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”

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. 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 Arntzen, 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 26, because I'm sure eventually I will be airing this as a rerun, but if you're listening on Friday, January 26, 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 mas, 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 fight had to do with how that no mas 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 what I have, the first thing I would do, and this is one of the reasons why it became necessary to finally give up the attempt of identifying myself that way, is from the very beginning there were two camps, or two strong emphases within the group 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 of 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.

They're all in with these emphases. And then the amber ale would be people

I would identify myself as an amber ale, and that is someone who is very concerned to stay within the orbit of Westminsterian orthodoxy.

I was wanting to be a historic confessional Protestant in what

I was teaching, but believed certain aspects of the historic Reformed 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 of the covenant, 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 and other federal vision people 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 stay what I described as historically evangelical, which

I would describe as emphasizing the absolute necessity of the new birth.

All right, so and that's not something that you can photograph, right?

The wind blows where it wishes, and you don't see where it comes from or where it's going. So the objectivity of the covenant for the federal vision oatmeal stout guys tended to gravitate toward the visible church, the visible sacraments, where a great deal and virtually everything rides on that.

And I was wanting to say, well, those are important, and they have reality. But it's also very important that the 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.

It began at a Bible conference, I believe, in Monroe, Louisiana, am I correct? Yeah, so it happened.

What happened was it was a pastor's conference at Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church, and the pastor there is a friend of mine,

Steve Wilkins, and Steve Schlissel was speaking there.

Steve Wilkins, I was speaking there, and a gentleman named John Barich.

And John Barich had subbed in because Norman Shepard was going to be there and was sick, or something happened where Norman Shepard had to cancel, so they got

John Barich to sub in. And so the name of that conference was federal vision.

So the word federal comes from the Latin word foitus, which means covenant.

And so it was just a conference on the covenant vision. And so we gave our talks.

There was no thought of starting anything or nothing like that, but we gave our conference talks.

And about six months later, John Robbins of the

Trinity Foundation, he's now with the Lord, yes, published a, like a, well,

Joe Morecraft's denomination issued a series of condemnations of these things that were identified as having been taught at the conference and anathematized them, basically.

John Robbins spread it all over the internet, and presto, there was a controversy. And the battle lines were determined largely by where everybody was standing when the controversy started.

And so there were some mismatches. There were people who were on the anti -federal vision side who were actually kind of federal vision people, and there were people on the federal vision side who were actually not.

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 really seems to upset those that are opposed to this movement is that they believe federal visionists are tampering with or deluding, if not outright denying, forensic 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 hold to forensic justification.

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, so I hold to those things.

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.

Others have, I think that there have been others in the federal vision camp who have been unfortunately ambiguous about what they mean, about what justification actually is.

Is there a forensic punctiliar moment of justification where on Monday this man is not justified, and on Wednesday he is, right?

There's been a tendency among some of the federal vision advocates,

I think, in my judgment, to make that matter of that transition more confusing than it needs to be.

But 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.

You know, I hold to this. It's absolutely necessary to hold to this.

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 Ottos and Steve Schlissel.

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 Ottos 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 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 it. This is after a discussion between Steve and John Ottos 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. Ottos? Did he obey God? He did. Absolutely.

He did that. So it's possible to obey God then. Wow. 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 Jesus will 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 of the confusion in it than the heresy in it.

And this is how I think it's confused. He says, are the 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 the instrument of our justification is faith.

The necessary consequence of having been justified is our works, because we're justified by a living faith, as the

Westminster Confession says, 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.

Right. Because if it were the obedience of Wilson, I've got, I'm going to hell, right?

Because I'm not, my works are not sufficient. Okay. God looks at, you look at Ephesians 2, 8 -10, we're not saved by good works, lest any should boast, but we are saved to good works, for we are

God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared beforehand for us to do.

So the good works are absolutely necessary, because that's how God does it.

But they are not necessary as a foundational thing. They are not a prerequisite to me being saved.

They are the result of me being saved. 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 federal vision folks could misrepresent their opponents as believing in cheap grace when that's not the issue at all.

You know, so if everybody believes that if you're saved, 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 implying that, 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 difference. I mean, do you see a difference between those two things? I would say it's a muddling of categories.

So I think I would probably agree with Steve that the fruit of belief is more than simply evidence.

It's more organically connected to saving faith than that. But here's how

I illustrate it. I don't turn myself from a bramble bush into an apple tree by growing apples, right?

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. That's what apple trees do. 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, if it's a wholesome 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 proof that this is an apple tree.

It's part of the nature of the apple tree. You know, this is just part and parcel of the whole thing.

But it happens because of the antecedent conversion, new birth, everything that God did to kick it off.

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, death, burial, and resurrection.

The ground of our justification is the work of Christ. Amen. The instrument of our justification is our faith, which

God gave to us as a gift, lest any man should boast. Right? And then the first consequence of our justification would be the sanctification and the consequences that follow.

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 can 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, and the thing that divided them from 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 us based upon 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 the jury comes out and they say, as the jury rendered a verdict, and they said, yes, we have, and they said, he's more or less guilty.

He's more or less, 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 complete.

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 to learn, but that has nothing to do with the not guilty that he just heard read in the courtroom, right?

Yes. So Rome wanted to have infused righteousness into us, be part of justification, and they wanted to deny root and branch, the juridical nature of justification, which the

Reformers uniformly avowed. And so I'm on this, I'm with Luther, I'm with Calvin, I'm with Tert, and I'm with Hodge.

