Fiducial Jokesters

It is gratifying when on occasion others have drawn the same conclusion that you have even when so many others seem perpetually oblivious to the painfully obvious.  For a number of years I have been saying, or rather yelling, that there is no such thing as justification by faith alone in the Federal Vision.  For that reason I have called men like Doug Wilson, Steve Wilkins, Steve Schlissel, Peter Leithart, Mark Horne, Jeffery Meyers, Norman Shepherd, John Kinnaird, and a host of others heretics.  Feel free to include N.T. Wright and the followers of the so-called New Perspectives on Paul in that list, but for my purposes here I just want to pick on Federal Visionists and not the other dogs that travel in their pack.  Identifying such men as heretics  would seem to be a biblical imperative like the one found in Romans 16:17, “Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them.”  Some like R. S. Clark are uneasy about calling these notable false teachers heretics, and even refuses to do it, even though he admits, “The FV is a profound corruption of the gospel masquerading as the Reformed faith.” You’d think if Clark really believed that he’d be right there following the Apostle Paul’s lead sounding the alarm that these men are indeed accursed to hell (Galatians 1:8).  And, it’s for this reason men like Clark refuse to identify these FV teachers as heretics, because, he says, he’s “not anxious to see folk in hell.”  Well, neither am I, but I am quite confident that neither R. S. Clark or I  have that kind of juice.  I would rather that all of the above mentioned self-styled Christian teachers would repent of their identified and deadly doctrines.  Yet, even with all the official statements and studies condemning their doctrines, these men remain entrenched, solidly committed to their corrupt gospel “masquerading as the Reformed faith.”

What seems to leave more than a few TEs and REs (teaching and ruling elders) bewildered, and hesitant to mark these men as they should and instead call them “brothers,”  is that some of the FV’s leading advocates and defenders will from time to time claim to believe in justification by faith alone.  The question is, why does anyone believe them?  Even the current Antichrist in Rome recently told a general audience that “Luther’s phrase: ‘faith alone’ is true if it is not opposed to faith in charity, in love.” Should we just assume that Razinger (aka Benedict XVI) has abandoned Romanism and is now a Protestant; a Christian?  Why is it “charitable” to believe the profession of ersatz-Reformed pastor with a Roman soteriology and not when the same is said by Roman bishop with a funny hat?  Shouldn’t we assume because the pope said “faith alone is true” that the divide that has separated Protestants and Catholics for centuries is nothing more than an ancient artifact from a time when everyone wore funny hates?   Of course, what may seem to be an issue of semantics to some is a matter of life and death to others.  For example, concerning the above mentioned papal affirmation of Luther’s phrase, “faith alone” R. S. Clark points out,  that the whole question comes down to that little conditional “if”:

That conditional, that “if,” makes all the difference in the world. That one little conditional is the difference between Rome and Wittenberg. Why? After all, Protestants affirm that faith alone is not opposed to charity (love) or sanctification. That’s certainly true, but the question here is whether the Benedict means by “faith” what we mean by it and whether we’re talking about the same justification and the same role of faith? For us Protestants, charity is the fruit and evidence of justification. Is it so for Benedict? If so, he’s abandoned his own catechism and magisterial Roman dogma since 1547. That would be remarkable indeed!

Read in its broader context (Roman dogma since 1547) and in its immediate context it becomes clear that he has not capitulated to Luther. The little expression “faith in charity” is a shorthand way of expressing the Roman doctrine that it is “faith formed by love” that justifies, i.e. faith justifies because and to the degree that it sanctifies. The “supreme pontiff” (so much for the theologia crucis) knows what he’s doing. He’s a German theologian.

Let’s let him explain what he means by “justification.

“Being just simply means being with Christ and in Christ. And this suffices. Further observances are no longer necessary. For this reason Luther’s phrase: “faith alone” is true, if it is not opposed to faith in charity, in love. Faith is looking at Christ, entrusting oneself to Christ, being united to Christ, conformed to Christ, to his life. And the form, the life of Christ, is love; hence to believe is to conform to Christ and to enter into his love. So it is that in the Letter to the Galatians in which he primarily developed his teaching on justification St Paul speaks of faith that works through love.”

