NB: This post had the wrong tag applied to it, and so I do not think it made it into the Auburn Avenue ebook.
Chapter One is Guy Waters’ introduction to and overview of the Federal Vision. In this chapter, he discusses names, players, and some of the foundational theological issues, particularly the definition of covenant, and the relationship of the doctrine of the covenant to the Trinity.
In what follows, I intend to spend the bulk of my time interacting with what Waters attributes to me, and not so much with his handling of some of my friends and colleagues. I am sure that they can answer for themselves, and I mention it here only because I do not want my comparative silence there be taken as an acknowledgement that Waters has treated them fairly or well.
Waters starts with some patronizing descriptions of how we in the FV spread our doctrines. Part of the problem is the Internet, as he sees it, and because of this we are able to instruct people in a way that is “resistant to the oversight and accountability that published discourse and ecclesiastical discourse would otherwise afford” (p. 1).
Then there is this description, and given what he has just said, it is a particularly ripe one. “Many make use of private presses (Canon, Athanasius), which enable swift and prodigious dissemination of book-length material” (p. 4). Our stuff is “privately published” (p. 5). And apparently, I am more well off than I thought I was, for Canon Press is mine, all mine — “his press, Canon Press” (p. 9). So I don’t know where to start.
Private presses? Canon Press is an ecclesiastical press, in submission to the session of Christ Church. Christ Church, in its turn, is a member of the Confederation of Reformed Evangelical Churches, and is in submission to that broader body. This means that everything Canon Press publishes is under the authority of multiple layers of ecclesiastical accountability.
Anthanasius Press, in its turn, is a ministry of Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church, a congregation in good standing in the Presbyterian Church of America. The accountability of Athanasius runs straight up the line to the General Assembly of the PCA. This would make it another ecclesiastical press. That would be different than a private press.
In contrast, Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, publisher of Waters’ book, is also the publisher of Call of Grace by Norman Shepherd, not to mention Back to Basics, contributed to by me. Now I don’t have anything against P&R, from whom I receive a royalty check from time to time. God bless ’em, say I. But I think perhaps an editor there at that august publishing house ought to have been paying closer attention when one of his authors hauled off and accused two ecclesiastical presses of not having ecclesiastical accountability, and who did it while writing for a fine publishing business, but one that is not in submission to any church body that I know of.
Then there is that odd phrase — book-length material. Canon Press, proud publisher of book-length material. Now I am not disputing this. The books we publish are book-length material. But they fit this description because they are books.
Establishment-speak oozes out all over. Waters says I founded “New St. Andrews, an alternative undergraduate institution” (p. 9). What does he mean alternative? He makes it sound like a Montessori experiment for 18-22 year-olds, where we have them all stack blocks according to color. But NSA is a four-year liberal arts college, offering an accredited degree in Liberal Arts and Culture. There is a positive sense in which you could say that we offer a real alternative in the world of higher education, but I don’t think that is what Waters meant.
I have done all this stuff “without formal theological training” (p. 9). And at the end of his section introducing me to his audience, he offers what I think was a compliment. “His impressive rhetorical abilities and his distinctive satire and humor have also helped to attract a substantial following within the Reformed community” (p. 9). But I am not sure that he really believes it. If he really thought I was a gifted satirist, would he have written a chapter like this? I go back and forth.
Now to the subtance, at least as it regards what I teach. Waters quotes me as saying, “A covenant is a relationship between persons. That relationship has conditions, stipulations, and promises” (p. 11). And I stand by this, pointing out that conditions, stipulations, and promises are all legal and forensic in nature. This will become relevant in a moment, as we shall see.
But Waters says that we in the Fv have “a resistance to defining a covenant in legal or administrative terms or in terms of an agreement” (p. 11). It is true we have trouble defining it as simply that, but it is not true that we have trouble acknowledging that this is an important element. He says:
“FV proponents . . . are not simply saying that a covenant entails a relationship. Few Reformed individuals would deny this point. FV proponents are saying, however, that a covenant is itself essentially a relationship” (p. 12).
Sure. But it is a bounded relationship, not just any old relationship. And then Waters acknowledges that we grant an important point about the legal aspect, just as he granted an important point about relationship. “Few FV proponents will categorically deny that the covenant of grace has legal or forensic dimensions” (p. 13). Right. So what is the argument over again? We say a covenant is a relationship with legal and forensic elements. They say a covenant is a legal and forensic agreement with a relationship at the heart of it. Let’s have an uproar over this, shall we?
On the second substantive issue, we have to begin with something admirable that Waters said he was going to try to do.
“Our caution is to avoid defining the FV in such a way as to impute one FV proponent’s views to another FV who does not share those views” (p. 4).
This is reasonable and fair. But I don’t believe he succeeded in doing it. When it comes to discussion of whether there are covenant members who do not have the “root of the matter” in them, Waters states it negatively, and, on our behalf, somewhat anemically. That is, “no FV proponents presently deny that some within the covenant community prove in the end not to have been genuine believers” (p. 14).
