The first half of chapter five in Waters’ book addresses the question of assurance of salvation. After recognizing that I had dedicated a full chapter to this subject, and granting that I emphasized a number of subjective aspects to assurance, Waters goes on to doubt the whole deal. Because I concluded that chapter with a call to look away, to look to Christ, to ground assurance in objective certainties, Waters concluded that I was backing away from what I had said earlier. But this is simply a category confusion. Waters says this:
“We might recall that Wilson’s ecclesiology, specifically his insistence upon covenantal objectivity and his questioning of the classical Reformed doctrine of the visible and invisible church, appears to render it practically impossible to frame the question of assurance in any traditional subjective sense” (pp. 142-3).
He says, at best, “Wilson has outlined in this chapter a doctrine of assurance containing two unreconciled components, namely, subjective and objective assurance” (p. 143).
So how is this a category confusion? By definition, assurance is not objective. It is a subjective response to an objective reality. Every pastor knows what it is to deal with introspective souls who struggle because they try to have faith in their faith, instead of faith in Christ. Faith in Christ works this way. Subjective faith rests in an objective (outside the self) Christ. Subjective faith looks in faith to objective (outside the self) means of grace, like Word and sacrament. Now when I tell someone to look away to Christ, there are two elements in this — subjective and objective. There is the looking away (subjective) and there is Christ (objective).
Everyone understands this if we are talking about a Bible verse. “Don’t torment yourself this way,” the wise pastor says. “Look away from yourself. Look to Christ. Look to the text. See? All you have to do is look.”
Now if I were listening to an evangelical say this, I would not catch at words, and tell him that he was teaching false doctrine because he said all that was necessary was to look. “Really? That’s all? Just look at the ink on the paper?” Of course, we know that this means to look in true evangelical faith. But true evangelical faith does not have its origin in a hunt for true evangelical faith. The seed that germinates is the imperishable word — objective. The life that springs up is subjective. These are not two alien principles that need to be reconconciled — not unless faith and the object of faith need to be reconciled.
The covenant is objective. Means of grace are objective. Grace itself is subjectively experienced, of necessity. Faithfulness to the covenant is not objective. But covenantal faithfulness is only possible if there is an objective covenant there. Marriage is objective. Fidelity is personal and subjective. Trying to reconcile these two things is like trying to reconcile ham and eggs.
And so this assessment by Waters radically misrepresents my views on this. My understanding of assurance is in no way at variance with the classical Reformed understanding of this. Not only so, but I wrote a chapter explaining this in detail. Why on earth would Waters think there was a contradiction between the subjective experience of faith and the objective ground of faith — and not understand the perfectly uncontroversial idea, advanced in that chapter, that faith flourishes when it looks, not at itself, but rather at the Faithful One, who has promised to meet us in His means of grace? What is the problem?