In the second part of chapter five, Waters goes on to misrepresent me on some other issues, particularly on the subject of the perseverance and apostasy.
While Wilson admits the existence and presence of hypocrites within the covenant community and stresses the necessity of the inward operations of the Holy Spirit for an individual’s salvation, his ecclesiology is weighted toward defining the Christian in an undifferentiated way” (p. 147).
Actually, I argue for defining Christian in two different ways. I define quarter as a coin in my pocket, and I define quarter as a fourth of something. I don’t “weight” my definition of quarter one way or the other. Why is this so difficult? I hold that a Christian is someone who is born again of the Spirit of God — “Paul’s statement is blunt — he is not a Christian who has only the externals” (RINE, p. 18). And then, in a completely distinct sense, a Christian is anyone who is baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit: “they were baptized in infancy or when they were ten in a Baptist church, they sang in the choir and went through catechism class, and they are not Buddhists” (RINE, p. 17).
When it comes to sorting out the sheep and goats before the eschaton, Waters tries to argue that I make no distinctions within the church, and make no distinctions within the Word.
In preaching and pastoring, Wilson counsels against attempting to raise explicitly the question of hypocrisy. ‘Pastorally, you don’t need to flush these people out by probing and doing private detective work of a pastoral nature. What you need to do is just back God’s truck up to the pulpit and unload it.’ This is not, Wilson stresses, defaulting on one’s pastoral duties. Ministers preach the Scriptures, Wilson argues, which ‘have all these severe warnings in the New Testament.’ He seems fairly confident that hypocrites, under such preaching, will generally choose to leave rather than ‘to slug it out.’ And undifferentiated word (at least in terms of its application to various groups within the church delineated according to the doctrine of regeneration) is therefore to be preached to an undifferentiated church” (pp. 147-8).
I don’t know where he gets this idea, but I do not hold to it. In fact, I deny it in the quotations that Waters produces to prove that I do too hold to it. Look at the citation just past. After I say that the New Testament contains many warnings for the hypocrites (making the point that the Bible differentiates between hypocrites and non-hypocrites), Waters cites this as proof postive that I do not believe the Bible differentiates between covenant members. And so why did I have two separate chapters on sons of Belial and false brothers (chapters 17 and 18)? If the Bible differentiates between faithful covenant members and faithless covenant members, then so must we. But Waters has got this idea in his head and it will not be dislodged. He says again that I do not believe in doing this. “First, Wilson’s pattern of preaching (preach an undifferentiated Word to an undifferentiated church) is not in keeping with Scripture” (p. 152). I agree. It isn’t. That is why I don’t believe in doing it. I had just said, with Waters quoting me on it, that the Word differentiates, and that if you preach the whole counsel of God (the biblical expression behind my phrase about backing God’s truck up to the pulpit and unloading it), hypocrites will scram. If we unload it, we unload it. The Word differentiates. The Word winnows. The Word is a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces. And why Waters would say that my confidence that the Scripture preached will establish this differentiation within the church (causing hypocrites to flee) is actually proof that I hold there is no such differentiation to be made, is a matter quite beyond my capacity to explain.
He says:
“The pattern of biblical teaching and preaching in both the Old and New Testaments, then, respects and addresses the distinguishing heart conditions found within the visible church” (pp. 152-3).
To which I reply:
You betcher.
But wait, there’s more, on a different subject. Waters maintains that I deny a qualitative difference between regeneration as experienced by the faithful covenant member and the faithless covenant member.
“Wilson, then, refrains here from defining apostasy in qualitative terms — that, apart from considerations of the grace of perseverance, the grace given to the elect is qualitatively different from that given to the reprobate. Rather, apostasy is defined temporally: the apostate is one who simply does not persevere” (p. 151)
Having said this, he then quotes me saying precisely the opposite. “The grace experienced by the apostate and the persevering grace experienced by the elect differ . . . regeneration extends (or not) to every covenant member” (p. 152, my emphasis in the original). In that quote, Waters cites my agreement on this point with Carl Robbins, a FV critic in the Knox colloquium book. Then he says this:
Wilson’s comments, however, do not substantially alter our analysis above. His affirmations regarding the necessity of individual regeneration are appreciated, but do not resolve the issue at hand . . . The question at hand is whether apostate members of the covenant were ever at all properly said to be regenerate” (p. 152).
If Waters is objecting because he thinks I might believe regeneration to be reversible, then he has radically misread my position. Regeneration (in the effectual call sense) is not reversible. And if he is objecting because he thinks I might use the word regenerate of the apostate covenant member in any sense, however distinct from effectual call regeneration, then he has radically muddled my position. When talking about apostates, and talking about effectual call regneration, I deny that said apostates can be properly said to have ever been regenerate.
As I said in “Reformed” Is Not Enough, “This might be called regeneration, theologically considered. A man is either regenerate or he is not. When the word regeneration is being used in this sense, we are talking about an invisible operation performed by the Spirit of God, who does what He does when and how it please Him. And when we are talking about what might be called this ‘effectual-call regeneration,’ we have to repudiate every form of baptismal or decisional regeneration” (RINE, p. 19).
In addition, I have written an extensive series of posts on this blog in order “to offer a defense of the historic evangelical understanding of regeneration” (6/16/04). Here is a small sampling from that series.