That's what the way it's got to be. 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 Ordo Salutis, regeneration precedes faith.

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. Now that is an internal transformation.

Mm -hmm. Okay, so the first thing, the kickoff of the whole thing, 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, 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 that this new heart does is repent and believe.

It turns away from sin and turns to Christ. Amen. Okay, that's the, by 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 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 with a 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 next thing happened, but the first thing that has to be theologically prior, you know, prior to everything else, is regeneration, which is

God's work alone, and then repentance and faith. That faith is faith in Christ and his righteousness, and 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, as using that faith as an instrument, imputes righteousness to me, the righteousness of Jesus Christ to me.

Okay, so all the obedience of Jesus over the course of his life, his sacrifice on the cross, his resurrection power, 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.

So God doesn't look at my regenerate 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 gives me the perfect work as the number two operation in the order of Saludas.

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 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.

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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. I think that was before the federal vision actually arose as an entity.

I think that's right, yeah. 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 years before John became a proponent of the

New Perspective on Paul, and also actually became a Pato Baptist. And John brought with him a very large stack of 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, it's a victim of the digital age,

I think. So, 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 if you had, this is why you need

Venn diagrams. You know, I think that the federal vision, both kinds, had certain emphases that were shared by some, you could find them also duplicated in the

New Perspective on Paul. But they weren't identical. They weren't the same project.

They weren't trying to answer the same questions. I think what happened was where I believe that N .T.

Wright is blurry, 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 certain things, on certain topics.

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 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, you know, they were too proud of their

Jewishness. But the difficulty with that is just some of the explicit expressions that Paul uses.

He says, you know, going about to establish a righteousness of their own. In other words, it was not just pride of place.

It wasn't your hockey team or your football team won the first place and you're proud of that.

There was a sense of righteousness that came from it, from law -keeping.

And that works -righteousness mentality is as old as dirt. And I think that when

I was... This is a telling thing. 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, it was clear that 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 sort of a latitude 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 asked him this question that was pretty astonished at his answer. I said that Paul says in Philippians that he was blameless according to the law.

He calls himself... He says, I was blameless according to the law. And then in Luke, it says that John the

Baptist's parents were blameless according to the law. Okay. And I asked

N .T. Wright, is the Scripture talking about the same basic thing there?

Was Paul, was Saul of Tarsus in the same basic position that Zechariah and Elizabeth were in?

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 says he described 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.

And that's the way in which people who are attracted 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?

What's happening here, right? Are there saved... Ask me the question another way.

Are there saved people who are clearly regenerate, through the Spirit, is evidence in their lives, they go to a faithful 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 certain saved people would not score 100 % on?

And I think the answer is yes. Can people be justified people while making theological errors or exegetical errors about the nature of faith?

I think yes, that's possible. Yes. And in fact, it's interesting that the

Apostle Paul, and perhaps you agree with me or do not agree, and you could comment on it, the

Apostle Paul seems to treat those who are teaching heresy and trying to convert others to it in a different way than those who are being duped, perhaps temporarily, by it.

And I think that's evident in the Epistle to the Galatians, because of the fact that he calls them brothers.

And he seems to have, even though he scolds them and calls them fools and so on, he treats them in a different manner, in a more loving manner, than he does the actual

Judaizers, who he says they are to be anathema and they have no gospel at all. Yeah, and he calls them false brothers.

So yes, very much so. I've told the story of a little vignette where someone dies and goes,

I love Pearly Gates jokes, you know, someone dies and they go up to the Pearly Gates and Peter meets them there, and there's a desk sitting off to the side, and there's a big stack of papers, and Peter hands him a pencil and says, here's one last thing, here's your justification by faith exam.

When you finish this and you score 100 % on it, just come right in.

And the person stands there and looks at the stack of papers, and he looks at the pencil, and he looks at Peter, then he hands the pencil back to Peter, and Peter says, very good, you pass.

I'm not justified by any work that I do, including the work of being theologically rigorous on justification by faith.

I'm saved by believing in Jesus. I'm not saved by believing in justification by faith alone, accurately, to the tenth decimal point.

Right, I'm saved by Jesus. Now, so, and that goes back to someone who said, and this is the questioner asked about damnable heresy,

I believe that a false teacher who's being obstinately heretical won't accept correction, etc.,

right, and that if the church convicts him as an obstinate heretic, then that person promulgating the damnable heresy, that person should be treated as damned.

Okay, so he's, and it's important for you to have

Presbytery exams that keep that kind of person out of the ministry. Right.

Because he's the electrician who's wiring your house.

A two -year -old can flip the switch and turn the lights on, and, but you don't let the two -year -old wire your house.

Right. Okay, so in this, so when people say, so I've got a

Catholic next -door neighbor, Roman Catholic guy, and we've had arguments about justification by faith, and he's maintaining the

Catholic position, but he's not very educated, and he gets muddled easy and stuff easily, but I think he really loves the

Lord. I think he's converted, but, you know, he's all messed up on justification. Do you believe that he could be saved?

Well, my answer would be yes, I believe that he could be saved. And someone would say, well, how is that possible since he's wrong on justification by faith?

I would say it's possible because he's wrong on justification by faith. If he were right about justification by faith, that we have to earn our way into heaven, then he's lost, man, he's praying to pictures.

Or statues. Yeah, or statues. That's a big -time sin, man.

