This afternoon, we begin a series of lectures in light of the 20th anniversary of the Federal Vision Controversy. Some of you may be familiar with the Federal Vision Controversy, others of you may not be familiar with it. But it began at a pastor's conference 20 years ago, in January of 2002 at the Auburn Avenue Pastor's Conference in Monroe, Louisiana, where the title of this annual conference included the phrase, The Federal Vision. And ever since, this federal vision or Auburn Avenue theology has been a point of hot contention within the Reformed community. Some of that contention has, in some respects, died down in recent years. But the fact of the matter is that at least one of its proponents, one of the men who was originally involved in advancing this perspective, has gained popularity in recent years, and we'll get into some of that. But this is a topic that's very important, and this topic is not something that we want to leave buried in the tomb, because it's not buried in the tomb. The thought and the ideas that are present in this movement are present throughout the history of the church. There's still an issue today that we have to grapple with, and I think like no other issue in recent decades, this issue, this controversy is really a beneficial doorway into the substance of the Reformed faith. In tackling this controversy, it will be highly edifying for us to look at some of the key issues that define who we are as Reformed Christians and what we mean when we say certain things in our confessional standards. I'm reminded of Romans 2, verse 7, where Paul says this. Sorry, Romans 3, verse 7. For if the truth of God has increased through my lie to His glory, why am I also still judged as a sinner?" Now the premise of what Paul is saying there is this, that in fact, the truth of God often does increase through lies. Through things that are not the truth of God. And God's truth increases in contrast to the lies to the increase of His glory. So as we tackle the federal vision, we're going to seek to be sympathetic and understand what these men are saying, why they're saying it, what they're concerned about, trying to be reasonable and not, you know, take their words out of context and be overly harsh. But in looking at teachings, that are contrary to the truth of God, there is great benefit. That's been the case throughout church history. Even in the early church, you look at the New Testament epistles, and in many cases, some of the most basic truths that we know from Paul's epistles were declared by Paul in opposition to various lies or false doctrines or controversies that arose in the early church. The same is true with the controversy in the fourth century over the doctrine of the Trinity. God, in a sense, raised up Arius to attack the deity of Christ and created an opportunity for the church to formulate and codify a more clear and precise biblical doctrine of the trinity and so God is constantly working all things together for the good of his people even doctrinal controversies or alleged errors and false teachings again we want to get to that in our lecture series but this is a great opportunity for every one of us. I know for myself, I was initially drawn to apologetics and to the study of theology when the Mormons started knocking on my door in high school. And I was further brought along in a love for studying theology as I was encountering the teaching of dispensationalism in which I had been brought up and wrestling with that. But with that said, there is no doctrinal issue that was of greater benefit to me and more influential to set me on the course that I'm on right now than the federal vision. Because I was in the reformed community 20 years ago when these things were taking place, and it was this controversy that prompted me to make that first large book order to Reformation Heritage Books, and by Herman Witsius, Economy of the Covenants, John Owen, Biblical Theology, Wilhelmus O'Brockle, The Christian's Reasonable Service, Thomas Boston on the Covenant of Grace, and a number of other volumes moving forward, many more volumes. I hope they don't have the sales record, but it would be almost embarrassing. But the Lord used this issue to take me from where I was at to where I am now. And I'm very grateful for that. Now, that does not let people off the hook for teaching things that are unbiblical. And so I'm not in any way saying that we should lessen our zeal to defend the truth and to refute heresy, nor am I saying that the federal vision at this point in the lecture is heresy. I'm simply saying we need to study this. And even if it is heresy, or some parts of it are heresy, we need to give glory to God and take opportunity to sharpen our own pencils in the knowledge of biblical doctrine. Well, even though this is really the 20th anniversary of the inception of the federal vision controversy, in one sense it dates back several decades before that. And today's lecture is going to focus on an overview of key events leading up to, including, and somewhat beyond the federal vision controversy. So first we consider the new perspective on Paul. This was a movement among biblical scholars, let's say from the 1970s up through the early 2000s and probably beyond, where they were redefining or seeking to replace the historic Protestant and confessional reformed understanding of Paul's writings in his epistles. We would say as confessional reformed Christians that when Paul speaks of justification by faith, not by works of the law, that he's speaking of our vertical right standing with God. God's verdict on each one of us individually before his throne of justice that will determine our eternal destiny either in heavenly communion with him or alienated from God in hell suffering for our sins for all eternity. And so justification is speaking of that vertical relationship to God and His justice. It is a forensic or legal judicial declaration that a person is righteous in the sight of God. And justification by faith not works. We understand to refer to the fact that No one is righteous, not one. None of us measures up to God's standard of righteousness. And so it's only the perfect obedience and sacrifice and righteousness of Jesus Christ that we receive by faith that gives us that legal declaration in the sight of God. And it's by faith in that, with an empty hand of faith, we receive Christ's righteousness which was worked out through His entire life of obedience unto death on the cross, taking our punishment, and we receive that full, total righteousness in the sight of God. Not by works. Not by anything that we can do. Not by ceremonial works, religious works, moral works. Even sanctified good works are still polluted by the flesh and by sin in the godliest believer and so disqualify us from bringing anything of our own into the equation of justification. Jesus speaks in Luke 18 verse 9 of the Pharisees who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others. And as we quoted in the sermon this morning, Romans 10 verse three, the Jews, for they being ignorant of God's righteousness and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God for Christ. is the end of the law, that is the purpose of the law, for righteousness to everyone who believes. 