Scott Clark on Federal Vision (Part 2)

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Federal Vision is in the news.

You might ask, �What is Federal Vision ?

� �Why does it matter ?

� �Who teaches Federal Vision ?� and �What�s the scoop ?

� So today, we have part two of our guest, Scott Clark, on No Compromise Radio.

If you didn�t listen to yesterday�s show, I suggest you do to catch yourself up to this very important topic

that hits at the heart of Sola Fide and our most favorite doctrine almost, the

justification by faith alone.

Scott, thanks for being back on No Compromise Radio again today.

Great to be with you, Mike.

Thank you for having me.

Let me start off by giving you a quote from R .C. Sproul.

I saw my son, Luke, post this on Twitter yesterday.

R .C. Sproul said, �I can�t fathom why there�s any hesitancy about

rejecting Federal Vision.

There�s too much at stake.

This is the gospel we�re talking about.

� End quote, R .C. Sproul.

Any comments?

Well, R .C., I was watching live.

This is early days when you could watch, you know, brand new.

You could watch the General Assembly.

This is the 2007 General Assembly of the PCA, Presbyterian Church in America, and that�s

one of the conservative Presbyterian groups, not the mainline liberal Presbyterians.

And they were debating, you know, whether to receive a report by a committee that had been very critical of the

Federal Vision, and whether they should publicly come out and

reject the Federal Vision.

And there were some in the denomination who were a little worried about, you know, rejecting this, if we�re going to reject this, what else are we

going to reject?

They were arguing kind of a latitudinarian position that, you know, we start rejecting things, you

know, I might get rejected or something.

And so, R .C., I don�t know how often R .C. went to GA, but he was there for

this one.

This was a big one.

And he stood up, and he said the very words that you just read.

And as I watched it online, it seems to me that that comment

changed the direction of the discussion in the General Assembly.

So for those who haven�t been to a General Assembly or a Senate, it operates a little bit like Congress

or the Senate.

Maybe the Senate is a better way, a better analogy.

So people stand up and make speeches.

There are motions and votes and all of that, and that�s what this was about.

So it was like a senator standing up, making a speech on the floor of the Senate, swaying all the other

senators, and then they voted to reject the federal vision theology.

So he was exactly right.

Say what you will about R .C., but he knew the difference between the law and the Gospel.

He was a Lutheran man.

He�s a Reformation guy.

And he wasn�t interested in messing around.

You know, when Chuck Colson and J .I. Packer drafted and others drafted

the Evangelicals and Catholics together and published this confusing ambiguous statement on

justification, he was right there with the others to denounce it and to publish an alternative.

And again, when they did it again, he spoke up again.

So he was a stalwart when it came to the inerrancy of Scripture, the doctrine of justification, the holiness

of God, and so many other things.

But, you know, the Reformed theologian in 1618, J .H. Allstead,

borrowing from Luther to be sure, said that justification is the article of the standing or falling of

the Church.

So if we don�t get this right, we lose the Church.

You know, as Bob Guthrie says, you know, if we don�t feed people, other people will feed them.

If we don�t clothe them, other people will clothe them, other organizations.

But if we don�t preach the Gospel, nobody else will preach the Gospel.

That�s one of the very few things, as I understand it, the Church essentially has three jobs, and that�s

job number one, preach the Gospel.

And so if we don�t get that right, then we�re in very serious trouble.

Yeah, but Scott, you don�t understand.

There�s a culture war, and the government overreach, and a bunch of woke people doing their woke

things.

And so it seems to me that these cultural issues have functionally boiled to the

top and have eclipsed Sola Fide.

And this is what people always say.

You know, the culture, we have other fish to fry, this is what people say.

They�ve been saying this to me for 20 years.

20 years ago, people were saying, �Oh, shut up about the federal vision and all that.

You know, we have these big cultural problems we need to face.

Well, I�d like somebody to show me from the New Testament, where did anyone tell the Apostle Paul

not to rebuke Peter for refusing to eat with the Gentiles, and thereby, according to Paul,

corrupt the Gospel, to deny the Gospel, and then to record it under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to

record it in the book of Galatians for posterity?

Where did anybody tell him?

You know, there�s a lot of bad things happening in the Roman Empire.

There�s chemical abortions, there�s slavery, homosexuality, lesbianism,

pederasty, all the things that are really genuinely terrible that we�re worried

about now, they were all going on in the first century in the Roman Empire.

And show me where the Apostle Paul compromised the Gospel, cut a deal with compromisers

in order to fight the culture war.

