THE CONTENTS OF OUR TABLE Bottles broken on the bar. This issue is a special collection, giftwrapped and offered up in the hopes of alleviating ignorance, calming teapots, and clearing fog. Take these—clear statements and responses, introductions, discussion and haiku—and wander out into the world. Topic for discussion: Fire vs. Smoke Machines, differences in a postalpresbyterian metatexture. (Hint: one involves more plastic.) Various Visions of Federal Volume 19, Number 3 A Cautionary Note Douglas Wilson passes on a word to the folk in his own corner. “First, it was a wise Puritan who said that the devil loves to fish in troubled waters.” 4 The Federal Vision (in one easy lesson) Douglas Wilson takes rookies on a guided tour from the roof of a double-decker bus. “I was watching my nine-month-old grandson Seamus sitting quietly on our front lawn yesterday, being covenantally faithful to the best of his ability. He did not have to earn his position there, and he did not have to attain to it.” 7 A Joint Federal Vision Profession A thorough statement collectively embraced by leaders and names associated with FV. “We therefore ask others to accept that the following represents our honest convictions at this stage of the conversation. This statement is therefore not an attempt at evasion or trickery, but simply represents a desire to be as clear as we can be, given our circumstances.” 9 Against the PCA GA FV Report (twenty-four variations on a response) Peter Leithart rumbles. “FV: You know, for kids.” 14 Can a Nature/Grace Dualism Be Born Again? Douglas Wilson and gnostic grace. “If you assume that in the supernatural act of regeneration, God comes down and implants a grace node in your heart, then this is a form of gnosticism, and it helps perpetuate that pestilent nature/ grace dualism.” 22 Life in the Regeneration Douglas Wilson snippets. “Christ was born again from the dead. Because of this, the whole created order was born again from the dead. Because of this, Israel was born again from the dead and is now the Church. Because of this, a man can be born again and enter the Church. If he was already in the Church, he can be born again and become a true son of the Church.” 23 “Things to be pinned” Volume 19/3 3 CAUTION A Cautionary Note Douglas Wilson WE have been involved in this round of the controversy over the “Federal Vision” for about five years now. During that time, many millions of words have been written, many more words spoken, friendships strained or broken, churches divided, and many sins committed—and I am not saying this because I think the sins have been on one side only. In the course of this controversy, on the Federal Vision side of things, I have seen more than a few examples of intemperate remarks, frayed tempers, and an unhelpful imputation of evil motives to others. Fortunately, I have also seen a frequent quickness to repent and a desire to make such things right. I say this as a participant in the controversy, and, I suppose, as something of an obvious partisan. Part of the reason Christians are reluctant to acknowledge any kind of wrong-doing in the middle of a fight is because “anything you say can and will be used against you.” Stonewalling is easier than giving ammo to the adversary. I don’t want to gut the force of what I want to argue in this article, so let me limit my “qualifications” about all this to this introductory section. I write this knowing fully some of the provocations my brothers have gone through. C. S. Lewis once wisely said, when comparing the heated rhetoric of Thomas More and William Tyndale, that it had to be remembered that Tyndale was the one being persecuted for his faith. It was not a level playing field. Lewis said something similar about Bunyan, and I believe there is a similar asymmetry in this situation. Exasperated rhetoric in self-defense is a very different sin than slander and accusation from one in authority or a doctrinal bounty-hunter out to make a name for himself. That said, a common question raised by critics of the Federal Vision is this—“Why don’t you guys admit any legitimate point that your critics might bring up? Why won’t you disavow ‘something outrageous’ that Schlissel or Lusk said?” The answers to this kind of question have been addressed in different settings already, but I want to mention them again here. The first is a Golden Rule issue. I have been misrepresented by FV critics time without number, and because I don’t want Schlissel or Lusk disavowing me for things I don’t really believe, I have no intention of doing it to them. And FV critics have not been reliable in handling what I have said, so why should I take them as reliable when they decide to give my friends the treatment? Second, in a scriptural understanding of justice, the burden of proof is on the accuser. I don’t have to prove my innocence or the innocence of my friends. If any one of them were convicted by a court of the church, I would then have the burden of looking 4 “Things to be wrastled” Volume 19/3 at what evidence was used, how they responded to it, and so on. But that hasn’t happened yet. And third, the Scriptures teach us that in a doctrinal controversy, it is important to discern why a question is being asked. Some people asked Jesus questions because they were not far from the kingdom, and others did it because they were trying to trap Him. So my loyalties to my friends and fellow laborers in this reformational ministry have not budged, nor will they. But I do want to urge my fellows in the FV trenches to take heed with regard to the following things. I have seen issues that concern me, and so I want to caution against them. Some of this I have already addressed in private conversations, and all of it needs to be said in public. None of it falls in the category of assuming sin in the ranks of those whom I address, and I am making no particular accusations. It is just that I know what I would do if I were the devil. How would I tempt? How would I try to exploit this most unfortunate division in the Reformed world? Scripture says that we are to exhort one another daily, so that we are not hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. That is all this article is—provoking to love and good works (Heb. 10:24). Now in mentioning good works as I have just done, perhaps it would be prudent if I hastened to add that we are not justified by them. First, it was a wise Puritan who said that the devil loves to fish in troubled waters. So the first thing that is necessary here is to guard the heart. In doctrinal controversy, it is the easiest thing in the world to believe that the “stakes” are this doctrine or that one. But a lot more than that is always going on. We can establish the right doctrine the right way, the right doctrine the wrong way, the wrong doctrine the right way, or, for the most popular option, the wrong doctrine in the wrong way. When two positions collide, we must always remember that there is a deeper right than being right. The second problem is taking the poor caliber of much of the public criticism we have received as representative of the whole. There are critics who don’t have the faintest idea of what we (or they) are talking about, and their ignorance is culpable. Men who are vocational theologians should be able to master these distinctions—that is what they are being paid to do. But this is not the case across the board. Some critics are reasonable men and women, who do not have any particular ax to grind, but are puzzled or concerned about some of the stuff they are hearing. And I am not speaking of those who hear rumors second or third hand. Rank-and-file believers who think that I have puppy sandwiches every day for lunch because they read all about it on the Internet are also culpable. Rather I am talking about folks who are hearing a different vocabulary than what they are accustomed to, and when this happens, they have a duty to Christ in this—they CAUTION are supposed to be wary and suspicious. We don’t want to produce the FV equivalent of the Calvinist “cage stage.” When someone first learns the doctrines of grace, they need to be locked in a cage for three years, and kept out of all conversations with Arminians. This is because the Arminianism that they believed for thirty years is now irrefutable proof that the Arminian they are currently talking to is an idiot. There are all kinds of reasonable questions and concerns, and we desperately need to remember that. I cannot come to certain conclusions over the course of ten years, and then demand that others do it in ten minutes. The third issue can be illustrated by adapting something from Hegel’s playbook. His take on history was that a thesis would provoke an antithesis. The two of them would meet, make a little love, and we would soon have ourselves a little synthesis. This synthesis would become a new thesis, and the process would repeat. Now as a master explanation of history, this is lacking in all kinds of ways, and among other bad things brought us the carnage of communism. But it does explain some things, at least for purposes of illustration. One of them is this: it is perilously easy for people who are in the midst of a reaction (antithesis) to a particular status quo (the thesis) to think that the thesis has always “just been there,” like the everlasting rocks. But there was a time, not that long ago, when these moribund expressions of doctrine that we find inadequate now were once new, fresh, and exciting. And they did not just seem that way, as though doctrinal shifts are nothing more than a rearrangement of the furniture. These were honest answers, and they were like a kiss on the lips. Banner-of-Truth Calvinism seems stuck in a bad rut now, but there was a time in my life when tumbling into their literature was like busting out into the Narnian snow dance. And the ossified and formulaic expressions of evangelicalism that we struggle with now were, at one time, the words that brought Europe back from the dead. Now some people are not interested in the power of religion, but rather in the form of it. They want to be curators of the museum, with an inspiring exhibit on justification by faith alone, three feet behind the velvet rope, there behind the glass. Others hold to the old doctrines in truth, don’t want to give any of that up, and of course they shouldn’t. We shouldn’t act like we are asking them to, because we aren’t doing that either. The next four concerns are particular issues with young men who have been attracted to the FV for various reasons. There is quite a difference between them and a man who has had a pilgrimage over decades through the zaniness of contemporary faith in America. He has done his time as a charismatic, then as a Baptist, then as a theonomic Reformed Baptist, then as a Presbyterian. He has a lot of wisdom, a lot of dents in his helmet, and one of the horns is knocked off. He then comes to the FV conversation, and he sees a number of questions addressed and answered that had been bugging him for thirty years, and he accepts the FV approach to these questions with gratitude and caution. Compare this to a young man who comes to this whole thing fresh off the boat. He embraces it enthusiastically, because his soil is thin and he has no root. After six months in the FV conversation, he popes. After a few months there, he decides that all the modern popes are heretics, becomes a sedevacantist, and becomes a true “Roman Catholic” rigorist. His congregation has a membership of three, four when their wife has their second kid. It’s kind of like that old Protestant sectarianism, only with Latin names for stuff. This is another way of saying that I trust experienced FV men who have paid their dues, and I am wary of young FV men who look like the dues that someone else is going to have to pay. A fifth temptation occurs when you are falsely accused of theft; it is sometimes a temptation to go off and steal something. When slanders of “not Reformed,” or “heretic” fly, it is easy for some to just embrace the accusation, and say something like, “Yeah, what about it? I never cared that much about being Reformed anyway. I just want to be biblical.” This is because the time they have been Reformed can be measured in weeks—there is not all that much invested in it. When coupled with the first temptation mentioned here— that of getting your attitude cranked—it is easy to go off and embrace what the FV men are falsely accused of embracing. The FV community has had a few of these young men, who thought they were being a vanguard when all they were being was a grief and a trouble. Temptation number six is not limited to young men, but it is more prevalent there. The clash between FV and its critics is often cast as a collision between “systematic” theology and “biblical” theology. There is a serious point here, and I do not want to dismiss it. But I also want to urge care, because it is not that simple. Systematic theology, like liturgy, is inescapable. Everyone has a systematic theology, whether they write it down in three volumes or not. The only difference is the nature of the system. And biblical theology, done right, is magnificent. But it is kind of like vers libre—in the hands of a master, it can be overwhelming and glorious. In the hands of an anxiety-ridden junior-high girl, it can be terrible. There is a temptation in FV circles, in an understandable reaction to how some of our critics have been leaving baskets of fruit in front of the confessions, to pit knowledge of the Bible against knowledge of the Reformed confessions. It is assumed that there is an inverse relationship between them— “Things to be pinned” Volume 19/3 5 CAUTION the better you know your confession, the less likely it is that you will know your Bible. But this is exactly the opposite of what I have found in instructing young people. If someone has memorized their Shorter Catechism, or the Heidelberg, and we test them on their knowledge of the Bible—simple biblical grammar questions like “Who lived first, David or Abraham?”