God saves us through Christ, the imputation of Christ's righteousness. And the fact that I got saved on Monday, and then told a lie on Friday, and I sinned, and let's say

I confessed it, but let's say I got into other sin after my... someone can be truly converted and truly get into sin later, their justification is as perfect as the saintliest person who ever lived.

We have to go to our midway break right now. It's longer than most breaks because Grace Life Radio 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida requires a longer break in the middle of our two hours. So please be patient.

We do have a final half hour with Dr. Doug Wilson. He wanted to be on for two hours.

We invited him on for two hours, but he could only commit to 90 minutes today. But we are having him back actually in the future,

God willing, to debate Joel McDermott, the current president of American Vision.

Many of our listeners may be familiar with that ministry that was perhaps most well known for having

Gary DeMar for many years as its president. And Gary is just involved in an emeritus capacity currently in contributing articles and so on to American Vision.

But Joel McDermott actually approached me and asked me to have a debate or orchestrate a debate on Iron Trip and Zion Radio with Doug on the penal code in regard to homosexuality.

And I'll have you just briefly describe that when we come back from the break because I don't want to be too far too off the subject with a rabbit trail.

Sure thing. But we're going to be going to our midway break right now. And if you'd like to join us, send us an email.

We do have a few of you still waiting for your questions to be asked. Please be patient. And our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

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-profit, non -profit, non -profit, non

Because it's fulfilled in Christ. Is he the only theonomist that believes that? Well, I think there are probably a few others.

He lays it out in his book. His book, The Bounds of Love, which is a very good book overall, has a section on that.

And I believe anybody's that's been influenced by his book probably thinks that, but my take is that I think that Joel's libertarianism

Sometimes drives the bus Okay, I Didn't know that he was a libertarian.

I have politically libertarian leanings I did not know that he was because Gary does not seem to be a libertarian

No, I'm a man. I don't want to misrepresent Joel I would say that Joel and Anna is particularly ironic because I would consider myself on all lawful activities

I would consider myself libertarian I'm a free market, you know, you know, if God I'm a free market guy from top to bottom front to back

So I call myself a theocratic libertarian. Okay, but I'm a but I'm a social conservative

I believe that right as a social conservative and it

Joel would agree with me and we would agree on abortion needing to be against the law, but Joel is

Does not take that stand on the on the prohibitions of homosexual conduct

And so I want to say that the Mosaic Code The the penalties of the Mosaic Code have some civil relevance to us today

Not that we apply them straight across but that we are to gain wisdom from them and apply accordingly

Well, if you keep listening folks, you will hear the announcements about that debate Coming up God willing in the near future between our guests

Doug Wilson and Joel McDermott on the homosexual penal codes of the

Old Testament and how they apply today and by the way, this is very appropriate then to bring up a question from BB in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, she says are you a theonomist and Christian Reconstructionist?

Yeah, okay, so, um, I just wrote that something on my blog the other day on this on Theonomy is a many -splendored thing

And And the answer is it depends so back in the 80s when theonomy was a thing as a movement

I Wasn't a card -carrying young theonomist I didn't I didn't belong to the movement

But I learned a great deal from the Reconstruction they were they were about the only ones who were seriously

Trying to apply the Bible to all of life, which is something I was very interested in So I would call myself in those terms a small

T theonomist a small R Reconstructionist and And people would joke when people said are you a theonomist?

I would say oh, no, I hate God's law So So, of course all

Christians are theonomic in the sense that every Christian believes that if God thinks we ought to do something

We should think that too You know We all we all believe that the real debate is over the exegesis

So I have no problem accepting Joel McDermott for example as a theonomist And he and I would agree with one another that God's laws authoritative and binding

But What is the exegesis? What what does this law actually require of us today and and how does the coming of Christ alter that?

How does the certain the how do the changing circumstances alter it? So for example in the

Old Testament It requires God's law required a parapet around the roof of your house.

I call myself a general equity Theonomist so the

Westminster Confession says that the judicial laws aren't binding today Except as the general equity thereof may require

So I believe God's law requires you to have a railing around your second -story deck

Because the general equity of the Mosaic law requires that right? We have a listener in Clifton, New Jersey Joey who says dear pastor

Wilson in the audio clip we heard Steve Schlissel say God chose Abraham because He knew

Abraham would obey him that almost seems Arminian to me This seems to be clear a clear denial of unconditional election

I think you spoke clearly on justification by faith, but could you please share your view on unconditional election?

Yeah, God It's not possible for God to look at any human being raw

To see what they would do without him because everything they do is with him so God when when

Arminians let's say that they that God looks down the corridors of time and And God look

God looks down the corridors of time and he sees someone choosing him I always want to ask these corridors of time who built them.

Are they godless who create you know, who created them? So I have no problem

Affirming without qualification that Election is sovereign and unconditional.

It does not mean that there are no conditions for the election It means that they're the conditions are not to be found in us

So there's there's nothing that God looks at me doing or doing in the future

That is the basis for him choosing me. Yeah, what you're saying is that he does not

Love us because we are lovable he just he chooses us because he has his own purpose and he has his own reasons for loving us that are

Not because we deserve it or merit in in any way Right. We basically we love him because he first loved us not the other way around.

So basically, this is something that I believe in the exhaustive sovereignty of God and that and that means of necessity that Everything good in me comes from him and he thought he didn't do that blindfolded

He knew he knew the consequences of electing me, but he didn't elect me because I was somehow meriting those consequences

Thank You Joey in Clifton, New Jersey We also have Arnie from Perry County, Pennsylvania who says are you aware of any notable names?