2 Corinthians 5, 21, he who knew no sin became sin for us that in him we might become the righteousness of God. So here you have the old perspective on Paul. But the new perspective on Paul, starting in the 1970s for the most part, said that this is all wrong. E.P. Sanders was one of the first influential exponents of this position, and he wrote a book called Paul and Palestinian Judaism in 1977. And he argued that the works of the law that Paul is repudiating and removing from the justification formula, that those works are ceremonial. And that in Romans 10.3, when Paul says that the Jews are trying to attain their own righteousness, that it's not their own moral good works in the sight of God to earn salvation. No, their own righteousness means a righteousness that is unique to them as an ethnic group. And so justification for Sanders is not primarily a vertical issue between us and God and His throne of justice and our eternal destiny. It's not primarily this forensic legal declaration of our right standing with God. But it's primarily an issue of Jewish ethnocentrism. He says the Jews were never trying to earn their salvation, but what they were doing was making themselves to be better than the Gentiles by way of the ceremonies of the law. So justification means inclusion in the people of God. not right standing with God, but inclusion in the people of God who are collectively righteous before God. In other words, they're vindicated by God's faithfulness. So the real important thing for the Gentiles is just to get into the covenant community. And Paul is repudiating the idea that Christianity bars the way for the Gentiles to be included in that horizontal membership in the covenant community and that barring that obstacle was the ceremonial law. So, justified by faith, not works, is just saying Gentiles can join the church without being circumcised, essentially. And then along came N.T. Wright, who is a very gifted and brilliant thinker and writer. who was very influential as a bishop in the Anglican Church. And he wrote a book called What St. Paul Really Said. Again, you see the new perspective on Paul. He said essentially that Paul had been Lutheranized. And you'll notice in all of these kind of discussions, there's always an attempt to take the most radical and extreme version of justification by faith alone, the most extreme language and rhetoric and law gospel distinction and put that before people's eyes as a straw man. So we are not Lutherans. We love Martin Luther. If you want to dress up on Reformation Day, I guess that's OK. But we're not Lutherans. We're confessional reformed Presbyterians. Are the people for the most part involved in the federal vision NT Wright however is an Anglican and he accuses our perspective of being of Luther and Ising Paul so Luther's worried about his relationship with God and can he do enough good works to get to heaven and he's just so anxious and concerned and sweating bullets over this and now we've Basically transferred that mindset on to the Apostle Paul as if Paul is chiefly concerned with our right standing before God's legal throne of justice. And so N.T. Wright then says, listen, the Jews, Second Temple Judaism, the Jews of Jesus' day, the first century Jews of Paul's day, they have been misrepresented. They were never presenting salvation by moral works of the law. They were never trying to earn favor with God and a right standing with God. They were just ethnocentric and they were just puffed up with their ceremonial laws as a way of distinguishing themselves from the Gentile world. And so for him, again, justification goes from being primarily vertical to being horizontal inclusion in the covenant community. And of course now, instead of circumcision, we have baptism. So all nations, Jew and Gentile, receive baptism. They're brought into the covenant community, into the church, through baptism, and therefore they are part of God's righteous people. And if they persevere, if they persevere to the end, then they will be justified collectively along with God's righteous people at the last day. And so the righteousness of God that we've been studying in the book of Romans, and we'll continue to study it, for N.T. Wright is not the righteousness Christ performed and obtained through his perfect life and death and resurrection, it's not his suffering the penalty of God's wrath and perfectly obeying the moral law of God. It's not those things that God imputes to the believer by faith but rather God's righteousness is God's faithfulness to vindicate his people at the last day, those people that were baptized and that continued on without falling away. That's the righteousness of God for N.T. Wright. And the legal self-righteousness that we've all been thinking that Paul was dealing with in his epistles is really just this Jewish idea of national exclusivity and superiority by way of these ceremonial laws. And according to N.T. Wright, imputation is a fiction, right? This is the Roman Catholic view, by the way. Roman Catholics say, for God to declare a sinner to be perfectly righteous, who's not perfectly righteous, on the basis of something Christ did, and not on the basis of something that's true about the sinner being justified, for God to do that is a legal fiction. That is the Roman Catholic perspective. that God justifies us, yes, on the basis of the work of Christ, but also on the basis of regeneration and changing our hearts and infusing sanctified righteousness into us so that when he declares us righteous, we're actually righteous in ourselves. Otherwise, they're saying it's a legal fiction. Well, N.T. Wright says imputation is a fiction. Listen to what he says. This is a later quotation, I think from 2009, but it summarizes his thought. He says, quote, the idea