What letter did the Apostle Paul write to Nero or Claudius or

any Roman leader to deal with the great pressing cultural issues of the first

century?

Where is that letter?

I�ve never seen it.

Well, I love your reference to Rome, because if you think of Romans chapter 1, Paul said, �I�m eager

to preach the Gospel to you.

� And whether they�re unbelievers or believers, we�ve got one message, and it�s the good news.

Scott, years ago, of course, many denominations condemned federal vision,

and so the ecclesiastical reports from the URCNA, the ARP,

the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Mid -America Reform Seminary, and others said

federal vision is wrong.

And here�s a couple of points from the OPC report, because many of our listeners would understand

an Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

11.

11. A denial of the imputation of the act of obedience of Christ in justification.

12. Defining justification exclusively as the forgiveness of sins.

14. Including works by use of the words �faithfulness� and �obedience�

in the very definition of faith.

And then 15.

15. Failing to affirm an infallible perseverance and the indefectibility

of grace.

Have we forgotten all these ecclesiastical reports?

And from my Baptist point of view, those reports, they take a long time.

If it takes eight years to get Norman Shepard kicked out of Westminster, Philly, they�re going to do their due diligence as Presbyterians

and not knee -jerk it, right?

I think that�s right.

I mean, I don�t know that all of the groups investigated it thoroughly, but they

did benefit from the work of the groups that did investigate it.

And so the RCUS study committee particularly worked on Doug Wilson,

because they�ve had a history of theonomy, and so there was a particular reason to be

concerned about that.

The PCA report is very well done, very carefully done.

The URC report is well done, the OPC report is well done.

The URC has actually spoken to this three times, so we have our own canonical committee report on the federal

vision and justification.

We have a report rejecting justification through works in 2004, and

we even adopted nine points of pastoral advice on the federal

vision, where we, you know, we deny, we say, �Therefore, the synod rejects the errors of those who,

for example, deny or modify the teaching that God created man good and it goes on

until nine points.

So these things are extremely valuable, very accessible.

I�ve got them all organized for you at heidelblog .net slash resources,

and then just search there for the resource page.

It�s all alphabetized on the federal vision, and then when you get there, there�s a section and there�s a table of

contents even.

You just have to click on the link, and it�ll take you to the section of all the ecclesiastical reports and

actions.

And so, yeah, there is a great consensus, and yet, as you say, since 2007, people have sort

of gradually forgotten or ignored or dismissed, and that is

special pleading and self -serving is what it is, when people say, �Oh, well, ignore that.

� Why?

�Well, because I want you to.

� Well, that�s called special pleading.

And that�s not a compelling argument.

Either the various denominations were right about the federal vision, or they were wrong.

And then, of course, there are lots of things that people say, �Oh, well, it�s changed.

� �Well, not really.

� �Well, Wilson doesn�t believe in federal vision anymore.

� �No, he does.

When you tell me that, you�re just telling me that you read the headline of a blog post, but you didn�t actually read the blog post.

� �Because in the post ,� he said, �in the article, he said, �Oh, I still believe it all.

I just don�t want to be called a federal visionist.

� That�s like an arsonist publishing an article saying, �Arsonist, no more.

� �I don�t want to be called an arsonist anymore.

� �Well, do you still carry gasoline around and light buildings ?

� �Oh, yeah, sure.

Yeah, I�ve always lit buildings on fire, and I still light buildings.

� �I stand by all my fires that I�ve set, but I don�t want to be called an arsonist.

� Well, who�s the deconstructionist, radical, you know, nominalist now?

I liked it when Adriel Sanchez on Twitter went after Andrew Sandlin,

he goes by Doc Sandlin, and Sandlin said, �Faith alone is the instrument of justification, not faith

and works.

Faith is always accompanied by good works, so we�re justified by faith alone, never by a faith that�s alone.

This isn�t heresy.

This is good, old -fashioned, biblical, confessional, Calvinistic orthodoxy.

� So that�s what Sandlin posted.

And then Sanchez posted a bunch of quotes from Sandlin�s book

that would deny the very things, if you compare the text with a tweet, and

I guess maybe, Scott, my question is this.

What should a federal visionist do if they no longer believe federal vision theology?

Instead of playing semantics and everything else, why can�t they just say, �I

repudiate it.

I don�t believe it.

I�m no longer part of this denomination.

� I mean, what should they do?

Because many of them, and Sandlin�s case in point, September 28th tweet, I think they�re

just game -playing.

Well, I mean, this is the thing.

So there�s two things.

First, Doc Sandlin, Andrew Sandlin, is a

heartfelt opponent to the Reformation�s distinction between law and gospel.

Last I knew, he is alleged to have written a doctoral dissertation on the work

of F. Scott Clark about the law -gospel distinction.

So I�ve been looking for this, I�ve asked him to send it to me, and he wrote to me and said, �Well, it�s a typo.

It�s supposed to be R.

And I thought, �You know, when I did my doctoral dissertation, I learned how to spell the name of the guy whom I was

studying.

� So that was the first thing I learned to do.

I was going to say, you know, the old Ss looked like Fs, but that�s not going to work with an R, is it?

No, no, no.

It�s not it.

I�m not that old.

So he hates the law -gospel distinction, as do most of the Federal Visionists, in fact,

all of them, as far as I know.

And that�s a fundamental Protestant basic that we all share, and so

there�s that.

So let�s say somebody is tired of being a Federal Visionist, I just happen to have a form.

So in some churches, there are forms to be read when there�s discipline, or when communion is being

administered, or when a baptism is being administered, we read a form.

And so, I won�t read the whole thing, but I did write and publish in 2013, or maybe before that

even, yeah, no, 2008, so it got reprinted in 2013.

In 2008, I wrote a form, because I thought, �Well, some of these people are probably going to change their mind.

So I said, �To all whom these Presence do come, I hereby declare

that I really and heartily believe

in those

righteous

Revivalists� enthusiasm for their

anti -Revivalism, and I

give them

an opportunity to list all the sins and errors that they�ve

committed.

Copa, mea

culpa, no.

Well, Scott, I don�t think it�s that hard.

I mean, it goes against our pride, of course, but I�ve said many times, and I want to keep saying it, that years ago,

while I�d like to blame other people and books that I read, I taught an

eternal functional subordination.

And I was wrong.

I repent.

I don�t teach that anymore, and I tell people, �I don�t teach that anymore, and I�m wrong and I keep

repeating those kind of things.

And so, how hard is that?

You just tell people, �I was wrong.

It was sinful.

Please forgive me ,� and then we move on, and in your particular case, we sign a form.

Do you have a form for me, when I used to teach eternal functional subordination?

I can make one.

Well, you know, mea culpa, I did the same thing, you know.

In the late 80s, mid -to -late 80s, we were all worried about what we now know to be third -wave

feminism.

We didn�t know what to do and how to respond, and so some folks that we trusted probably mistakenly came along and

said, �We can fix this.

We will say that male -female relations are just like the relations between the father and the son,

and just in the way that females submit to their

husbands, etc., the son has eternally been subordinate to

the father.

We were just talking about that in class today, because today was an ancient Church class, and we were talking a little bit

about the Nicene Creed, and I told them, �Look, I was not a sufficiently

Nicene Christian.

It wasn�t in my bones.

So had I been a truly Nicene Christian, and had I read or heard somebody

say the words �eternal� and �subordination� in the same sentence,

I would have known, �Oh, no.

Hold on.

You can�t do that.

We don�t believe that.

Scripture doesn�t teach that.

We settled this at Nicaea.

You can�t say �eternal� and �subordinate� of the son in the same sentence

without becoming an Arian.

So this is what happens when American Evangelicals, and you know, at Mea culpa, I got caught up in this

myself, and it was a serious error, a gross error, and arguably a heresy

against the ecumenical faith.

So this is the American thing.

We�re always remaking stuff.

So I was actually chastised by a fellow

prof at Wheaton, sort of randomly, just popped into my office and started railing at me about this.

I had no idea where it came from or why, but as it turns out, I thought about what he said, and he

was right, and I was wrong.

So yeah, if you believe in grace, then there�s no shame in admitting you�re wrong,

right?

But if you�re standing before God and depend on being right all the time, then it�s much harder, I think, to

admit that you are wrong.

Scott, let�s talk a little bit about helping our listeners.

If our listeners know of folks that believe the Federal Vision and they�re dialoguing

with them back and forth, I mean, we could talk about all kinds of things out of Moscow, but I�m mainly

focused on the Federal Vision issue.

What are some good diagnostic questions, Columbo -like questions, you know, the detective and he�s walking out the door, �Oh,

one more thing, you said faith, you know, please define it.

How should our folks talk to the Federal Visionist to get them to really

show their true hand so then they can try to combat that?

Well, I think the core

error is, before theology we

say there are those who have an internal relation and

an external belief,

and there are other

people listed in the

New Testament who

are in the Church and

didn�t believe in

the Church, or is baptism a sign and a seal?

What is the instrument here?

Is it baptism or is it faith?

Find faith!

Justification.

Are you initially justified by grace alone through faith alone, but only to be finally

justified

through

good

work into your

infant?

Don�t you know that baptism is the sign of initiation into the Church, and communing

is the sign of

renewal into wine and giving it to infants?

Why are you doing that?

I think that would make a great little Heidelblog article.

I�m not trying to give you work to do, but those kind of questions are important because people are trying to weed through this

very muddy issue and confusing issue.

I think so many people believe so many things about it.

It�s fluid.

They also, I think, in my mind, are trying to confuse the people listening, and so I

like that.

I always say, Scott, there�s only one thing worse than intinction, and that is infant intinction.

For what it�s worth, I don�t actually think that the federal vision is that complicated.

It was for me because there were no roadmaps or handbooks when I was trying to figure this out.

We were living it in the early 2000s, and it was developing right in front of us.

But now, in 2022, we know what it is.

Anybody who tells you, listener, or you, Mike, that, �Well, nobody really knows.

� That tells me this person has not done resources.

I don�t

actually think that

it is shifting.

The federal vision is shifting, no lie.

Scott, maybe we can add another question.

Why doesn�t Doug Wilson take down his book �Reformed is

Not Enough� from the Canon Press website?

If you�re in charge of the press, if I call Zondervan and say, �Stop publishing my

Romans commentary from S. Lewis Johnson it�s probably harder for me to do that than it would be if I owned Zondervan,

but then you�d call me Rupert Murdoch maybe.

In other words, why are they still publishing material that they say they no longer believe?

Well, that�s because they still believe it.

I don�t think anything�s changed.

And, by the way, I�m glad you mentioned that title, because I think that is the crucial title in that

respect, in respect to figuring out what the leading advocate actually believes.

It�s in print, and nothing has changed.

So, you know, you don�t get to be reformed and say �Reformed is Not Enough.

So this is equivalent to handing tools to a chimpanzee and turning him loose

on your Rolls -Royce engine.

Say, �Go ahead and work on my Rolls -Royce, chimpanzee.

Here are a set of metric tools.

Go at it.

� That�s crazy.

You have to know what you�re doing.

You have to understand how the engine works.

And you have not to be a chimpanzee.

That�s one of the prerequisites for working on a Rolls -Royce.

And so when you�ve written a book saying �Reformed is Not Enough you�ve disqualified yourself

to get to redefine the reformed faith.

He and others are dialectical.

They say regularly �A� and �Not A� at the same time about the same thing.

And when that happens, in politics, we call it �gap lighting.

� The guy�s just stepping on your toes and telling you, �Oh, I�m not really stepping on your toes.

� No, you really are.

I can feel it.

It hurts.

So, no, you can tell me that you�re not � It�s like when the cops arrest people and the guy says, �I�m submitting.

� You know, �I�m not resisting.

� While he�s resisting, how do I know you�re not resisting?

Because you�re not reaching into your waistband for a firearm.

That�s how I know you�re not resisting.

You�re relaxing.

You�re putting your hands behind your back.

So we just have to think clearly and talk sense about this, and pay attention.

And yet, you do have to be willing to believe your eyes.

So when a guy writes a book, �Reformed is Not Enough or when he tells you in an article, �No, I still believe the Federal Vision you have to

be willing to believe your eyes that, well, okay, that�s the truth.

Talking to Scott Clark today.

R. Scott Clark.

He�s a professor at Westminster Theological Seminary in Escondido, California, and writes on the

Heidel blog.

I think you can also go to his website rscottclark .org and find all kinds of

interesting and edifying articles.

Scott, when I first got to know you, I went to that site and looked up your reading list for certain classes, you know, a two

-hour class, and I thought, �That�s more than I used to have to read for a four -hour class at other schools.

� And so I got the list of books and just went through and bought them all.

And I still haven�t read them all, but I�m working on it.

Well, my students complain, and I just remind them that when I was in seminary,

after we graduated, the accreditors came in and they cut the curriculum down by 10 percent.

So what I�m assigning is at least 10 percent less than what I was assigned.

And I didn�t die, so they�ll survive.

Well thank you for being on the show.

I wanted to make sure we talked a little bit more about this very important topic.

It�s back in the news, and I don�t think it�s going away.

And for many of you who may be listening, you don�t know that Canon Press is in your church because it�s in your

homeschool movement, and there�s all kinds of other things going on with this, but I wanted to make sure people could

understand justification by faith alone is very, very important, and that we

need to stand for the truth, and if people don�t like it, then come what may.

Scott, thanks for being on the show today.

Thanks, Mike.

Always great to be with you.

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