Been a while since I wrote anything about the Auburn Avenue stuff. So why not? says I. A gentleman named Paul Manata has written a detailed and very fine refutation of Cal Beisner’s claim that the root of the Auburn Avenun teaching was our embrace of Van Til’s apologetic. Manata’s post is called “The Root of The Problem With Auburn Avenue Theology?” and can be found somewhere on this site.
In his discussion of this issue (in Auburn Avenue Theology: Pros and Con), Cal says this, “Federal Vision theology will continue to be unstable and plagued with error so long as its adherents continue to resist the universal application of logic to theology–which is, in the final analysis, all that is meant by systematic theology.” (pp. 323-324).
He chastises me in particular because I co-wrote a logic textbook, and consequently ought to know better. But it is precisely because I have taught logic that I can identify a straw man fallacy. Cal made much of the fact that I spoke about the need for recognizing differences between “levels of discourse.” John Robbins has done some tub-thumping on this point as well, acting as though by “levels of discourse” I meant some sort of irrationalist leaping about. Cal took it similarly, as though I was ignoring the warnings given by Francis Schaeffer about upper-story/lower story dualisms. But actually, I was simply restating in other words what Cal himself argued in a footnote in this very section. “Whether McNeill knew it or not, Calvin knew that affirming something in one sense and denying it in another was not a contradiction. He distinguished between God’s (secret) will and His moral (revealed) will . . . Consequently he could affirm that God could will decretively what He forbade morally.”
Now before I have some fun with this, let me speak distinctly into the microphone and say that I am making fun of something that I agree with completely. That’s because I like levels of discourse, and let it never be said that I am an unjust or unfair maker of fun. Cal makes this point on p. 321. Then on pp. 322-323, he chastises me for wanting to distinguish levels of discourse. But Cal had just finished saying that we should distinguish between God’s upper story will and His lower story will. When answering McNeill, we must distinguish levels of discourse. When answering Wilson, we must not do so. This is not a contradiction on our part because we must distinguish levels of discourse. Different levels of discourse do not represent a contradiction, he argues, unless Douglas Wilson tries it. Then it is creeping irrationalism, and is built on the errors of Van Til who made all the same careful qualifications about logic that I have. But these careful qualifications are not made by the rationalists, unless answering Barthians named McNeill. This must be some A-M, and then N-Z thing. And which part of the alphabet has to obey modus ponens?
For the record (again): All creation was brought forth from nothing by the self-consistent triune God. All reality is therefore self-consistent. No contradictions. To deny the law of non-contradiction (to use the pagan name for it) is to open the door to Trinitarian heresies that maintain that Father is also not the Father. Nobody around here wants to do that, and we would be abandoning the faith if we did. But we do need to learn how to ground the way we speak of these things on the revealed triune nature of God, instead of on some of Aristotle’s preliminary sketches. So I am not against the use of reason in studying and sorting out what God has given to us. I am in favor of reason, and am therefore opposed to arid rationalism. As the poet said, beware of all isms, except for prisms.
Now, when we come to the promises of God for our children, here is the issue. The promises are just like God’s promises to answer prayer. There are sweeping statements in Scripture that promise to grant anything to any believer if the prayer is made in Jesus’ name. At the same time, we know from the rest of Scripture that not all Christians will believe these promises; not all Christians pray in faith the way they ought to. But they are invited to do so by the promises. If Cal were to argue that a man should never pray in faith until he has some kind of a priori determination from the decrees of God that his prayers were decretively determined to be among those that are answered, he would be arguing in exactly the same way he is arguing with regard to God’s promises for the salvation of our children.
God gives general promises — for many things, not just our children. Those for whom the promises are intended are those who hear and believe. Faith sorts things out, not a deductive argument, the premises of which are filled out because we have pryed into the secret decrees of God. So, when I referred to levels of discourse, I was saying that believing the promises of God is a moral duty (which not all Christians fulfill). God decretively has determined the names of those who will believe Him in this way. But in order to believe Him, all I need is His Word, and not access to the decrees. And if I start casting sidelong glances at others, and say, “But what about them? The promises don’t seem to be fulfilled in their case,” the answer comes back clearly — “What is that to you? You follow Me.”