In his most recent post on assurance and apostasy, Lane frames the question of assurance this way: “Can a believer be absolutely assured of his own salvation in knowing that he is decretally elect?” In this, as with so many other details of our controversy, what Lane says is suspect when you hold it next to the plain teaching of the Westminster Confession. Lane says that I am assured of my salvation in knowing that I am decretally elect. In other words, decretal election with my name on it is in the premises, from which I derive the conclusion that I am saved. No. It goes the other way. Incidentally, I would agree with Lane’s statement if it read this way:” Can a believer be absolutely assured of his own salvation, knowing that he is decretally elect?” Just drop the word in and we’re good. Confidence that you are decretally elect is the conclusion, not the premise. And this is what Westminster teaches.
This is the Christian receiving assurance — “being enabled by the Spirit to know the things which are freely given him of God, he may, without extraordinary revelation in the right use of ordinary means, attain thereunto” (WCF 18.3).
We cannot know the decrees without extraordinary revelation (Dt. 29:29). The Confession says, quite rightly, that we do not come to an assurance of salvation from any kind of revelation like that. This does not mean that I cannot have assurance, or that I cannot know that I am decretally elect. Of course I can know that. It wouldn’t be assurance if I didn’t. But my decretal election is what I know; it is not how I know. See, I underlined it. Hardly ever do that. I can know that God in fact elects His people by name because that is revealed. But the list of names is not revealed, and my particular name is not revealed to me.
So if my name is not revealed to me as being there, then how can I know that it really is there? Again the Confession. The Spirit enables me to know the things given to me, and this knowledge grows in me through a right use of ordinary means. The “ordinary” here contrasts with the “extraordinary” of revelation; it does not mean, for example, that the Westminster believed preaching to be earthly and mundane. It is just that you can see and hear the preacher, and you cannot read the decrees. So this is referring to the means of grace that God has established for us. As I read the Bible, and pray, and worship with God’s people, and improve my baptism, and come to the Lord’s Table, the Spirit enables me to see what I have been given in all these means, and, as He enables me, I through this right use of ordinary means, come to the conclusion that I am decretally elect. The Spirit enables me to see Christ in the sermon for me, Christ in the baptismal waters for me, Christ in the bread and wine for me, Christ in the passage I read this morning for me, and so forth. The Spirit enables me to look through all these means to see Christ, and, as a consequence, my eternal election.
When he gets to apostasy, a simple mistake about terminology trips Lane up again. He says of us that “they use the term ‘Christian’ of someone who is baptized, not of someone who is decretally elect . . . One gets the distinct impression that that use is the only use they want to use.” But of course, we want to use the term both ways. I did that in RINO, at the very beginning of this controversy, and I will be doing it next Lord’s Day in a message entitled “The Absolute Necessity of the New Birth.” Not all Israel are Israel. Not all Christians are Christians. Not that hard to follow, people.
I won’t interact a lot with the section on John 15 because we have already flogged that quite a bit, other than to say that Lane says the vine is the visible church. I am fine with that so long as he is good with Christ identifying Himself with that visible church. Jesus said, after all, “I am the Vine.”
One other thing, a quick question. Lane says, “To say that anyone has temporary saving grace and then loses it is Arminian.” Lane, are you willing to say that Augustine was an Arminian?