that what sinners need is for someone else's righteousness to be credited to their account simply muddles up the categories, importing with huge irony into the equation the idea that the same tradition worked so hard to eliminate, namely the suggestion that after all, righteousness here means moral virtue. the merit acquired from law-keeping, or something like that. Imputed righteousness is a Reformation answer to a medieval question. in the medieval terms, which were themselves part of the problem. So he's saying in Luther's context, people believed in merit and earning salvation and purchasing salvation in various ways, legalistic ways. And Wright is saying, along come the reformers and say, no, Jesus purchased your salvation. He redeemed you. You're bought with the price of his obedience. He earned salvation for you. He's given you this righteousness and moral virtue imputed to your account. despite your own sinfulness. And N.T. Wright is saying, see, the real problem is any idea of anyone purchasing anything by their good works, or any type of merit, or any type of righteousness that is required for salvation. This is N.T. Wright's idea. He's saying that the medieval theologians invented the idea of earning salvation, and the reformers foolishly said Jesus earned it, instead of saying nobody earns it. And there's no such thing as earning your salvation. And the Jews were never trying to earn their salvation. But notice where he's going with this, right? Once he knocks Jesus out of the equation, Jesus didn't earn your salvation. Nobody earned it. Listen to what he says. It is therefore a straightforward category mistake, however venerable within some Reformed traditions, including part of my own, to suppose that Jesus, quote, obeyed the law and so obtained, quote, righteousness, which could be reckoned to those who believe in him. To think that way is to concede, after all, that, quote, legalism was true after all, with Jesus as the ultimate legalist. This is where he's going. At this point, Reformed theology lost its nerve. It should have continued the critique all the way through. Legalism, in quotes, itself was never the point, not for us, not for Israel, not for Jesus. To think that way is to concede, after all, that legalism was true after all, with Jesus as the ultimate legalist. I think I just read that quotation two times, but in any event, you get the point. This is N.T. Wright, and he's telling us that there is no alien righteousness in Christ that's imputed to the account of the believer. Well, along comes Norman Shepard. Point number two, the Norman Shepard controversy. Norman Shepard was a professor of systematic theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. He took over after the retirement of John Murray. And he was fired in 1982 by the seminary board for some of the teachings that he was allegedly giving to his students. And so there was a long, a lengthy process of evaluating his teachings from the late 70s right up to his firing in 1982. Now some of the things he was accused of teaching were that good works and a diligent use of the means of grace are necessary for justification. Good works and a diligent use of the means of grace, in other words, prayer and the scriptures in private and in public, the means of grace, the ordinances of grace, good works plus diligent use of the means of grace are necessary for justification. and he defined justification as final justification at the last day. Again, importing Roman Catholic categories that at your conversion there's an initial justification and if you continue down the field without fumbling then you get the final justification at the goal line. He was accused of teaching that election, for instance in Ephesians 1, God choosing us before the foundation of the world, that election, apart from covenant faithfulness or covenant perseverance, may be lost. And so you need to do certain things to continue in your election by way of covenant faithfulness. And he appeals to passages of Scripture which deal with Israel's corporate election. So you see that in Romans 9 through 11, how God called Israel as a nation. and there was a corporate election of the visible covenant community. And he then sort of is accused of mixing and matching that concept with eternal saving election. He's also accused of saying that justifying faith, the faith by which we believe on Christ, he takes our sin and we receive his perfect righteousness, that justifying faith includes obedience, that it includes faithfulness and repentance. And one of the things in the New Perspective is they say faith really includes faithfulness. Faith means fidelity. It means you're believing, but you're obeying on the basis of your belief, and therefore, all of this is included in the sum total of saving justifying faith. Well, Norman Shepard is accused of including obedience and faithfulness in justifying faith. Not just saying that it's a fruit of faith, or that it's an aspect of faith, that justifies, but the historic reformed view would recognize that faith is an obedient response to the truth of God, so on and so forth, the obedience of faith, but would not bring that aspect into justification. How are you justified? An empty hand as an instrument to receive Christ's righteousness. It is not the virtue of faith or the obedience of faith or the repentance of faith that justifies, but the empty hand as an instrument to receive. That's the historic position. He's accused of corrupting that by including obedience and he was defended by a majority of the Westminster faculty at the time and so it was really difficult for the board as they're wrestling with this and people are bringing these complaints and as you have the Orthodox Presbyterian Church where Shepard was an ordained minister, they're wrestling with a possible discipline, and so there were further efforts to bring reconciliation and to resolve this matter, and they involved outside theologians to examine Shepard's teachings. And among those who examined his teachings and rejected them, Some of the big names, Martin Lloyd-Jones, William Hendrickson, R.C. Sproul, Robert Godfrey, O. Palmer Robertson, and others. And eventually he was fired by the Seminary Board in 1982. No discipline was brought by the OPC. So that's the Norman Shepard controversy. Thirdly, The Christian Reconstruction Movement, which dates roughly back to the 1960s up through around the 2000s and perhaps beyond. This is not a lecture series on the Christian Reconstruction Movement, but