Well, I have listened to an interview with Guy Waters on the Federal Vision (HT: Mark Horne). In a nutshell, I agree with Mark’s response here. How is it possible for the same teaching to create false assurance and no assurance? How is our preaching and teaching putting them to complacent sleep in their covenantal pew and at the same time dangling terrified parishioners over the abyss? This is a theological problem with his critique. What exactly is the bad thing we are doing to the people of God? Are we taking assurance away or trucking in great amounts of undesired surplus assurance? That is the theological critique.
Here is the ethical critique. In this interview, Guy Waters did the same thing that he did in his book, and which I have already refuted section by section. He says we don’t say things we very clearly say, he says that we obscure things we don’t obscure,and in short he grossly misrepresents us (to an unsuspecting Christian audience). I would refer him to the Larger Catechism’s treatment of the ninth commandment, and ask him to adopt an attitude of strict subscription.
Here is one glaring example from the interview. Dr. Waters said that assurance is simply not to be found in FV preaching and teaching. Not to be found. Okay, what about the whole chapter on assurance in my book “Reformed” Is Not Enough? And this was not a chapter on how assurance is bad, but rather a standard, straightforward pastoral treatment of assurance, in line with our confessions, and in complete harmony with what I was arguing in the rest of the book. We know we have passed from death to life because of our love for the brethren. We know we are God’s children because He chastizes every son whom He receives, and so on. John the apostle wrote 1 John so that we might know that we have eternal life.
But if I were a member of that unsuspecting Christian audience, listening to this stuff, I would be alarmed. If I were alarmed enough to form an opinion, but not so alarmed that I actually went and got a book by an FV author, or listened to a downloaded sermon from one of them, I would walk away from hearing this interview with a false opinion of Christian brothers, and I would have gotten that false opinion directly from Guy Waters.
Given the line that is being spun about us, it is plain as day why there will not be any debates anytime soon. Hypothetically, we could find ourselves hearing something like this. Dr. Waters: “Nowhere in FV preaching and teaching will you find anything on assurance.” Wilson: “I just finished a short series of sermons on the important subject of assurance, which can be obtained from Canon Press.” Dr. Waters: “Oh.”