January 26, 2018 Show with Dr. Douglas Wilson on “Why I Discontinued Identifying Myself with the Federal Vision” PLUS Dr. Dewey Roberts on “Historic Christianity & the Federal Vision”

The Federal Vision Controversy and Why Douglas Wilson Discontinued the Label

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Our host Chris. Good afternoon Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arms and your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio wishing you all a happy Friday on this 26th day of January 2017 and this is not a rerun ladies and gentlemen, that is it's not a rerun if you're listening on January 26th because I'm sure eventually I will be airing this as a rerun, but if you're listening on Friday January 26th this is a live program, it's the first one this week because as many of you know I have been laid up in bed with a bad case of the flu after having a wonderful week in Atlanta, Georgia at the G3 conference a week ago and completely healthy, didn't cough at all that I recall, didn't have any stuffy nose, no headache or dizziness or weakness and the night that I returned home to Pennsylvania from Atlanta it all hit me with a sledgehammer and I thank God that I am well enough to do this very important program today because I've been looking forward to it and did not want to postpone it.

For the first 90 minutes of our show today we have with us again after a very long absence Dr. Douglas Wilson, he's an author and he's the pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho and he's going to be addressing why I discontinued identifying myself with the federal vision and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. Doug Wilson.

Thanks so much, good to be with you. Well Dr. Wilson, the catalyst obviously for this program today was a blog article that you had posted some time ago, actually it was on January 17th of last year, Federal Vision No Mass, obviously meaning Federal Vision No More and did that have anything to do with, was it the Roberto.

Duran fight? Which fight was that? I think that the fight had to do with how that No Mass got into the language, but it was just, it was not a hat tip. Yes, I actually watched that.

Fight live somewhere, not at ringside, I mean on television screen, but this is a fascinating issue because it has divided not only the body of Christ, meaning the federal vision, but it has divided those within the reformed camp of Christendom and it has divided us who are, we who are reformed in various ways.

There are some who view this federal vision issue as a matter of life and death, meaning eternal life or damnation, because they have such a strong view in opposition to it that they believe this is no more, or should I say no less serious than the heresies of Rome that required the 16th century protestant reformation.

And then there are some who may disagree with the federal vision, but they just don't think it's that important. They don't think that the disagreements are that vital. And then, of course, you have those who are fully supportive of and active in the federal vision.

But I think it would be wise for you, if you could, to the best.

Of your ability to summarize what exactly is the federal vision. Okay, so finally give up the attempt is from the very beginning, there were two camps or two strong emphases within called the federal vision.

And I described them for many years. I tried to say, well, there's federal vision oatmeal stout, and then there's federal vision amber ale.

And from what I know, federal visionists, they are sampling both.

So I would say that men like Jim Jordan or Peter Lightheart would be examples of federal vision oatmeal stout. And then the amber ale would be people I would identify myself as an amber ale. And that is someone who is in the orbit of orthodoxy.

I was wanting to be in what I was teaching, but believed certain aspects of the historic reform faith had been backgrounded, particularly in American Christianity. But one of the things that overarched those two camps and tied them up together was what I called the objectivity, meaning that you could watch or photograph someone becoming a covenant member.

When someone was converted and they were baptized, you could see them enter into the visible church, enter into the visible covenant. And I would say that objective covenant is a thing, right? It's something that God cares about.

It matters. It's a reality. At the same time, because I was amber ale, I wanted to, what I described as historically evangelical, which I think the absolute necessity of the new birth. And that's not something that you, that you, that's not something you can photograph.

The wind blows where it wishes. The objectivity of the covenant for the oatmeal stout guys tended to the, you know, where you a great deal and virtually everything rides on that. And I was wanting to say, well, those are important and they have a reality, but it's root of the matter be within you and that you must be born.

Again. Now, who are the primary figures that were really known for identifying this movement, being a part of this movement? I know that Steve Schlissel, who has been a friend of mine going back to the late 1980s, was a part of this, began at a Bible conference, I believe in Monroe,.