—the catechized kids will generally do far better. Those who say that knowledge of the Bible is “far more important” than knowledge of the confessions are less likely to know their Bible very well. It is kind of like comparing those who tithe with those who believe that they should “give out of love and as the Spirit leads,” with the Spirit always leading somewhere between one and two percent. There is no necessary contradiction between knowledge of the Reformed tradition and knowledge of the Bible. Those who make an idol out of the confessions are a walking contradiction—but it is a contradiction between knowledge of the Bible and knowledge of their idolatry. This could go on for a while, but let me conclude with one last concern. This is related to some of the previous concerns, but it also bears mentioning in its own right. One of the great fears of FV critics is the fear of nominalism. One of the great pastoral fears of the FV men is the fear of beating the saints up in the name of getting them to examine the inner recesses of their hearts. In other words, some people are so tired of being badgered every week to “search their hearts” that they are desperate for some gospel rest. The FV offers that, and it offers it as the glorious gospel of grace. And what happens when you preach grace? Those in need of it come and their thirst is quenched. But there is another kind of person who comes also—and the apostle Paul even had to deal with this kind of character. Paul preached grace, and he was falsely accused of preaching license. Some people rejected Paul for that reason, and others, sharing the same misunderstanding, thought he was hot stuff. I believe that liturgy is God-given and inescapable. I am as enthusiastic as a man can be about the potency of covenant renewal worship. But I also know there is a certain kind of person attracted to this for all the wrong reasons, and they are attracted to it precisely because it gives them a place of religious respectability where they can hide from God. This temptation is mentioned throughout the Bible, and FV critics warn us in dire terms of the nominalism that will result if the measures we suggest are adopted by the Church. Well, sure it will happen. When you sow the seed, birds eat some of it. When you sow the seed, thorns and weeds choke out some of it. Let God be true, and every man a liar. If you enroll in a math class, the first thing you will encounter is math problems. That is not an argument against taking the class. But it is 6 “Things to be wrastled” Volume 19/3 an argument for being prepared to solve the problems. It is not an answer to the FV critic to insist on enrolling in the class, and then refusing to do the problems. So FV pastors need to be sensitive to this, and when we are warned about it (by people we believe are exaggerating the issues), we need to acknowledge that this is a temptation that the Bible hammers on over the course of millennia. Away with the noise of your songs, and get your homosexual chancel prancers the hell out of here. Who required of you this trampling of my courts? I have seen more than one moth flying toward the FV candle for all the wrong reasons. There are some folks who like the externals offered in FV worship because their internals are such a mess. There is a pastoral awareness of this kind of temptation (I call it “sunny and affectionate cynicism”) that is really most necessary. When FV pastors are ministering to those who have been genuinely beat up by “soul-searching preaching”— a thirteen part series on the sin of coveting your neighbor’s new snow shovel—the temptation is to think that all refugees from that kind of thing must be genuine. But there are plenty of people in the world who could benefit from any kind of soul-searching preaching, including a Larger Catechism approach to the snow shovel problem. They will flee from any kind of preaching that gets at their innards, and they will gravitate to worship services where someone important gets to walk around dressed up like Saruman. In my mind, this is not an argument against liturgical worship at all. But it is an argument against liturgical worship presided over by pastoral naïfs. Pastoral wisdom cannot be universally critical or universally accepting. People are different. The cure of souls cannot take a “one-size-fits-all” approach. Affectionate cynicism is in order. One time when my grandson Rory was about two years old, the adults were sitting around in the living room after Sabbath dinner. We were having a good time visiting with guests, and in that setting, Rory came barreling out into the living room and announced to his father Nate, “I love Jesus.” The same suspicious thought came into my mind and into his father’s mind at right about the same moment. The guests were saying awwhhh while Nate headed off to the back of the house to see what his son had broken. It turned out in that case that nothing had been broken, and that Rory really did love Jesus. And so should we all. DOCTRINE 101 The Federal Vision (in one easy lesson) Douglas Wilson LET’S START with the name, and the fact of the name. The Federal Vision was the title of a pastors’ conference in January of 2002 at Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church in Monroe, Louisiana. This is why the controversy is also called by the name of Auburn Avenue. This happened because conferences need to have titles, and not because there was a desire on the part of the participants to create yet another faction within the Church. When controversy arose the following summer over what had been said at the conference, the name of the conference stuck as a label for the points being made. What does the phrase Federal Vision mean, then? The word federal comes from the Latin word foedus, which means covenant. Vision obviously refers to seeing, and perhaps to seeing on a grand scale, and so the Federal Vision wants to urge believers to see the world through covenantal eyes. The Federal Vision expresses a desire for a more rigorously consistent covenantal theology. In this respect, the Federal Vision is an answer to prayer, God’s gracious fulfillment of a promise He has made to those who fear Him. “The secret of the LORD is with them that fear him; and he will shew them his covenant” (Ps. 25:14). There is one important thing we must carry away from this passage, and that is that the covenant needs to be shown to us by God. It is not something we can attain to by our own effort—it is all the sheer grace of God. So what do we claim to see in our “vision” of the covenant? And why has it caused all this commotion? It would perhaps be more helpful to point out what we don’t see there. What we don’t see in God’s covenantal dealings is the idea of merit. One tradition in the Reformed world has seen Adam failing to merit the blessed state after his probationary testing was over. We believe that Adam was given his blessed surroundings gratis, and, had he continued in that blessed condition, that too would have been the ongoing grace of God. We believe that Adam by his disobedience forfeited what God had promised him, and his continuance in his fellowship with God was certainly conditioned upon his ongoing obedience. But we don’t believe that Adam was charged to earn anything. Grace has a backbone, and there are conditions that are attached to the grace of God. Grace does not cease to be grace simply because we are charged not to despise it. We see the justice and law of God as contained within His gracious character, and as fully consistent with it. His holiness is the sum total of all His attributes, and so when Adam abused the gifts that God had given to him, it was certainly appropriate for the wrath and displeasure of God to be made manifest in the history of the world since that time. But justice is not the context of God’s favor; God’s favor and grace are the context of His justice. If Adam had obeyed God in the Garden, that obedience would itself have been a gift from God—all things are from His hand. Had Adam passed that probationary period of testing, the only appropriate response for him would have been to turn to God and give thanks for his deliverance. This being the case, it cannot be that Adam would have been able to operate as an autonomous agent, laying a claim of raw justice against God. Adam could not have said, “God, I owe You no thanks for this achievement at all. I did this all by myself, but I do thank You for the opportunity You provided to me to demonstrate what I could do without Your help.” In short, we reject the idea that Adam could have functioned autonomously and obediently. All attempted autonomy on the part of creatures is always sinful. Adam could eat the fruit autonomously, but he could not refrain from eating it obediently in an autonomous fashion. That’s it? Is that that nub of the matter between the Federal Vision and its critics? Yes, that’s it. There are other issues, certainly, but they all flow, one way or another, out of this one. If you believe that Adam was “on his own” as he tried to navigate the difficult task of staying away from the tree in the middle of the Garden, then you are a critic of the Federal Vision. If you believe that Adam should have obeyed God by continuing to trust and rest in Him, and that striking out “on his own” is what got us into all this trouble, then in principle you are in sympathy with the Federal Vision. I said that the other issues flow out of this one. Let me take a couple of samples to try to show how this is the case. If you assume that grace and favor is the default position that God has, then we as imitators of our God will do the same. When children are born into our covenant homes, we will tend to believe that they are accepted and beloved, without them having to earn anything, without them having “to prove it.” I was watching my nine-month-old grandson Seamus sitting quietly on our front lawn yesterday, being covenantally faithful to the best of his ability. He did not have to earn his position there, and he did not have to attain to it. No climbing was involved. He did not have to work for it—it was just a gift. We baptized him without his permission, and he will be brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Now he will have to continue in this grace, and he will be repeatedly charged throughout the course of his life not to rebel against it. But he is accepted already. He was born accepted, just like Adam was created accepted. This is why there is no covenantal barrier between Seamus and the Lord’s Table. So “Things to be pinned” Volume 19/3 7 DOCTRINE 101 paedocommunionists are replicating in their homes and churches the same attitude that they believe God took with our first parents in the Garden. Sheer gift, and all glory to God. We may not throw away the gift, but holding on to a gift by faith is not the same thing as earning it. And those who do not believe in paedocommunion are requiring their children to replicate in their lives the pattern that they believe was in the Garden at the first. God’s grace gives the opportunity to follow Him, but you are not enrolled as one of those followers until you pass a test. Let’s take another example—the charge that the Federal Vision overemphasizes the sacraments, making too much out of them. How does this root difference of views about the Fall of our first parents in the Garden affect our view of the sacraments now? It is the same kind of thing that we saw with paedocommunion. Our assumption is that the sacraments are signs and seals of God’s grace, indications of His standing favor. We should therefore come to them with gladness, and we should come frequently. God is being good to us in the sacraments. We promote weekly communion, for example, for this reason. Now we know that people can and do abuse the grace that God offers in the sacraments. We do not believe that they automatically save anyone, apart from evangelical repentance and faith. Of course not. But this does not move us from our default assumption of fundamental grace. Grace abused is terrible judgment indeed, but we never want to forget that the fall was a fall from grace. The starting point is always grace. The position that the Federal Vision is resisting is the default assumption that we are always in trouble. We should come to the Lord’s Table in faith, confident that we are accepted in the Beloved. We should not come to the Table expecting to be yelled at. If we approach the sacraments as though they were a lit stick of dynamite, we have a faulty view of God. Indeed, we have a faulty view of His holiness. Of course, as said earlier, grace has a backbone. A man in the midst of an adulterous affair who is coming to the Table should be fearful. The man who abuses God’s grace with a high hand should not confuse that grace with senile indulgence. Our God is a consuming fire. But He is not a consuming fire for those who approach the throne of grace with boldness. Getting the merit question straight also helps understand the debates and discussions over sola fide. If we are justified by faith alone, and we are, then what role do our good works play? As seen elsewhere in this issue, there is some discussion and disagreement on this point among the Federal Vision proponents themselves. But whatever that relation, it needs to be remembered that in the Federal Vision there is a universal hostility toward meritorious good works. If we uniformly deny that the unfallen Adam could have merited his reward, how would it be possible for any of us to think that a forgiven sinner could merit anything? One last caveat. The Federal Vision does represent a different way of working through some basic theological problems in the modern Reformed tradition. At the same time, there are no fundamental innovations here—these positions represent a current in the Reformed river that has been present from Calvin down to the present. Some of the vocabulary is different from what twenty-first century Calvinists are used to, and, as I have shown, one of the fundamental assumptions we have does collide with another tradition within the Reformed ranks. But the notion that this represents a stream of thought entirely outside the Reformed faith is risible. All the FV representatives that I know are fivepoint Calvinists, they all believe in the absolute predestination of God, and they all believe that we are justified by faith from first to last. cherry blossom spins dropping charges, elusive, brave debate partner Nathan Wilson 8 “Things to be wrastled” Volume 19/3 STATEMENT A Joint Federal Vision Profession: Greetings in the Lord. MANY of us who have signed this statement are also confessionally bound to the Three Forms of Unity or to the Westminster Confession of Faith. The following brief statement therefore should be understood as being in harmony with those other confessional commitments, a supplement to them, and not an example of generating another system of doctrine. In any place where statements here would constitute an exception to whatever confessional standards we are under, they are exceptions that have been noted and approved by our respective presbyteries or classes. We have sought to maintain an eagerness to submit our teaching to our respective presbyteries for their evaluation, and see this statement as consistent with that desire. In addition, in the books, articles, and websites that are part of the broader Federal Vision discussion, there are many issues being discussed and distinctive positions held that are not addressed below. We have limited ourselves here to those issues that have been a significant part of recent controversy, or which, in our view, have silently contributed to it. This statement represents the views of those who drafted it, contributed to it, and signed it. It should not be taken as a confessional statement by any ecclesiastical assembly or body, particularly the CREC. There are things stated here which do not represent the views of the CREC as a whole, or of certain CREC ministers in particular. The CREC is not an FV denomination, but is rather a confederation which welcomes convictions like these as being “within the Reformed pale.” This statement therefore represents the views of the CREC men who signed it, and it represents what CREC men who could not sign it believe to be within the realm of acceptable differences. It should further be noted that not all the signatures are from the CREC. On the other side, there are many people who should be considered as full and friendly participants in the Federal Vision “conversation” who cannot sign this statement (even though they might want to) because of one or two issues— paedocommunion, say, or postmillennialism. This statement is not drawing the borders of our fellowship, and it certainly does not represent any club from which we are trying to exclude people. We offer this statement in good faith, and we pray that it will do some good in promoting unity in the broader Church. At the same time, we recognize that some of our differences with our brothers in Christ are “sub-systematic” and may not be obvious on the surface, on the level of systematic theol- ogy—what one writer described as looking like the “same theology, different religion.” We have no desire to present a “moving target,” but we do want to be teachable, willing to stand corrected, or to refine our formulations as critics point out ambiguities, confusions, or errors. We therefore ask others to accept that the following represents our honest convictions at this stage of the conversation. This statement is therefore not an attempt at evasion or trickery, but simply represents a desire to be as clear as we can be, given our circumstances. Our Triune God We affirm that the triune God is the archetype of all covenantal relations. All faithful theology and life is conducted in union with and imitation of the way God eternally is, and so we seek to understand all that the Bible teaches—on covenant, on law, on gospel, on predestination, on sacraments, on the Church— in the light of an explicit Trinitarian understanding. We deny that a mere formal adherence to the doctrine of the Trinity is sufficient to keep the very common polytheistic and unitarian temptations of unbelieving thought at bay. As the Waters Cover the Sea We affirm that God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but rather so that the world through Him would be saved. Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world—He is the Savior of the world. All the nations shall stream to Him, and His resting place shall be glorious. We affirm that prior to the second coming of our Lord Jesus, the earth will be as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. We deny that eschatological views are to be a test of fellowship between orthodox believers, but at the same time we hold that an orientation of faith with regard to the gospel’s triumph in history is extremely important. We deny that it is wise to imitate Abraham in his exercise of faith while declining to believe the content of what he believed—that through him all the nations of the world would be blessed, and that his descendants would be like the stars in number. The Next Christendom We affirm that Jesus Christ is the King of kings, and the Lord of lords. We believe that the Church cannot be a faithful witness to His authority without calling all nations to submit themselves to Him through baptism, accepting their responsibility to obediently learn all that He has commanded us. We affirm therefore that the Christian faith is a public faith, “Things to be pinned” Volume 19/3 9 STATEMENT encompassing every realm of human endeavor. The fulfillment of the Great Commission therefore requires the establishment of a global Christendom. confessional and/or scholastic use of words and phrases over the way the same words and phrases are used in the Bible itself. We deny that neutrality is possible in any realm, and this includes the realm of “secular” politics. We believe that the lordship of Jesus Christ has authoritative ramifications for every aspect of human existence, and that growth up into a godly maturity requires us to discover what those ramifications are in order to implement them. Jesus Christ has established a new way of being human, and it is our responsibility to grow up into it. Creeds and Confessions Scripture Cannot Be Broken We affirm that the Bible in its entirety, from Genesis to Revelation, is the infallible Word of God, and is our only ultimate rule for faith and practice. Scripture alone is the infallible and ultimate standard for Christians. We affirm further that Scripture is to be our guide in learning how to interpret Scripture, and this means we must imitate the apostolic handling of the Old Testament, paying close attention to language, syntax, context, narrative flow, literary styles, and typology—all of it integrated in Jesus Christ Himself. We deny that the Bible can be rightly understood by any hermeneutical grid not derived from the Scriptures themselves. The Proclamation of the Word We affirm that God’s Spirit has chosen the best ways to express the revelation of God and reality, and that the divine rhetoric found in Holy Scripture is designed to strike the richest of all chords in the hearers of the Word of God. For this reason, we believe that it is pastorally best to use biblical language and phrasing in the preaching and teaching of the Bible in the Church. We deny that it is necessarily unprofitable to “translate” biblical language into more “philosophical” or “scholastic” languages in order to deal with certain problems and issues that arise in the history of the Church. At the same time, we do deny that such translations are superior to or equal to the rhetoric employed by the Spirit in the text, and we believe that the employment of such hyper-specialized terminology in the regular teaching and preaching of the Church has the unfortunate effect of confusing the saints and of estranging them from contact with the biblical use of the same language. For this reason we reject the tendency to privilege the 10 “Things to be wrastled” Volume 19/3 We affirm that all who subscribe to creeds and confessions should do so with a clean conscience and honest interpretation, in accordance with the plain meaning of words and the original intent of the authors, as can best be determined. We deny that confessional commitments in any way require us to avoid using the categories and terms of Scripture, even when the confessional use of such words is necessarily more narrow and circumscribed. We deny that creedal or systematic understandings of scriptural truth can ever be given a place of parity with Scripture, or primacy over Scripture. In line with this, we continue to honor and hold to the creeds of the ancient Church and the confessions of the Reformational Church. The Divine Decrees We affirm that the triune God is exhaustively sovereign over all things, working out all things according to the counsel of His will. Because this necessarily includes our redemption in Christ, God alone receives all the glory for our salvation. Before all worlds, God the Father chose a great host of those who would be saved, and the number of those so chosen cannot be increased or diminished. In due time, Jesus of Nazareth died on the cross, and in that sacrifice He secured the salvation of all those chosen for salvation by the Father. And at some time in the earthly life of each person so chosen, the Holy Spirit brings that person to life, and enables him to persevere in holiness to the end. Those covenant members who are not elect in the decretal sense enjoy the common operations of the Spirit in varying degrees, but not in the same way that those who are elect do. We deny that the unchangeable nature of these decrees prevents us from using the same language in covenantal ways as we describe our salvation from within that covenant. We further deny this covenantal usage is “pretend” language, even where the language and terminology sometimes overlap with the language of the decrees. The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children, that we may keep the words of this law. We affirm the reality of the decrees, but deny that the decrees “trump” the covenant. We do not set them against each other, but expect them to harmonize perfectly as God works out all things in accordance with His will. STATEMENT The Church We affirm that membership in the one true Christian Church is visible and objective, and is the possession of everyone who has been baptized in the triune name and who has not been excommunicated by a lawful disciplinary action of the Church. We affirm one holy, catholic, and apostolic church, the house and family of God, outside of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation. In establishing the Church, God has fulfilled His promise to Abraham and established the Regeneration of all things. God has established this Regeneration through Christ—in Him we have the renewal of life in the fulness of life in the new age of the kingdom of God. We deny that membership in the Christian Church in history is an infallible indicator or guarantee of final salvation. Those who are faithless to their baptismal obligations incur a stricter judgment because of it. The Visible and Invisible Church We affirm that there is only one true Church, and that this Church can legitimately be considered under various descriptions, including the aspects of visible and invisible. We further affirm that the visible Church is the true Church of Christ, and not an “approximate” Church. We deny that such a distinction excludes other helpful distinctions, such as the historical church and eschatological church. The historical Church generally corresponds to the visible Church—all those who profess the true religion, together with their children—and the eschatological Church should be understood as the full number of God’s chosen as they will be seen on the day of resurrection. Reformed Catholicity We affirm that justification is through faith in Jesus Christ, and not through works of the law, whether those works were revealed to us by God, or manufactured by man. Because we are justified through faith in Jesus alone, we believe that we have an obligation to be in fellowship with everyone that God has received into fellowship with Himself. We deny that correct formulations of the doctrine of sola fide can be substituted for genuine faith in Jesus, or that such correct formulations can be taken as infallible indicators of a true faith in Jesus. The Covenant of Life We affirm that Adam was in a covenant of life with the triune God in the Garden of Eden, in which arrangement Adam was required to obey God completely, from the heart. We hold further that all such obedience, had it occurred, would have been rendered from a heart of faith alone, in a spirit of loving trust. Adam was created to progress from immature glory to mature glory, but that glorification too would have been a gift of grace, received by faith alone. We deny that continuance in this covenant in the Garden was in any way a payment for work rendered. Adam could forfeit or demerit the gift of glorification by disobedience, but the gift or continued possession of that gift was not offered by God to Adam conditioned upon Adam’s moral exertions or achievements. In line with this, we affirm that until the expulsion from the Garden, Adam was free to eat from the tree of life. We deny that Adam had to earn or merit righteousness, life, glorification, or anything else. The Sacrament of Baptism We affirm that God formally unites a person to Christ and to His covenant people through baptism into the triune Name, and that this baptism obligates such a one to lifelong covenant loyalty to the triune God, each baptized person repenting of his sins and trusting in Christ alone for his salvation. Baptism formally engrafts a person into the Church, which means that baptism is into the Regeneration, that time when the Son of Man sits upon His glorious throne (Matt. 19:28). We deny that baptism automatically guarantees that the baptized will share in the eschatological Church. We deny the common misunderstanding of baptismal regeneration—i.e. that an “effectual call” or rebirth is automatically wrought in the one baptized. Baptism apart from a growing and living faith is not saving, but rather damning. But we deny that trusting God’s promise through baptism elevates baptism to a human work. God gives baptism as assurance of His grace to us personally, as our names are spoken when we are baptized. The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper We affirm that by faithful use of the humble but glorious elements of bread and wine (remaining such), we are being grown up into a perfect unity with our Head, the Lord Jesus. Unless there has been lawful disciplinary action by the Church, we affirm that any baptized person, children included, should be welcome at the Table. We deny that the Supper is merely symbolic, but we also deny that any metaphysical changes are wrought in the bread or wine. We believe in the real presence of Christ with His people in the Supper, but we deny the local presence of Christ in the elements. “Things to be pinned” Volume 19/3 11 STATEMENT Union with Christ and Imputation We affirm Christ is all in all for us, and that His perfect sinless life, His suffering on the cross, and His glorious resurrection are all credited to us. Christ is the new Adam, obeying God where the first Adam did not obey God. And Christ as the new Israel was baptized as the old Israel was, was tempted for 40 days as Israel was for 40 years, and as the greater Joshua He conquered the land of Canaan in the course of His ministry. This means that through Jesus, on our behalf, Israel has finally obeyed God and has been accepted by Him. We affirm not only that Christ is our full obedience, but also that through our union with Him we partake of the benefits of His death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and enthronement at the right hand of God the Father. We deny that faithfulness to the gospel message requires any particular doctrinal formulation of the “imputation of the active obedience of Christ.” What matters is that we confess that our salvation is all of Christ, and not from us. Law and Gospel We affirm that those in rebellion against God are condemned both by His law, which they disobey, and His gospel, which they also disobey. When they have been brought to the point of repentance by the Holy Spirit, we affirm that the gracious nature of all God’s words becomes evident to them. At the same time, we affirm that it is appropriate to speak of law and gospel as having a redemptive and historical thrust, with the time of the law being the old covenant era and the time of the gospel being the time when we enter our maturity as God’s people. We further affirm that those who are first coming to faith in Christ frequently experience the law as an adversary and the gospel as deliverance from that adversary, meaning that traditional evangelistic applications of law and gospel are certainly scriptural and appropriate. We deny that law and gospel should be considered as hermeneutics, or treated as such. We believe that any passage, whether indicative or imperative, can be heard by the faithful as good news, and that any passage, whether containing gospel promises or not, will be heard by the rebellious as intolerable demand. The fundamental division is not in the text, but rather in the human heart. Justification by Faith Alone We affirm we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone. Faith alone is the hand which is given to us by God so that we may receive the offered grace of God. Justification is God’s forensic declaration that we are counted as righteous, with our sins forgiven, for the sake of Jesus Christ alone. 