An evangelical newspaper in the UK has printed an excerpt from a book entitled Risking the Truth in which Ligon Duncan says some creative things. I am quoting the section that deals with me by name, and my commentary is interspersed.
“Douglas Wilson of Moscow, Idaho (perhaps the best-known advocate of the FV), highlights the following as concerns of the FV:”
Notice that I am introduced as the “best-known” advocate of the FV. I am also represented as highlighting the “concerns of the FV,” with the clear implication that these are my concerns, as in, my positions. The print version of the newspaper did not footnote the sources for this summary of mine, and neither did the web version. Given what follows this lead in, I would be most interested in being allowed to have a look at those footnotes, supposing them to exist.
“(1) to articulate and practice a more consistent view of the place of children in the covenant community and in relation to the promises of God [this often translates into the practice of paedo-communion in FV circles];”
This first one is a good start. It’s a fair cop.
“(2) to use language more biblically than has been the case, in their opinion, in traditional Reformed dogmatics, as well as its desire to subject traditional, confessional systematic theology to a rigorous scriptural re-think [this often translates into FV proponents’ dissatisfaction with confessional categories, formulations and boundaries];”
But, as I have maintained, clearly I do not want to substitute biblical language in for confessional language. I want confessional language, believing it to be necessary and edifying in its place. What I object to is the restriction that has been placed on using biblical language ever. So the question is not whether we use biblical language or confessional language. The issue is when we are to use each, because we must use each. The preamble to the Joint Federal Vision Profession notes that many of the signatories (including me) are “confesssionally bound” to the Three Forms of Unity or the Westminster Confession. I am confessionally bound to the Westminster Confession, and happily so. I like it. Every other year I teach through the Westminster Confession to our ministerial students. It is a practice I commend to some of our critics. There are some lost valleys in there that no white man has ever seen.
“(3) to co-ordinate the doctrine of union with Christ, with the doctrine of the church, so as to correct what it sees as an errant distinction between (or at least an unhelpful deployment of the idea of) the visible and invisible church in traditional Reformed ecclesiology [this sometimes results in FV proponents wanting to say that all members of the visible church are elect];”
At some point in the discussion Wilson began to spit sixteen penny nails. He maintained that this was necessary to keep him from swallowing them.
Are all baptized Christians decretally elect? Of course not. Should all of them put on tender mercies as the elect of God? Of course. Are both of these points important to maintain? Absolutely.
“(4) to recover truths that the original Reformers had discovered but which have been lost due to the influence of the Puritans and the Great Awakening, not to mention revivalism [FV proponents tend to view Puritanism and the evangelical Calvinism of Whitfield and the Great Awakening as roots of numerous problems in the modern church];
What’s with mushing the Puritans and Whitefield together? And why am I being treated as a critic of the Puritans when I have spent a lot of time defending them? You know, as in Douglas “Puritan fan boy” Wilson. Whitefield was the source of some of our contemporary problems, but he was still a great blessing to the church, and a hero of the faith. He did a lot more good than bad, and was far better than your average 18th century Anglican. So where did this criticism come from?
“(5) to recast the doctrine of faith and obedience in more scriptural language and categories [because the FV does not think that the New Testament entertains the kind of opposition between faith and obedience that is often articulated in evangelical explanations of the relation between law and gospel, between faith and works].
This one is not so much wrong as incomplete and confusing.
“Thus, FV advocates often express an interest in and concern for (a) sacramental efficacy, (b) the centrality of the visible church, (c) the importance of a living and active faith in Christ, and (d) something they call ‘real covenantal union with Christ’.
And last, in sum, (a) yes, but only Westminsterian efficacy. You know, the good kind, (b) centrality of the visible church compared to what? The visible church is not central in the decrees, for example. What circle are you drawing? (c) there is a problem with having a living and active faith in Christ? Somebody is against this? (d) yes, but only in the sense meant by John 15 and Romans 11. Whatever those passages mean, that’s what we mean.