Who are pastors or leaders within the federal vision movement who do in your opinion outright deny justification by faith alone or forensic justification

No, I'm not aware of anyone who outright denies it No, I'm not aware of anyone like that and most of them would say that they affirm it what

I regard this issue as is The implications of certain positions that they hold so for example,

Jim Jordan denies the classic understanding of regeneration Okay, so what is he what is he specifically believe about it regeneration?

Well, he doesn't He has a monograph where he in the monograph. He tentatively suggests and then later he came

Sort of down on it. He he doesn't believe it has to do with he doesn't believe that we have a nature

That can be transformed right, so it's like I Would be a classic evangelical and I would say that God takes away my heart of stone and gives me a heart of flesh

He gives me a new nature. Amen. All right, and And Jim would say

I don't I think the Holy Spirit comes in to your life And he wrestles with you, but he doesn't fundamentally change your nature because you you it has to do with a

Philosophical view of whether we even have such a thing as a nature Okay now that can get

Very complicated, but I think it has I think that those sorts of speculations have downstream

Consequences for things like justification by faith, but I've never heard anybody flat -out denied justification

So you actually believe that? My friend Steve Schlissel believes that we are justified by faith alone

Yes Really? Yeah, I think that he has a Well, I'll put it this way

I've not heard him Deny it. I've heard him Quarrel with and argue with certain expressions of it

But those expressions like in the exchange to the recording that you just played. I thought that there was a misunderstanding of the roof of the of the traditional classic

Reformed expression I think Steve was misunderstanding it and rejecting the misunderstanding Well, it's fine to reject the misunderstanding

It's like debating an atheist and I could tell an atheist, you know The God you don't believe in I don't believe in that one either

Right Yeah, well, he seemed to be like for instance He instead of affirming he never in that debate affirmed justification by faith alone, by the way

He never said I do believe in that What he did was he tried to press his opponent to prove it from the

Bible without using Romans and Galatians He seemed to be in opposition to that point of view

And at the very least he didn't seem to think it was a salvific issue if you fell on The view that you believe that works were somehow required in a meritorious way

He didn't seem to think that that was all that horrific Between believing in your works and Believing that works might have a person might believe that works have something to do with it and simply be confused

But if a person is trusting in his works, that's idolatry. That's that's

Damned double sin sin people like that go to hell By the way,

Steve if you're listening, I will talk to John Otis about revisiting a full -blown debate with you and If I am misrepresenting you in any way, please

Send us an email or give me a call later and we'll get you back on to respond to this program

Because I don't want to in any way put words in your mouth The Well, let me read another question

From let's see here we have Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York who says would you embrace as a brother in Christ a

A studied knowledgeable Roman Catholic who was faithful to the

Council of Trent or someone else who clearly on paper in their doctrine or dogma

Denied justification by faith alone If you stipulated the way you just read it is

I don't see how someone who Held to the Council of Trent Understood it and affirmed it and he really meant it.

I don't see how I could have fellowship with someone like that. No It would just it wouldn't be a matter of me choosing.

It would just wouldn't be there because he's Worshiping another God there are You know, there's you don't have fellowship with people that you don't have to you don't have fellowship with I Can fellowship with people that I believe are in grievous error

If I believe and I have evidence for thinking that God is fellowshipping with them So if there's a work of God in their life, the fruit of the

Spirit is evident there I believe they're trusting in Jesus and not their own stupid theories The reason

I can fellowship with them is because their theories are stupid If their theory was right

Then I couldn't have fellows that I'm I'm lost if their theory is wrong and we are

Justified apart from works of the law Okay, it's like asking

Can you can you have fellowship with? Christians who have told lies since they were converted or can you fellowship with Christians who lost?

Or can you fellowship with well, yeah, that's the only kind I do fellowship with The Christians and that doesn't mean if someone's abandoned to lust if someone's abandoned if they're not struggling against sin

So that's the kind of person who gets excommunicated and you don't fellowship with right. In fact, we can have some kind of social

Friendship with those who are out and out pagans, but the Bible only prohibits that if they are professing to be

Christian Right, and so I would say it's it's exactly comparable so that if someone is in grievous error

And they're just as they're just being as stubborn as the Pope's mule about Yeah, and that's in case you didn't get the up to the meaning that's pretty stubborn

So if they're just being obstinate and That kind of demeanor you can't fellowship with that but there are there are

Roman Catholics who are they've got all kinds of workarounds in their head and heart that Enable them to be have that hold this convoluted thing that they just said but their actual trust is in Jesus That's that's the way that their actual

Resting place is in Christ and it shows up in their life And I lament the fact that they're being so inconsistent in what they say, but Fellowship is something

God does Amen we have RJ from White Plains, New York who says

I have heard that those in the federal vision believe that you are truly a

Christian and Truly a brother or sister in Christ as long as you have been baptized in a

Trinitarian formula. Is this true? No in some in some

Quarters, it might be kind of true, but it never was true in my case what

I would say is if you've been baptized in a you know a Christian church if you were baptized by Christian Church, you are truly a

Christian in one sense Right, but there are other senses so And what

I meant by it is you were simply a member of the visible church Yeah, you're a

Christian you're not a Buddhist you're you belong to faith Presbyterian down the road here and So that I would treat that person as a

Christian The same way I would treat someone that I've been to their wedding ceremony as a husband now, let's say

Let's say that someone Let's say there's a husband who's getting married a man who's getting married and he's not he takes the vows

But he has no plan to be faithful He's you know, he's already got a mistress let's say right and he's gonna he's and he's going to continue that and he makes these false promises

Now is he a husband? I Would say yes and no Oh Okay.