We can see exactly what the pope means by “justification” and why he says “faith alone is true” provided it is definitionally related to charity and the works of love.  According to Razinger, it is through faith that we are “conformed to Christ” and it is this process that ultimately  justifies us before the throne of God.  The problem should be obvious and what Razinger attributes to justification Luther rightly attributes to sanctification.  This is the central issue of the Reformation.  Reformation 101.  Justification is a fiat once-for-all  declaration that occurs the moment someone first believes. We are accounted as righteous not because of anything or any change that occurs within us, or, that we are by any means actually righteous, but are accounted as righteous because of Christ’s righteousness (His active and passive obedience, i.e., His life) imputed to us.  By contrast, sanctification is an ongoing process that occurs throughout a believers  life whereby we are being formed by the work of the Spirit more and more into the likeness of Christ as we mortify the work of the flesh and grow in personal or subjective righteousness.  However, sanctification contributes absolutely nothing to our justification.   While sanctification naturally follows or flows from justification, the two doctrines are necessarily and logically distinct. It’s absurd that anyone would ever think God’s work in us could ever satisfy God’s absolute standard of justice apart from us as long as the stain of sin remains.  Purgatory isn’t going to help anyone either.  The ongoing transformation that occurs as the result of our progressive sanctification is something that is never perfected in this life (Methodists notwithstanding), is wrought with sin even in the seemingly most sanctified sinner (see 1 Tim 1:15, Romans 7), and, again, contributes absolutely nothing to our justification before the bar of God’s justice.  That’s why it should be no surprise that the pope appeals to Galatians 5:6 in support of Rome’s scheme of justification.  It is the faith that works through love and not faith alone that justifies.

That said, have you ever noticed how often Federal Visionists make the exact same arguments whenever they discuss justification even justification by faith alone?  Compare what Razinger writes above concerning faith’s relationship to justification to what Doug Wilson has written in light of his feeble and failed attempt to harmonize the seeming contradictory use of “justification” in  James and Paul:

The solution of the whole problem is provided by Paul himself in a single phrase. In Gal. 5:6, he says, “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision; but faith working through love.” “Faith working through love” is the key to an understanding both of Paul and James. The faith about which Paul has been speaking is not the idle faith which James condemns, but a faith that works. It works itself out through love. And what love is Paul explains in the whole last division of Galatians. It is no mere emotion, but the actual fulfilling of the whole moral law. “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” (Gal. 5:14). Paul is fully as severe as James against a faith that permits men to continue in sin. The faith about which he is speaking is a faith that receives the Spirit who gives men power to lead a holy life.

So, when Wilson talks about justification by faith alone it should be clear that what he means is identical to what Ratzinger means.   Ratzinger and Wilson both appeal to Galatians 5:6 as evidence that the faith that saves is that faith that “works through love.” Like Ratzinger, Wilson denies that merely believing the Gospel can justify any man:

So what is meant by faith? According to James faith without works is dead; according to Paul faith is all sufficient for salvation. But what does James mean by faith? The answer is perfectly plain. The faith which James is condemning is a mere intellectual assent which has no effect upon conduct.

Now, what exactly is a mere intellectual assent that has no affect upon conduct?  In reply Wilson makes reference to James 2:19 and the old saw about demonic faith, completely oblivious to the fact that James is discussing monotheism and the demonic belief that God is one.   Yet, even this belief in the unity of the Godhead affects the conduct of demons, for James tells us that they tremble as a result.   How this verse can be marshaled as proof that justification by belief alone is false or somehow insufficient all by itself is a mystery?  Beyond that one failed example, Wilson doesn’t provide any other examples of an intellectual assent that has no affect upon conduct.  If someone assents to the Communist Manifesto or believes that the government has a duty to provide health-care for all of its citizens, will it not have an affect on their conduct or at least on how they vote?  I should think it would. By the same token, if someone assents to the truth of Jesus Christ and the Gospel will it not also affect the way they live; their behavior?  Again, I should think it would and James in fact argues this very point even if Federal Visionists and their big brothers in Rome fail to get it.