they're often known as theonomists, theonomic post-millennialists. Their emphasis is God's law for society. God's law for society. And their big concern in their movement is antinomianism, or autonomy. And so you can see how very quickly, perhaps in some cases without really thinking it through, they immediately jump to Shepard's defense because Shepard is saying, look, you've got all this antinomianism, people have this easy believism mentality, and I'm saying, you need obedience. And he's so zealous that he even includes it in the definition of faith. And so the Reconstructionists, who aren't necessarily the sharpest doctrinal tools in the shed, get excited about this, and they're jumping on board. And so R.J. Rush Dooney, one of the founding fathers of Christian Reconstruction, who published the Journal of Christian Reconstruction, he would have Shepard publish articles in his journal, and in fact, he published an article in the 1990-91 Journal of Christian Reconstruction, and that issue an article by Joseph Bradswell, who, I'm not gonna read the quotations, but he calls into question the imputation of Christ's righteousness as an alien righteousness. He tries to ground our justification in the sight of God, not in the imputation of something that's outside of us in Christ, but in our, what he calls our existential intimate union with Christ. Now the historic view would acknowledge that we're justified in connection with our union with Christ in the sense of a legal union with Christ. In Adam, we were legally united to Adam in his sin, and therefore his sin, which was existentially outside of us, is imputed to us, not because of some biological or existential intimate relationship between us and Adam, but fundamentally because of the covenant representation, the legal status of Adam as our representative. That sin that was outside of us is imputed to our account based upon a legal covenantal union between us and Adam. And so we would say, yes, when God declares us righteous, he is actually doing it on the basis of righteousness that has been imputed to us. It's not a legal fiction. That righteousness of Christ that was outside of us has been imputed to us on the basis of our legal union with Christ, and it now is the basis of our right standing with God. But Braswell, as so often in these debates, is, again, he's not sharp, he doesn't come across as a very well-trained theologian, if at all, and so he's grounding our justification in our intimate existential union with Christ, which is a whole lot more to do with Christ and us and the fellowship and sanctification. That's really where that's leading. And Rush Dooney's publishing it. Rush Dooney's son-in-law, Gary North, has written a lot of books. Some of them are in the library. But Gary North wrote a book called Westminster's Confession, I think in the early 90s. And it was a defense of Norman Shepard as a martyr. that Norman Shepard is opposing autonomy, human autonomy, and antinomianism in the Reformed world, and he's stressing biblical obedience to the law of God, and he was fired, and he's a martyr. And throughout the whole book, I mean, this is one of the punchlines, almost at the end of every chapter, he was also upset that Greg Bonson, who had studied under Shepard at Westminster, he was upset that Greg Bonson was not hired as the apologetics teacher. And so these are the two martyrs that he brings. And that leads us to Greg Bonson, one of my favorite guys in the last several decades of the Reformed Church. But Greg Bonson was deeply involved in the Christian Reconstruction movement. He authored Theonomy and Christian Ethics, which is the basis of Theonomy, he was the main speaker for that aspect and of course we know and love him as an apologist for the Christian faith over against atheism and probably never found an issue he wasn't willing to debate and I'm not sure he ever lost a debate. He could be wrong and still win the debate. So in any event, Greg Bonson, he's someone that's very near and dear to my heart. I was married in Bonson Hall and in my undergrad I earned it from a School that that was founded originally by Greg Bonson, but in any event Bonson in his multitude of tape series and lectures and audio Sermons he has a series of talks on Calvin's Institutes that is recorded and it's available online and in that at one point he defends Norman Shepard's view of James chapter 2 of course James 2 says were justified by works and not only by faith and And Shepard takes a view that James and Paul are not talking about justification in a different sense, but it's the same sense. And he tries to say that James is speaking legally and forensically about our justification. And he uses this as a proof text for his whole notion of obedient faith factoring into our justification. Bonson defends that and implies that Shepard was wrongly fired. So that has led various people that were close to Bonson. Bonson died, I think, in 1995 of open heart surgery, sadly. But Bonson's close friend, and I think his co-pastor in Southern California, Roger Wagner, later said this, I'm absolutely sure if Greg were still with us, he'd be squarely on the shepherd's side of this issue. His son, David Bonson, who recently co-wrote a book on disinflation, along with Doug Wilson, He said later on after the Federal Vision controversy broke out, I do not deny that the Monroe men from the 2002 Auburn Avenue Pastors Conference in Monroe, Louisiana, this is the Federal Vision, the Monroe men are endorsing a paradigm shift. As a matter of fact, I embrace it and I'm certain my father would as well. Now we will deal with Greg Monson and I'm certainly not necessarily agreeing with what these men are saying, but understand he's involved in this whole development to some extent and his followers for sure. Fourthly, the Auburn Avenue Pastors Conference on the federal vision in January of 2002. Now Norman Shepard had a book coming out called The Call of Grace coming out in 2002. The conference was in January. So you know the book we assume had not come out just yet. But no doubt that book and the contents of it were the reason why they asked him to speak at the conference. If I'm mistaken in that forgive me but that seems to be what happened there. Anyway, in that book, The Call of Grace, listen to what he says. Page 15 of the book. Listen, quote, Genesis 15.6 says that Abraham's faith was so significant that it was credited to him as righteousness, exclamation point. If so, then righteousness was a condition to be met