Confession Debate
How should God's people argue with one another? How should they live together with those who are not following God's word? And how do we discern between those who are dangerously, sinfully heretical and those who have a genuine difference of conviction?
I'm asking this because I'm spending today working on my dissertation, and because I happened to just read Doug Wilson's latest. Essentially, Wilson is arguing that he and his FV cohorts are more in line with the tenets of the Westminster Confession than their Reformed opponents. I am certainly not trying to start a debate on FV (Or anything else of Wilson. Every time that guy writes a book some part of my life plan goes up in smoke.). However, I think it is important to consider and recognize, as Reformed Christian thinkers, the role that the Confession plays in our practice of religion. While I'm not going to say that the confession is in any particular way false, I do want to challenge the notion of standing upon the Confession. Can a group or individual argue that he/she is more closely, more carefully following Christ because his/her agenda/belief fits more carefully with the Confession?
One reason that I'm curious about this is that I'm studying the Parliament in the 1640s as part of this chapter of my diss. Samuel Gorton, after being shuttled around the NE colonies throughout the 1640s and put on trial by the gov't of the United Colonies for illegally buying land from Indians, headed over to England to petition Parliament for the right to stay put on his land and be left alone (this was long before SG could settle with like-minded folks in the wilderness of Idaho). Parliament, who was embroiled in a fierce civil war with King Charles I, was also listening to frequent sermons from--guess who?--the Westminster Divines. From the Wilson statements above, a Parliament that is hearing from these Westminister folks should be a pretty orthodox Parliament. However, the Committee for Foreign Plantations sent SG back to NE with a letter telling the Puritans to leave him alone. And Gorton did return to his land--but only after a few years chilling out with a bunch of like-minded folks. See, as the Parliament took control and the king was on the run, the lid was off in terms of religious orthodoxy in England. We may now celebrate that this led wise and godly men to meet and compose the Westminister confession, but we also must recognize that this produced the ideal condition for the production of much heretical and heterodox teaching.
So, I'm going to suggest that the lid is off in terms of orthodoxy here in America, and it has been for awhile. It might be important for someone to answer Wilson's call for a debate. But let's think--are the sheep under DW and his FV buddies uninformed? I would say not. I would say that those Christians who are with Wilson, et al, know full well where those theological lines are being drawn. Let's take a lesson from history and focus our Reformed, good theology energies not just on drawing the lines of orthodoxy, but also for convincing those on the margins--those who are in the realm of the uninformed & heterodox--and showing them the true gospel of Jesus Christ.
I'm asking this because I'm spending today working on my dissertation, and because I happened to just read Doug Wilson's latest. Essentially, Wilson is arguing that he and his FV cohorts are more in line with the tenets of the Westminster Confession than their Reformed opponents. I am certainly not trying to start a debate on FV (Or anything else of Wilson. Every time that guy writes a book some part of my life plan goes up in smoke.). However, I think it is important to consider and recognize, as Reformed Christian thinkers, the role that the Confession plays in our practice of religion. While I'm not going to say that the confession is in any particular way false, I do want to challenge the notion of standing upon the Confession. Can a group or individual argue that he/she is more closely, more carefully following Christ because his/her agenda/belief fits more carefully with the Confession?
One reason that I'm curious about this is that I'm studying the Parliament in the 1640s as part of this chapter of my diss. Samuel Gorton, after being shuttled around the NE colonies throughout the 1640s and put on trial by the gov't of the United Colonies for illegally buying land from Indians, headed over to England to petition Parliament for the right to stay put on his land and be left alone (this was long before SG could settle with like-minded folks in the wilderness of Idaho). Parliament, who was embroiled in a fierce civil war with King Charles I, was also listening to frequent sermons from--guess who?--the Westminster Divines. From the Wilson statements above, a Parliament that is hearing from these Westminister folks should be a pretty orthodox Parliament. However, the Committee for Foreign Plantations sent SG back to NE with a letter telling the Puritans to leave him alone. And Gorton did return to his land--but only after a few years chilling out with a bunch of like-minded folks. See, as the Parliament took control and the king was on the run, the lid was off in terms of religious orthodoxy in England. We may now celebrate that this led wise and godly men to meet and compose the Westminister confession, but we also must recognize that this produced the ideal condition for the production of much heretical and heterodox teaching.
