Full disclosure right at the outset. The Foreword to Faith Alone was written by David Wells, and if that man’s books were orange juice concentrate, I could still eat them right out of the can with a spoon. When he is on his message (which is the exposition of the soul destroying nature of relativistic mush), there is no one better. Thankfully, this foreword continues my opportunity to cheer and applaud, and to remain a staunch Wells man, because Wells basically tackles something other than the subject of the book.
The subject of the book was summarized on the back cover in the blurb by Robert Godfrey.
“But the recent assault on justification by the New Perspective on Paul and by the Federal Vision is particularly pernicious, cloaked as it is in apparent scholarship and piety. This important book defends the historic Reformation doctrine with better scholarship and more profound piety.”
Okay. I was oriented, and I knew who the bad guys were supposed to be. Then I read the foreword. Wells divides the evangelical world into three basic groups.
“What I suggest is that there are currently three main constituencies in evangelicalism. There is one in which the historical doctrines of evangelical believing are still maintained and even treasured. There is one that is oblivious to these doctrines and considers them an impediment to church growth. Finally, there is one that is thumbing its nose at both of these first two constituencies, in the one case because its orthodoxy is too confining and in the other because its church life, glitzy as it may be, is too empty” (p. 15).
Now given the fact that I got the right book with the right title. I thought I knew right away who these constituencies were. There were the historic Protestant lovers of the Reformed standards, there were the happy clappy seeker sensitive pragmatists, and then there were the federal vision troops giving both of the first two groups the raspberry. But I only got two out of three.
I was right about the first group. “The reformational doctrines, part and parcel of which is sola fide, are still preserved among churches and by individuals in the first major church constituency” (p. 15). Okay, check. And I got the second one right too. The second constituency is “made up of a generation of pragmatists” (p. 16).
“And so it was the the seeker sensitive church emerged, reconfigured around the consumer, edges softened by marketing wisdom, pastors driven by business savvy, selling, always selling, but selling softly, alluringly, selling the benefits of the gospel while most, if not all, of the costs were hidden” (p. 16).
Then we got to the third constituency, which I missed completely. Since we are what the book is about, I thought the third group had to be us Dwarfs, duly chastized for shooting at Calormenes and horses indiscriminately. But no, the third group is the Emergent church, of the Brian McLaren stripe. “The Emergent church, the third of these church constituencies in evangelicalism, is a reaction which, in effect, is saying to the other two constituenceies, ‘a pox on both your houses!'” (p. 17). Huh.
Again I say, huh. Maybe there was a mix-up at Crossway. Maybe this is the Foreword to another book. But probably not. Wells concludes by saying he is grateful for the book because of what the authors believe and declare. He does not appear to know if their adversaries believe what is attributed to them, and doesn’t really get into that. But the Emergent church is bad.
“I am grateful for this book because I am grateful for any clarity, any light, that can be brought to bear on our situation in the evangelical world, and this particular book brings a lot. This desire for doctrinal clarity that I share with all of these authors, this yearning for biblical truth, makes me hopelessly ‘modern’ as it does them” (p. 19).
Yeah, I yearn for clarity too. I long for the day when our adversaries will be able to write a book in which they quote us accurately and extensively, demonstrate clearly that they understand what we teach and what we do not teach, and interact with it in a way that is actually informative. Shooting reformational solas into the air is not the same thing as defending the faith. But Robert Godfrey promises more. He says in the blurb that the New Perspective on Paul and the Federal Vision are going to get their comeuppance in this book at the hands of “better scholarship and more profound piety.”
How much better? All this made me wonder exactly how much interaction with the federal vision there was going to be. So, going back to the index of subjects and names, I discovered that Jim Jordan is mentioned three (3) times, Peter Leithart one (1) time, Rich Lusk an avalanche of five (5) times, Norman Shepherd tying him at five (5) times, Steve Wilkins getting one (1) mention, and me getting one (1) favorable mention — I am quoted critiquing N.T. Wright. And the Leithart and Wilkins references are on the same page, simply identifying them as paedocommunists, along with Robert Rayburn.