I am afraid that Westminster West is disgracing itself. I finally had a chance to begin reading Covenant, Justification, and Pastoral Ministry, edited by R. Scott Clark, and released by Presbyterian and Reformed, proud publishers of Norman Shepherd’s Call of Grace.
The first essay in this new bucket of fruit is by Clark, and is set up to answer the question “how we got here?” “Here” would be that controversial point where we have two sides within the Reformed camp, each claiming to be orthodox. Here is Scott Clark’s summary of the points at issue.
“One side tends to argue that genuinely Reformed doctrine teaches one covenant before and after the fall, the imputation of Jesus’ passive obedience only, and faith that justifies because it obeys. The other side in contrast holds that the Reformed doctrine denies those very things. Without equivocating, both sides cannot be correct” (p. 5).
Here it is in a slightly different form.
“To conclude that in justification faith justifies because it obeys or that Christ did not perform vicarious active obedience or that Paul’s doctrine of justification was not primarily about right standing before God has the most serious implications for the historic (and confessional) doctrine of justification” (p 4).
A slight difficulty arises because, as readers of this blog know full well, I hold that there are two covenants, one before the fall and one after. I hold to the imputation of the active obedience of Christ, and I do so with robust gesticulations. And I deny that faith justifies because of any boy scout qualities it may have. Strike three. At this point, Clark needs to hand his bat to the bat boy and respectfully take his seat in the dugout. But he does nothing of the kind. He just assumes the stance again, and looks at the pitcher with a steely gaze. “That all you got? Three pitches? I’ll hit one eventually. C’mon.” Okay. I also affirm that justication is primarily about right standing before God. Strike four.
Observers of this debacle, who are sympathetic to the concerns of Westminster West, but who are clear-headed enough to see what’s going on, will no doubt say, “Yeah, but you’re an anomaly, Wilson. Shepherd does deny the imputation of the active obedience of Christ, and rumor has it that some of your friends are squishy on the other two.” But denying the active obedience of Christ wouldn’t have prevented Shepherd from being a delegate to the Westminster Assembly, would it? And neither would the “squishiness” of insisting that God’s dealings with man are always gracious, or the view that faith has to be living and not dead. And faith is living because it obeys the command to rise and walk. All these positions were found participating in the work at Westminster.
But in my case, that dodge won’t work anyway. Here is how I fit into this scheme, according to this book. I show up, for starters in a footnote in the second essay (p.52).
“For a summary of the convictions of the federal vision by one of its most vocal advocates, see Douglas Wilson, “Union with Christ: An Overview of the Federal Vision,” in The Auburn Avenue Theology, Pros and Cons: Debating the Federal Vision (ed. E. Calvin Beisner; Ft. Lauderdale, FL: Knox Theological Seminary, 2004), 1-8.
I am one of the most vocal advocates of the federal vision, and I deny all four of the characteristics of that vision as kinda assigned by Clark. These are strange doings. Somebody doesn’t know what he is talking about. Either I am not in the federal vision at all, or the federal vision is not what its opponents claim, or it is not monolithic as its opponents claim. In any case, this book is out of line.
One of the criticisms that I have had to field is that we have an innovating spirit about us, fiddling around with the Reformed heritage that our fathers bequeathed to us. “Why mess with the fathers?” the cry goes up. “We must hold mindlessly to the tradition of rejecting mindless papist traditions.” But that is a subject for another time.
We are considered impudent movers of ancient landmarks. But I learned a bunch of this stuff from these fathers. I became a Calvinist in 1988, and began reading stacks of books published by Banner of Truth, P & R, Soli Deo Gloria, and so on. And a bunch of the current controversy was already in print, in those books, and circulating peacefully in Reformed circles — almost as though these issues were an intramural set of differences within the bounds of Reformed orthodoxy. But now, becoming aware of this problem, Clark is preparing himself for a purge of the history books.
He appears to be preparing us to say that John Murray was at the headwaters of this mischief (p. 6). Cornelius Van Til, despite his stalwart support for Norman Shepherd, is still considered a good guy (p. 7), but we can put this down as another manifestation of the tombs of the prophets phenomenon. It would be impolitic to touch Van Til just yet, or Richard Gaffin for that matter — for blurbing Shepherd’s book. But Clark is ready to throw Melancthon under the bus because at least for a time he thought that good works were necessary for justification (p. 13). And we also have to rid ourselves of Richard Baxter because he “taught quite clearly that faith justifies because it obeys” (p. 15). So when is Banner of Truth going to repent of publishing The Reformed Pastor?
The intent is apparently to bury the truth under a rock pile of footnotes.
“These essays are not intended to be popular. The faculty held a conference in 2003 in which we presented some of this material in a way that is accessible to Christian laity. Those lectures are available from the Westminster Seminary California. Some of the essays in this collection do arise from that conference, but they have been significantly revised to speak to a more academic audience” (p. 23)
You betcher. This is the kind of book that has footnotes like this in it:
Seeberg, History of Doctrines, 2.364. See also Robert Kolb, “Georg Major as Controversialist: Polemics in the Late Reformation,” Church History 45 (1976): 455-68; idem, Nikolaus von Amsdorf (1483-1565): Popular Polemics in the Preservation of Luther’s Legacy (Nieuwkoop: DeGraaf, 1978), 123-71.
I for one find myself almost persuaded. You would think that with all this firepower they would be able to get the basic facts of the case right. But they have not. I responded to the Westminster West conference referred to above, and I did so back at the time. This means there is no excuse for not getting the basic positions right. Robert E. Lee was not a Yankee. The Dutch have not conquered Holland. Maybe referring to a series of blog posts entitled “Yelling at my Windshield” would not have enough of a scholarly patina to be included in these footnotes.
One last thing for now. Clark objects that the “word Reformed has come to mean predestinarian” (p. 11). The problem here is that if you believe in heaven and hell, as all of us in the federal vision do, and if you are predestinarian, as all of us are, and as Clark acknowledges, then all five points of Calvinism follow from this, inexorably, like a man dragging a rope. Not only so, but sola gratia and sola fide also follow, like a second rope. This is something we all know, acknowledge, and affirm. He who says A must say B. We know that. So, Dr. Clark, for the record, again, “B.”