Lane thinks that I am taking him to task because he simply affirms that saving faith must contain the element of notitia, which I also affirm. Lane requires this of adults, but argues that even infants have nascent understanding, a view I am also sympathetic with. The reason I said that Lane was (unwittingly) messing around with sola fide is that he was talking about something that saving faith had to go and do. And in his defense, the Bible sometimes sounds like this. “that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Rom. 10:9). But if I took what Lane and I would both say about notitia, and said the same thing structurally about baptism, he would be all over me like white on rice. “. . . arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord” (Acts 22:16). Was that a work? Well, not when Paul did it.
Let me propose a solution, and given what Lane has already said here, I think we might actually agree on it. It solves the problems of elect infants dying in their minority, as well as the other stumpers that might come up. Saving faith is something that God gives, and He gives it by means of giving a new heart. That new heart will always behave in certain predictable ways, given the same circumstances. If the circumstances vary, then the responses will also. When God gives an infant a new heart, the child does not start clamoring for his Berkhof. But that heart will be always be fundamentally submissive and tractable to the truth as it comes to him. The child doesn’t have to go and “do” notitia in order to be saving faith, but it will always exhibit the fruit of notitia when that is the appropriate response. We have to say something like this; otherwise saving faith for infants would have to be a different kind of thing than what it is for adults, and I want to argue that it is basically the same kind of thing.
Our discussion of John 15, unlike some of the branches in that passage, has been fruitful. First, I grant and insist on an ontological distinction between the fruitful branches and the fruitless branches. I am simply saying that this ontological distinction is not (in this image of Christ’s) that of dead versus alive. The distinction in this image is fruit-bearing vs. fruitless, and abiding vs. not abiding. That is all Jesus says about it. He does not equate death and fruitlessness or death with not abiding. To bring those terms in is eisegesis. Jesus explicitly says that fruitlessness and/or not abiding lead to cutting out, withering, and burning. If fruitlessness leads to a dead withered state, it cannot be a dead withered state.
Now I am quite prepared to say that other images in Scripture describe this ontological distinction in terms of death and life. Absolutely. But this is why we must not take these metaphors as though they were schematic diagrams for our systematics texts. In one image, Jesus contrasts the nature of the plant (wheat/tares). In another He assumes a parallel in the nature of the plant life, and attributes the differences to the kind of soil. What we should do is take all the images together, affirm them all, recognize them all on their own terms, and let the Spirit harmonize them. This is distinct, in my mind, from a systematic harmonization. A sow that is washed is, at its best, a cleaned up sow, and this is why it goes back to the mire. Others fall away even though they tasted the heavenly gift.