12 “Things to be wrastled” Volume 19/3 We deny that the faith which is the sole instrument of justification can be understood as anything other than the only kind of faith which God gives, which is to say, a living, active, and personally loyal faith. Justifying faith encompasses the elements of assent, knowledge, and living trust in accordance with the age and maturity of the believer. We deny that faith is ever alone, even at the moment of the effectual call. Assurance of Salvation We affirm that those who have been justified by God’s grace through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are saved to the uttermost and will spend eternity with Christ and his saints in glory forever. We affirm also that though salvation is granted through the instrument of faith alone, those who have been justified will live progressively more and more sanctified lives until they go to be with God. Those believers for whom this is true look to Christ for their assurance—in the Word, in the sacraments, in their fellow believers, and in their own participation in that life by faith. We deny that anyone who claims to have faith but who lives in open rebellion against God and against his Christ has any reason to believe that he will be saved on the last day. Apostasy We affirm that apostasy is a terrifying reality for many baptized Christians. All who are baptized into the triune Name are united with Christ in His covenantal life, and so those who fall from that position of grace are indeed falling from grace. The branches that are cut away from Christ are genuinely cut away from someone, cut out of a living covenant body. The connection that an apostate had to Christ was not merely external. We deny that any person who is chosen by God for final salvation before the foundation of the world can fall away and be finally lost. The decretally elect cannot apostatize. Some Points of Intramural Disagreement The “Federal Vision” is not a monolithic movement. It has been variously described as a conversation, a broad school of thought, a series of similar questions, and so on. As the statements above would indicate, there are a number of common themes held by those who signed this statement. But there are also important areas of disagreement or ongoing discussion among those who are identified as “Federal Vision” advocates. Some of these areas would include, but not be limited to, whether or not the imputation of the active obedience of Christ (as traditionally understood) is to be affirmed in its classic form. Some of us affirm this and some do not. Another difference is whether or not personal STATEMENT regeneration represents a change of nature in the person so regenerated. Some of us say yes while others question whether we actually have such an “essence” that can be changed. All of us would affirm that we should have a high view of covenant renewal liturgy, but this does not necessarily mean that we all agree on how “high” the liturgy should actually be. Some of us are comfortable using the language of justification to describe the “deliverdict” of the last day, while others would prefer to describe it in other ways. That said, we are all agreed that no one is justified at any time because they personally have earned or merited anything. Some of us robustly affirm Christ's unique merit in His person and work as the answer to our demerit. Others think there are better words to describe the value and worthiness of Christ’s sacrifice without recourse to the term “merit” because it is not biblical language, and its use both in the history of the church and currently shows that it can cause confusion. Any doctrine mentioned in the previous sections can be fairly represented as part of the Federal Vision. Issues in this last section cannot be fairly represented as the view of the whole. Our prayer is that this statement will help to bring clarity to a subject that been confused because of the noise of controversy. “Endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace . . .” (Eph. 4:3). John Barach (minister, CREC) Randy Booth (minister, CREC) Tim Gallant (minister, CREC) Mark Horne (minister, PCA) Jim Jordan (minister, teacher at large) Peter Leithart (minister, PCA) Rich Lusk (minister, CREC) Jeff Meyers (minister, PCA) Ralph Smith (minister, CREC) Steve Wilkins (minister, PCA) Douglas Wilson (minister, CREC) Ministerial Conference 2007 Online Registration: www.christkirk.com/ministerial Against Christianity: The Church as Politics October 17-19 University Inn/Best Western, Moscow, Idaho Call Chris LaMoreaux at the church office for further details - 208-882-2034. Topics include: From Cain to the Consummation, Peter Leithart Assuming the Center, Doug Wilson Which Tribal Religion is the Republican Party? Doug Jones The Time of the Church, Peter Leithart Outside in, Inside out, Peter Leithart A Trinitarian Reading of the Cold War, Doug Jones The Centrality of Story in Politics, Doug Wilson How Can Small Churches Make Richer, Deeper Communities? Doug Jones The Festive Center, Peter Leithart Worship Is Warfare, Doug Wilson “Things to be pinned” Volume 19/3 13 CONTRA Against the PCA GA FV Report (twenty-four variations on a response) Peter Leithart 1 IT’S LONG BEEN A FRUSTRATION that there is no forum for theological discussion and debate in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). Presbyteries sometimes devote time to such discussion, but that’s too rare. And General Assembly (GA) is simply not a place where theological debate can be expected to happen. The General Assembly debate on the Federal Vision (FV) was a case in point. Nearly two hours were devoted to the committee report, but virtually no theological claims were made or disputed. The Assembly quickly determined that justification by faith was the issue, on the assumption that some in the PCA are denying it (which is not true). Once the debate went in that direction, the outcome was predetermined, as we Calvinists like to say. We all know what we think about justification by faith; we in fact know all that needs to be known; no need to discuss; let’s vote. 2 The emperor invited Luther to speak for himself at the Diet of Worms. By that time, the Pope had already had a stack of Luther’s writings, enough to detect forty-one errors he wanted Luther to retract. Eck knew full well what Luther had written; he had a table full of books at the Diet itself. The Diet met to demand that Luther retract. But the Diet summoned Luther, personally. For reasons that Committee Chairman Paul Fowler’s convoluted explanation certainly did not clarify, the PCA study committee on the Federal Vision decided not to contact any of what R. C. Sproul called the “accused” personally. They were satisfied with a stack of papers and web printouts. It’s the kind of thing that makes you stop and say, Hmmm. 3 During the PCA debate on the Federal Vision, PCA minister David Coffin dismissed N.T. Wright’s supposed claim to have discovered the gospel that had been hidden for centuries. Coffin finds Wright’s claims dubious. I am dubious that Wright actually makes the claims that Coffin attributed to him. Wright claims to have discovered fresh insight into Paul’s letters, but he doesn’t claim, as Coffin implied, that he’s the first ever to understand Paul’s gospel. Leave that to the side. The irony of Coffin’s statement runs deep, because in the end the PCA voted in favor of the committee report in order to defend justification by faith, 14 “Things to be wrastled” Volume 19/3 which, if Alister McGrath is to be believed, is a theological innovation of the first order (a quite proper theological innovation, I should add). It’s not hard to imagine a sixteenth-century Cardinal saying, “Dr. Luther, we have known since the time of Saint Augustine that iustificare means ‘to make just.’ Are you telling us that we have been wrong for 1000 years? Are you the first to understand the gospel? I find that dubious.” 4 The Federal Vision has been about a lot of things, but one of the central pastoral issues has to do with the status of our children, what we say to them, and how we say it. From one perspective, the Federal Vision is an effort to articulate a consistent paedobaptist theology. Douglas Wilson said awhile ago that this is all about children. I agree. The pastoral import of the Federal Vision is that we can say to our children, without mental reservation, “God is your God. Trust Him, and He will be your God.” The critical edge of this is that the Federal Vision exposes the ambivalence that weakens the testimony of many Presbyterian and paedobaptist churches—the ambivalence that says both “God is your God” and also “God is maybe not your God. We can’t tell. We’ll be able to tell later. But maybe not.” FV: You know, for kids. 5 In other words, paedocommunion lurks behind the whole Federal Vision debate. Paedocommunion disambiguates the ambiguous “God is/isn’t your God” that paedobaptism without paedocommunion declares to our children. 6 In his stimulating book Liturgical Theology, Simon Chan argues that a crucial weakness of Protestant and evangelical theology is that it ends the gospel story with the ascension and doesn’t see that Pentecost and the church are integral to the evangel. This is not Jesus’ own version of the gospel. Jesus says in Luke 24 that the Old Testament is not only about the Christ, but about the preaching of repentance to all nations. Acts also recapitulates Israel’s history. Without a pneumatologically shaped ecclesiology, Chan says, Protestantism permits sociology to fill the vacuum: “If the Spirit is linked to the church in any way, it is to the invisible church, such as in the Spirit’s bringing spiritual rebirth to individuals. The visible church is largely defined sociologically, while the ‘real’ church cannot be identified with anything visible. Such an ecclesiology could only be described as docetic.” CONTRA If this is true of Protestantism in general, it’s true of certain brands of Reformed theology in spades, for which membership in the visible church is only “external” or “legal” membership in the covenant (that is, purely “sociological”). For this kind of Reformed theology, the Spirit is at work only in that circle within the circle of the church, within that invisible circle that invisibly circumscribes those who are truly (but invisibly) in the real (albeit invisible) church. The Spirit leaves the visible church as such to fend for her/itself. Chan’s proposal is no minor adjustment. Far from it. It messes with the foundations of Western ecclesiology going back far beyond the Reformation, to the time when ecclesiology first began to be framed in categories from Roman law. And it also messes with modern secularism’s belief that the church might possibly be a “merely social” society, the secular belief that the church is supernatural only in private. It subverts the secular belief that, whatever we might say about individuals, a pneumatological society is impossible. This is another perspective on the Federal Vision: It stands against sociology—more precisely, it stands against any sociology that claims to be anything other than pneumatology and ecclesiology—and stands equally, it must be said, against any pneumatology and ecclesiology that doesn’t simultaneously claim to be a sociology. The Federal Vision is an effort to elaborate the third article of the Nicene Creed. 7 The PCA Committee denies that one is elect “by virtue of” baptism. Good for them. They should condemn this kind of nonsense. But what does the denial mean? The statement is ambiguous, since “election” can refer to the general election that applies to all who are members of the chosen new Israel or to the special, eternal election of the eschatological Israel. In either case, though, election is not “by virtue of” baptism, and nobody has ever said it is. Election, in both its general and special senses, is an unconditional sovereign act of God. Baptism may express God’s election to membership in the church; but election is not dependent on baptism. 8 The PCA Federal Vision report condemns the notion that some receive saving benefits of Christ and later lose them. But this runs contrary to the PCA’s own covenant understanding of infant baptism and the statements of its own Constitution. Consider: Children of believers, Presbyterians confess, are covenant children. Presbyterians often say that God is a God to us and to our children. In fact, according to the PCA Book of Church Order (BOCO), the following statement is to be read at baptisms: “For to you is the promise, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call unto him. And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee. Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved, thou and thy house (Acts 2:39; Gen. 17:7; Acts 16:31)” (BOCO 56-5). A straightfoward reading implies that we can say to every child in a PCA church, “God has made promises to you. God is your God. You are a covenant child.” Head-for-head, we can say those things to our children, every baptized infant in the PCA. Now, is being a “covenant child” a saving benefit or not? Is having God as our God a saving benefit or not? Of course it is: Claiming God as my God is the saving benefit. Yet, no Presbyterian on earth (including me) believes that everyone who is baptized will end up sharing in the new heavens and new earth. So, our children enjoy this crucial saving benefit, but some will lose it. (Alternatively, we say what the BOCO requires, but don’t really mean it. See numbers 4-5 above.) We can push this further. If God is God to our children, does that not imply that God has forgiven and accepted them? Does it make any sense to say that God is God of our children, and yet also to say that they are children of wrath, piling up sins until they exercise personal faith? Do we say to our children, “God is your God, but He holds all your sins against you”? Ought we to say, “God is your God, but you are also a child of wrath”? The PCA constitution does not support this kind of double-speak. BOCO 56-4, alluding to 1 Corinthians 7, says that children of believers are “federally holy before Baptism, and therefore are they baptized” (BOCO 56-4, h). That the BOCO immediately says that the “inward grace and virtue of baptism is not tied to the very moment of time wherein it is administered” (BOCO 56-4, i) creates some potential dissonance. But the dissonance doesn’t undermine the statement about the holiness of covenant children. The federal holiness mentioned in 56-4, h, after all, doesn’t depend on baptism; it is the gift to the children of believers, and according to the BOCO is the basis not the result of baptism. 56-4, i doesn’t even qualify the statement about federal holiness. If our children are holy, they are accepted, cleansed; if they are holy, they have access. What else does “holy” mean? And is that not a “saving benefit”? (Alternatively, the term “federally” that qualified holiness might be defined as “not really.”) “Things to be pinned” Volume 19/3 15 CONTRA 9 Baptism has a promissory aspect. The Lord promises forgiveness and life in the Word, and calls hearers to faith. Baptism is a ritual form of the same promise, offering this gift to me by name, and baptism calls the baptized to trust the God who has baptized him. Baptism not only offers gifts, however, but confers gifts, and it confers some gifts on all the baptized, reprobate and elect. Baptism is itself a gift. Whether or not the baptized ever believes, the Father has personally addressed him, personally and directly promised life in the Son by the Spirit. God does not address everyone in this direct and personal manner. To be so addressed is a privilege, a mercy, a gift of grace, a wholly unmerited favor. It’s often said that those who are baptized but never believe haven’t received the offered gift. That’s one way to say it, and gets at the truth that those who do not believe never received the gift rightly, since they despise the Giver. Another way to say it is that they have received the gift, but abused it. They have, after all, received baptism. Baptism is just there, as real as the drops of water streaming down the head. If baptism itself is a gift, the baptized inevitably receives at least this gift when he’s baptized, whether he responds rightly to it or not. In receiving baptism, the baptized receive a great deal more. The baptized person is brought into the community of the church, which is the body of Christ. That’s a gift. The baptized is made a member of the family of the Father. That’s a gift. The baptized is separated from the world and identified before the world as a member of Christ’s people. That’s a gift. The baptized is enlisted in Christ’s army, invested to be Christ’s servant, made a member of the royal priesthood, given a station in the royal court, branded as a sheep of Christ’s flock. All that is gift. All this is not only offered but conferred on the baptized. All this he receives simply by virtue of being baptized. Some will spurn the gift. Some will say, “I don’t believe I belong to Christ. I don’t believe I’m a sheep of His flock, or a soldier in His retinue.” Some will enlist enthusiastically for a time, and then go AWOL. But their failure is not a failure to receive a gift. Their failure is a failure to use it rightly. 10 According to the PCA Federal Vision Study Committee, the Westminster Confession condemns the view that people can receive saving benefits from Christ temporarily. Does the Apostle Peter conform to the Westminster Standards as interpreted by the Federal Vision Study Committee? 