Just one last post here, and I am caught up with Green Baggins. Look at me go.
There are four basic issues to respond to in this post. The first is that Lane says, completely misunderstanding everything, that the “FV definition of the covenant” says that the “covenant of grace is undifferentiated between the elect and the non-elect.” This, despite the fact that over the last number of years I have made clear that the covenant of grace is not undifferentiated between the elect and the non-elect, and have done so more times than Carter’s got pills. I don’t know what to do anymore, so I will just stand here forlorn, arms hanging by my sides.
On second thought, I do need to say something. I will be calm. I will be as cool as the other side of the pillow. If Lane can say this, and he is one of the few guys on the other side trying to understand us, heaven knows what everybody else over there is thinking. Some of them might even be thinking that Guy Waters did his homework, for example. Just for the record, this is a misrepresentation simpliciter. The fact that I am sure it was not deliberate doesn’t change the fact that the claim made about us is false and incoherent. To say that the covenant of grace is undifferentiated between the elect and the non-elect covenant members is to say that there is no such thing as a distinction between elect and non-elect covenant members in the first place. To make the latter distinction at all establishes a necessary differentiation, one which has been made clear in other ways explicitly — multiple times. What do they want? Egg in their beer?
Second, Lane asks what the “common operations of the Spirit” are for the non-elect. Here is a summary statement of it. The common operations of the Spirit for a non-elect covenant member would include every or any covenant privilege, minus efficacious grace. Those privileges would include, but not be limited to, baptism, hearing the Word, a Christian upbringing, restraint from grievous sin, and so on. Like common grace outside the covenant, such privileges when despised serve simply to heighten judgment when it comes.
Third, Lane argues that we ought not to be dismissive of the “judgment of charity” argument, as applied to those instances of Scripture where non-elect people are addressed as the elect, or as part of the elect body. Lane complains that the judgment of charity is airly dismissed by some FV folks, and asks us to argue “exegetically that the judgment of charity argument holds no water.” Two points here. First, I believe that there are a number of places in the New Testament where the judgment of charity is obviously occuring, in my view. In other places it can’t be occuring. For an example of the former, when Paul tells the Colossians as the elect of God to put on tendermercies, he is addressing the church corporately, and he speaks of them in their corporate identity. As most pastors would, he would probably have his doubts about some of them, but nevertheless addresses them all as the elect of God. He is not making an apostolic dogmatic pronouncement about the decrees. He is talking to a church body, and he calls them the elect of God because all of them are supposed to be, and most of them probably are. The phrase judgment of charity covers this very well. But note in passing that there is a difference between the judgment of charity and a judgment of suspended suspicion.
But here are many instances where the judgment of charity doesn’t fit with the text at all. When Jesus talks about branches being cut out of the Vine in John 15, or when Paul uses the same kind of language in Romans 11, the judgment of charity doesn’t fit with the language. If I address a body of a thousand people as part of the elect of God, a judgment of charity recognizes that some of them may well be decretally non-elect. But when Jesus talks about branches being cut out of the Vine, it is not a judgment of charity to say they were in the Vine. It is a state of fact — they were in the Vine that they are being cut out of. The illustration doesn’t work if they were really not in the Vine. The same goes for Romans 11. Decretal election is something that some church members never have, and so to speak of them as though they do is a judgment of charity. But we cannot say of removed branches that they never had branchness. Branchness is not a judgment of charity, but rather a judgment of fact.
The last point is that Lane asks what covenantal justification is. “What is it? I would propose that if the FV cannot answer this . . . then it is a very unhelpful term.” I have not written a lot (if any) about covenantal justification, but let me take a stab at this anyway. I would begin by asking a question — is the Church corporately justified? I am a justified person, true, but is there such a thing as a justified people? Sure. Corporate justification language is used in the New Testament. “And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed” (Gal. 3:8). Contextually that blessing is justification. The Bride of Christ is justified, and it is clear that an individual who is unjustified can be a member of a justified body. He partakes of that covenantally justified status for a time, but he is removed in due time. He was never justified individually. The warts and blemishes are a true part of the Bride for a time, but they were always blemishes, and they are now removed. A blemish that is part of the justified Bride is not the same thing as a justified blemish.
So there we are, all caught up.