A few weeks ago, I made the point that leaders among the anti-FVers have been extremely reluctant to admit the obvious, which is that I hold to the historic Reformed view of justification and so on. The reason for this, I suggested, was political. In other words, to admit publicly that I had a clean bill of health would do damage to the political campaign against FV now under way.
It would do damage to their cause in two ways. First, it would undercut those on their side of the fence who have already gone on the record about me — e.g. someone like Guy Waters. To recognize my orthodoxy would make these guys out front to be the anti-FV equivalent of guys on the beach at the Bay of Pigs — “Where’s the air support, man?” The second way it would undercut the current crusade is by making people make distinctions when they are in no mood to make distinctions. If they start doing that, it might set an unedifying chain of thought in motion. “If Wilson is okay,” someone might muse, “after years of hearing that he isn’t, maybe some of these other guys are okay too.”
So I made this point about the politics of the thing, and one poster here raised the question of whether I was “playing politics” also. Can the tables of this argument be turned? I don’t believe so, but here is how the argument would go. If I am as orthodox as all that, then why haven’t I denounced my friends and ecclesiastical homies whose language makes people more nervous than my language does? Am I not circling the wagons for political reasons, just like I say the folks on the other side are doing?
No, and here is why. There is a difference between partisan loyalty and personal loyalty. Personal loyalty obviously has limits, but the biblical principles of justice define what those limits are. Here is how it works. The first thing to remember is that ministers in good standing should be considered (especially by their friends) to have done nothing wrong unless someone establishes that they have done something wrong. Second, when accusations are raised against a group of men, it is reasonable and prudent to judge the reliability of the accusers by holding their charges up against the positions you know best, which in this case would be my own positions. I am not an expert in everything my friends have written or said. I am an expert in what I have written and said, and if people are saying outrageous things about my views, what motivation do I have to tunnel through everything Rich Lusk has written in order to “prove him innocent”? Rich can do that better than I, and I already know his accusers are out to lunch. Remember, they came over to my house first, and said some crazy things. Third, when trouble arises the first reaction of a friend ought not to be that of backing away and coming back sheepishly later when things look safer for his sorry idea of a friend. And fourth, using theological language that is not typical for provincial presbyterians is not the same thing as heresy. I know enough about how my friends express themselves to know that they don’t always put things the same way I would. So why, when someone starts trying to whoop up a heresy trial, don’t I join in the general frenzy and acknowledge publicly that “some of this language is troubling”? The reason is that there is a difference between operating outside the well-worn grooves of theological cliches and heresy. Yes, some of my friends speak differently than I do. So does Calvin. So does Turretin. So do a bunch of other Reformed fathers. This has been the point of the various Calvin citations I have used. The point is not that I would put things the same way that Calvin would. For example, I do not use the word regeneration the same way Calvin does. That is no reason for me to douse my hair with lighter fluid, set it off, and run around in tight, little circles. Men can use different theological vocabulary without disagreeing in substance. If it appears that this is what is happening (as it does to me in this situation), then cooler heads ought to prevail until the thing is sorted out. Different terminology is a standard technique used by damnable heretics to conceal their pernicious errors, but it is affirming the consequent to say that the presence of different terminology is equivalent to heresy. All dogs have four legs, but that does not turn cows into dogs. Heretics use different terminology for their unrighteous purposes, but James and Paul used different terminology for their righteous purposes.
So then,
1. Innocent until proven guilty;
2. Evaluate the unknown in terms of the known;
3. A brother is born for adversity;
4. And the Reformed faith should be big enough to encompass different streams or traditions within it. But at the very least, it should be big enough to include those who established it.
Put all this together and you can see why I felt no pressure whatever to ditch my friends just because someone started yelling. This refusal to budge is not an example of me playing politics on this issue; it is actually an example of me declining to do so. In contexts like this one, personal loyalty — to men like Wilkins, Lusk, Leithart, Horne, Schlissel, or Barach — is simply what Christ calls for.