16 “Things to be wrastled” Volume 19/3 At the beginning of his second epistle, Peter says that “divine power” has granted “everything pertaining to life and godliness” (1:3). God communicates the life and godliness that results from His power “through the knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence” (1:3), presumably Jesus (cf. 1:16). This knowledge is clearly not just intellectual or doctrinal, but personal knowledge of the Savior and Lord Jesus. The result is both positive and negative: We are promised that we will be made “partakers of divine nature” and we are promised that God’s power will deliver us from “the corruption that is in the world by lust” (1:4). A cluster of the same terms appears at the end of chapter 2: * Peter speaks of some who have “escaped” (apophugontes), using the same form of the same verb found in 1:4. * In 2:20, the people Peter talks about have escaped the miasma tou kosmou, the “miasma of the world.” Peter’s wording is slightly different in 1:4: We have escaped the “in-theworld-by-lust-corruption,” and “corruption” is phthoras rather than miasma. The thought in the two passages is very similar, however. (I suspect that “world” here refers to Judaism, and that there’s an implicit analogy with the exodus.) * In 2:20, the instrument for escaping the miasma of the world is the “knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” This is the same instrument God uses for communicating grace and peace (1:2) and for granting life and godliness (1:3). It is the same knowledge by which we grow in grace (3:18). It is possible, further, that 2:21’s reference to the “way of righteousness” should be personalized—knowing the way of righteousness is knowing the Righteous One who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Peter, in short, uses very similar language to describe the people in 1:3–4 and 2:20. Both have escaped from the world; both have escaped from the world through the knowledge of Jesus. There are differences, to be sure: Peter does not say that God has granted “everything pertaining to life and godliness” to those in 2:20. But the similarities are striking: The people in 2:20 know Jesus, and receive some benefit from that knowledge. But those benefits are temporary. While those Peter describes in chapter 1 grow from faith to virtue to knowledge to self-control, and so on, the people in 2:20 don’t remain in the way of righteousness. They return to the miasma of the world, and their last state is worse than the first (2:20b–22). They are people who have failed to grow because they have “forgotten purification from former sins” (1:9). So, again, my question: Does the Apostle Peter conform to the Westminster Standards as interpreted by the Federal Vision Study Committee? CONTRA 11 Of all the declarations of the PCA Federal Vision Study Report, the most mystifying is the one that reaffirms justification by faith and rejects final justification according to works. This became the central issue in the “debate” on the floor of GA, and this was likely the reason for the resounding support for the report. It’s mystifying first because, R.C. Sproul to the contrary, justification by faith is not being challenged. It’s also mystifying because the Westminster Confession, part of the constitution of the PCA, clearly teaches judgment according to works (33.1): “In which day, not only the apostate angels shall be judged, but likewise all persons that have lived upon earth shall appear before the tribunal of Christ, to give an account of their thoughts, words, and deeds; and to receive according to what they have done in the body, whether good or evil.” The committee, by contrast, says, “The view that justification is in any way based on our works, or that the socalled ‘final verdict of justification’ is based on anything other than the perfect obedience and satisfaction of Christ received through faith alone, is contrary to the Westminster Standards.” These two statements are, to put it delicately, hard to square with each other. Perhaps the committee is using “justification” or “final verdict of justification” in a sense different from how I understand those. When anyone associated with the Federal Vision says “final verdict of justification,” they mean “final judgment.” Perhaps, too, the committee is emphasizing the “based on” part of its statement. The argument might be this: “Good works are not the ultimate cause of God’s final justification of the righteous. They merely serve as evidence of genuine faith.” That is a quite traditional view, but even on this view the final judgment is “based on” works in the same way that every judgment in a court is supposed to be “based on” evidence. It appears that the committee condemns the very view that WCF 33.1 articulates, since the Confession says explicitly that what we receive at the final judgment will be “according to what they have done,” which is something other than the “perfect obedience and satisfaction of Christ received through faith alone.” 12 Revelation 20:11–15 is widely taken as a scene of final judgment. Despite some potential preterist doubts, it does appear to be a final judgment scene. It comes after the millennium, and the ones to be judged are raised from the dead. The dead in verse 12 includes all the dead, not only the wicked dead. The names of some of the dead are found written in the book of life, and they escape the lake of fire. Those names not written are tossed into the lake of fire, with death and Hades. Twice in this passage, John says that the dead are judged according to their works. They “were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds” (v. 12); and “they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds” (v. 13). Would John fall afoul of the Westminster Standards as interpreted by the Federal Vision Study Committee? As the prooftexts to WCF 33.1 show, this is the consistent teaching of Old and New Testaments: Ecclesiastes 12:14: “For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.” Matthew 12:36–37: “But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.” Romans 2:16: “In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel.” Romans 14:10, 12: “But why dost thou judge thy brother? or why dost thou set at nought thy brother? for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.… So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God.” 2 Corinthians 5:10: “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.” Not to mention John 5:28–29: “for an hour is coming, in which all who are in the tombs will hear His voice, and will come forth; those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment.” Or 1 Corinthians 4:5: “Therefore do not go on passing judgment before the time, but wait until the Lord comes who will both bring to light the things hidden in the darkness and disclose the motives of men’s hearts; and then each man’s praise will come to him from God.” I haven’t been able to find a single text that plausibly talks about final judgment—or about temporal judgments for that matter—that says anything different. God renders and will render to each according to what he has done. Works may be “merely” evidence, but God’s final judgment will be based on this evidence, and not the evidence of Christ’s personal obedience in the flesh. “Things to be pinned” Volume 19/3 17 CONTRA 13 It’s been suggested that there is some conflict between my denial of human merit and my defense of judgment according to works. There is no conflict. There is not even a tension. Nary a whisper. We are judged, after all, according to works that are entirely gifts from God. The life we live in the flesh—the life of action and doing—is lived by faith in the Son of God who lives in me. As Augustine said, when God rewards our works, He is simply crowning His own works. At the judgment, the Father gives judgment into the hands of the Son, who approves the works we have done, which have been produced by the Spirit. God the Father looked at the fruit trees springing from the ground (the ground having produced them) on the third day, turned to the Son and Spirit, and said, “That’s good. Well done, good and faithful dirt.” At the final judgment, the Son will approve what we have done, which is the effect and fruit of the Spirit working in us: “That’s good. Well done, good and faithful men-of-dirt.” We are not rewarded because we have earned the reward, because we have done so well that we have staked a claim on God. There’s no merit here any more than there was for Adam. We receive a reward of grace, just as Adam would have if he had remained faithful. On the other hand, there is a tension between a meritorious covenant with Adam and judgment according to works. On this paradigm, evaluation according to works is the standard in Eden but never after. From the garden’s gate to the final judgment, we are evaluated only according to imputed righteousness. On this view, saying that we are judged by works is saying that we have merited eternal salvation. Based on this view, many in the PCA condemn the Federal Vision for undermining justification by faith. But that criticism only holds if the Federal Vision believes that human works can be meritorious. But that’s precisely the view that the Federal Vision has been questioning. Ergo, the Federal Vision support for judgment according to works poses no danger to justification by faith alone. None. No more than Romans 2:13 poses a threat to Romans 3:2131. 14 Does judgment according to works contradict the gospel? Does it reintroduce law back in the covenant of grace at the last minute? Is judgment according to works God’s final “Gotcha”? Not at all. Judgment according to works is part of the gospel. Paul hopes for the day when “according to my gospel, 18 “Things to be wrastled” Volume 19/3 God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus” (Rom 2:16), a judgment that will “render to every man according to his deeds” (Rom. 2:6, quoting Psalm 62:12). This is good news because Jesus, in contrast to all human authorities, will “judge the world in righteousness” (Acts 17:31). Not at all, again. Judgment according to our deeds does not reintroduce law, because the promise that God will produce good deeds in us is a central gospel promise. This is the new covenant, that Yahweh will “put My laws into their minds, and I will write them upon their hearts” (Hebrews 8:10, quoting Jeremiah 31). The Spirit is given to enable us to walk in the statues and commandments of God (Ezekiel 36:27), so that the “righteous requirement of the law may be fulfilled in us, who walk according to the Spirit and not according to the flesh” (Rom. 8:4). Of course, all our works are tainted by our prior sins, our continuing sins, the remnants of the flesh in us. Of course, our works are acceptable only in Christ. Of course, the gospel is about the forgiveness of sins and standing before God in Christ the Righteous One. But our works are acceptable, and we really do good works because God is at work in us to do His will. The good news is that Christ the Righteous One in whom we stand will, by the power of His Spirit, renew us in righteousness. The good news is about a law written with the Spirit on the tablets of human hearts, not on stone. The gospel is about God giving us hearts that are not stone but flesh. This has a couple of important implications. It means that our works are just as much a matter of grace-throughfaith as our right standing with God. God has promised that He will produce fruit in us by His Spirit. We trust Him for that, ask Him to do it more and more, believe Him as we receive the various gifts He gives us to cultivate this fruit— baptism, the table, the word, fellowship, the guidance of elders—in short, the church. It also means that a judgment that is not according to works is in tension with the gospel. This is subtle, but consider: God promises to produce good fruit in His people by His Spirit. He gave His Son on the cross, raised Him from the dead, and poured out the Spirit on us, for precisely that reason. He says He’s going to do it. Suppose we get to the final judgment, and we haven’t produced the fruit of good works by reliance on the Spirit. Suppose we get to the final judgment, and God finds that the Spirit has not caused the people of God to walk in the ways of His commandments and statues after all. Suppose we get to the final judgment and God discovers, to His surprise, that this gospel promise has not been fulfilled. Will God say, “Well, that didn’t quite work. You really didn’t produce any good fruit. Turns out the flesh beat the CONTRA Spirit in the end. Not what I expected. Guess I’ll let you in, but only because of Jesus’ obedience, not your own.” It’s a caricature, of course. Nobody teaches this. But it’s a caricature with a point. Under those circumstances, has God made good on His promise? Under those circumstances, has God kept the promise He made in the gospel that His Spirit will make us walk in His ways? If no one can stand in the judgment when his Spirit-induced works are judged, hasn’t the gospel promise failed? Of course, no need to worry. God’s promises are Yes and Amen in Jesus. He’s kept them all, and He’s going to keep this one too. And when He comes to the end of it all, He will delight in His works, the Triune works which wholly envelop ours. 15 Is the denial of judgment according to works implicitly binitarian? If we are judged according to Christ’s imputed righteousness, then at the judgment, Jesus’ works are approved but not ours. The judgment is Father-Son. Where’s the Spirit? If our works are the works of the Spirit in us, then their approval is the Son’s final judgment about the Spirit, the vindication of the Spirit as the Spirit of righteousness. At the final judgment, the Son, speaking the Father’s final word as the Incarnate Word, will say that the Spirit did everything expected of Him. The Spirit will be able to join with the Son in saying, “It is finished.” If judgment is not according to works, when is the Spirit finally vindicated? When do the Father and Son say, “Well done, good and faithful Spirit”? (I’m not, for the record, claiming that those who differ on this point are non-Trinitarians. I’m simply suggesting that they haven’t worked through the implications of Trinitarian theology as thoroughly as they might.) 16 The Father has put judgment into the hands of the Son (John 5), and God the Father has appointed a day on which the Risen Son will judge all men (Acts 17:31). The judge of all will be a Man, as Paul says in Acts 17. According to the PCA Federal Vision Study Committee, the “so-called final verdict of justification” is based entirely on “the perfect obedience and satisfaction of Christ received through faith alone.” Doesn’t that mean that Jesus is passing judgment on His own obedience? And isn’t that slightly odd? Doesn’t Jesus seek His Father’s approval, rather than His own? 17 Luther illustrates justification with the image of a mortally sick man and his doctor. The doctor is so certain that he is going to heal the patient that he declares him well already, and tells the patient to consider himself well. The patient trusts the doctor so thoroughly that he considers himself well now, takes all the medicine prescribed, and looks eagerly to the time when he’s finally healed. (Scot Hafemann, incidentally, has argued that Paul’s doctrine of justification is very like this.) Though this parable doesn’t capture everything that the Bible says about justification, it neatly captures a number of things: * The patient is, in the present, simultaneously sick and well. Sick in that he is not wholly healed, well in the judgment of the doctor and in his own trusting judgment. * The patient’s “status” is that of “well.” That’s what the doctor puts on his chart. The patient accepts this judgment because he trusts the doctor, not because of the condition of his own body or his self-diagnosis. * Justification on this view is a verdict or judgment already passed. The patient is well. That’s how the doctor regards him, and how the patient should regard himself. But he is well in spe, in hope. This “verdict” points to the final state of the patient, which is one of complete healing. The faith that receives justification is the assurance of things hoped for, the substance of things not seen. * The present judgment of health in this parable is grounded in the future state of the patient. The doctor saying “you are well” depends on his confident “I will heal you.” But notice that the future state of the patient is not the product of the patient’s own doing at all. It’s all the doctor’s doing. The doctor doesn’t pronounce the patient healthy because he knows the patient has the capacity to make himself healthy. The patient doesn’t have that capacity, which is why the patient has to rely completely on the doctor. The physician pronounces the patient well because of the doctor’s confidence in his own healing powers. All the patient can do is trust the doctor, take his medicine, and look ahead to his recovery. * The doctor’s “verdict” on the patient is also a commitment to see the patient through to complete healing. On Luther’s analogy, then, the verdict of justification is not only a statement about the present status of the person justified. The verdict is also a promise about what the Physician will do for the person. In saying “You are right in Christ,” the Father is also saying “And I have given my Spirit to make you righteous in fact.” Justification is God’s pronouncement that things are right; and it is likewise His utter commitment, His commitment of His Triune self, that He will not rest until things are set right. “Things to be pinned” Volume 19/3 19 CONTRA Is this promissory aspect of justification sufficiently appreciated in Reformed churches? 