and faith met that condition, end quote. You see the whole point, with New Perspective and with Norman Shepard, the whole point of getting rid of the idea of earning or meriting salvation and sweeping away those categories is so that they can put forward the idea that salvation is contingent or conditioned upon your good works, but not in the sense of earning or meriting, right? You're saved, you're righteous, you're declared righteous because of the righteousness, the inherent virtue of your faith, but not by way of legalism. God is graciously, God is graciously giving you this righteousness on account of you meeting that condition, but it's not merit. And by the way, why do they want to get rid of merit? It seems pretty obvious. is that the idea that we're saved or declared righteous on the basis of something that we did is subject to the criticism that whatever we did is infected with sin. And so if this is an idea of earning it or purchasing it or meriting it, then our sin would disqualify us because it has to be perfect, it has to earn it, it has to be meritorious. But getting rid of the idea of earning it, now they can say, well, God gives salvation to those who meet the condition, but it doesn't have to be perfect because it's all of grace. God graciously gives you salvation because you met the condition. This is Roman Catholicism. If you're not familiar with Roman Catholicism, this is Roman Catholicism. Essentially, God graciously enables you to save yourself and accepts your efforts, even though they're not perfect. Anyway, the fact that Shepard here says that Genesis 15.6 describes Abraham's faith as his righteousness is a denial of the gospel, okay? And we're gonna spend a whole lecture on Shepard, I don't wanna get too much into it, but Genesis 15, six says, Abraham believed in the Lord and he accounted it to him for righteousness, or the preposition could be translated unto righteousness. And the Arminians historically have said, it's Abraham's faith that was righteous, and so God accounted him righteous because of the righteousness of his faith. And that is the false gospel of those most extreme types of Arminians. shepherds saying the same thing in principle. And the problem is that in Romans chapter 4, The Apostle Paul makes it clear that the righteousness accounted to Abraham is the righteousness by which we're justified and made right with God. I'm not going to read all the verses, but read Romans chapter 4. Paul quotes that verse in Genesis 15, 6, and he goes on to speak of the fact that this accounting of Abraham righteous is the same righteousness by which we are accounted right with God. And so if Abraham's Righteous faith is the righteousness he has before God. Therefore, our righteous faith or righteous good works or whatever other righteous aspects of us as we perceive ourselves become the basis of our right standing with God. And that is heresy. And not surprising, on page 59, listen to what Shepard says. Is there any hope for a common understanding between Roman Catholicism and Evangelical Protestantism regarding the way of salvation? Okay, finally, after all these years, the truth comes out. This is his agenda. We're going to find a way to unite Rome's view that God graciously enables us to do the work necessary for salvation and the Protestant view that it's by faith alone and he's going to try to merge these two. And his answer to the question. We wish here at this point he would say something like Paul, like may it never be or not at all. Can Rome and Protestantism come together here? He says, may I suggest that there is at least a glimmer of hope if both sides are willing to embrace a covenantal understanding of the way of salvation. And the word federal means covenantal. It's another way of saying covenantal. So the federal vision. For Norman Shepard, his teachings on justification are a glimmer of hope to bring us back to Rome. And listen, Richard Gaffin, one of the faculty members at Westminster that had defended him, and he doesn't seem to say the same things in his books, but listen to what this well-respected Reformed scholar, who's even well-respected today in many Reformed circles, listen to what he says in recommending this book. He says, quote, this lucid and highly readable study provides valuable instruction on what it means to live in covenant with God. He goes on, the call of grace, that's the name of the book, the call of grace should benefit anyone concerned about biblical growth in Christian life and witness. So you see some heavy hitters are promoting Norman Shepard. And for the life of me, I just don't understand why. But anyway, he was invited to speak at the Auburn Avenue Pastors Conference in 2002. He was unavailable to speak. So he was replaced. The speakers at the conference included Steve Wilkins, a PCA pastor who was the pastor of the host congregation, the Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church. He lectured on the legacy of the halfway covenant among the New England Puritans, attacking the idea of someone having to give a credible profession of faith and to come to the Lord's table. attacking the idea of the marks of grace and of conversion, and so on and so forth. We'll look at that. Another speaker was Steve Schlissel, who was, he's a Dutch Reformed pastor in New York, a converted Jew, who, so much could be said about Steve Schlissel, we'll have an entire lecture on him, but he's part of the Reconstructionist movement along with Wilkins, and he had a talk called Through New Eyes, where he says we need to be Hebraic in our understanding of the Bible and not import these Greek logical systematic theology categories. That's a main theme among this movement. Also, he had a talk called, What Does the Lord Require? Where he says the main question is not how to be saved, but what does God require? And he begins to attack the foundation of this justification by faith alone apart from works of the law. Of all the speakers, Schlissel is by far the most passionate, the most emotional, and you get the sense he actually enjoys when he says something that people wonder maybe that's heretical. He's quite a character, very entertaining, very funny, even when he is not making much biblical sense. He gave another talk that focused on justification and assurance. and really opposing the idea that we should examine ourselves for the marks of grace. Another speaker, Douglas Wilson, who that same year published a book about the church called Reformed is Not Enough. Wilson spoke on the