My (hopefully helpful) interactions with Greenbaggins continue apace. This segment includes his response to a recent post of mine (on Eck’s argument against Luther), as well as our continued interaction as he works his way through my book, “Reformed” Is Not Enough. This should not have to be too long a post because I think I can answer the questions he has posed without a lot of explanation.
The question raised by my Eck argument was this: am I seriously saying that tight-shoed Calvinists are on a doctrinal par with Roman Catholics? Was I talking about the content of the Establishment’s doctrine, that which always motivates them to clamp-down down on the courageous dissidents?
Now, there is always the possibility of rhetorical overstatement with Wilson, and I hope he will clarify this point. Maybe he is only claiming that the method of argumentation tends towards ossification, and not the actual doctrinal content.
Whaddaya mean, “rhetorical overstatement?” Most of the time I am holding back. And, all kidding aside, Lane is starting to read me pretty well. I was talking about the method of argumentation, and not the actual content. This does not mean that this is unrelated to content, but that was not my point there. But the relationship to content is this: when a church begins defending itself by means other than the assigned scriptural means, then in my book the content is not really being defended. The Roman Catholic church still teaches a great deal of truth (Trinity, Incarnation, etc.), but the methods they allow in arriving at some of their errors are a standing threat in principle to the truths that remain. The same thing is true about ossified Reformed denominations. The apostasy from the central content may still be centuries off — but when an ecclesiastical culture defends its traditions by raw authority, minimal debate, one-sided investigations, no appeal to Scripture, and so on, all the godly content that remains in their confessions is certainly vulnerable and exposed. I say this as someone who subscribes, in good faith, to the Westminister Confession, holding to it with rowdy enthusiasm.
But Lane is correct. I was not saying that those Reformed folk who did this thing deny the truth of the Confessions, or that they have embraced heretical doctrines. I am saying that they have adopted a means of defending their Confession that is at odds with the content of the Confession itself, and hence they will not be able sustain a defense of the Confession over any extended period of time. If there are any leading lights in the PCA who are able to defend the truths of the Reformation against those who contradict it (as it is claimed we in the FV do) by means of open debate, relevant interaction, and appeal to Scripture, this controversy has not revealed their names to us. A stacked committee, followed by time for debate on the floor of GA that could be measured in minutes. What a joke.
I am on the road, and don’t have my copy of RINE with me, so I don’t think I can answer as specifically as Lane might like (with page numbers and everything), but I think I can answer his questions about this section of the book.
First, I do believe in a continued “first use” of the law for Christians. We are constantly in need of re-learning why we need a Savior. Lane goes on to anticipate a disagreement here, because he is right that I do believe that, for believers, everything is contextualized in ultimate grace. I don’t buy the “equal ultimacy” of grace and law. But I do believe that law is grounded in the character of God, and am not trying to denigrate it in any way. Grace has a backbone, and that backbone is law. I agree (partly) with Lane that grace and law “are both equally ultimate…in Christ, the Law-Keeper and Grace-Giver.” Of course, Christ is the Law-Keeper, and of course, He is the Grace-Giver. That is where we agree. We differ because I think they are obviously not equally ultimate. Christ giving grace is grace. And Christ keeping the law is also grace — He didn’t have to do that, and He gave it to us anyway. His grace is grace, and His obedience is grace. There is nothing in the life of a believer that cannot be reduced to grace, within two or three steps.
We then come to Lane raising the question about my views of Reformed scholasticism. I went back and looked, and this is what I previously said.
On the point about Post-Reformation scholasticism, I went back and looked at my quotations from Joel Garver in chapter five. I am not sure where he has changed his views since then, but those quotations still represent my views. I do believe that the Reformed scholastics had to fight off a lot of bad stuff, and that they used a certain rationalistic approach to do so. This was necessary, but cautions are always in order. As I put it there, “Such lawful interpretations can require technical and high flown language. This is not necessarily bad, so long as we remember what we are doing” (RINE, p. 55, emphasis added). My concern is not so much with them, as with some of their curators.
Lane responds to this by asking (quite respectfully) if I have read and interacted with Muller on this. The answer there is (with equal respect) that I have not. I have Muller’s big monga-set, but haven’t read it yet. I have read and appreciated his work elsewhere, and I guess I am not quite sure how the sentiments I expressed above would differ with how Lane is representing him here. I don’t believe that the Reformed scholastics were rationalists, but I also believe that the apostle Paul would have been quite amused with any detailed displays of Ramian logic. But I don’t even believe that it is bad to use that kind of logic, just so long (as I noted above) as you remember where you are and what you are doing. And that Ephesians and Second Kings weren’t written that way.
Lane stated the principle this way: “No one can state a position with authority on this question unless he has read Muller and interacted with his arguments.” I think this would be reasonable to apply to someone who was setting up challenge someone of Muller’s stature. But I don’t see myself as doing that. And so my question to Lane would be — does this same high threshhold apply to critics of the FV? Should those hundreds of men who were simply voting on something that many of them had barely heard of, and were doing so because RC Sproul said that sola fide shouldn’t be up for grabs, did they meet this threshhold of yours?
The last issue is where it would be nice to be able to point to page numbers in RINE, but oh, well. From the quotations that Lane supplied, it looks as though I may have unwittingly caused some confusion. I am not a monocovenantalist. I believe that God made a covenant with Adam in the garden, which Adam then broke. God then made a second covenant, distinct from the first, but not unrelated to it. It was not unrelated because one of the blessings of the second covenant was to reverse the curses that had fallen on our race because of our disobedience to the first covenant. In a very limited way, they are like the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution — not the same at all, but not unrelated. When I said that there was only one covenant throughout covenantal history, I was assuming the Fall as having already happened. In all history, two covenants. Since the fall, only one, contra the dispensationalists.
As I use the word bond in my definition of a covenant, I mean a relationship and everything that goes with a true and godly relationship (which would include love, agreements, standards, and parties of the first part).
And last, when I reject morbid introspection, I am rejecting the morbidity, and not godly self-examination. My problem with morbid introspectionists is not that they examine their hearts, but rather that they absolutely refuse to examine their hearts. I wish that they would learn how to examine their hearts.