So, I'm going to suggest that the lid is off in terms of orthodoxy here in America, and it has been for awhile. It might be important for someone to answer Wilson's call for a debate. But let's think--are the sheep under DW and his FV buddies uninformed? I would say not. I would say that those Christians who are with Wilson, et al, know full well where those theological lines are being drawn. Let's take a lesson from history and focus our Reformed, good theology energies not just on drawing the lines of orthodoxy, but also for convincing those on the margins--those who are in the realm of the uninformed & heterodox--and showing them the true gospel of Jesus Christ.
posted by Meg | 12:57 PM
2 Comments:
Doug Wilson's charge reminds me somewhat of Bill O'Reilly--not that that's a bad thing, but there seems to be something slightly underhanded about saying "I would welcome a debate from any of these people," implying that if the debate does not ensue, it is because those people are cowards and/or implicitly wrong.
Should we argue from the Confession? I think it depends. I'd like to tell myself that part of the reason I stopped memorising the Shorter Catechism midway through was not just because I got too lazy to devote the time, but because I hate it when I find myself in an argument using the catechism as a proof-text, for example, saying "God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth," which is not Biblically errant, but not nearly as convincing to someone who does not hold our standards as quoting John 4:24 and other proof texts. However, when someone who grew up in the PCUSA tells you he converted to Mormonism because he wanted an answer about why we're here on this planet and to the best of his knowledge no other religion could provide one, it can't hurt to say, "Excuse me: Haven't you heard of Question 1?"
I'm trying to think of whether we see any explicit debates in the Bible and I can't think of one off the top of my head. It seems like the majority of what we do see is either defence of what someone knows to be true or doctrinal correction directed at those who are going astray from what a prophet or apostle knows to be true. However, Matthew 18:15 talks about pointing out faults to our brethren so that if they listen to us, we will win them over. I think part of the application we can take from this is that we can expose to others what we perceive to be their faults, but because we know that we are all sinners, we should be ready to have others try to expose what they perceive as our faults to us. We may easily perceive that someone has sinned against us when in reality we have misjudged them; so, too, we can be in error in our doctrinal positions and should be ready to defend what we believe with ears open to the possible correction of our brethren should we deserve it. If others without faith hear our debates, so much the better; it teaches them if nothing else that we do not close our minds when we open our hearts to Christ.
As someone who (moment of shame) has never heard of Federal Vision Theology and had to spend a bit of time on-line before I could figure out what "FV" stood for, I thought I would say a few words.
First of all, this is a great blog idea:) I'm a grad student at Northwestern who grew up in the RP church, so It's nice to see that there are other academically-inclined RP-connected people out there.
On the FV issue, my sense is that the critique of individualism is good. We need to recognize that the modern individual is a modern construct--one the Westminster Divines had access to but Calvin did not. Hobbes's "Leviathan" is obviously the place to start on any discussion of modern understandings of the individual, and Charles Taylor's "Modern Social Imaginaries" gives a good review of the subject.
On the other hand, the biggest problem I can see in the FV position is that it looks like an attempt to "purify" community by reducing admission into the church community to a visible sign (Baptism). Having a pure community in this way seems to get us beyond the undecidability of admission. If everyone who is baptized is part of the community, then we no longer have to rely on the unreliable individual confession to determine who's in and who's out.
The first problem is that, if pushed, the FV position cannot do this. Community admission is still determined by something beyond the mere physical act of baptism. Baptized people must live "consistent" with their baptism, and in this sense, besides glorifying the sacrament in ways that may be doctrinally problematic, the FV position is purely semantic and pretty insignificant.
The second problem is that the FV position should not try to do this. Community, like individualism, is a construct, and the ideal of a pure human construct is certainly unbiblical. It's tempting to try to find a way of perfecting our community norms so we can find theological rest here on earth, but God does not leave us that option.
I've probably used this example before on Jared's site, but I can remember re-reading Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress a few years ago and coming across the passage where Christian is climbing a mountain and comes across a little wayside chapel. Exausted, he goes inside and falls asleep--an action he later regrets because he must make his way between lions in the dark. The point I think Bunyan's making is a good one. We are called to rest in Christ, but never to rest on our earthly path.
It's tempting to try to find a way of stabilizing our human community and create a heaven on earth. The great sin of modernism is trying to develop a system of scientific rationality that articulates absolute earthly standards and takes away doubt and fear and tension without reliance on the "Fear and Trembling" that Kierkegaard calls faith. Perhaps it's just the universal human failing of pride in a different manifestation to believe that we can prove the preacher of Ecclesiastes wrong and cure undecidability "under the sun." FV seems to be just another manifestation of this much broader problem.
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