Louisiana. Am I correct? Yeah. So it, it happened. What happened was at Auburn Avenue, Presbyterian church. And the pastor there is a friend of mine, Steve Wilkins and Steve Schlissel. Steve Schlissel was speaking there and a gentleman named John Berridge and John Berridge had subbed in because Norman Shepard was going to be there and was sick or something.

Something happened where Norman Shepard had to cancel. So they got, they got John Berridge to sub in. And so the, the name of that conference was Federal Vision, Latin word for the covenant vision. And so we gave our talks attempt.

There was no, you know, nothing like that. But we gave our conference talks and about six months later, John Robbins of the, of the Trinity Foundation, he's now with the Lord, published a, like a, well, Joe Morecraft's condemnations of these things and anathematized them, basically.

John Robbins spread it all over the internet and and determined largely by where everybody was standing when the, when the anti-federal vision.

And of course the movement itself, it seems to have been something that publicly divided theonomic or Christian reconstructionist believers. Joe Morecraft being very well known for being a theonomist and Christian reconstructionist, being very opposed to federal vision.

And also my friend, John Otis, who I have interviewed on this program many times, John wrote a book exposing or criticizing, critiquing the federal vision called Danger in the Camp. In fact, I had a debate.

Well, it was really a mini debate, a rushed debate on my program years ago between John and Steve Schlissel. It was short or shorter than desired because Steve was caught in traffic in Brooklyn and finally arrived to the studio with just enough time to rush through a brief exchange between the two.

But the main thing, I mean, there are certain things that trouble Christians outside of the federal vision that are secondary and tertiary. Like for instance, I know that most, not all federal visionists believe in paedo-communion and things like that.

But the thing that, the thing that really seems to upset those that are opposed to this movement is that they believe federal visionists are tampering with or diluting, if not outright denying, forensic justification, justification by faith alone.

And if you could.

Comment on that. Right. Yeah, that was one of the things that was unfortunate about the whole thing, because I believe in the imputation of the act of obedience of Christ, I believe in the imputation of the passive obedience of Christ.

You know, you give me the appropriate sections of the Westminster Confession, and I would sign it in blood, and you know, and then people would say that I'm denying that, because I think largely because of where I was standing when the controversy started.

And they just didn't believe me. In the federal vision camp, who have been unfortunately ambiguous about, you know, about what they mean, about what justification, tillier moment of justification. On Monday, this man is not justified.

And on Wednesday, he is. Among some, in my judgment, to make that matter of that transition more confusing than it needs to be. I spent years on the federal vision side, saying, Hey, guys, that's not fair.

Because, you know, give me a forensic justification statement of faith. And I'll sign it. I, you know, I, you know, I hope necessary to meaning to forensic justification.

Yeah. Okay, I just want to play a very brief clip of a part of that debate that I mentioned between John Otis and Steve Schlissel. And, and by the way, Steve Schlissel, who, as I said, has been a friend of mine since the late 1980s.

Although we have not had frequent contact for a number of years, we have had it from time to time. He has contacted me, I don't know, maybe a year ago and said that he would love to actually have a full blown, properly moderated debate with John Otis on federal vision.

And I love Steve, although I disagree with him on a number of things. And I know Steve disagrees with me on a number of things. In fact, I can, I can remember Steve telling me on a number of occasions when I identified myself as a reformed Baptist, there's no such thing.

But anyway, here's just a brief clip. And I want you to comment on this is after a discussion between Steve and John Otis in regard to how Abraham was justified.

Before God. Hold on. Abraham's a good example. Let's talk about him. This is the one of whom it is said, God speaking now to Isaac, I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands and through your offspring, all nations on earth will be blessed because Abraham obeyed me and kept my requirements, my commands, my decrees, and my laws.

The very things that you said, Abraham couldn't do. Did he do it or didn't he do it? Mr. Otis, did he obey God? He did. Absolutely. He did that. So it's possible to obey God. What a wonderful thing it is to be alive and to be able to obey God.

Then it's worth living. Because if we couldn't, why bother living? The only purpose we have here is to obey him. But you're telling people they don't need to obey him. No, that he doesn't take care of it for them.

