Is Doug Wilson REDEFINING FAITH?

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For now, we've had so many people say, well, prove it, prove it, show it. So we're gonna be talking about Doug Wilson. And this one's gonna be a lot more complicated because there's a lot more that could be said.

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So we're gonna do our best here to put this all in here. But Doug Wilson has obviously been a part of the federal vision.

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He no longer accepts the title, but on his blog part, blog article, you can go there and look at, we'll link to it, he says he still agrees to what he signed off on theologically.

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So he rejects the title. It's like saying this, Justin, I don't like the word Calvinism. I'm no longer a Calvinist. But then you were to ask me, but do you hold to the five points?

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And I would say, yes. Yeah, I hold to the five points. I affirm everything written in the canons of Dort. Right. Yeah, right.

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It's the same thing. Yeah. So rejecting a title is not the same as rejecting the actual theology.

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True. And the title of our episode today is Easy Listening Legalism. The reason we called it that is because what we're trying to expose here is how there are so many ways that we can talk about works and obedience that are confusing.

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And we would contend, the first two guys, biblicists with good intentions, have spoken in ways that are less than clear and helpful about the relationship between faith and works.

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And now what we're gonna get into is an even more, what we think, is an intentional distortion of how to think through these matters.

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But all of this that we're talking about, it's a new law, and it's a new kind of legalism and works righteousness woven into justification sola fide, all the while trying to maintain the claim to justification sola fide on the basis of Christ alone.

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And that's what's concerning, is that, like, especially with Doug Wilson, I mean, he's going to say, no, I don't claim the federal vision anymore.

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I'm sola fide, solus Christus, all of those things. And it's like, yeah, but bro, in all honesty, look at the things that you're writing and saying.

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You're talking out of both sides of your mouth and you're contradicting sola fide and Christ alone. So we're gonna start with this.

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Before I even read a quote of Doug, we have to clarify some things here.

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So one of the things that's really hard about dealing with Doug Wilson is he knows how to say the right thing, and he knows how to say the right words.

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So you have to be very careful when someone says, like for instance, Justin, if someone walks up and says, I am a

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Christian, well, there needs to be some clarification to that because even in the world today, we don't agree on what is a

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Christian. Mormons say that, Jehovah's Witness say that, there's a Catholic say that, there's got to be some clarity.

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Yeah, I mean, at a basic level, do you affirm the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed and all these guys? Yeah, I mean, yeah.

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So Wilson will say, I am reformed, I hold to the

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Westminster Confession, I hold to the solas, but he doesn't. And this is why, he holds to the same wording, but different definitions.

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And so we're gonna talk to you guys about the definition he holds, and then you will see when you read him, he says, no, no,

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I believe in faith alone, but his word when he says faith means something different. Yeah, like I don't think that word means what you think it means.

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No. I mean, it's a very princess bride kind of. Exactly. Using that word. So first of all, we're gonna talk about what he denies, and this will help you understand.

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So first of all, he denies the covenant of works. Just real quickly, even in their own, how do you call this, the federal vision, and even in their cross -examination.

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So this was the cross -examination from his own denomination. And his response to this, he says, I believe the covenant of works mentioned in chapter seven is badly named.

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I would prefer something like the covenant of life or the covenant of creation. I believe that this covenant obligated

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Adam to a wholehearted obedience to the required men of God. That one stipulation

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I would add is that had Adam stood, he would have been required to thank

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God for his gracious protection and provision. And had Adam stood, he would have done so by believing the word of God.

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In other words, it would have all been by grace through faith. The covenant of works was not a meritorious, sorry, was not meritorious, and we deny that any covenant can be kept without faith.

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Sorry, go ahead. No, I mean, so the thing is though, is that, so what he's saying, he's denying the covenant of works in the framework that reformed theologians have articulated for hundreds of years.

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And I would argue the idea that has been communicated by theologians throughout the history of the church, and that is this, that Adam stood as our representative in the

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Garden of Eden, Doug would affirm that. But we understand that had

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Adam obeyed the covenant that God made with him, he would have earned eternal life and blessedness for himself and all of his posterity.

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That's been understood throughout the history of the church. Romans five makes that very plain.

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Other places in the scripture do too. We've talked about this at length at other venues. So that's a big concern that Doug Wilson does not understand that Adam could have earned obedience.

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And this has a tremendous downstream effect then on how you understand the work of Christ. That's right.

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John and I were talking about this a little bit ago, and this fires me up a little bit. I'm gonna try to just be clear and not too passionate about it.

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To say that Adam would have been saved by grace through faith implies then that Jesus was accounted righteous on the basis of faith.

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And it was by grace through faith that Jesus would have obtained eternal life and that we in him attained it that way.

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That's a problem. Because where the first Adam failed, the second Adam succeeded.

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And that was in obeying, that was in keeping the law perfectly. And so Jesus was not given anything.

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He was not gifted anything. He earned eternal life. And he accomplished righteousness.

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And what Jesus earned, we are given by faith in the covenant of grace. That is a massive thing.

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By faith alone, right? Yes. And so when you reject that, and this is why, well, as someone dispensationist might be listening, well,

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I reject covenant of works language. That's fine. But what you do not reject is imputation by faith alone.

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Right, well, and go ahead. No, I was gonna say, this is important. If you reject that you, you know, that is heresy.

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If you reject that you are not imputed by Christ's righteousness, by faith alone, then you are denying the gospel.

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And there's a play with words here, which we're gonna get into. In essence, they say, no, no, no, we believe in the complete imputation of Christ's righteousness.

