A Few More Links

I realized that I forgot to put the link to Bishop Wright’s article. Here it is now.

And, for good measure, here are some other responses. There is this one, and David Field, mentioned in my post yesterday, says this. I want to draw particular attention to the grace evident in David’s last paragraph — but it is grace that has a backbone. The authors of Pierced for our Transgressions respond here.

Gary Johnson, inexplicably, has said this on another blog.

“You have no doubt seen D.A. Carson’s review that is linked by Justin Taylor. As expected, the Wright fan club is already rallying to his support, i.e. Mark Horne who is an out-spoken defender of what goes by the name ‘The Federal Vision’. A number of the FV men have assimulated Wright’s views on justification along with his formulations on the nature of saving faith and the non factor of imputation. Wright’s take on penal substitution will probably find shelter as well in the circles sympathetic to the FV.”

From the beginning of the Federal Vision controversy, certain men have sought to mush the FV and the NPP into one unit, a move that made it easy to ignore certain important theological distinctions. It was an intellectually dishonest move from the beginning, and now that this most recent controversy has revealed the charade (and Gary Johnson is faced with the prospect of siding with certain FVers like me in their controversy with certain NPPers), he has to simply pretend it isn’t happening and assert the old line louder.

As I read Wright’s article, as I said yesterday, it seemed to me that he clearly asserts penal substitution. It also appears to me that he has been snookered by Chalke, who apparently is now pretending to affirm it. I understand Mark Horne to have simply said that he believes Wright’s assertions about penal substitution, which I think is a reasonable position to take. But I was asked about this off-line by someone I respect who read Wright’s article and concluded from it that Wright denies penal substitution. I hope to write about this soon. But until then, it is important to note that an inability to identify a particular heresy in another man is not the same thing as holding to that heresy yourself.

In the meantime, I would have two exhortations for those involved in the controversy. The first is that we must avoid a particular form of dualism. There is a link, established by the triune God, between what a man professes and how a man lives. To pretend that this link is not there, or is irrelevant in doctrinal debates like the one we are now in, is to be guilty of a very troubling dualism. Dr. Jeffrey John’s rejection of the doctrine of God’s wrath is not disconnected from the way he is living, a way that exhibits that he has been given over in that wrath. To bring it up is not an ad hom, it is not an irrelevance. Our reluctance to bring such things up in circumstances like this one is simply an indication that in contemporary ecclesiastical and academic debates, we have simply codifed this dualism, and call it irenicism. We draw a smiley face on the compromise.

The second exhortation is related. It is that we must avoid one of the great sins of the Pharisees, which was their lack of a righteous senses of proportion. The mint, dill, and cummin thing, and swallowing a camel, and thinking that the gold sanctifies the altar — all that. One of the things that has astonished me about the controversies of the last few years is the tendency that some have shown to bash those closest to them and to give a pass to those who are radically at odds with them. More than this, there has even been an eagerness to join with open enemies of the gospel in order to “get at” fellow conservative Presbyterians. There is currently a former parishioner of mine, desperately trying to win respect from the atheists on Richard Dawkins’ blog by attacking me. There have been Reformed men — who all should have known better — who have believed and advanced various slanders against our ministries here, slanders cooked up by our local intoleristas. And now we have Wright’s disproportionate reaction to the Oak Hill men.