Yes. I was there in the church. I saw him take the vows. It was Registered at the county courthouse.

Yes. He's a husband in that sense. Is he a husband in the sense that he's Keeping his vows.

No, not at all and Let's say he lived that way for a few years and finally repented the

Lord got a hold of him He repented in grief and went home to his wife and confessed everything and and sought her forgiveness

Suppose she said tonight. I finally have a husband It wouldn't be right for him to say.

Oh, you mean we weren't married up to this point? well, we Look, he's a husband in sense a and he's not a husband in sense

B And so I believe that there is a sense a Christian There is such a thing as someone who is part of the visible church, but they're the kind of Christian who's going to hell

There because all they have is that baptism, but that's they don't have the root of the matter

You must be born again, it's like asking was Caiaphas a Jew Paul toggles between these categories very easily in at the end of Romans 2

He says a true Jew is one who is one inward right? Circumcision of the heart of the heart by the

Spirit. It's the same thing It was with baptism a true Christian is one who is one inwardly and baptism is baptism of the heart by the

Holy Spirit But there is such a thing as a Christian on the outside and I'm sorry for those of you who are waiting to have your questions asked and answered by Doug You can hold on to those for a future date

But we have to wrap up right now, and I'd like you to really reiterate why it is that you Disassociated yourself from identity with the federal vision.

Is it really? Because anything that they believe is something in truth that they believe and I don't mean that what they believe is true

I mean Something that's not a a slanderous caricature of them is it something about what they actually stand for or is it that you don't like the unnecessary baggage of the the murkiness or ambiguity

It's more it's actually both so I described earlier the oatmeal stout amber ale

I really do disagree with some of the emphases of the oatmeal stout Camp I really don't think that that's helpful.

I really disagree with it and and I think it's I don't want to be associated with that because I differ with it and Because it was all under the same heading of federal vision

I found myself having to do a lot more explaining that I wanted to do If I say if someone says are you federal vision and I say yes, but it depends on what you mean by that Then I find

I have to do a lot more explaining than if I just say no, I'm not and could you reiterate what those things are specifically at least in summary form that you acts absolutely oppose that they

Truly do believe in the federal vision camp. Okay, I would say the central thing is something we alluded be alluded to before which is

Jim Jordan's denial of the evangelical doctrine of regeneration and And Peter Lightheart agrees with him in that and so I That would be my central

My central concern if you find online the federal vision statement Which I drafted all the first part is a consensus document and then at the tail end

There's a there's a little writer that talks about Debates and discussions we were having in in -house

And the idea of regeneration is one of those things that's probably that's probably the central thing then certain things come out of that like The church the visible church and the sacraments having a greater importance than I think they have

All right, well, I would love to have you back on I know that the 90 minutes that we had our conversation

Especially with commercial breaks didn't do justice to the topic But I thank you so much that you came on today.

I'm looking forward to your return to debate Joel McDermott on the homosexual penal codes in the

Old Covenant and how they are applied today And I know that a lot of you were hoping to get more involved in discussions on Pato communion and many other things but This is just the first perhaps of many conversations that we'll be having with Doug Can you provide for our listeners any contact information that you cater share?

Okay, the best place to go catch up on what is going on would be my blog and you can get to other places from There it's

Doug wills .com or blog and may blog Doug wills .com and there's only one

L and that wills Yeah, so you G W I L s .com,

right? short for Wilson, right right, well Doug thank you so much for taking the time to be on the program and I look forward to hearing from you again soon and of course to orchestrating that debate

God willing with you and Joel Wonderful. Thanks. God bless you you too

And don't go away brothers and sisters ladies and gentlemen because our program is not over We have joining us for the remaining half -hour

A brother who has written a book on the very subject that we are addressing today.

Dr. Dewey Roberts He is an author and pastor of Cornerstone Presbyterian Church in Destin, Florida And we are going to be addressing his book historic

Christianity and the federal vision. Dr. Roberts Please let our listeners before we get into the discussion.

Let our listeners know about Cornerstone Presbyterian Church of Destin, Florida we are a

PCA congregation here in Destin, Florida, and we believe of course in the Historic Christian faith and the reformed understanding of the gospel and that is what we preach every week as we go through the scriptures and we welcome you to come and worship with us and Just in case

I forget later. I want to let our listeners know that they can Visit that congregation

In fact, why don't you give us the website? It just slipped my screen here escapes my vision here.

Oh, yes, that's fine. It's www .cornerstonepcadestin .org

And they can find out everything about our worship times and any information they need there

Great. We'll have our guests repeat that before the end of the program well

I would like you to start with because there might be people joining us late and and perhaps you even disagree with my first guest definition of the federal vision

But if you could give us a succinct definition of what it means

To be a federal visionist or what federal vision theology actually is

You know Chris I was interested in Doug Wilson's definition of things and In the first hour,

I probably agreed with about 90 % of what he had to say And then of course then there began to be what

I would define as equivocations on the last 30 minutes but the federal vision is a system of legalism with respect to salvation that you believe either in works salvation by obedience to the law or you work you believe in ceremonial salvation and those works

And I was interested that Doug Wilson said he did not know anybody in the federal vision who denies justification by faith alone and I don't know whether that is a disingenuous statement on his part or if he just simply has not talked to them, but Certainly in their writings

