Just a quick answer to two points raised on Green Baggins.
The first is a reply to Lane’s question, what do we mean by “hyper-specialized terminology in the regular teaching and preaching”? All technical vocabulary will be specialized, and there is no way to avoid it. I believe that trying to avoid it, especially in theology, will have pernicious effects. So by “hyper-specialized” we don’t mean “specialized.” I believe the context of that section of the FV statement makes it clear that hyper-specialization has occurred when one narrow technical meaning is privileged over the broader biblical meanings, and trumps them. If the narrow confessional use is asserted to be the only possible meaning, and Scripture contains broader meanings, then hyper-specialization has occurred.
I agree with Lane that many of the Westminster terms are biblical terms, and I also agree that the Westminster definitions of these terms overlap with biblical definitions. What we are saying is that if “election” means one thing one hundred percent of the time in Westminster (because it is being applied in a precise, theological way), and it means that very same thing seventy percent of the time in Scripture, a Bible teacher needs to be able to say what is going on exegetically that other thirty percent of the time. That is all, and it ought not to be controversial.
Lane used the example of homoousias, which is not the best example. In the ancient standards, it means “of the same essence.” There is no scriptural use. and so we are home free. But there is another, more complicated, example, one that is to the point. Consider hypostasis, which is used creedally as well (and in crucial ways), referring to the three hypostases or Persons in the Trinity, and the hypostatic union in the Incarnation. These are their technical and creedal definitions, ones that I would go to the stake for. Yet at the same time, this word is used in the Bible, and the meanings aren’t clustered for us in a tidy way. It means confidence in 2 Cor. 11:17 and Heb. 3:14, confident in 2 Cor. 9:4, person in Heb. 1:3, and substance in Heb. 11:1. Now what do we do?
The creedal use means that I must side-step some scriptural definitions and set others aside while functioning in the realm of these precise definitions. If I confess one substance and three persons in the Trinity, then to throw the scriptural use of hypostasis as substance in there is only going to confuse things horribly. Let me be clear and provocative. There is a legitimate scriptural definition of hypostasis that has no business in interpretations of Nicea, and vice versa.
So the point here is a simple one. I can translate hypostasis as confidence in 2 Corinthians without denying the Trinity. And I can see broader uses of the word election in Scripture without denying in the slightest the doctrine of decretal, jet fuel election, a doctrine which flies our Reformed fighter jets really, really fast, and which I like as much as anybody.
Second point. As it happens I agree that decretal election is very much in view in Ephesian 1. But it isn’t in Romans 11:28.