I don’t have a lot to say about the next chapter of By Faith Alone, other than that I enjoyed it. It was written by C. Fitzsimmons Allison, who also wrote a very good book that I also enjoyed entitled The Cruelty of Heresy. Allison is the retired Episcopal bishop of South Carolina, and so he knows a good deal about heresy — having studied it up close and in its native habitat. Kind of like those guys who live with wolves in National Geographic specials.
Part of the reason I enjoyed it is that it didn’t really have anything to do with the current dust-up through which we are all in advanced stages of endustment. Allison proves that the historic standards of the Anglican church are entirely unambiguous on the question of justification, despite a great deal of learned and ecumenical mumbling to the contrary these days. And he also does a good job showing that “ancient pastoral wisdom and contemporary depth psychology testify to the reality that many intractable patterns and compulsions are symptoms of unconscious roots” (p. 105). This in turn creates a real problem with Romanist definitions of mortal sin — because bringing the root issues out into the open where a pastor can help a parishioner is to jeopardize that parishioner’s immortal soul by making that sin realized and conscious. Anyway, I refer you to that discussion, which was interesting.
But the only way this chapter contributes anything to the Federal Vision controversy is by means of a hidden premise. That hidden premise (hitherto unproven, unestablished, but not unasserted) is that FV guys deny justification by faith alone. If that is assumed then historical discussions of other bad guys who did the same thing become relevant. But of course, if we affirm sola fide, as we do, then the hidden premise has disappeared, leaving us with less of an enthymeme and more of a gap in the argument. But you can’t have everything.
One thing that Allison commented on made me think of a separate principle that needs to be mentioned, and so I might as well do it here. This is not really an interaction with Allison’s point, but he provides me with a good excuse to talk about it.
“Bishop N.T. Wright, another who wishes to give up on imputation, was interviewed in The Christian Century and stated that his studies had undermined his earlier views, and that ‘the big question about justification for Paul was not, ‘How do I find a gracious God?’ but ‘How do Jews and Gentiles who believe in Christ share table fellowship?'” (p. 109).
One of the things that I have found exasperating in this whole debate is the practice of setting up dichotomies that are not really dichotomies. One of the points I made in Angels in the Architecture is that the medieval mind had a harmonizing tendency. This can obviously be overdone, and they overdid it, but there are times when you wish for that harmonizing spirit. For example, when I look at the statement above from Wright, the first thing I want to do is see them together. Why on earth would we have to choose?
Consider the two questions: How do I find a gracious God? How do Jews and Gentiles who believe in Christ share table fellowship? The answer to the second is the answer to the first. The way Jews and Gentiles share table fellowship is by finding a gracious God. In fact, the first is included in the second. We can rephrase the second question this way: How do Jews and Gentiles who have found a gracious God share table fellowship? The answer is contained in the statement, and the two are intertwined. Unless we hear the gospel message of how to find a gracious God, we will have no interest whatever in finding gracious table fellowship with anybody else. In short, they are not detached questions, any more than the two great commandments — love God and love your neighbor — are detached commandments.