith (our faith) is emphatically the instrument of justification. I grant, enthusiastically, that God does not justify us because He thinks the aliveness of our faith proves that we are admirable human beings.

Then Lane says this:

“Regeneration happens simultaneously with justification, not before it. I have excellent antecedents in the Reformed faith for thinking so: John Calvin, Richard Gaffin, Sinclair Ferguson, and the entire WTS faculty. Calvin believes that union with Christ is the basic soteric category in which all other things are comprehended.”

To which I reply that I am bumfuzzled, pole-axed, gob-smacked, and bewildered. This was one of the earlier points of controversy in the whole FV dealy-o, when the hounds of confessionalism were baying full-throatedly around the base of the tree that Rich Lusk was sitting in. Union with Christ is the basic soteric category in which all other things are comprehended? Could you please go over the problem with Lusk’s view again?

Do you recall that I used different illustrations of the ordo (e.g. paper mache models of the atom) as I was defending Lusk’s view and the traditional ordo? And do you recall the FV guys defending themselves from the charge of heterodoxy on the ordo by pointing to Gaffin and what they had learned at Westminster, along with you apparently? Do you recall that when I raised the point of the primacy of regeneration, leading logically to repentance and faith, not chronologically in stopwatch fashion, that I was responding to you guys making a big deal out of the traditional ordo. And that I said, fine, if you insist, this means that some form of infusion is logically prior to imputation?

And now, after all this, you simply announce that “union with Christ” is the basic “soteric category”? Everybody can come out now? Is the coast clear? Isn’t this a bit like Grant at Appamattox announcing the great victory that he has achieved for states’ rights?

“On Romans 6, is Doug seriously suggesting that ‘dikaisunen’ means ‘justification?’ He needs to look up the word in BDAG. When he does, he will find out that the vast majority of the uses of the term simply mean ‘righteousness.’ It is by extension that the term means righteousness judicially by divine declaration. The word by no means automatically implies justification.”

Fine. And my point is that the word obedience by no means automatically implies merit or do-goodery. If you want to be skittish about the word obedience, which you plainly are, my point is that God has no trouble using the same word to describe ethical obedience on the one hand and on the other the state of imputed righteousness from Another, blurring a key distinction upon which the entire gospel depends. Try to defend your skittishnes and insistence on watertight lexical categories with regard to the word obedience by appeal to the one word the Bible uses for justification and personal righteousness. A twofer.

“Furthermore, just because one word has an interesting semantic range has nothing to do with whether another word has an interesting semantic range . . . The point is simply that the semantic range of one word does not determine the semantic range of another word.

Sure. Though I want to argue that obedience has a similarly broad semantic range in Scripture, let me give it to Lane, and say that we are the ones who are using the word obedience with this broader range. To do so is not to complicate things hopelessly, and does not jumble the gospel up. If God can use the same word to describe things that Lane insists must be kept distinct, then can we follow His example and keep sanctification-obedience distinct from evangelical-faith-obedience?

A couple quick things from Lane’s last section, which interacts with the next section of the FV statement. My hermeneutic is basic — historical/grammatical. God has created us to use language in a certain way. When we come to an authoritative text in that way, the text itself (content-wise) continues to teach us, and we get further lessons in hermeneutics. Put simply, I come to the text of Scripture the same way I encounter all language in this world. If I come submissively, then I learn more. I hear the words of God the same way I first heard the words of my mother. If I am submissive to the words of my mother I learn more about what she is saying to me.

So then, the base rock is creational — historical/grammatical. The next level of hermeneutical understanding comes when we “listen to our mother,” allowing the apostles, for example, teach us that Christ must be found throughout all Scripture typologically. It is here that we learn about the Trinity, law and gospel, and the Rock of Christ that followed the Jews in the wilderness.

Lane then talks about “good and necessary” consequence. He says that to the extent the Westminster Standards are summarizing the teaching of Scripture accurately, to that same extent they are the words of God. I agree with this completely. The same thing is true of my sermons. To the extent that they are scriptural, they are scriptural.

What we don’t have with Westminster (or anybody’s sermons) is a guarantee across the board that what we are getting is the Word of God. But to the extent that we are, we are. I have put it this way before. What the neo-orthodox say about Scripture (a place where one might encounter the word of God, as you might encounter a bear in the woods), I would say about uninspired teaching from men of God. And as Calvin taught, in faithful churches, the people should assemble expecing that encounter. We should expect the same from the confessions to which we have subscribed.

So I do affirm good and necessary consequence. I have been arguing on the basis of it throughout this entire exchange. God commands us to believe. We do or we don’t. The words the Bible uses for “doing” or “donting” are obedience and disobedience. Therefore, when we believe the gospel, we are obeying. Good and necessary consequence. Q.E.D.

I also believe in good and necessary consequence when the Westminster divines extract the teaching of Scripture faithfully. This is why, for example, the Word of God tells us that saving grace is really exhibited and conferred by water baptism when applied to worthy receivers. Lane doesn’t like this, but there it is. When it comes to good and necessary consequence, Lane is like the son in the parable who says he will go work in the vineyard, but when the father turns around to see if the boys are coming, non sequitur.

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