Lane and I continue on.
First, Lane says, “The instrumentality of obtaining the glorified state was works in the first covenant, and faith in the second covenant. This is non-negotiable.” Suppose I were to say something like this — would Lane find it acceptable or not? I am honestly asking. “The instrumentality of obtaining the glorified state was faith resulting in staying away from the forbidden tree in the first covenant, and faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus in the second covenant. This is non-negotiable.” Of course I agree that the first covenant was conditioned on Adam’s obedience. Of course, just as our salvation is conditioned on Christ’s obedience. But obedience is a human action, and therefore requires human intentionality. That intentionality will either exhibit faith in God or it will not.
Confusion about what makes us perform certain actions is pervasive throughout this debate. Lane says, “to say that Adam would have obtained the highest state by faith alone (indicating instrumentality) contradicts utterly the WCF 7, which explicitly says “upon condition of perfect and personal obedience.” But it does not contradict it at all. I believe that Adam’s happiness in the Garden was upon condition of perfect and personal obedience. But perfect and personal obedience is not rendered by blocks of wood or stone. Obedience is something rendered by someone with a heart.
In the comments at Greenbaggins, someone argued this way — “there was no need for ‘faith’ prior to the Fall. Faith is evidence of things not seen, whereas Adam knew God.” Adam certainly knew God, but he did not know (in the sense of being able to see) if he would actually die when he ate the fruit of the tree. He had to take God’s word about this on faith, or not. To set faith (a motive for action) over against obedience (the action itself) seems to me to simply be confused.
So here it is again — my understanding of the covenant of life. I will leave it to Lane to pronounce on whether I have strayed beyond the non-negotiable boundaries. Adam’s glorification was dependent upon his perfect and personal obedience, which in turn, was dependent upon Adam believing God and taking him at His word. Our glorification is dependent upon genuine and personal faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus, the second Adam. For the life of me, I cannot see the cash value of insisting that Adam had to have the opportunity of obeying God without an attitude of faith. I just don’t get it.
On notitia, Lane wants to insist on its necessary presence, while at the same time leaving room for the salvation of infants. And he says, quite rightly, that we frequently underestimate what infants can know. But I want to insist on the salvation of fertilized eggs, as well as infants, and I am quite interested in hearing Lane explain the “non-Bavinck-level” of understanding exhibited by such. I have no trouble saying that incipient faith has the characteristics of incipient notitia, assensus, and fiducia. Emphasis here on incipient, with gratitude that God is the one who judges these things. But if, as Lane insists, some recognizable form of notitia must be present, then he must say that all fertilized eggs, dying at that stage, are damned because they don’t have the intellectual wherewithal. And if these people are saved by some other extraordinary exception, then this means that the rest of us have to “get notitia,” making it something we do, which was my point.
Lane is tired of John 15, but I am not, really. He says that I ought to be willing to bring in Ephesians 2 into the discussion, where Paul says that in our unconverted state we are dead in our transgressions and sins. This is quite true, and it is just as true of unconverted covenant members as it is of unconverted non-covenant members. Amen. It is also true that in the wheat and tares parable, the unconverted are tares. In the parable of the sower, the unconverted are wheat choked out by thistles and such. This does not give me the right to say that wheat and tares are the same.
The way I would apply Ephesians 2 (in my volume of systematic theology, were I to write such) would be by saying that all unconverted men and women are dead in their transgressions and sins. They are dead, not sick. I would also hasten to point out that in other senses they are alive, not dead. For example: “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath” (Eph 2:1-3, NIV). Words like alive and dead admit of different senses.
In John 15, the converted and unconverted are both in the vine that is Christ. In this image that Jesus used, the fruitless unconverted are removed, and the fruitful converted. Some scriptural metaphors describe an ontological distinction between the converted and unconverted (sheep, goats, wheat, tares, etc.). Other metaphors don’t do that. Systematic theology puts it all together, and this is a fine and a noble pursuit. But what systematic theology does not have the right to do is edit Jesus’ words for Him, telling him that He put the withering, dead part description in the wrong part of His metaphor, causing some unstable souls in Idaho to get the wrong idea.
A number in the Reformed world need to just admit the obvious — there is a sense in which the unconverted covenant members are in Christ. They are in Christ in the sense described in John 15 if words have any meaning. Why do we want the plain sense of the text in Romans 9, and we find it intolerable in John 15? If John 15 were the only passage we had, the average Arminian understanding would be beating up all the Reformed kids at recess, and be taking our lunch money. So here is the quick and easy guide to the FV controversy. Traditional Calvinists take Romans 9 straight up, and use their exegetical funny business on John 15. Arminians take John 15 straight up, and pull the funny business in Romans 9. FV Calvinists try to take both Romans 9 and John 15 straight up. I was talking to an Arminian gentleman one time (after all this FV business started), and he said something like, “Hey! What are you doing messing around with our verses?”
So I read the rest of my Bible too — there are other senses in which we must say that unconverted covenant members have no portion in Him. Amen to that as well. But when you are assembling your verses into that grand system, just forget about the adage that I learned in the Navy, which was, “Don’t force it. Get a bigger hammer.”