All they have to do is make some mental ascent and then they can do whatever they want. And that's supposed to be the historic reform faith. That's who we believe. John does believe, though, that the works and the good deeds are necessary evidence.

No, no. Forget evidence. Are they necessary or not? And did Abraham obey God or didn't he? The Bible says that God chose Abraham because he knew he would obey him and keep his commandments and he would teach his children to do the same.

Now we're told that obedience is an optional or necessary only for evidential value of some sort of justification that came by faith. I say that God can make people who have no understanding unto faithful people.

John, can you respond to that?

Well, there you have it. It seems from that exchange and from the entire exchange that Steve, being a representative of the federal vision, he was actually pushing John Otis throughout their brief exchange to prove justification by faith alone from the scriptures.

And he specified, don't use Romans or Galatians. And his reasoning behind that is, if the doctrine of justification by faith alone was truly a biblical one, you wouldn't need to use Romans and Galatians.

You would be able to find it elsewhere. But does Steve's statements.

In that exchange trouble you at all? Yeah, I would say it's more troubling because I think of then the heresy in it. Works necessary or not? Well, I would say yes, but a necessary what? Necessary what?

I would say necessary condition, which is not the same thing as a necessary ground. What is the ground of our justification? And what is the instrument of the necessary consequence of having been justified is our works, because we're justified by a living faith and not by a dead faith.

It's no dead faith. So the faith that God gives for us to apprehend the righteousness of Christ at the moment of justification is a faith that is spoken into existence by God, and it doesn't go out of existence a moment later.

It's living faith. Yes. And it's living faith, and it continues to live. But when God declares me righteous, it's because of the obedience of Christ, not the obedience of Wilson. Because if it were the obedience of Wilson, I'm going to hell, because my works are not sufficient.

You look at Ephesians and Christ Jesus to do good works, but they are not necessary as a foundational... Right, but the thing that troubles me, because I agree with you, but that's.

Why I made the clarification with Steve, that John Otis does not believe in easy believism or cheap grace. He does not believe that you just need to offer some kind of mental assent to the truth as the demons do, which obviously we have in the warning in James's epistle that even the demons believe and they tremble.

But when I said to Steve that John does believe in the necessity of works as an evidence, or as you just said, a consequence, but Steve clearly radically.

Opposed that notion. Right, and I would say that that would be an example of how, as believing in cheap grace, when that's not the issue at all. It's going to be the perseverance of the saints, and the perseverance of the saints in holiness.

If you affirm that, then there shouldn't be any.

Charge of cheap grace at all. Yes, but what about his own view is really what the more important thing is. He seemed to be denying that works were only an evidence of true justification or true salvation.

He seemed to be muddling the differences between the temporal and earthly covenant that God had with Israel and the Old Covenant, and how obedience and disobedience affected you in regard to your connection with the covenant of Old Testament Israel, with how one is justified before God and being given an entrance into heaven for all eternity with him.

There seems to be a muddling of differences. I mean, do you see a difference between those two things? I would say.

They're muddling of categories. I think I would probably believe is more than simply evidence. It's more organically connected. Don't turn myself from a bramble bush into an apple tree by growing apples.

I don't grow an apple, and God says, very good, on that basis, you can be an apple tree. What happens is God changes me, transforms me into an apple tree, and then, necessarily, I grow apples.

Carl, as Jesus said, a good tree will bear good fruit.

Right. So if justification by faith alone is a good tree, if it's a good doctrine, as the Apostle Paul would say, it's going to grow the fruit. Now, the fruit that grows is not just, it's not like an academic proof that this is an apple tree.

It's part of the nature of the apple tree. You know, this is, but it's of the antecedent conversion, new birth, everything that God did.

Yeah, well, I agree with that, but I don't believe that being transformed into the apple tree is the grounds of our justification. I think that those are two different...

No, no, no. No, it's not that. The ground of our justification is Christ. Christ.

Amen.

The instrument of our justification is our faith, which God gave to us as a gift, lest any man should boast. And then the first consequence would be the...