There are many of them who have denied that and they speak out of one side of their mouth and then on the other

Could you actually provide for him from for us some actual quotes with with names so we know exactly what you mean

Absolutely you know As far as the federal vision their view of final justification

Brings the whole matter of justification by faith alone into question because as you said

Justification is something that it's forensic and it's once for all When we believe in Christ, we are as justified that day as we shall ever be and we can never be more so And they deny that by their doctrine of final justification

For instance, Richard Lusk who studied under Steve Wilkins at in Monroe, Louisiana and Steve Wilkins is a good friend of Doug Wilson's It was a one of my best friends in seminary, but Richard Lusk said this final

Justification however is according to works This pole of justification takes into account the entirety of our lives

The obedience we performed the sins we've committed the confessions and repentance we've done

God's verdict over us will be in accord with and Therefore in some sense based upon the life we've lived now

There's no way that a person can make that statement. It didn't say they believe in Justification by faith alone once for all now what if somebody were to say well, what about the parable of the sheep and the goats when

That they are being separated according to what they did or did not do Christ parable of these are the sheep and the goats

Yes, of course. Well, that's the Judgment on the last day. It's not a final justification

It's a judgment and the fact of the matter is in that it's not on the basis of the totality of their lives because Christ comes and says to the sheep on the right hand come and here at the kingdom of God prepared for you for the fact

From the foundation of the world, so there's no judgment that is awaiting them until the end and then he says

To them only good things. I was in prison and you visited me.

I was naked and you closed me I was thirsty and you gave me water. I was hungry and you fed me and So it was not the total totality of their lives, it's just that when we believe in Christ Our faith will be evidenced by good works

And that's all that is said about the sheep that point on the other hand The goats all that is said about them is that they did not do any of those things and so in that sense

The difference is very clear, but we are not justified in The final day with God taking the consideration everything that we've done and then counting it up in the balance and saying, okay

You've done enough and therefore you're allowed to come in Right, and we will be known

By our deeds and our words and our professions, but those aren't the things that are actually making us right forgot by God That's right

You know, Doug Wilson mentioned I'm glad that he got into this because I was hoping to bring this up he mentioned about James Jordan and some others and I suspected it was

Peter Lightheart from all the work. Yeah, he did actually mentioned Peter Leonard Yeah.

Yes. Yeah, I had suspected before Doug Wilson confirmed it that Peter Lightheart was another one of those

He did not believe in in regeneration And he mentioned the joint profession of faith and let me read you a statement that James Jordan said about regeneration

He said my thesis is that there's no such thing as regeneration in the sense

Which reformed theology since Dort has spoken of it The Bible says nothing about a permanent change in the hearts of those

Elected to heaven and I could give you several other statements by him to the same effect

But here's the question. I would ask of anybody in the federal vision why would you sign a profession of faith a joint profession of faith with someone who denies regeneration that is if you say that regeneration is important I Would not do that Because I could not have a joint profession of faith with a group like that and does does to your knowledge does

Doug still have a signed joint Relationship with mr.

Jordan well, he was one Doug was one of the Ministers who signed that joint profession of faith of the federal vision

And it's still available online and Doug is not retracted it He said he he wrote out the things that were consensuses to begin with and they had the things that they called intramural debates

The doctrine of regeneration is not an intramural debate, right? It is an absolute necessity

Christ said you must be poured again And so I could not sign a joint federal vision profession with people who

Considered that an intramural debate, you know, it's interesting and perhaps it's just because I'm stupid But it seems that denying

Regeneration is actually an opposite heresy to the

The heresy that that is being claimed that federal visions federal visionists stand for in other words

Like for instance the Roman Catholic believes that Our transformation as a new creature is the basis of our justification not a result and That seemed to fall in line

Would seem to be an opposite Heresy to deny the reality of regeneration do

I'm am I making sense? I don't know if I'm babbling here right the

Rome made the mistake of making justification defined by sanctification

And Doug Wilson mentioned that the problem with these people who deny regeneration is that they're

Going so far into objective grace and denying so very stridently

Subjective grace which the Bible has both of those for instance Christ died for me is a death on the cross and his

Active obedience in the life that he lived are imputed to me and become my righteousness But there's something else that God does in salvation as well

That is he puts his spirit within my heart. That's subjective grace

That's the grace of regeneration and the grace of the Holy Spirit working in my life And these people have gone so far in objective grace that they deny

Subjective grace and so it's a different kind of heresy in one sense and it can't be just classified simply as as Roman Catholicism in fact in my book

I show in chapter after chapter that they are closer to Pelagius and They are to just Roman Catholicism of Trent And it's because Pelagius did the same thing

He denied Augustine said the problem with Pelagius was that he denied the inner working of grace in our hearts

And that's what these many times do Doug Wilson affirmed it today, which

I'm thankful for But James Jordan Peter Lightheart deny it. I Have a question

Well, let me before I go to the question Please if you could provide us some more quotes because otherwise you're just going to have our listeners who are defenders of federal vision or Adherence of it.

