Lane says that, although I offer some qualifications, when it comes to the history of doctrine, I am essentially a Hegelian. I would take issue with that description — here are the qualifications I gave.
“The third issue can be illustrated by adapting something from Hegel’s playbook. His take on history was that a thesis would provoke an antithesis. The two of them would meet, make a little love, and we would soon have ourselves a little synthesis. This synthesis would become a new thesis, and the process would repeat. Now as a master explanation of history, this is lacking in all kinds of ways, and among other bad things brought us the carnage of communism. But it does explain some things, at least for purposes of illustration.
It explains some things at least illustratively if you adapt it. I am no Hegelian of any sort, and it is apparent that I need to be careful about standing within fifteen feet of any illustration like that. Oops. As Nietzsche once said . . .
But Lane then asks a series of questions that in my view lie right at the heart of this entire controversy.
“By ‘ossified and formulaic expressions of evangelicalism’ I trust he means the confessions. I have this question to ask of Wilson, then: are the Westminster standards true or not? Are they ossified, and therefore of no value to us except in the archaeology of dessicated theologians . . . How does this Hegelian doctrine of theological advancement square with saying that they are not asking us to give up those precious old doctrines? Does justification by faith alone mean what the Reformers exegeted the doctrine out of the Bible to mean, or does it need constant fixing?”
My point here is this. Although I don’t believe the Standards are absolutely perfect, and agree with Lane that clarification is sometimes needed, and would also say that there are sometimes new issues that need to be addressed confessionally, that was not my main point here. The Westminster Confession of Faith does not need constant fixing; the hearts of Westminsterians do need constant fixing. The problem is not Moses’ seat, but rather the Pharisaical bums ensconced there. I have been regularly surprised at the defenders of the Confession who cannot answer simple questions about what is actually in it. Their loyalty to the confession is loyalty to the idea of having it, and not to what it actually says.
Are you children of Abraham? Don’t show us the papers of your family tree — do the works of Abraham. Are you Lutherans? Then preach like Luther did. Are you children of Calvin? Then do the works of Calvin. Don’t read us the words of Calvin in a monotone; don’t read them off the marble monument you set up in the lobby of the Reformed museum. And if you try to read them in that monotone, and I object, don’t try to make it appear that I have problem with his words. Preach them to the world in the open air; preach them in such a way that people start accusing you of being a madman, or drunk, or evil, or something. Preach them in such a way that people set up anonymous websites to destroy your reputation. Don’t pin his words to a poster board like a row of dead but orthodox butterflies.
This problem we have reveals no deficiency in the Confession because this very human religious impulse (to put spiritual things under glass and behind velvet ropes) is something we do to bronze serpents, arks of the covenant, holy lands, and revelations of Scripture. The Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord! When God found fault with the people, He was finding fault with the people, and not with the old covenant.
I am answering Lane here, but not speaking of him. Lane appears to me to genuinely love our Lord Jesus Christ, and to love Him the way Christians ought to love Him. But I am speaking to a very dour segment of our small Calvinistic tribe, and, if you will permit me for a moment, I want to speak as a preacher of the good news of salvation.
Do you really love Jesus Christ, or do you love debating propositions related to Him? John Calvin once said that the human heart was a forge of idols — has this innate human tendency toward idolatry ever evidenced itself with the accoutrements of Reformed history and theology? When Hezekiah destroyed the bronze serpent was he complaining against Moses for making it in the first place? Or was he doing something else, something you need to consider far more deeply than you have with your own soul’s welfare in mind? Are you so in love with debates over the ordo that it has never occurred to ask whether you are actually standing in that queue? If you gathered up all the fruit of the Spirit and squeezed it, it is not bile that is supposed to come out. I raise these questions, not because I am trying to insult anyone who differs with me on these doctrinal matters — I know that there are many Christians on the other side of this issue who are my spiritual betters by orders of magnitude. But from long experience of preaching the gospel, I know that the sinful heart loves to hide from God in clever places, and precisionist orthodoxy is one of the cleverest. But clever confessional disguises cannot hide a malicious heart forever, and so it is there (and only there) that I direct my appeal. Be reconciled to God. If it is ever appropriate to declare to God’s covenant people generally that some of them are likely not to have been genuinely converted, and are therefore not truly regenerate, then it is also appropriate to pray that God the Holy Spirit will reveal His glory in such a way to get such evangelicals saved.
So when I speak of ossification I am not talking about the glorious truth of the Standards somehow going stale. As C.S. Lewis says somewhere, the square of the hypoteneuse does not go moldy by continuing to equal the sum of the square of the other two sides. But there is this problem with wineskins — they get old, and they cannot contain the new wine. This does not represent any disagreement with the true and glorious propositions embroidered on the side of the wineskin.
So the doctrine of justification by faith alone is as glorious as it ever was. It needs to be confessed, believed, cherished, and preached. But there are some who who deny it by wearing it around their necks as a talisman; they are in grave peril because when the gospel is declared to them, they mutter to themselves that they are already children of Abraham and have never been in bondage to anyone.