curses of the new covenant, how you can be a member of the church and still go to hell. Some of these things we wouldn't necessarily disagree with in some respects, but we'll look at Wilson as well at another time. He has a talk called Heretics and the Covenant, perhaps ironic, we won't go any further with that, but Heretics and the Covenant, his main focus is that heretics were part of the covenant and are accountable as members of the church, even if they're not saved, and he focuses on the objective nature of church membership and of the covenant. John Barak, who was asked to pinch hit for Norman Shepard, spoke on the covenant and election, the covenant and evangelism, and the covenant and history. We'll spend time looking into that. There were two question and answer sessions as well. It's interesting that N.T. Wright spoke at the 2005 Auburn Avenue Conference and the title of that conference was Paul's Perspective. Now they did have other views there. They had Gaffin representing the other side. So anyway, you get the sense the fox was guarding the hen house. N.T. Wright spoke at the conference and advocated new perspective on Paul. Other figures that came on later in this movement, Rich Lusk, we're going to have to devote an entire lecture to him, Rich Lusk, Peter Lightheart, James Jordan, Randy Booth, Jeff Myers, And again, well, we'll just leave it at that. Some of the major themes of the federal vision movement. And let me just say, I'm going to wrap up with this portion of the lecture here and maybe take some questions, but next time we're going to consider the immediate aftermath within the reformed world. and some of the books that were written for and against the federal vision, along with some of the ecclesiastical documents that were approved by various reform denominations in response to the federal vision, and then finally we're going to look at some theological backpedaling. what I call the federal revision, where the federal vision advocates, some of them are trying to reformulate and make things sound a little bit nicer. And in one case, one of them trying to distance himself from the federal vision controversy entirely. But let's just finish this section by looking at some of the major themes of the federal vision first. As we said with Shepard, the idea that justifying faith includes faithfulness, and this is to fight against antinomians who have a sort of lordless gospel of easy believism, who say justification by faith alone means that if somebody says, I believe in Jesus, they shouldn't be questioned about their Christian life, they shouldn't be questioned about their obedience to God's law. And in fact, there are these carnal Christians out there that have true faith, but they have no works and no sanctified life. Sanctification is optional. So you have these rank antinomians that are out there. You have certain grace movements within the PCA, which is the denomination most closely associated with these men. And so in reality, they're confronting a lot of antinomianism. But instead of using the biblical confessional solution or antidote to antinomianism, which is the robust doctrine of Christian sanctification and the marks of grace, instead they import obedience and faithfulness into justifying faith. So that's the first main theme. Second main theme is, as I mentioned with Wilson, objective covenant membership. We know there are Baptists who hold that the only people that are truly members of the New Covenant or that are really even members of the Church of Jesus Christ are the elect. And you hear that type of theology from some of our good friends in the Reformed Baptist Church. We agree on so many other things, but on that, they're saying, men like James White, they're saying that if you're not elect, you're not part of the covenant in any sense. Now, we would disagree with that. The classical confessional Reformed faith would disagree with that. The federal visionists would disagree with that. The problem is, rather than utilizing the doctrine that the Reformed Church has used to combat that Baptist mentality, namely the doctrine of the visible and invisible church, not all Israel is of Israel, the wheat and the tares, the sheep and the goats, if you will, rather than utilizing the mixed nature of the visible church and the invisible church as an elect remnant, all of those things that we talk about all the time. Rather than doing that, Wilson and others attacked the doctrine of the visible and invisible church. They say it amounts to two churches and Wilson comes up, big surprise, he puts his cape on and he saves the day by inventing a new distinction between the historical church and the eschatological church, but we'll get to that in our lecture on Wilson. Thirdly, main theme is objective baptismal efficacy. That, again, they're sort of trying to oppose Baptists and closet Baptists that they see around every nook and cranny everywhere around them. They're always worried about Baptists. By the way, Baptists hold that all baptized people in the church should be viewed as regenerate and come to the Lord's table. It's the Presbyterians that hold to a distinction between communicant and baptized members. It's the Presbyterians that have two types of members. We don't consider every single person who's baptized eligible to partake of communion. That's the Baptist view. That's also Doug Wilson's view, who's the Baptist now, right? But Doug Wilson's worried everybody else is Baptistic. His church practices a Baptist view of the church that has a one-fold, monolithic view of church membership. Anyway, these men present the case that baptism unites every person who's baptized to Christ. Baptism unites them to Christ. Baptism in every case objectively shows that someone is elect, that they're justified, that they're sanctified. They apply these things. Now they say that's only objective. You can lose it. You can lose it. It's a covenantal election. It's a covenantal regeneration. It's a covenantal justification. But baptism conveys this objective status upon everyone who's baptized, and in doing that, they repudiate the distinction between the sign and the thing signified. But by the way, in seeking to reassure God's people, you don't have to examine yourself, look to your baptism for assurance. In doing that, they're actually forfeiting the idea that you can know that you have assurance of faith, that you can know you're saved, because you could always lose it later. Thanks for that covenantal justification, but if I can