Now, the Reformation, this is really the key issue that divided Rome from the Protestant Reformers, was the issue of justification, how we are made right before God. And, of course, the Reformers disagreed with each other on various other things, on the secondary and tertiary levels of importance.

And, you know, there is a lot of difference between those who are considered Calvinists and those who are heirs of the Martin Luther, specifically in his lineage. But how do you think, if at all, federal visionists, and you could include yourself as a non-federal visionist, but somehow at least associated by friendship today, how would you, if at all, disagree with the manner and the level at which the Reformers disagreed with Rome?

Because Rome made it clear at the Council of Trent that works were necessary as a means to make yourself right before God, and that if you say that you believe that the works were just necessary as an evidence or fruit, you are to be anathema.

So how would you disagree with the Council of Trent and with Rome? Obviously, the Council of Trent was after the Reformation began, but it still was within that period of time when the Reformers were rising up.

And so on. Right. What the Council of Trent, what the Catholics did, their error, Geneva and Wittenberg, was the fact that they jumbled up sanctification and justification. The thing that they said happened, the infusion of righteousness, no Orthodox Protestant denied, right?

Every Orthodox Protestant agreed that God infuses his righteousness into us. That's what happens in regeneration, that's what happens in the ongoing process of sanctification. We just insisted that you can't biblically call that justification, because that means that God would have to justify a work that's still in progress.

If my sanctification is the ground of my justification, then I'm whipped, because my sanctification is still incomplete, right? I need to be put right. If I'm on trial for murder, and they said, yes, we have, and they said, he's more or less guilty.

Or they said, he's not guilty, more or less. Well, that kind of judicial statement is binary, right? It's got to go one way or the other. You're either guilty, and you're all the way guilty, or you're not guilty, and you're all the way not guilty.

It's a definitive statement by its very nature, right? And so the reformers said justification is a juridical term, judicial term. It's the foreman of the jury reading, not guilty. Okay, and that has to be sanctification.

You know, the guy who's just been acquitted, and he's been released, and he's in vocational training, and he's getting a job, and you know, all of that, he might have a lot of lessons. That has nothing to do with the not guilty, right?

Yes. So, Rome wanted to have infused righteousness be part of justification, and they wanted to deny root and branch, the juridical nature of justification uniformly. On this, I'm with Luther, I'm with Galvin, I'm with Kerr.

Now, the apple tree analogy that you gave before, some might think that you are making the transformation of the center, which we as, all of us as Christians, actually I shouldn't say that because there are many evangelicals who believe in the aforementioned heresy of easy believism and cheap grace, but those of us who are Reformed predominantly believe that we are not just left as we are after we are justified.

Christ truly does transform us and makes us a new creation in Christ. But some might think that the apple tree analogy that you gave is that you are saying that the transformation of the person into the new creation is the basis.

Now that they are a new creation, that's the basis that they are acceptable to God and right before him. Okay, great, thanks.

For asking that question. In the classic Reformed order, regeneration precedes faith. Yes. Okay, so I'm a pagan, standing on a street corner, minding my own business, listening to a street preacher, and then God, monergistically, without asking my permission, gives me a new heart.

Yes. Okay, now that is an internal transformation. Okay, so the first is an internal transformation. It's a species of sanctification. It's a change in me. Now, the change in me is still incomplete, it's corrupted, I'm still, the remaining sin is all there, even if I'm truly, solidly, completely born again.

Right? I'm born again and it precedes faith. The first thing is repent and believe. It turns away from sin and turns to Christ. Amen. Okay, that's the definition. If God creates new life, the new life that he creates, that's the first thing it does.

Turns from sin and turns to.

Christ. Yes. Has faith in Christ. Yes, I disagree with the testimonies of a lot of evangelicals and fundamentalists who will say, I raised my hand at Bible camp when I was seven, I accepted Christ into my heart, I was truly born again, but I actually rededicated to my life when I was 47 after years of whoremongering and drug addiction, and I was a serial killer for a period of that time, but I rededicated my life to Christ, but I was still saved when I was seven.