In order to take all baptized covenant members as participants in Christ in the “strong sense,” we would have to distinguish what is objectively given in Christ, and not what is subjectively done with those objective benefits. Perseverance would, on this reading, be what was subjectively done with what God has objectively given. In this view, the person who did not persevere was not given less of Christ. But this necessarily means that persevering grace is not an objective gift or grace. God’s willingness to continue “the wrestling” would depend upon what kind of fight we put up, or cooperation we provide, and because no one’s fundamental nature has been changed, those natures remain at “enmity with God.” In this view, whatever total depravity means, it is not ontologically changed, just knocked down and sat upon. The Spirit pins one snarling dog, but not another. But this in turn leads to another thought—eventually at some time in the process we stop snarling and start cooperating (if we are bound to heaven), and what do we call this change or transformation. The historic name for this change has been regeneration, and I see no reason to change it (7/24/04).
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 (8/5/04).
Not to put too fine a point on it, Waters represents me as holding a view that is 180 degrees out from what I actually hold. Not only do I not hold the views he attributes to me, I have argued energetically against them in print. There must be a qualitative difference between unregenerate baptized hypocrite and the faithful covenant member.
From overt misrepresentations of my position, we may now move to disagreements and interactions of an ordinary kind.
“Second, Wilson’s doctrine of new covenant curses raises certain questions. How then may we affirm Paul’s declaration that Christ has borne the curse of the law for believers (Gal. 3:13)? How may we say, with Paul, that believers no longer fall under condemnation (Rom. 8:1)? (p. 153).
Well, the point would be that believers within the covenant know that Christ has bore the curse for them. But covenant members who do not believe this are thereby identified as unbelievers. Because they are unbelievers, and all the promises of Christ are apprehended by faith alone, and because there is a fundamental differentiation within the covenant during the course of history, unbelievers within the covenant receive the curses of the covenant, and not the blessings of the covenant.
“One may agree in principle with Wilson that ‘covenant members in the new covenant were judged more severely than the covenant members in the old were,’ but Wilson’s explanation of Hebrews 10:26f. in terms of specifically covenantal curses is a dubious one. When we consider its likely connection to Wilson’s doctrine of covenant election, we are further inclined to be skeptical of its merit” (p. 153).
This quotation above may serve as a sampling of how Waters undertakes to refute something. Note that this is under a section labeled “Critique.” One may agree with me in principle about how curses in the New Covenant are more severe than those of the Old, but he says my explanation of Heb. 10:26 is a “dubious one.” Furthermore, my explanation has a “likely” connection to my doctrine of “covenantal election” and so Waters is further inclined to be “skeptical of its merit.” Oh? Might there be any reasons? This is just academic handwaving. He says nothing more than that he doesn’t buy it, which is fine, but ought not to be confused with offering reasons for not buying it.
We now come to the last point, which is the problem of sap in John 15.
“Third, it is gratuitous, that is, baseless to say that Jesus’ analogy in John 15:1-6 teaches that the broken branches partook of the sap of the vine. Jesus does not use the term sap in this parable. That metaphor is an inference that Wilson has drawn. As Beisner has rightly commented, ‘It is dangerous enough to draw doctrines from parables; it is more dangerous to draw doctrines from details within parables; it is exegetically fatal to draw doctrines from details that are even there!’ There is no hint in this parable that the broken branches ever existed in any vital, living relationship with Christ. Far less is it clear that the broken branches sustained the same relationship to Christ as those who prove to be decretally elect. Wilson’s argument fails to overturn conventional Reformed readings of this passage, which see branches that are outwardly and inwardly related to Christ” (pp. 153-4).
Excuse me if I have just a little bit of fun with this one.
First, the point of the sap illustration was not to turn John 15 into a complex allegory, with the sap representing the internal motions of grace or something. The point of mentioning the sap was to emphasize something that Christ’s metaphor says explicitly, and which Reformed exegetes consistently run away from (in the best tradition of an Arminian in Romans 9), which is to say, the branchness of the branches that were broken off. Christ says nothing of sap, or bark, or leaves. But He does say that branches in Him were cut out of Him, and were then taken away and burned. He does say that. So, Mr. Reformed, what does it mean? What is taken away from the Vine which is Christ? They are branches, which had a branchy connection to Him. All I mean by sap in the branches is to say that they are true branches. A branch can be fruitless and still be a true branch — a branch that needs to be pruned. A branch cannot be sapless and still be a true branch. That was my only point in talking about sap, which leads to this next point.
Waters chides me for mentioning sap in my discussion of this (although every branch I have ever seen has had sap), and then moves blithely on to talk about branches that are “outwardly related” to the Vine and branches that are “inwardly related.” Now I have never in all my born days seen a branch that is merely outwardly related to a vine or tree. We have never seen it in nature, and Christ makes no mention of it. But it is responsible Reformed exgesis to have outwardly related branches and inwardly related branches, but exegetically fatal to have branches with sap in them, that is to say, branchy branches.
And third, Waters says, “Far less is it clear that the broken branches sustained the same relationship to Christ as those who prove to be decretally elect.” Well, of course not. They were cut out because they did not have the same relationship; one was fruitful and the other not. But in some sense, at some level (not in every sense, not on every level), they did have the same relationship to Christ. How’s that? They were both BRANCHES.