lose it later, how does that comfort me, right? Nobody knows. Fourth main theme, presumptive regeneration and paedo-communion. And I've already kind of jumped the gun on this one. Wilson and others say that if we really believe the promises for our children, we'll assume that our children are regenerate and by faith claim that promise, almost bordering on a name it, claim it. for Wilson, if you read him carefully, he seems to be saying if you believe that your children are regenerate and you presume in faith that they are, then they will be and therefore then they take the Lord's Supper. without making a credible profession of faith. So they reject the two-tiered membership as being a closet Baptist view. Now, again, I'm not here to criticize Baptists that may come across. What I'm saying is Wilson is very much against Baptists, and yet he actually agrees with them on this idea of rejecting the two-tier membership. and presuming that every baptized person should come to the table. That's how a Baptist church would do it. Wilson's just bringing children into the equation. Fifthly, objective covenant assurance. Don't examine yourself and look for the marks of grace, but look to your baptism. Don't engage in morbid introspection. Don't pay any attention to Jonathan Edwards and the revivalists of the 18th century and 19th century. If you do that, you're sort of a closet Baptist again. Instead, you should look to your covenant membership, your baptism. Now, it's interesting to me that on the one hand, they're saying there's so much antinomianism. People are claiming to be Christians and not living it. On the other hand, they're so concerned that we shouldn't examine ourselves. And then they adopt a view of assurance based on baptism and based on these objective covenant marks and objective status. They end up embracing a view that is tailor-made to produce nominalism. So it's really unbelievable that they're not making this connection. Number six, biblical language over propositional systematic theology because what happens is when they bring these things up they get refuted from scripture and from the confession and they don't like that and so they come up with this idea that well if James says justified by works we're just going to keep proclaiming the words of the Bible even if they're shown to be misrepresenting and shallowly interpreting those words of the Bible They demand that we get away from this scholasticism and logic and all these things. And again, if you doubt me, I got the quotes. We'll deal with it next time. But that's what they're saying. We need biblical language over against biblical meaning. They wouldn't say it that way, but that's really how they defend their view, which is logically and biblically contradictory. Seventhly, They promote new covenantal biblical vocabulary. They say, let's get rid of all the terms from the confession, in the confession, regeneration, justification, adoption, sanctification, election. These terms have a certain meaning, but we're going back to the Bible, and so we're going to bring forth new biblical definitions, covenantal definitions for these terms, such that they don't guarantee salvation. You can be justified in a certain sense and lose it. You can be elect in a certain sense and lose it. You can be adopted in a certain sense and lose it. So we now redefine these salvation terms as non-salvific, non-decretal, These things are not grounded in eternity. They're not guaranteed in terms of perseverance. They're losable benefits from a losable covenantal union with Christ. Now, with that said, when we look at this, we're going to be able to sympathize with why they're going in this direction, some of the errors in the Reformed Church that prompted them to try to find some kind of answer to these problems. We're going to look at passages of Scripture that they try to interpret as best they can, and it seems in their minds that this is the right answer to how to understand these things. But the main takeaway for me is that we need to make sure that our ministers are studying reformed systematic theology and that they're able to read books that answer these questions so that when these questions arise, they have the biblical confessional answers and they don't have to get creative to try to find and rig up some kind of doctrinal formula to meet the challenges of the day. So we're gonna pause there. I know I've gone over time. Does anybody have any questions? If you do, I can't promise that the people next to you aren't gonna be upset because they wanna go home, but I will answer them. And I have one in the back, and then we'll get here. Yes. Yes. Okay, so the question is Is the lordship salvation debate relevant here in this timeline? And you mentioned Zane Hodges and who was the other one? Charles Ryrie and the dispensationalists. Right, so, and John MacArthur opposing that, the gospel according to Jesus. Okay, yes, that's a good question, okay? Thank you for that because I will confess the fact that I didn't include that in the outline may show some bias against federal vision. This is part of trying to be sympathetic. So what is Norman Shepard possibly reacting against? It is this idea that you can have Christ as your savior by faith without having him as your Lord. Now the traditional Reformed biblical answer to that is to say to believe in Christ is to receive him in all of his offices as the Christ, the anointed prophet, the anointed priest, the anointed king. So by faith you're receiving Christ as Savior and Lord as our membership vows state and That's the approach. I think that has refuted the lordship salvation Well the people who deny lordship salvation now I think that may very well have been a major influence upon Shepard. He's trying to find his own way to really nip that in the bud and say, well, not only does true faith always produce obedience, it's included, right? And so we can sympathize with him in rejecting the false gospel of the anti-lordship camp. John MacArthur didn't need to go to those lengths to refute it, by the way, so I think we should be cautioned there as well. I think that one of the reasons why some people in the Reconstructionist camp and the Reformed Church were tempted to defend Shepard is because they perceived that some of these denials of lordship were seeping in. Antinomianism was seeping and creeping into some aspects, perhaps even at Westminster and in the PCA and in the broader Reformed Church. And so they came to Shepard's defense as a co-belligerent against