They're gonna just say it's hearsay. It's Your guest is just misinformed if you could provide us with at least a couple more quotes because we don't we have limited time

And by the way, I want to let our listeners know that we do Intend to have our guest Dewey Roberts back on for a full two hours to be more detailed in his discussion on this topic

But if you could okay Concerning regeneration, this is what their joint document says, which they all signed

And considered as an intramural debate between them Another difference is whether or not personal regeneration represents a change of nature in the person

So regenerated some of us say yes while others question whether we actually have such an essence

Quote unquote that can be changed now. They make a couple of mistakes there. They Identify nature and essence as being the same thing and Theologically, they are not we say that a man has a nature that is transformed by God's grace in regeneration

But the nature is not essence and Charles Hodge deals with this as long as with along with BB Warfield and many others and showing that when you define

Your spiritual nature is essence You've given yourself over to a completely different thing because essence becomes something that is physically nature

And that's tonight You want quotes of Yes that basically reveal the charge that you seem to have

That it is inherent within a federal the federal vision that you deny or at least muddle to a

Level of being worthy of considered heresy the the idea of justification by faith alone and of course anything else that you care to share that is a departure from historic understanding like unconditional election seems to be

Something that has a new definition at least according to the charge of those who are opposing federal vision

Well, the the real problem starts, of course with baptism and making Election depend upon that For instance,

I'll read this to you by John Barak I Think that's how you pronounce his name that may be bearish or something like that but anyway, he said

Covenantal election and individual election to salvation aren't actually that far apart Covenantal election, of course, let me stop here and covenantal election is election through baptism

That's what they call covenantal election He said we can distinguish them perhaps but we cannot we may not divide them completely

What is the connection the connection has to do with God's promise God's speech to us

God has promised Every covenant member that he he or she is elect in Christ Well see then you have a new definition of election at that point and what

I did in my book Was to go through each one of these categories election union with Christ apostasy and I have

Doug Wilson quoted on several things that that he would have to retract if he really is no longer in the federal vision

But you have a new definition of election, but it's it's not unconditional election

But rather it's election that begins at the point of baptism So that's not unconditional and it's not before the foundation of the world

And it's it they make no distinction between that What they do is they try to equivocate the two together to say well conditional election a covenantal election and Individual election and same thing if you keep moving in the right direction and persevere you'll be saved

There are many If you want me to get some other quotes of some of the things that they said, yeah, definitely

And let me just read one listener question. Sure. We have Walter from Oceanside, California and I'm sorry,

I have to enlarge Walter's question because it's written or typed with a microscopic font and Let me give our email address while I'm doing this

Chris Arnson at gmail .com If you'd like to join us before we run out of time, which is happening rapidly

Chris ARN z en at gmail .com. Give us your first name city and state and country of residence.

We have Walter in Oceanside, California, perhaps I have misunderstood Doug But when he stated several times that a

Roman Catholic can be saved because of what Roman Catholic Because of what that Roman Catholic believes on justification is wrong

Is that not a denial of the notitia component of the three essential aspects of saving faith?

Notitia a census fiducia according to the Reformed Faith in other words

How can a Roman Catholic be saved when the content of the body of doctrine is not only wrong?

Which he's okay with but that RC Roman Catholicism Places an essential aspect of his faith on this false body of doctrine to use an analogy

Can a cancer patient be cured of cancer? When he believes that an aspirin can cure him

I guess what he's referring to is when Doug was saying we were both differentiating between a knowledgeable learned person who is who is aggressively and unrepentant ly

Spreading heresy such as even the Roman Catholic Church And as opposed to somebody that might be

An uneducated person that is a temporarily duped in some way Okay, a lot of times people are

Better when they're on their knees than when they're on their feet. And so for instance an

Armenian when he gets on his knees And I've heard people do this They will say

Heavenly Father You are the one who is completely in control and only you can do something about this situation

And I thank you that you've saved me, etc And so they on their knees they're arguing with their

Position when they're on their feet, and I think that Doug was probably saying something like that I think that there are some people who are

Maybe not very knowledgeable, but they are when they're on their knees They know that it's only by the blood of Christ that they are saved

Yeah, and I think I think that what Doug was trying to say when our listener was wondering Well, how they could be how could they be saved by grace alone?

If if they're claiming it an opposite gospel, I think he was saying that the grace was so great that it covered that error

I think that's what he meant to say Right. I don't have a problem with what he said there it's

Other things, you know, the whole matter of their of union with Christ is something that is very important Steve Wilkins said this

He said Baptism then is the sign and the seal of this reality. That is union with Christ in his death burial resurrection our partaking of the

Holy Spirit By baptism the Spirit joins us to Christ since he is the elect one and the church is the elect people

We are joined to his body. We therefore are elect I Could give many others such quotes.

I have them in my book, but that defines union with Christ and election in a way that is

Outward rather than inward it's conditional rather than unconditional. It's in time and space

Rather than from eternity. Yeah, it seemed that Steve Schlissel in his in the clip.

I heard he was equating Abraham's being chosen For the earthly reasons he was chosen in the

Old Covenant. He was equating that with Predestination and election it seemed Yes Yes, and and so then you were chosen not because of The blood of Christ but you were chosen because God foresees some good in you and he knows that you will do something good for him and so that redefines election therefore

Well, I want you to come back Very soon to have a two -hour

Treatment of this subject, but if you could wrap up in five minutes for those of us first well that for those of you who hear us disappear on the live streaming, that's just because the

Leading -edge radio network has cut us off. But this will be included in the recording God willing

This remaining five minutes because we since we had technical difficulties. I wanted to extend this a little bit

I want you to summarize even if you want to include quote include quotes

What you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today Uninterrupted before the close of the program

The study that I've done in great detail on the federal vision shows to me that this is

Not something that is a subset of Reformed theology but another gospel altogether and there's only one gospel and what