18 Did Adam have to exercise faith in the garden, prior to sin? Of course. He was a creature. Creatures are utterly dependent on the Creator for everything, absolutely everything. That’s what it means to be a creature. An utterly dependent being is a being whose stance must be one of expectant trust. God said, “Eat from the trees.” Can Adam produce the fruit? No. He had to trust God for food. God said, “It’s not good for man to be alone.” Could Adam find a helper suitable to him? No. He had to trust God. God put Adam into deep sleep and tore him in two. Adam has to entrust himself to Yahweh just as surely as Abraham did when Yahweh told him to sacrifice Isaac. Adam went into deep sleep exercising the faith of Hebrews 11—hoping for something delightful that he had not yet seen. Denying that Adam had to exercise faith is an implicit denial of his creaturehood. 19 If some of the baptized end up in hell, how can baptism be an instrument of assurance? Might as well ask the same question about the Word: If some who hear the Word end up in hell, how can the Word be an instrument of assurance? In both cases, the answer is this: Baptism and the Word fail to assure when those who receive the promise do not believe it, or do not continue to believe it. Baptism and the Word fail to bring assurance to people who regard God as a liar. We get into problems when we look for some ground of assurance more solid, certain, and well-grounded than the promise of God. But there is no better ground for assurance than the mercy of God. Baptism is God’s promise to me, personally, by name. I know that God has promised Himself to me because I know that I was baptized. I’m just supposed to believe that, rely on it. That’s the way of assurance. If I’m looking for some way to peek over God’s shoulder (or my own) and see if He really promised Himself to me, I’m looking for something more solidly reliable than the promise of God. If I look for something else, I’m looking for the real God behind the God-who-promises. But there is no other God, and the attempt to find one is simple, straightforward idolatry. Nor is there any backdoor 20 “Things to be wrastled” Volume 19/3 entrance to His presence. We don’t need to find a back alley entry (discovering whether we are elect, having some kind of indubitable experience of assurance) because God left the front door wide open. That’s the gospel; it’s the gospel of the open door. God faces us in Jesus, who is the Face of the Father, offers promises, assures us in Word and water and wine of His self-commitment to us. We have only to believe it. 20 It may seem that emphasizing the promissory nature of baptism and the Supper is a reversion from the Reformation. On the contrary: in popular medieval piety, no common believer could have assurance simply by hearing the promises of God, receiving baptism, receiving the Supper (which he rarely did anyway). To have real assurance, they had to find a mystical backdoor to God. The Reformers said that God has come near to us and that His promises are true. God hasn’t hidden Himself. The gospel says, “He’s come out of hiding; He’s come in the flesh of Jesus; He’s shown Himself.” And this available God has made Himself available to the ending of the world through His Spirit in Word and Sacrament. The Reformation was about closing the back door and locking it tight. The Reformation was about letting people come in the front. That’s the pastoral program the Federal Vision attempts to continue. 21 Imagine you’re a sharp young New Testament scholar of Reformed conviction, who wants to engage the latest New Testament scholarship fairly, critically, and appreciatively where appropriate. Imagine you’re a theologian of Reformed inclinations who’s looking for a place to do creative theological work. Imagine you’re a Reformed Old Testament scholar who wants his Old Testament scholarship to inform his theology in a vigorous manner. Imagine you’re a theologian who thinks that there are still things to be discovered in Scripture, even about settled Reformed convictions like justification by faith and election. Imagine you’re a theologian who loves Luther and Calvin and the Puritans, and the Westminster Confession, and The Three Forms, and yet doesn’t believe they said everything or said everything as well as it might be said. If you were one of these, and you were looking for an ecclesiastical place to raise your flag, where would you go? What Reformed denomination would be attractive to you? What Reformed denomination would leave you room to serve the church in freedom? CONTRA 22 I confess. I have read a good bit of N. T. Wright, and appreciate much of what he has to say. His books on Jesus opened the gospels for me in ways that nothing else did. Wright, for those who don’t know, is a bishop in the Church of England. I confess. John Milbank, another Anglican, was my dissertation advisor, and his Theology and Social Theory is a fairly constant presence in my theology. I confess. Russian Orthodox liturgist Alexander Schmemann’s For the Life of the World is one of my favorite books. I confess. I have read Lutheran Robert Jenson with profit, albeit mixed with a good bit of puzzlement. And I’ll keep confessing. I find Henri de Lubac’s books, particularly Catholicism, Medieval Exegesis, and Corpus Mysticum, awe-inspiring both in breadth of scholarship and in theological depth. Geoffrey Wainwright, a Methodist, has written some admirable books on liturgy, and I started reading Stanley Hauerwas before he became Anglican. Of course, I learn a great deal from Reformed writers too: from centuries past, I’ve learned from Calvin especially, and from the present I have learned much from Cornelius Van Til, John Frame, Vern Poythress, Richard Gaffin, Michael Horton, Kevin Vanhoozer, and so on. If I came for ordination in a PCA Presbytery with such a reading list, could I be ordained? Would I have to hide my reading of Milbank and Wright? 23 Among other things, the Federal Vision has been an effort to articulate a Reformed catholicity, and the fight in the PCA is in part a fight between catholicity and sectarianism. The massive vote at GA against the Federal Vision was, to put it gently, not a vote in favor of catholicity. 24 According to Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy’s cross of reality, individuals are always stretched out on a cross, in four directions—to the past and to the future, to the inside and to the outside. Growth and maturity come when we endure the cross in confidence that when we are torn to pieces we will yet be revived, that our death on the cross of reality is the gateway to life. Like Jesus, we are glorified through the cross. Churches are also on the cross. Churches are called to remain faithful to the past while also boldly embracing the novelty of the future; called to cultivate a distinctive language and culture inside the community, while also listening attentively to voices from outside. Life would be much easier if we could ignore one or the other poles of the cross. Life would be much easier if we could retreat to a pure in-group and ignore everybody else, everybody who disagrees with us. Life would be much easier if we could rest in the securities of the past rather than face the uncertainties of the future. Life is easier off the cross, but if we get off the cross, we will never grow up. At the 2007 General Assembly, the PCA showed its adolescent desire to come down from the cross, retreating into the safety of the past and denouncing those willing to listen attentively (if critically) to voices outside. This is safe. This is easy. But this is not the path to greater maturity or deepening reformation. Because unless we are torn, we will never grow, or grow up. Unless we are torn in all four directions, we’re bound to stay children forever. peach petals floating, now drift down on the water, ah, presbytery! Douglas Wilson “Things to be pinned” Volume 19/3 21 PRESBYTERION Can a Nature/Grace Dualism Be Born Again? Douglas Wilson A FEW YEARS AGO I read Harold Bloom’s The American Religion with great interest. He makes many points which I thought quite compelling, the main one being that the American approach to religious faith is fundamentally gnostic. He, being a gnostic himself (p. 30), thinks this is all to the good, while I, not being a gnostic, am not cool with it. At the same time, since he is a gnostic, he does us all a valuable service by identifying his fellow gnostics— the same kind of service that was performed by the former Soviet Union when they opened up all their old KGB files, proving that Joe McCarthy was in the main correct—and according to Bloom his fellow gnostics are everywhere. They are found in Mormonism, the Southern Baptist Convention, Adventists, and Pentecostals. This is far more than just a glib assertion—he has a lot of evidence to support him. On what might appear to be an unrelated topic, I recently finished Peter Leithart’s very fine book on baptism, The Baptized Body, and while I was reading it, the penny dropped, and I figured out one of the sticking points in my discussions with Jim Jordan over the necessity of regeneration (covered somewhat in the following pages). This is a classic illustration of how a set of paradigmatic assumptions, like a good outboard motor, can drive the boat even though nobody can see the prop going. Leithart said this: “For Baptist practice, redemption—inclusion in the new humanity that is the church— adds a second layer of ‘religious life’ to the ‘natural life’ of creation. This is necessarily the case, since children begin their ‘natural’ life of physical and socio-cultural growth before coming to faith. This dualism of nature/culture and religion means that Christ is not in a full sense the ‘New Adam’ who inaugurates a race that will fulfill Adam’s calling to dominion” (p. 130). On the next page, he wrote, “By positing a distinction between natural life and natural teleology over and against supernatural life and supernatural teleology, and by suggesting that natural life (which includes cultural and political life) had its own integrity that needs only to be ‘completed’ by the supernatural addition of grace, scholastic theology wrote the preamble to nature and culture’s ‘declaration of independence’ from God” (p. 131). 22 “Things to be wrastled” Volume 19/3 Now stay with me, because this is where it gets fun. As an historic evangelical I insist on the absolute necessity of the new birth. And so I do. But what do Americans hear when they hear such words? What do American Christians hear? The new birth is a supernatural act, but what kind of supernatural act is it? There is a kind of “born againism” which is gnostic, which Bloom celebrates, and which Jim Jordan is leaning against. There is another kind (I am convinced) which is not at all gnostic, and does not need anybody to lean against it. If you assume that in the supernatural act of regeneration God comes down and implants a grace node in your heart, then this is a form of gnosticism, and it helps perpetuate that pestilent nature/grace dualism. But if you hold that the act of regeneration is supernatural, and that the results are entirely “natural,” then this is not gnostic. For example, Jesus exercised miraculous power when He transformed the water into wine. The act was one of supernatural power, but the wine that resulted was natural wine, and the water He started with was natural water. If the master of the feast had been a trained sommelier, he would have been able to tell by taste what vineyard that wine came from. He would have been technically wrong, of course, because it actually came from the well in the town square, but you can’t have everything. The gnostic would want the miracle to start out with water, and wind up with ambrosia, the supernatural elixir of the gods. In the biblical faith, the act is the miracle. In gnosticism, the result is the miracle. So regeneration is an act of God’s kindness and power, in which He changes me from one kind of human being (with Adam for a father) to another kind of human being (with the last Adam for a father). Before, during and after the process, I am a human being. In that respect, nothing changes. But with regard to who my father is (and regeneration always assumes generation), everything changes. In respect to how it is done, it is a miraculous intervention of God’s grace. I am not born again because something alien to the nature of humanity was implanted in me. The nature/ grace dualism creates the temptation to think that way, and, at the end of the day, we are fighting off gnosticism. Rather, I am regenerate because I was miraculously transferred from a deteriorating way of being human to another restored way of being human. It is natural water to natural wine, supernaturally done. It is not natural water to supernatural ambrosia, supernaturally done. REGENERATION Life in the Regeneration Douglas Wilson This series of thoughts was originally part of an internet discussion a few years ago with Jim Jordan over his essay Regeneration: Some Tentative Explorations. Readers familiar with Jordan’s essay will understand more of the interaction, but the thoughts contained here can still stand on their own. Since writing this, while reading Peter Leithart’s fine book The Baptized Body, some additional thoughts on this important subject occurred to me, which can be found on the previous page. THE REFORMED world is currently cooking up a perfect Irish stew controversy. Thrown into the pot have been the meaning of regeneration, imputation, and justification, the relationship of faith and works, the New Perspective on Paul, the firing of Norman Shepherd twenty years ago from Westminister Seminary, and a Presbyterian (!) newspaper charging me with having become a paedobaptist ten years ago. Part of this strange mix has been a concern to protect the historic evangelical faith with regard to the new birth. The point of this series of meditations is to offer a defense of the historic evangelical understanding of regeneration, but also to place it in a more scriptural context. That context is the Restoration of the heavens and earth that came with Jesus Christ. Hence the title—Life in the Regeneration. The new life in Jesus Christ is a reality in the heart of each individual genuinely converted to God. But this new life has come to pass in a new world, a world or age that Jesus called the Regeneration (Matt. 19:2). *** There is an important sense in which regeneration has to be understood as applied to individuals. But this is not the primary thrust of the scriptural emphasis. If we emphasize individual regeneration alone, we will lose the glory of the biblical message of Regeneration. But if we keep the scriptural emphasis, we lose nothing with regard to individuals. *** As we talk about what it means to be “born again,” we have to preserve the scriptural pattern and order. First, as the cornerstone of all doctrines of regeneration, Jesus was born again from the dead (Col. 1:18). Because of Christ’s birth from among the dead, the whole created order was made new in Him. We have a new heaven and a new earth because of Him. He is the firstborn of all creation (Col. 1:15). Jesus was raised from the dead for us, so that He might be the first born among many brethren (Rom. 8:29). In doing this for us, Christ accomplished the resurrection of Israel (Ez. 37:1-14), which is why Nicodemus, a teacher in this Israel, should have known what Christ was talking about (John 3:7). You all must be born again. But this national regeneration carries individuals with it. A man must be born again to see the kingdom of God (John 3:3,5) *** Christ was born again from the dead. Because of this, the whole created order was born again from the dead. Because of this, Israel was born again from the dead and is now the Church. Because of this, a man can be born again and enter the Church. If he was already in the Church, he can be born again and become a true son of the Church. *** Jesus Christ, the firstborn, is therefore head of the Church of the Firstborn (Heb. 12:23). All of this is indicated in Paul’s interpretation of the second psalm— And we declare unto you glad tidings, how that the promise which was made unto the fathers, God hath fulfilled the same unto us their children, in that he hath raised up Jesus again; as it is also written in the second psalm, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee (Acts 13:32-33). When Christ was begotten from the dead in the resurrection, this was the fulfillment of a promise God made to our fathers. And because Christ entered resurrection life, we may enter His resurrection life. We may be born again. *** It should not surprise us to find pockets of “unregeneration” in this world made new. The yeast works through the loaf gradually. But the yeast is alive, and brings life to the whole. Thus we find creatures who hate the new creation around them. Thus we find baptized covenant members who inexplicably hate the church of the Firstborn that claims them by baptism. No matter. Let God be true, and every man a liar—for the time being. *** But these pockets of “unregeneration” have caused more than a few theological headaches. How can a part of the whole not have what the living whole has? Moreover, how can a part of the whole not really have what that part, as part of the whole, has? “Things to be pinned” Volume 19/3 23 REGENERATION *** This is the beginning of all spiritual wisdom. Among the sons of Sarah, we find sons of both Sarah and Hagar. Among the Jews, we find Jews and Gentiles. Among the regenerate, we find the regenerate and the unregenerate. Among the elect, we find the elect and the reprobate. Until the resurrection, why do these two categories always arise? *** Before talking about regeneration, we have to remember the importance of generation. Out of the five points of Calvinism, three of them have to do with the decrees of God. “Total depravity” has to do with this morning’s newspaper (the record of man in the past), and is not one of the secret things hidden from us. The sin of man is revealed to us, and if we believe the Scriptures, can actually be seen by us. So the place to start in understanding regeneration would not be those passages which talk about regeneration (or even apostasy), but those passages which speak about the generation of unbelieving covenant members. Regeneration cannot be understood apart from generation. *** Regeneration means becoming the seed of another— ultimately, having one family tree and then acquiring a different one. My father used to be Adam and now he is the last Adam. My father used to be the devil and now he is Abraham. A creature being summoned into being ex nihilo is being created. We might say he is being born. We would never say that he was being reborn. Rebirth entails having been in existence already, with another father. *** Regeneration means being transformed from the seed of the serpent to the seed of the woman. This cannot simply be equated with baptism (or circumcision in the Old Testament) because most of the “broods of vipers” identified for us in the Bible were covenant members. *** On all questions regarding regeneration, the basic question is: Who’s your daddy? Outside the covenant, the devil is father. For the elect, God is our Father. But for the reprobate covenant member, God is his Father in a real covenantal sense, 24 “Things to be wrastled” Volume 19/3 but in another tangible way, the devil is still his father. This is fully consistent with how Jesus addresses unbelieving covenant members. The emphasis is mine. I know that ye are Abraham’s seed; but ye seek to kill me, because my word hath no place in you. I speak that which I have seen with my Father: and ye do that which ye have seen with your father. They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham’s children, ye would do the works of Abraham. But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham. (John 8:37–40) Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. (John 8:44) Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? (Matt. 23:33) In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother. (1 John 3:10) *** Our interest in such passages should not have to do with the wickedness as such, but rather 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. *** In fact, biblically speaking, “nature” is not captured by a static Hellenistic definition, but rather something that is revealed through the process of generation. The nature of the father is found in the nature of the son. In order to acquire a different nature, I must acquire a different father. REGENERATION *** *** 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. Eventually, the view that natures are unchanged (or nonexistent) 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 concept of genuine heart regeneration, which means heart transformation. *** 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. 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. *** So then, for those who persevere, how they subjectively receive grace is part of what has been objectively given. We are to work out our salvation because God is at work in us to will and to do for His good pleasure. My continued subjective positive responses tomorrow must be considered as part of His objective gift to me. We work out what He works in. *** What are we to say to the view that the Bible does not teach that some people are individually “regenerated”? A view that locates perseverance in an ongoing and mysterious wrestling of the Spirit, rather than in a change of nature of those elected to heaven? If the Spirit wrestles with all baptized believers, but with some more than others, then pastorally, heaven or hell depends upon the extent of that wrestling. There has to be a watershed in there somewhere. One obvious question that would arise, were this kind of thing to be taught from the pulpit, is when, how, and why does God give up on a person? He is wrestling with all of us, meaning that all of us resist Him to some extent. Do any cooperate with Him fully? How much is necessary? This has the effect of locating that watershed in our choices, which we must avoid. *** Morbid introspection can work with virtually any doctrinal material. In a traditional Reformed pietistic setting, it tries to pry into the decrees of election to find out the names of the chosen. In the view that a person in conversion does not undergo a change of nature, the guessing would have to involve the inscrutable whims of the Spirit. What kind of wrestling will God do with me? How long will He be willing to keep it up? But the basic question should always be, “Who is my Father?” The only faithful covenantal answer is “God.” “Things to be pinned” Volume 19/3 25 REGENERATION *** It cannot be the case that all who are covenantally “in Christ” by virtue of baptism are in exactly the same position as regards the grace and favor of God—with no distinction save that some persevere. To think that having “all grace” except for persevering grace is somehow reassuring is to have a wildly skewed sense of priorities. “Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?” How is God’s withholding of perseverance not a refusal of grace? If we say that the grace was forfeited by those who subjectively resisted His work in their lives “too much,” then why did God withhold from them the gift of “not resisting too much?” Jim Jordan has helpfully shown the connection between the ten commandments and Ezekiel’s heart of stone, and this appears to be a connection St. Paul makes also. But this does not really weaken the need for individual regeneration. How could it? The apostolic treatment concludes with an indictment of individual covenant members. “But their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same vail untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which vail is done away in Christ. But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the vail is upon their heart” (2 Cor. 3:14–15). Blindness is a condition which covenant members then and now can certainly have. If the change in a person is simply relational, then how can these covenant members be described as blinded and having a veil on their hearts? Relationally, they would be identical to the elect. In reponse to the question, “What more can there be than union with Christ?” the answer would appear to be permanent union with Him. And this idea of permanence is one which the Lord certainly talks about. Servants come and go, but sons are forever. Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. They answered him, We be Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free? Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. And the servant abideth not in the house for ever: but the Son abideth ever. If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. (John 8:31–36) The problem with our Auburn opponents is that they wanted to talk about passages like this one, or the wheat and tares, and ignore the passages like John 15. But we don’t want to be guilty of the reverse problem, camping out in John 15 and 26 “Things to be wrastled” Volume 19/3 failing to treat the fact that many of the illustrations indicate an ontological difference between the elect and reprobate within the covenant as one existing the entire time. Tares are weeds the entire time, the sow that is washed is a clean pig but still has a natural affinity for the mire, the dog that vomited is still a dog. On the other side, all the branches are true branches, including those to be cut out, etc. I simply want to affirm all the passages at face value, and let God sort it out. The only way I can do this is to affirm the objectivity of the covenant, affirm that ontological differences exist between the elect and the reprobate whether the covenant is involved or not, and affirm that we should not pry too closely into it. We should teach that these things are so, not that we know what and where and how they are so. I want to affirm this kind of ontological anthropology because the Bible repeatedly does, but it does so in terms of the nature of the ancestry. It speaks of thornbushes, vipers, the devil’s children, and so on, and it does this frequently when addressing those covenant members whose spiritual ancestry (and therefore nature) ought to have been different than it was. *** In the Bible, personal identity is not primarily a question of some substance inside a man. But each man still has a nature, inherited from his father. So ontology is not a philosophical problem in the Bible, but rather a problem of generation. And when this generation is sinful, the only solution to the problem is regeneration, which is to say, generation by a new father. So can we say that God gives exactly the same thing (Himself) to all baptized individuals? And then account for the differences in outcome by saying that God’s Spirit works with all individuals differently? I don’t think so. When someone gets married, he gives himself. And he does so, promising that he will continue to do so forever. God does the same with His elect. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom. 8:38–39) The elect believe this promise, and it is always fulfilled because the promises are always apprehended by faith. It is not fulfilled for the reprobate covenant member because he does not believe it, and never did. So if God gives Himself to REGENERATION me as my Father, then this means that I no longer have the nature of my first father, the devil. This is why God continues to be a Father to me. If He gave Himself fully to a reprobate covenant member, then He would give Himself the same way tomorrow, and the day after, and suddenly the reprobate covenant member cannot be considered reprobate. So long as we acknowledge that there are covenant members who are not saved, then we must necessarily say that God does not give Himself to all in the same way. And this is just another way of saying that some covenant members need to be regenerated. *** We are not engaged in a fight to recover biblical language simpliciter, but rather in a fight to recover the right to use biblical language when necessary. The vocabulary of historic liturgies, systematics, the creeds, and so on are also most necessary, and we should have no interest in ditching them unless absolutely necessary. Our endeavors in this whole area should include fifty years of attempted harmonization. At the same time, what we must reject is such uninspired creedal vocabulary making it impossible to use biblical language (as appropriate) without being called a heretic. I want to be able to use the word regeneration in the same way the Synod of Dort did, but I don’t want to be told that the usage of that venerable synod outranks Christ’s reference to life in the Regeneration. *** Some are troubled by the idea of definitive justification at the beginning of our Christian lives and another eschatological “justification” at the end of history. They are right to be wary about any attempt to smuggle autonomous works into the equation, but wrong in not realizing that eternity/time transactions cannot always be tidily represented on the blackboard. I once asked Mike Horton if he agreed with the Reformed commonplace that not only our persons needed to be justified, but that also our works needed to be. He said that he did. I asked him when he thought our works were to be justified, and he answered that he thought that would be at the last day. I thought this was a good possibility, but asked whether this might not be construed by some as a “progressive” justification. Another possibility (it seems to me) is that our works need to be justified as we do them, which seems to be even more like a progressive justification. The strange thing is that because of shibboleth/sibboleth, tomato/tomahto issues, a man could find himself in deep presbyterial doo-doo for saying this, depending on his pronunciation. But I cannot imagine any Reformed man getting in trouble anywhere for saying that our works must be justified, and not just our persons. But suppose he talks out loud about when this might happen? With all this noted, we still need a word to describe the heart transformation that occurs in everyone who goes to heaven. And we need a word to describe the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the sinner. We already have stipulated theological definitions for regeneration and justification. Why change them? Some might want a more strictly exegetical name or words for these realities. I am not necessarily against this, but the disadvantage that a biblical name has when it is being used in a precise, theological way is that the need for consistency and precision can then displace the broader (and more gloriously sloppy) connotations that are usually found in any biblical usage. How does the Bible use hypostasis? Does anyone really care anymore? Back on the topic, in Luke 18, for example, two covenant members go down to the Temple to pray. The Pharisee was rigorously orthodox (and Reformed!) in his formulation. He gave glory to God for all that he had and was (soli Deo gloria!). He thanked God that he was not as other men (what do you have that you did not receive as a gift?), and so forth. We see right through this sin of his, of course, and close our Bibles in order to thank God that we are not like that Pharisee. Sorry, I got sidetracked. Anyway, the other fellow confessed that he was a sinner, and asked God to be merciful to him. God was merciful to him, and so he went home justified rather than the other (Luke 18:14). So here is a biblical term to describe what happens to a repentant covenant member who is finally getting his act together. He is justified. Now it might be replied (and should be) that this does not do justice to the other usages of the word justification in Scripture. Exactly so, which is why I think we ought not to be trying to come up with biblical phrases or uses only. We should use terms which are consistent with Scripture, based on Scripture, and are subordinate to Scripture. We do not pick and choose, but rather harmonize them all. A man can be justified in one sense and not in another. This was the condition of the Pharisee, who went home that day unjustified. The other man had been circumcised, and was able to worship in the temple. He was justified, right? In one sense. But then he went home justified, and we may assume that he had not arrived that way. Some might want to say that we have no need to use the word converted of such a man (which misleads people), because it suggests he never really was in Christ in the first place. But “Things to be pinned” Volume 19/3 27 REGENERATION sometimes this is precisely what we do need to suggest. Being in Christ is not just one thing that is operated by just one on/ off switch. The hypocrite is in Christ in one sense, and he is not in Christ in another. Part of our problem is that we want to nail too many things down. Tares are in the wheat field, but they do not partake of ontological wheatness. But when the pietists beat this drum too loudly, they need to be reminded that the fruitless branches in John 15 do partake of ontological branchness. God is perfect, but He is no perfectionist. He likes to mess with our heads. *** Many theological problems are created by turning certain issues into theological problems. As Yogi Berra might have said. One of the central sticking issues in the Federal Vision stuff is the question of personal regeneration. But this is only a problem because we are dealing with it on the blackboard, as a theological problem involving categories. But personal regeneration is personal, and the most important thing about it is not its placement in the right category. You must be born again. Here is how we stumble. Take a basic truism of Reformed theology— the doctrine of the antithesis. While doing this, never forget that truisms are true, but also guard against using the abstracted truth as a shield to guard against the actual truth. And in this case, here is how it is frequently done. “I am guarding the antithesis,” a man might solemnly say, as he haggles over one of his pet doctrines. But what makes this work? It is the assumption that “the antithesis” is between righteousness and unrighteousness, abstractly considered. And since his pet doctrine is on the side of righteousness, in the same column on the blackboard, in fact, it must be a faithful representation of the “antithesis.” But the antithesis is not a theological form of A and not A. It is not the contrast between right and wrong. It is not between righteousness and unrighteousness. The antithesis divides people—the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. We are talking about billions of personal names: mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, sons, and daughters. The antithesis is not about abstracted categories at all. Upholding and defending the antithesis means doing whatever we can to keep a clear distinction between those people who walk in the light and those people who, hating their brother, continue to walk in darkness. This is where the doctrine of personal regeneration comes in. I don’t care what you call it—transformation, 28 “Things to be wrastled” Volume 19/3 conversion to God, effectual call, being born again to God— but this reality is the only thing that will enable us to make faithful sense of the secular and ecclesiastical worlds around us. Now there are two basic ways to mess this up. One is to deny the antithesis, which is the route of saccharine dogooders, weepy universalists, chagrined hand-wringers, and other exegetical bed-wetters. The indivisibility of the human race (their godhead) is assumed, declared, preached, and exalted. This dogma is then ferociously applied to any who might call it into question. So this “we are the world” position is forced to acknowledge that the only divisible segment of the human race consists of those Christians who blasphemously posit the divisibility of the human race. Since this sets up a clear absurdity that their secular apologists cannot solve, these angular and uncooperative Christians have to be quickly shouted down, and then frogmarched off for their (taxsupported) Inclusivity Training. This accounts for why the tolerant and inclusive can become so savage so quickly. The other error is to affirm but misplace the antithesis. Some make the antithesis personal, which is good, but they also make it tribal or racial. This was the error of the Judaizers in the first century, and is the error of various racialists today. But others, in defense of orthodoxy, misplace the antithesis by making it a division of abstract categories. But it is nothing of the kind. It is the division between those people who are the seed of the woman and those people who are the seed of the serpent. These two groups of people have antipathy settled between them (by the decree of God), and nothing whatever can be done to dissolve that antipathy in various humanistic or ecumenical solvents. Now here is the problem, and this is why the doctrine of the absolute necessity of the new birth is so important. The fundamental antithesis is between those who are on their way to heaven and those who are on their way to hell. We are invited (in numerous places in the Scriptures) to consider our earthly lives in the light of our ultimate destinations. The rich fool is not encouraged to say or think, “Well, I know I am in hell for all eternity, but for a while there I sure had enough money to build some bigger barns!” This vantage of eternity (and only this) gives us genuine perspective on our lives. We may affirm other doctrinal truths alongside this one, but we may never mute or diminish the absolute necessity of the new birth for every son or daughter of Adam. If we lose that battle, we lose the war. None of this is being said to take away from the importance of the Church, which is the body of Christ. The eschatological Church is identical to the company of the elect, and on that great day, there will be no confusion or blurring of REGENERATION our categories at all. But until then, in the mess of history, the historical Church contains wheat and tares, sheep and pigs, brothers and false brothers. This means that if we allow historical categories to trump eschatological ones, we will wind up offended by the historical antipathy that God settled between the seed of the woman (in history) and the seed of the serpent (in history). And if we are offended at what God has done in this, we will soon be stumbled and offended by what He has done elsewhere. If we don’t repent of this, we will not succeed in removing the antithesis which so offends us—but we might manage to turn coat. At the same time, those who want to affirm the central importance of regeneration, but who also want to assert that they have the power to peer into hearts and determine who around here is really born again and who not, are preserving an important truth (the need for personal regeneration), but they are paying far too high a price. That price is that they have also introduced the very dangerous sectarian (and—sorry everybody!—baptistic) impulse into the life of the Church. We, the Pure and Lovely, consist of “thee and me, and I have my doubts about thee.” But those who want to affirm the central importance of the Church in history, but who also want to act as though if you are “baptized, it’s all good,” are just begging for marginal Christianity to take root everywhere. And marginal Christianity is always tare-Christianity, not wheat-Christianity. These folks are also paying too high a price for the raggedy piece of the truth that they manage to preserve. This is why we preach Christ. This is why we preach Christ crucified. This is why we call all men to be converted to God, so that they might live faithful and gracious lives—a gift from the hand of God. This is why we are rightly called evangelicals. Christ died, was buried, and rose again on the third day so that we could walk in newness of life. *** If we hear a word enough, we think we know what it means. We live in a Christian sub-culture that has strongly emphasized the need to be “born again.” Without denying this need for regeneration at all, we still have to place the reality of this in a biblical context, lest we turn it into something entirely unbiblical—which we have been in great danger of doing. Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence . . . (Col. 1:12–22) This is a particularly rich text, but in order to see it rightly we first have to put away an unbiblical set of assumptions. Whenever we hear the word regeneration, we think of individuals getting saved or not. This is entailed by the biblical concept of regeneration, and required by it, but if we begin and end here, we will have a gross distortion of the Bible’s teaching. The gospel is not limited to the salvation of atomistic individuals. The common assumption is that God drops a rope from heaven, and then the theological debates begin. Pelagians want to shimmy up the rope, Arminians want to hang on while God pulls, Calvinists say that God ties the rope to us with one of His knots, and some of our more severe brethren think He ties it around our necks. Within the constraints of this debate, the Calvinists are quite right. But note that something is still wrong with the entire picture. The illustration itself limits us in ways the Bible does not. Within those constraints, the Calvinists are correct, but there is more going on outside those constraints. We need to recover an understanding of the glory of the regeneration, and we begin by looking at what the word means, and then at how the Bible applies it. Regeneration refers to rebirth after death. With this in mind, what do we learn from Scripture about regeneration? First, Jesus was born again. In our text above, we learn that Jesus was the firstborn from the dead (Col. 1:18). Our father Adam plunged us into a condition of death. Jesus entered into that Adamic death, and was born again from that death. The apostle Paul quotes the 2nd Psalm (“Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee”) and applies it to the resurrection (Acts 13:33). Because Jesus was born again from the dead, everything else can be born again from the dead. And this is what we see. Unless Jesus was born again from the dead, no one else could be born again from the dead. Unless Jesus was raised from the dead, we are all still in our sins, which is the same thing as still being in our death. Second, the entire cosmos was born again. Our text again says that Jesus was the firstborn of every creature. This principle of new life was placed at the heart of the cosmic order, and began to work its way out. “And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matt. 19:28). The creation longs for “Things to be pinned” Volume 19/3 29 REGENERATION the culmination of this glorious process (Rom. 8:22). The regeneration referred to here is the regeneration of heaven and earth, which would not have been possible apart from the resurrection—the engine of this cosmic regeneration. And third, Israel was born again. In his famous conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus pressed this particular point. You (all) must be born again (John 3:7). You are a teacher of Israel, and you don’t know this? This is what Ezekiel so wonderfully predicted for Israel (Ez. 36:25-28; 37:11). Israel was born again, and so we are now members of the new Israel, the Christian church. The valley of dry bones came to life, and all Israel stood to its feet. And finally, John Smith was born again. But we must place this in its right context. Jesus said “a man” must be born again if he is to see the kingdom of heaven (John 3:3,5). Our passage in Colossians descends from the cosmic heights to tell the Colossian Christians how it was applied to them. After Christ accomplished the cosmic new birth (v. 20), He brings this new life to those who had been alienated through sin (v. 21). It is the same here. Without the resurrection, without the transformation of the heavens and earth, without the reconstitution of the new Israel, there is no such thing as individual regeneration. We do not say that corporate regeneration makes individual regeneration superfluous, but rather we say that corporate and cosmic regeneration makes individual regeneration both possible and mandatory. The world has been reconciled to God through Christ. Therefore, Paul presses the point. Be therefore reconciled. Compare this to getting wet. What difference does it make how you get wet, just so long as you do? The problem here has to do with autonomous man’s desire to control and manage this thing. But Christ has remade the world, and we cannot control what He is doing. It makes a difference whether you got wet because someone spritzed a little moisture in your face or you got wet because the tsunami hit the beach. The issue of control is always the issue, really. One of the central features of Christ’s teaching on regeneration is ignored or twisted by us, because we cannot handle the fact that God has never been successfully domesticated by man. The wind blows where it wants, Jesus taught us (John 3:8). Some people try to bottle the wind—and tell others how to be born again. Others ignore this by pretending that Jesus must be talking about gentle zephyrs, playing quietly among the flowers. But perhaps He wanted us to think about a typhoon. If our thinking about regeneration begins and ends with the individual, we will drastically misunderstand the nature of God’s work in the world. If it never gets down to the individual level, the confusion is just as bad. When a man is summoned by an evangelist to the new birth, he is not being summoned into a private chamber, where mysterious things happen to him as an individual. Rather, the evangelist declares that Jesus has been born again from the dead. Because Jesus has been born again from the dead, He is the Lord over all creation, and all creation, the heavens and the earth, rejoice in having been made new. God has also raised Israel from the dead so that a new Israel might be God's nation in this new creation. The unregenerate individual is told that everything around him has been transformed, and that he might as well come along quietly. Behold, the Lord Jesus, the Savior of the world. long months had gone by then internet turmoil from Samurai Robbins. Douglas Wilson 30 “Things to be wrastled” Volume 19/3