those movements. So we are not here to defend the PCA in some of the things that may be taught there that are not faithful to the biblical doctrine of sanctification. So great point. And again, this helps us to sympathize with federal vision in a way, because if you're not sympathetic, you're not going to understand what they're saying, and therefore you can't refute where they violate scripture. And another question. Yes. Mine was on Article 117, the commands of the Lord, where it says, since we are to judge of the will of God in His Word, which testifies that the children of believers are holy, not by nature, but by virtue of the covenant of grace, which they together with their parents are comprehending, Godly parents ought not to doubt the election and salvation of their children, whom it pleases God to call out of this life in their infancy. How do we hold to that? historical reform view and not fall into the doles of New York. Okay, so question is Article 117 of the Canons of Dort, this idea of not doubting the salvation of covenant children dying in infancy. I'm going to say this, that will factor into at least one if not multiple of these lectures that are to come. How do we embrace that? Not all of us do because Westminster says elect infants dying in infancy. I personally would agree with the canons of Dort there, not every confessing Presbyterian would, but I think it is a valid question. How do we embrace that, those of us that do, without going to embrace Doug Wilson's position on presumptive regeneration? That's an excellent question, and that's one of the reasons why I think federal vision forces us in the providence of God to grapple with some very important doctrinal questions that have been answered in the past, but have been sitting on the shelf collecting dust. So we will do that because we don't, I don't want to fall into the trap of the straw man that Wilson is critiquing and deny God's covenant with us and our children. John, do you think that the reason why these folks are so anti-antinomianism, but yet seem to embrace an idea that essentially is antinomianism, and their attitude about not examining oneself and things like that is because they are overreacting to the idea that they can be seen as sympathizing too much with Roman Catholicism, or I don't know if you have a thought on that. Okay, so the federal vision's allergic reaction to self-examination and yet their allergic reaction to antinomianism. How do we explain these things? And you mentioned the response to Roman Catholicism and so on. I would say we will deal with that in our lecture on Steve Wilkins because of his critique of the halfway covenant and of Jonathan Edwards, and this is another crucial thing. Edwards wrote a treatise defending the idea of making a covenant of communicate membership Very similar to what our denomination practices, and that treatise is collecting dust, and Wilkins takes umbrage with that practice. And so we're going, in dealing with Wilson, or Wilkins, we're going to address that. I will simply say that the Christian Reconstructionist movement, as we'll see next time, not all of them embraced this stuff. It was actually some of the Reconstructionists, like Joe Moorcraft, that were the first to blow the trumpet against it. So there are some theologically sharp Reconstructionists. I don't mean to say there aren't any. There are some. But the Reconstructionist movement has a tendency to overreact. and to be focusing on the people they disagree with rather than diligently constructing and building up an edifice of consistent classical reformed theology, systematic theology. It's always focused on debates, blog posts, bullet points, Greg Bonson versus this guy, Greg Bonson versus that guy. It's so focused that it has a tendency in some cases to overreact And that's what you get. You get the sense, all these lectures that these men give at these conferences, you can almost, in the back of your mind, think of the extremist straw man that they have in the back of their mind, or in some cases, not a straw man. So Schlissel speaks out against self-examination. But when you listen to Schlissel, you get the sense that he's been in some of these extreme Dutch hyper-Calvinist pietist churches where if you didn't see a blinding light, you don't come to the Lord's table. And most, like 80% of the church, might not even commune because they haven't had this amazing revival experience. And so if he's dealing with that abuse of introspection, maybe we can understand why he just throws the baby out with the bathwater. We can understand it, but we in a way we can't, because he's a minister. He should know better than to impute some extremist fringe group, impute their views to the classical Reformed faith. That's just absurd. Okay, last question, and then we're done. Okay, why is this important? I would just go back and we'll end on this, that the truth of God has increased through the lies against it to his glory. And so by studying by studying lies or false teachings, or at this point, we don't wanna be precipitous here with our verdict, but this federal vision controversy, by studying it, it will help us be sharper to understand the truth of God. There's an illustration that pastors often use where they say people that are trying to detect, I've used it before too, but people that are trying to detect counterfeit bills, all they do is study the real thing and they never look at counterfeit bills. That's actually not even true. That's just a pastor's illustration. So it's not. They do study counterfeits. And I've done some studying on that in terms of rare coins and stuff. They do study the counterfeits. So we do need, if you're a doctor, you're a physician, you need to study disease as well as health. And that's why. But it's a good question. Let me close in prayer. Gracious God, we give thanks to you, for you are the God of truth. You sent us the Spirit of truth as another comforter to lead us into all truth. You've anointed us with your Holy Spirit so that we don't need any kind of infallible teacher to confirm these things, but we have the Spirit of adoption testifying with our spirit that we're the children of God and confirming in our hearts the truth of your word. We pray that you would indeed sanctify us in the truth, and that you would give us that discernment, that we would have a teachable spirit to learn, to grow, to develop, that discernment that we might let no one steal our crown. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.