I did in my book and the way that I've approached the federal vision is to go through the whole order of salvation

And from beginning to end and show what their stated positions or quotes are

Concerning that and I quoted various people in the federal vision on each one of those areas and In every particular instance,

I found their positions to be out of chord with the scripture the

Reformed confessions and the historic Christian faith and They they to try to say that the federal vision is

Just kind of a nuanced position It's something that is completely wrong because it's not simply nuanced yet There are nuances to it and there are definitely differences between some of the people in it

But the federal vision itself is a heresy and It is heretical on every particular point

I put the chapter on regeneration after an introductory chapter into my book. I put it as the first one

I'm going to do the order of salvation in the order in which it is given in the scripture But I considered that regeneration was so important and their errors to be so grievous on that that I put it as the very second chapter of my book because I want to put it up front a

Common doubt that I had at the chaplain's pool always taught me bottom line up front And I put that up front.

I'm glad Doug Wilson mentioned it because If it is true, and it is as Doug Wilson confirmed that there are some of those who deny regeneration

And that is a grievous error to the point that all of the

Christian faith falls apart if that is not true because that what that would mean is that we are capable in ourselves of this nature that we have of living in obedience to God and doing what he's asked of us and Expressing faith in him.

Whereas the Bible says We have by nature an evil unbelieving heart and turning away from God And so therefore we must be regenerated before Christ spoke about faith

In John the third chapter the most well -known passage. He made that statement to Nicodemus You must be born again showing that the new birth precedes it.

I was Thankful today that Doug Wilson expressed that very thing

But what I hope that Doug does is that he realizes that some of these people

That he has been in fellowship with and they've signed his joint profession of faith Do not hold to historic

Christianity and they do not hold To the Reformed faith and they do not hold to the scripture in their view of things and that he will

Consider that further and I'll be happy to supply Doug with my book so that he can read it and He can see some of the things even that he said that he needs to we can't and retract

I Don't know where we are on our time well if you could if I would love for you to provide at least one or two more quotes because there are

People that over and over and over again that I know personally who insist that The only thing that is different from what would be commonly experienced in the

Reformed faith That is unique to Federal vision is perhaps pato communion and the objectivity of the

Covenant and sometimes even that becomes hard to understand what they're exactly saying, but This is

Rich Rusk's view of the imputation of Christ's righteousness He says this

The notion of Jesus's 33 years of Torah keeping

Torah being the law Being imputed to me is problematic These works were not accumulating points that would be credited to Jesus's people whether they were vocation fulfilling acts

That is they were for Christ and his calling That prepared the way for the one man's righteous act namely his death on the cross the active obedience itself then is not saving in itself rather it's the

Pre -condition of his saving work in his death and resurrection in other words Lusk is saying the

Christ had to do those things for himself and that they are not Things that are imputed to me to that idea that they are imputed to me is problematic

Of course that brings out the whole question if they are not imputed to me by what righteousness

Am I standing before Christ and God in the last day? Is it mine or is it his and?

of course we say that it is a Hours it is the righteousness of Christ that is ours

Okay, this is what Peter Lightheart says on justification

Biblically again the case is fairly simple does the New Testament ever claim that works are in any sense necessary for justification

Romans 2 16 again claims that the doers of the law are justified That is a controversial passage, but it shows that works and justification are legitimately linked

James 2 is even clearer Again, this is a controversial passage, but whatever the specific sense of James 2

He explicitly state states that we are Justified by works and not by faith alone

Steve Schlissel whom you referred to earlier said this This statement and he's referring to Romans 2 13

Is not a theoretical proposition concerning some meritorious method of being righteous before God The presuppositions undergirding

Paul's statements include facts that the law is Obeyable that truly responding to the law

The word in faith does justify and that such justification is not an exclusively

Jewish possession so there he says the laws are payable Obeying the law justifies us

And that's contrary to a justification by faith alone Rich Lusk says the same thing

Works of faith filled obedience in a secondary way calls our final justification and salvation

Works are the means through which we come into possession of eternal life The path of obedience is the way we must trod if we are to be justified at the last day

So there it is Obedience. Yeah Well, we are out of time, but we definitely as we had already agreed before the program

We want you to be back on for full a full two -hour treatment of this very deep and important subject

I want our listeners and I want our listeners to know that your church website is Cornerstone PCA Destin org, that's cornerstone

PCA D as in David e D as in David e s as in Sam T.

I am org cornerstone PCA destined org and that's for cornerstone Presbyterian Church in Destin, Florida and If anybody wants to order the book that we are addressing today

I think everyone on both sides of this issue should get a hold of this book by our

Guest Dewey Roberts historic Christianity and the federal vision a theological analysis and practical evaluation

This can be ordered through CV BBS comm one of our sponsors CV as in Cumberland Valley BBS for Bible book service comm and make sure if you're ordering it to enter in the the

Coupon code iron I r o n for a 10 % discount any other contact information that you care to provide.

Dr. Roberts Well, they can someone could email me at my email

D as in Well, it's the ROB for D for Dewey ROB for Roberts 9944 at aol .com

And I'd be happy to respond to them Thank you so much Dr.

Roberts, especially with short notice for being on the program today, and I look forward to your return I want to thank everybody who listened today, especially those who took time to write in Of course,

I want to thank also Doug Wilson for participating in the first 90 minutes of this broadcast And I hope that you all have a safe and blessed

Weekend and Christ honoring Lord's Day And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater