The Federal Vision and Union With Christ

Shane Lems writes about The Federal Vision and Union With Christ.

“But apart from sloppy equivocation, purposeful ambiguity, or outright lying, there is no way to harmonize these two positions.  Either union with Christ is inseparable or it is not.  The Federal Vision says it is not.  The Reformed Confessions say it is.  This is one of many reasons why historic Reformed churches have collectively and publicly spoken against the Federal Vision (for two examples, see the Orthodox Presbyterian Church’s Report on Justification and the URCNA’s Report of the Synodical Study Committee on the Federal Vision and Justification, among others).”

The Federal Visionists try to escape the contradiction by claiming the “decretally elect” will remain united to Christ as the Confessions describe. So we’re left with two elections and two unions – The intial stages of which unions are identical and carry the same redemptive blessings of Christ. This is the confusing mess that claims to follow the Reformed tradition?

HT: Jason Punches of Somerset Reformed Fellowship

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Zacharias Ursinus and the Westminster Confession vs. Cornelius Van Til

Cornelius Van Til was a minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church who is well-known today for his apologetic method and his views on analogical knowledge and paradoxical theology. While many uphold Van Til as a bastion of orthodoxy in the Presbyterian church, his view of Scripture as paradoxical – appearing to be contradictory – was actually anti-Confessional.

Cornelius Van Til

Now since God is not fully comprehensible to us we are bound to come into what seems to be contradiction in all our knowledge. Our knowledge is analogical and therefore must be paradoxical. -Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, 61.

… while we shun as poison the idea of the really contradictory we embrace with passion the idea of the apparently contradictory. Van Til, Common Grace and the Gospel, 9.

All teaching of Scripture is apparently contradictory. Ibid., 142.

According to Van Til, God’s Word, all throughout Scripture, appears to our human minds to be logically contradictory. Indeed, he even made the claim that to even attempt to demonstrate the logical consistency of certain doctrines (e.g. divine sovereignty and human responsibility) was to fall prey to the error of “Rationalism.” (See The Text of a Complaint)

Is this true? Is this orthodox? Is this Confessional?

We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church to an high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scripture. And the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is, to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man’s salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it does abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God… (Westminster Confession of Faith, I.v)

According to the Westminster Confession of Faith, all the parts of Holy Scripture, rather than being “apparently contradictory,” logically consent. In fact, the Confession takes this truth as being so obviously foundational that it actually claims it as an argument for Scripture being the Word of God. If “all teaching of Scripture is apparently contradictory,” as Van Til claimed, how can “the consent of all the parts” be used to support it as being the Word of God? How would we, being finite creatures, even be able to see “the consent of all the parts,” if Scripture constantly appears, to our minds, utterly contradictory?

Zacharias Ursinus

Zacharias Ursinus, primary author and editor of the Heidelberg Catechism, had this to say in his Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism:

The harmony of the different parts of the doctrine of the church, is an evidence of its truth. That doctrine which contradicts itself can neither be true, nor from God, since truth is in perfect harmony with itself, and God cannot contradict himself (7).

Scripture does not contradict itself. Any apparent contradiction we perceive is merely a temporary problem in our own minds. With proper exegesis and the application of logic, we will see, along with Ursinus and the Westminster Divines, that each part of God’s Word perfectly consents in logical harmony with every other part. What cannot be resolved, however, is the teaching of Van Til and the correct view taught by Reformed orthodoxy.

Handling Predestination with Prudence and Care [Particular Voices] | The Confessing Baptist

Chapter 3.7 of the  Second London Baptist Confession, based upon the Westminster Confession of Faith, is often misunderstood to mean we must be careful not to preach election and predestination to unbelievers or “baby” Christians. But this is not the case! In this post from Particular Voices, Sam Renihan offers a selection from John Norton (commenting on the WCF) in which he explains how we ought to be Handling predestination with special prudence and care.

via Handling Predestination with Prudence and Care [Particular Voices] | The Confessing Baptist.

 

Does All Worship and No Play Make Jack a Holy Boy? Sabbath-Keeping According to Isaiah 58:13 – Dr. Robert Gonzales | The Confessing Baptist

Does All Worship and No Play Make Jack a Holy Boy? Sabbath-Keeping According to Isaiah 58:13 – Dr. Robert Gonzales | The Confessing Baptist.

 

Was there an old covenant administration of the covenant of grace?

One of the key differences between the Covenant Theology of the framers of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith and that of the Westminster Confession has to do with the nature of the Covenant of Grace, that is, the covenant through which sinners are saved. The Westminster Confession presents the view of one over-arching Covenant manifested in several historical covenants (e.g. Abrahamic, Mosaic, New). The 1689 Confession, on the other hand, maintains that prior to the formal establishment of the New Covenant at the time of Christ, the “covenant of grace” consisted only in the form of gospel promises revealed “by farther steps” throughout biblical history. If an individual living before Christ believed these promises, he was redeemed by the future spilled blood of Christ just as surely as believers living today.

Nehemiah Coxe answers the question, Was there an old covenant administration of the covenant of grace?.

Owen on the Mosaic Covenant (Part I)

Theologians have historically disagreed concerning the nature and purpose of the “Mosaic” Covenant, which God made with Israel at Mount Sinai. Most Presbyterians follow the Westminster Confession (VII:iii-vi) in describing this covenant as merely one administration of the over-arching “Covenant of Grace.” Others have disagreed, saying that this Covenant is a restatement of the Old Covenant of Works made with Adam before his fall. Is the Sinai Covenant the Covenant of Grace? Is it the Covenant of Works? Both? Neither?

John Owen, in his Commentary on Hebrews, describes the Sinai Covenant as being formally neither the Covenant of Grace nor the Covenant of Works, but a national covenant made with Israel which, while pointing to both the principles of works and grace, was itself confined to material, temporal things.

“This covenant thus made, with these ends and promises, did never save nor condemn any man eternally. All that lived under the administration of it did attain eternal life, or perished forever, but not by virtue of this covenant as formally such.”

At Sinai, God gave Israel a law. What was its relationship to the Covenant of Works?

“It did, indeed, revive the commanding power and sanction of the first covenant of works; and in that respect, as the apostle speaks, was “the ministry of condemnation,” 2 Cor. 3:9; for “by the deeds of the law can no flesh be justified.”

The Sinai covenant included many instructions regarding sacrifices for sin. What was its relationship to the Covnenant of Grace?

“And on the other hand, it directed also to the promise, which was the instrument of life and salvation to all that did believe.”

But despite these shadows and signs of eternal things, the Sinai covenant cannot be formally called either The Covenant of Works, or the Covenant of Grace. It was its own entity, with its own purpose, given to a special people in a special situation in history.

“But as to what it had of its own, it was confined to things temporal. Believers were saved under it, but not by virtue of it. Sinners perished eternally under it, but by the curse of the original law of works” (Nehemiah Coxe & John Owen, Covenant Theology: From Adam to Christ, pp. 197-198).

Westminster Standards vs. Federal Vision: Merit (via Wes White)

Do the Westminster Standards teach Merit? More importantly, do the Scriptures teach Merit? What is Merit? Did Christ merit anything by His work on earth? Was Adam, in God’s original arrangement with him, justified by works, or through faith? There are some who deny a meritorious arrangement with Adam, denying the existence of a “Covenant of Works.” Pastor Wes White tackes these questions and responds to the erroneous claims of the Joint Federal Vision Profession in this post:

Do the Westminster Standards Teach Merit?

In order to answer the question of whether the Westminster Standards teach merit, we must know what merit is. So, what is merit? Merit is defined in the dictionary as worth. As a verb, to merit something is to deserve something.

With that definition in mind, we can now consider whether the Westminster Standards teach merit. If you search the Westminster Standards, you will find that it does use the word “merits” in reference to Christ. Westminster Larger Catechism Q. 55 says that Christ appears in our nature before the Father in heaven “in the merit of his obedience and sacrifice on earth.” Thus, Christ’s obedience and sacrifice on earth was meritorious, and it is Christ’s will that the merit of His obedience and sacrifice would be “applied to all believers.”

You can read the rest of Pastor White’s excellent post here.