None of us presently deny . . . just a matter of time! But the real situation is drastically different than this. Not only is it true that I don’t presently deny this, I robustly affirm it. More on this anon.
But Waters describes our position this way — “we find that what characterizes FV conceptions of covenant is that membership in the covenant of grace is to be understood in an undifferentiated sense” (p. 17). If by this, he means the fact of membership, this is true, and something that should hardly be controversial. But if he is talking about the nature of that membership, this is simply, uproariously, false.
Waters even quotes me pointing out that when the baptized are behaving badly, we are “at liberty to point to the inconsistency and say that constitutes covenantal faithlessness” (p. 18). Waters then tries to say that this constitutes a “judgment of charity,” which John Barach rejects, and Waters says, “This difference represents a significant hermeneutical inconsistency among certain FV proponents” (p. 18). This is not true, but if it were, as Waters claims, then why does Waters say the following about all of us in the FV?
“the doctrine of covenantal objectivity also fails to account for biblical teaching that speaks of the covenantally unfaithful as those who were never truly members of the covenant of grace in the first place” (p. 19)
What can he possibly mean, “fails to account”? Does he mean that we don’t talk about it? That we don’t handle the passages that require us to acknowledge the truth of this? Not only am I okay with this truth, I emphasize it. I teach it in a robust and enthusiastic way. I take this particular point (that there are covenant members who were unregenerate from the beginning), make a small pile of it in my front yard, and borrow a cricket bat from one of my British friends, and I wale on it. Then when the cricket bat breaks, I go to the shed and got the snow shovel out, and pound that point a little more.
In “Reformed” Is Not Enough, I dedicated chapters to the exposition of this particular truth (RINE, ch. 3, 14-19). Why do I do this? I am not sure anymore. I suppose I need to teach it because the Bible does. But why should I bring it up in debates with anti-FVers? I have made this point before. When my friend Steven Schlissel says something flamboyant and without qualifications to their liking, folks get up in arms. “Nuance that, Steve,” they all cry. He says nope, he is not going to do it, because it doesn’t do any good. These folks aren’t interested in hearing any qualifications. I would have a hard time going up against him right now in a debate on this point. What good does it do for me to insist that “the new birth is a reality. To be born again separates those who love darkness and those who love the light” (RINE, pp. 35-36). I would like to get someone on the other side of this debate to acknowledge publicly that I teach this. And that I do so while also teaching the objectivity of the covenant.
Waters says, against the FV:
“The difference, John says in both verse 19 anf verse 20, is qualitative in nature and is inherent from the beginning . . . This proves that we are not at liberty to understand membership in the covenant of grace in an undifferentiated way” (p. 19).
Now take this statement, and hold it up next to the following statements that I posted here on this blog under the heading Life in the Regeneration.
Eventually, the view that natures are unchanged (or non-existent) has to go one of two directions—either we must minimize how bad unbelievers are, or we must emphasize how bad believers still are. Either way gets us into trouble, and the only alternative is to stick with some notion of the traditional evangelical and reformed notion of genuine heart regeneration, which means heart transformation (Life in the Regeneration, 8/6/04).
Affirming the absolute need for personal regeneration is the sine qua non of historic evangelicalism. Affirming that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church is the sine qua non of historic catholicity. Deny the former only, and the end result is the deadly nominalism found in many quarters of the institutional Church. Such saintlings need to be told that God can make sons of Abraham out of rocks. Deny the latter only, and you have the endless splintering sectarianism that has come to characterize American pop evangelicalism. This comes about when Christians cease affirming the need for an invisible work of the Spirit of God, and presume to be able to see exactly how and when that regeneration happens.
But the moment of regeneration is never visible to us. Lack of regeneration, however, is visible over time because the works of the flesh, Paul tells us, are manifest. And the fruit of the Spirit manifest themselves publicly as well, and Jesus tells us to make our judgments on the basis of fruit. But it must be noted that biblical judgments of this sort are mature, and are based on the mature outcome of a person’s way of life. All this to say that genuine discernment is based on the video, not on the snapshot (Life in the Regeneration, 8/5/04).
Our interest in such passages should not have to do with the wickedness as such, but rather has to do with the divine “paternity suit” that follows on the basis of it. If some covenant members are children of the devil and others are not (as the quotation from 1 John indicates), then there must be a divide of nature—different fathers require different natures, and vice versa. Now I am aware that some may want to reject the very idea of “nature.” But such a rejection is problematic in discussions of regeneration because it is impossible in discussions of generation. We generate according to our kinds, we generate our nature. A fig tree bears figs, according to its nature, and does not bear oranges, which would be contrary to its nature (Life in the Regeneration, 7/24/04).
There are only two ways to go. Either Waters acknowledges that I do in fact teach this, but then his definition of the FV movement is all shot to blazes. Or he does not acknowledge it, in which case he is misrepresenting my teaching in a drastic way.