I radically oppose that notion, so I am on, right now, I'm on the same page with you completely. Okay,.

So then, I said earlier that faith is the instrument of justification. Now, you can't stand by a guy getting converted to the stopwatch and time these things. It's all, you know, nanoseconds sort of thing.

We're talking more about logical priorities. Yes. Does that make sense? So we're talking, it's a logical priority, not something I can say, and then two seconds later, this next thing. First thing that has to be fired, everything else, is regeneration, and then repentance and faith.

That faith is faith in Christ and His righteousness, and that's, God gave me that faith by giving me the new heart that could exercise it, okay, that necessarily it must exercise it. Yes. That's how God gave me the faith.

The faith looks to Christ on the cross in faith, and God, using that faith as an instrument, imputes righteousness to me, the righteousness of Jesus Christ to me. Amen. Okay, so all the obedience of Jesus over the course of His life, His sacrifice on the cross, all of that is imputed to me as a result of, not on the ground of my faith, but as a result of God using the instrument of my faith.

The ground of my salvation and justification is Christ. The instrument that God uses is my faith that comes from a regenerate heart. I regenerate a heart and say, oh, He means well. I think I'll justify Him.

What He does is, He has a regenerate heart that humbles itself for sin, turns to Christ, and then God, as the number two... Amen. Yes, a friend of mine who I've had.

On this program recently, Dr. Bill Downing, he gave an illustration as far as what comes first regeneration or faith, and then of course even subsequent sanctification and so forth, is like being shot with a gun, and the bullet is the thing that causes the wound, but they are simultaneously occurring.

You have the bullet actually being fired first and immediately entering into somebody's body, but the wound is something that will necessarily immediately follow. Yeah, yeah. And we are going to our first break.

It's going to be a brief one. If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, at least, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA.

Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Perhaps you disagree with your own pastor on this issue, or your own wife, or your own husband, or something like that.

But if it's not personal and private, please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence. That's chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Doug Wilson, God willing, right after these messages from our sponsors.

New Perspective on Paul Versus the Federal Vision

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Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko, inviting you to tune in to A Visit to the Pastor's Study every Saturday from 12 noon to 1 pm Eastern Time on WLIE Radio, www .wlie540am .com. We bring biblically faithful pastoral ministry to you, and we invite you to visit the pastor's study by calling in with your questions.

Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you, never dull. Join us this Saturday at 12 noon Eastern Time for A Visit to the Pastor's Study, because everyone needs a pastor. Welcome back. This is Chris Zarnes,.

And if you just joined us, our guest for the first 90 minutes of the show, with about an hour to go, is Dr. Douglas Wilson, the pastor of Christ Church of Moscow, Idaho, and we are discussing why I discontinued identifying myself with the federal vision.

That is why he did, not me, and not that I ever did, but I just wanted to clarify that. And if you'd like to join us...

Oh, you're in trouble now.

And if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, chrisarnsen at gmail .com. And by the way, Doug, the first and only time that I believe I ever saw you face-to-face was at a conference you were conducting that was sponsored by Steve Schlissel and Ron Weinbaum in Brooklyn, New York.

I don't know if you remember that. That was even, I think, I think that was before the federal vision actually arose as an entity.

I think that's right, yeah.

Right. And I still hear from both from time to time, especially Ron and his wife will contact me from time to time. And the first time I heard of you was back in the late 1980s, Calvary Baptist Church of Amityville, Long Island, which eventually became Grace Reform Baptist Church of Long Island.

We had a Bible conference with John Armstrong before, years before John became a proponent of the New Perspective on Paul and also actually became a paedo-baptist. And John brought with him a very large stack of the Credenda Agenda magazine that he gave out, and I believe that was the very first time I heard about you.

Do you still publish Credenda Agenda?

No, it's gone the way of its...

Well, that actually brings me, I think, to an important point, the New Perspective on Paul, because there are some opponents of the federal vision who, I think, mingle the two things too much. But I have spoken with adherents of the federal vision that seem to approve of N .T. Wright's understanding of Paul and his New Perspective.

If you could differentiate those two things.

Yeah, I think that this is why you need Venn diagrams. I think that the federal vision, both kinds, had certain emphases. You could find them also duplicated in the New Perspective on Paul. They weren't identical.

They weren't the same project. They weren't trying to answer the same questions. I think what happened was N .T. Wright, I think, on justification by faith, and because he blurred that up, and because some federal visionists were being attacked for denying justification by faith, some of them availed themselves of Wright's argumentative blur to keep things murky.

I just think that N .T. Wright was very, very helpful on... He's just stellar. And on other topics, it's just the worst thing you ever saw.

Well, the thing that I gathered, and I'm perhaps totally misunderstood what Wright was saying, or at least some of his disciples, for lack of a better term, is that, for instance, in the letter to the church at Galatia that Paul, the apostle, wrote, when he was condemning the Judaizers, it was not for the heresy of adding works to faith to justify yourself before God.

It was because the Judaizers were making or attempting to make Christianity an exclusively Jewish club of some kind, and they were like a cult trying to make Christianity Jewish. And, of course, by enforcing circumcision and other ceremonial aspects of the law.

Am I right on that, or am I.

Off base? I think that that's fair. That's one of the things that New Perspective on Paul sought to do, is to say that the Pharisees weren't really pharisaical. They were chauvinistic, right? You know, that Paul uses.

He says, and, you know, it's a righteousness of their own. In other words, it was not like it wasn't your hockey team or your football team won in the first place, and you're proud of that. The righteousness that came from it, from law-keeping.

And that works-righteousness mentality is as old as dirt. And I think that I've only met N. T. Wright one time, and it was when he was speaking at the 2005 Auburn Avenue Conference. And he was there with Richard Gaffin.

They were doing a point counterpoint thing on all of this. And one of the things that became apparent to me is that Wright appears to be saying that what he's attacking, when he's attacking the Reformation understanding or the Reformation distortion of Pauline justification, he's attacking a particular Lutheran form of it.

And when Gaffin would respond, N. T. Wright was simply not up to speed on the historic Reform position on a number of these issues, right? And then there was that in cutting slack that makes me nervous.

So I was with a number of other men, and we were having lunch with N. T. Wright. And I asked him this question. I was pretty astonished at his answer. I said that Pauline, that he was blameless, blameless according to the law.

And then in Luke, it says that John the Baptist's parents were blameless according to the law. And I asked N. T. Wright, if you're talking about the same basic thing there, was Paul in the same basic and Wright said yes.

He said he thought they were in the same spot, the same place. He said that John the Baptist's parents would think that Saul was something of a hothead, but that he was a faithful covenant member, blameless according to the law.

Well, if you read Paul's description of himself, he describes himself as an insolent man, as a blasphemer. He persecuted the Church. Paul's problem with his pre-conversion self was that he was wicked.

But N. T. Wright wanted to say he was circumcised, he kept the law, he was good. That was good. Which people who are to the externals of the law sometimes gravitate to that. We have a listener in Lindenhurst,.

Long Island, New York, CJ, who says, Does Doug believe that if you truly do believe that works are required in some way to merit eternal life or to justify one before God, that that is a damnable heresy, whether it be a misinformed federal visionist, a Roman Catholic, or an Eastern Orthodox individual?

Yeah, anybody who believes that I can earn or merit my standing before God is denying grace. Yeah, you're just denying grace. You've fallen from grace, Paul says in Galatians.

So do you believe that that's damnable?

Yes.

Even if somebody uses the caveat of provenient grace as Roman Catholics do and some others do?

Yes. This is something I wanted to say early on in our discussion, and this might clarify, it might murk it up for you, but...

Let's try to clarify.

Let's try to clarify. So when you say damnable heresy, I would say yes, it is a damnable heresy, but who's going to hell, right? Are there saved... If you ask me the question to people in an evident Bible-preaching church, but if I sat them down and gave them a pop quiz on justification by faith alone, a theological exam, could I give a theological exam on justification by faith that would save people, would not score 100