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But then they deny it, and we're gonna show that here in a minute. And here's the thing, from a framework perspective, understand where this goes.

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Doug Wilson, when he looks at the covenant God made with Adam, he sees that the requirements of the covenant are obedience and faith.

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And so then now, that's the paradigm and the framework for everyone else. And so it's gonna be obedience and faith in the way that he understands the new covenant, and the way that he understands life in the church and everything else.

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And you might be in by grace, but you're kept by obedience. And so that's the paradigm, and that's important.

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The other thing that he denies, though, verbatim, and we're just getting this from the Joint Federal Vision Statement, is there is a denial of the law gospel distinction.

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That's right. So, quote from the Joint Federal Vision Statement, we deny that law and gospel should be considered as hermeneutics or treated as such, close quote.

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So we have been clear on this show, along with the Reformed and our Lutheran brothers and sisters through history, that there is a distinction between the law and the gospel.

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That there's law and gospel in the Old Testament, there's law and gospel in the New Testament. And then whenever you hear something that we are to do in order to have righteousness before God, right, that's law.

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Whenever you hear of something that Christ has done that God then gives us that we receive by faith, that's gospel.

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That's right. And so they deny, the Federal Visionists do, but Doug Wilson does as well, deny that law and gospel distinction as a hermeneutic and would contend that it should not be used as a way to understand the scriptures.

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Oh, I would say, look, you don't have to have it as a hermeneutic, but to deny its existence is a massive problem. Because even -

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Well, and where they go is they end up conflating it, and they're like, passages are both law and gospel. That's right.

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And this is where you hear people say things that sound holy, like, you know, the law is all of grace, and like, the law is good news.

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And it's like - No. No, in that the first - Gospel wouldn't be titled good news if it wasn't the good news.

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The law is good and holy, amen, Romans 7. But it's not good news. There's no problem with the law, but there's a huge problem with us in that we cannot live up to its standard, and therefore it condemns us.

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Yep. Anyway. One last category. So there's, first of all, there's a denial of covenant of works. There's a denial of the law gospel.

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And then he has this thing that he changes words, and this is why I said you have to pay attention to words.

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So he changes the definition of faith. So this is quoting from his website.

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It says, I'll put the link down there so it's still live, you can go read it. In the New Testament, obedience is a good word. Also in the

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New Testament, works is not, unless it is modified with the word like good. We are called to good works, but we are not saved by works.

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So you see what he did there is that he's saying not by works lest anyone should boast. Those are bad kinds of works. And obviously this doesn't work because John 17,

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Jesus says, I've fulfilled the work that you've given me, and Jesus doesn't put good work in front of there. But he says this, by way of contrast, sinners do not obey the truth.

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The Lord is the author of eternal salvation for all who obey him. No, so he is saying basically faith and obedience is synonymous.

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I'll just keep reading. All nations are summoned to the obedience of faith. Obedience is unto righteousness.

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Even thought, I'm sorry, every thought is to be brought into obedience of Christ. God gives the

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Holy Spirit to those who obey him. And of course, obedience is an evil thing when it is referred, sorry, rendered to the wrong master, which should be obvious enough.

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But the bottom line is that simple words, obey and obedience, should not set off alarm bells for those who read the

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Bible. And yes, they should shut off alarm bells if you're saying obedience and faith are the same thing, which he is, and we have further quotes to help you understand that this is what he's arguing for.

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Sure, he's saying, as others have said, that obedience and faith are effectively one and the same, or at least that obedience and faith are sort of part of the same, they're like flip sides of the same coin, which is just not helpful.

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And the whole business about how he tries to drive a wedge between works and obedience is wild.

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How obedience is good, works is not a good word in the New Testament unless it's modified by a word like good.

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And so what he's saying is, yeah, we're not saved by works, but implication, our obedience is at least a part of our salvation.

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If not, obedience is the way that we are justified. Because obedience is a good word, whereas works is the bad thing.

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So it's not faith versus works in the way that we would think, because he's like, yeah, works are clearly bad, but he's saying, yeah, like obedience is good.

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Well, this doesn't even work in James, because James uses it this way, right? Faith without works is bad.

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James uses the word works, not the word obedience, which is wild. Because so this is where he's setting this up so that it's like, yeah, we're not saved by works, but obedience, now that's different.

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Yeah, and when you're always defending salvation by works, you have to come up with this kind of stuff.

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That is like, I've just never heard someone describe the Bible that way before. Like that is very wild.

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Well, it plays out. So here's an example. This is from his book, Reformed Is Not Enough. So a lot of these quotes,

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I want you to understand, some of these quotes are from the Federal Vision, which is 20 years old, and he's still teaching this.

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He says he rejects it, but he's still teaching this today. The means by which men preserve in the covenant is faithfulness.

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So you have to understand his argument here is that he believes that baptism regenerates babies, or even for those of us who are adults, baptism brings you into what's called a temporary election, or this visible election, and that the way in which one preserves and reaches final election is through faithfulness.

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Continue quote. In other words, to assert that men fall away because their salvation was contingent upon continued faithfulness in the gospel is not to deny the sovereignty of God at all.

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So somehow he's construing saying, well, God in his sovereignty projected for this to happen, that you could be legitimately in election, in covenant with God.

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You could be temporarily elect through baptism in the church, but not be eternally elect, because the way that you persevere in the covenant is through faithfulness, and thereby become eternally elect.

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And he will argue that in his mind, that is faith alone. No, no, no, we are justified by faith alone.

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But he's redefining the word faith. It doesn't mean the same thing that when we say faith alone, or the reformers, it does not mean the same thing.