I am glad that Green Baggins is feeling a little less green at the gills, and has returned to the fray. He responded to my post on the nature of apostasy by suggesting that I am committing the fallacy of composition. If sodium is a poison, and it is, and chloride is a poison, then it is, then shouldn’t a combination of the two be twice as poisonous, instead of being breakfast salt? Another example: every small piece of this backhoe is light. But it does not follow from this that the backhoe is light also.
But if every piece of the backhoe is made out of metal, then the backhoe is metallic also. The fallacy of composition is not as simple as it might appear. Lane thought that I had committed this fallacy because he was talking about what made a communion or denomination apostate, and thought that I was moving back and forth between the individual and the collective. And so I was, but I would argue that this is a question of metal/metal and not light/heavy, or poisonous/non-poisonous.
Here is why. Lane says this: “With the qualifications mentioned in my last post on this, a church (we’re talking a denomination) that gets justification by faith wrong is apostate. That might mean that many churches are apostate. So be it.” He makes a point of saying that he is not talking about individuals, and even acknowledges that justified individuals might not express their views on the matter in proper language. And yet he says that if a denomination denies sola fide, then that denomination is apostate. In passing, please note that my argument has not been that such a denomination is just fine, but rather that it is corrupt, not apostate. This should not be taken as a well done from me, as though denying sola fide is part of our love and good works.
But here is why I think it is a metal/metal issue, and not an example of the fallacy of composition. I think Lane would apply the same rules to individuals as he would to denominations. Someone who denies sola fide is apostate, just as a denomination is. Someone who is muddled about it might or might not be saved, depending, and the same thing would go for a denomination — it might or might not be apostate, depending. In short, Lane is treating the denomination as apostate because he is treating denial of sola fide as equivalent to denying Christ and the gospel, which is a bad thing for a church to do. But this would work out in very similar ways — whether we were talking about corporate groups or individuals. If a denomination is apostate because it denied the gospel, then what happens to individuals who do the same thing? Sodium can’t do what salt can do — season your meal to taste. But an individual can most certainly do what an ecclesiastical body can do — confess faith in Christ or deny Him. So I think the charge of the fallacy of composition fails.
While we are here, I would urge Lane to step back from his willingness to swallow my reductio. He acknowledges that this might unchurch many denominations, and he says, “So be it.” This is the path to a tight, Reformed sectarianism, and I don’t think Lane wants to go there. If justification by faith alone is defined tightly (and in this controvsersy, that is certainly happening), and if a correct formulation of it is then made a requirement to keep one’s denomination from being treated as apostate, then you have just out-reformationed the reformation. I have been condemned as a heretic by numerous individuals, including some commenters on this blog, and this, despite that I personally hold to the tight Reformed ordo. Lane has stated it generally, but let me make it very specific. This standard declares all non-Reformed churches to be apostate. Further, that circle not being tight enough, a number of Reformed denominations will also have to be considered apostate. Thee, me, and I have my doubts about thee. I don’t think Lane has a sectarian heart at all, and I would urge him not to be driven into sectarianism for the sake of saving the argument.
In the comments section over at Green Baggins, Jeff Hutchinson says this:
“Every church everywhere has always and will always administer doctrinal tests (the fact that some tests are too strict and some are too leniant is beside the point). If asking a person what they believe is ‘actually a demand for justification by works’ that would be news to every church everywhere that has ever asked a person membership questions.”
Jeff has completely missed the point here. We use the same basic membership questions that Jeff mentions there, and we have no problem asking our people to affirm these things and commit themselves to live in a certain way, a way that befits followers of Christ. But we do not demand that they trust in “living in this certain way” for their justification. We demand the opposite. We require them to not trust in what they are doing, and we also teach them not to trust in what they are saying. We teach them to trust in Christ, not to trust in themselves trusting in Christ. We do call upon them to confess their faith in Jesus alone. This is what we teach them to do, and it is how we lead them. What we do not do is tell them that their salvation hinges on whether they say the magic words just right, or have their face looking “just so” while they say it. We don’t tell them that they are apostate if they get some detail about justification wrong. To do so would be for us to deny sola fide.
I was talking to a woman once about D. James Kennedy’s famous question, “Why should we let you into heaven?” I told her that the right answer was “because of the righteousness of Jesus Christ alone.” She laughingly told me later that her first reaction was, “Gee, I hope I remember to say that.” This is not some weird hypothetical argument. There are far too many people trusting their tiny, propositional works instead of trusting in Jesus. Anybody who doesn’t think this is happening does not know the human heart the way he ought to.
David Gadbois asked this: “A person’s professed theology may or may not articulate that reality well, but can we not be fairly certain that someone is not practicing sola fide if they deny sola fide as Romanists do?” Fine. But let’s push this out to the end of the road. Multiple Protestant and evangelical groups deny sola fide in just the same way that the Romanists do — the only difference between that the Romanists are more honest about it. I am Reformed, and so of course I believe that Arminian expressions of the gospel are deficient in certain ways. If I didn’t think so, I wouldn’t be Reformed. But do those deficiencies (which, like Romanism, amount to a certain level of semi-Pelagian synergism) make these groups apostate? No. And the reason I would say no is that I believe in the doctrine of justification by faith alone. A genuine faith in Jesus can reside (thank God) in a very imperfect heart. Sometimes those imperfections get into the doctrine, and bless God, we are still not undone. Why? Because God does not receive us on the basis of our performance in any area. Jesus is my righteousness, and His perfection is imputed to me. He understands sola fide perfectly, and that understanding is mine by imputation. But if God were to take me out of Jesus, and run me through my doctrinal paces, with me handling His hardball questions on my own, I am in the highest degree confident that I would be condemned to Hell for my failures of understanding in Romans, Galatians, and the Westminster Confession. I am going to heaven because of Jesus, and not because of my mastery of the dikai-word group.