It should be crystal clear by now in Wilson’s Federal Vision, or in Ratzinger’s Romanism,  that without the concomitant conduct no man can be justified.  Faith alone or mere intellectual assent to the truth of the Gospel cannot justify anyone, therefore it follows that Christ’s work alone that a sinner receives and rests on for their justification  is insufficient to make any man right before God.  Our conduct is required because without works done through faith faith alone is “dead.”   So says Razinger.  So says Wilson.  Of course, Jesus disagrees with these two brazen religious heretics.  In  John 5:24 Jesus said;  “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.”  Oddly, Jesus doesn’t seem at all concerned with the affect this belief will have upon conduct and as it relates to justification, rather the one who believes has already passed from death to life and is already justified.  The will not “come into judgment” at any time. Belief alone and nothing else is required, much less “faith working through love,” in order to be justified.  Jesus says in the next chapter of John’s Gospel; “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.”  Notice, the flesh, what we do or what is wrought in us, profits nothing, but the very words or doctrines Jesus spoke are “spirit and are life.” Again, belief alone will suffice.  And, if that still wasn’t enough, add to that what Jesus says  in Chapter 8  to believing Jews: “If you abide in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine;  and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”   If we abide or believe in Jesus’ word, his doctrines, we shall know the truth and be set free from the curse and penalty of sin (John 8:34).  By mere belief alone we are  truly His disciples.  Notably absent again from Jesus’ words is the need for any concomitant works, even works done in love and through faith.   That’s not to say that our assent to the truths of the Gospel won’t affect our conduct, but rather our conduct should not be confused or conflated with an assent to the truth resulting in justification.  A man is saved by mere or simple belief or faith alone and not through some Roman or Federal Vision fusion of faith and works no matter how cleverly disguised.   Believing is believing and doing is doing.   Not so in Romanism or in the Federal Vision. This also is why Federal Visionists will often attempt do differentiate belief from faith when in fact these words mean the exact same thing in Scripture and are translations derived from the exact same Greek word pistis.

Which brings us back to how gratifying it is when others seem to draw the same conclusion that you have.  Recently on Darryl Hart’s blog, Old Life, Reformed Faith and Practice, a small band of Federal Visionists were busy defending Norm Shepherd as a perfectly good Christian man and teacher, a saint really, who fully affirms the biblical doctrine of justification by faith alone.  At one point one contributor, Nicholas Batzig,  taking exception to the claims of at least one of Shepherd’s defenders, wrote:

… Shepherd has developed the doctrine of justification in a way that those who hold to the Reformed doctrine of justification do not understand. It is precisely because he has ADDED an eschatological element to the biblical doctrine that we believe he has taken away from it. I think you might have misunderstood the point of my previous comment. Do you think that obedience is a part of fidei? Shepherd and the Federal Vision think so. Doug Wilson says as much in his article “A Pauline Take on the New Perspective. (Credenda/Agenda vol. 15, issue 5)” Expounding the nature of the three-fold definition of faith Wilson says, “It is the essential nature of fiducia to trust gladly in everything that God has spoken in His Word—whether law or gospel, Old or New Testaments, poems or prose, odd-numbered pages or even. This means that fides salvifica is related to ongoing fidelity, trust or obedience in the same way that a body is related to breathing. Without a body, there is nothing to breathe with. Without breathing, there is something that needs to be buried.” Wilson, as is true of Shepherd, lodges obedience or faithfulness in the third part of the essence of faith, namely, fiducia or trust. This is not what the Reformers and Puritans meant by fiducia. They meant what is expressed in the Westminster Confession of Faith’s definition of faith–”receiving and resting on Christ alone as He is offered to us in the Gospel.” That is a largely passive act. It is not what we do, it is what Christ has done and our appropriation of it by faith.

Batzig point is exceptional and not only because it’s the same one I have made and in reference to the exact same 2003 Credenda article.  No one anywhere that I know of has leveled the same criticism against Wilson based on the same source.  Frankly, most just don’t seem to get it.  Yet,  Batzig exposes Wilson, and by extension Shepherd, by showing that Wilson includes obedience as the third or fiducial element of saving belief.

As the readers of this blog or the many publications of the Trinity Foundation already know, Gordon Clark demonstrated years ago that the traditional tri-fold definition of saving belief consisting of  a combination of understanding (notitia), assent (assensus), and trust (fiducia) is tautological nonsense.  To define belief as trust is to define the word by itself.  To trust someone is to believe what they say and to believe someone is to trust what they say.  Consequently, and as Clark demonstrates, the history of how Reformed men have understood saving faith (which is of critical importance since it is intimately  and ultimately related to justification) is a morass of pious sounding psychological nonsense and confusion.  However, whereas most holding to the tautological and self-referencing tri-fold definition do not end up denying the Gospel, there are many out there who do. Wilson provides a powerful case in point.  Perhaps at one time  Clark’s critical analysis could be dismissed as a curiosity or the obscurant observations of some aging professor of philosophy.  Not any more.  FVist like Wilson, Shepherd, and others have been able to avoid the tautology charge by successfully adding trust in the sense of obedience as the central element that makes faith the sole instrument of justification. Salvation by faith and works through redefinition

This is precisely why James Jordan (who some call the Godfather of the Federal Vision) said :

A baby’s trust in his mother’s arms becomes the primary analogy for faith, as Jesus taught. As we grow, our understanding matures, and we expect mature faith to have lots of notitia and assensus; but fiducia is the foundation. It’s the Clark controversy with feet on it.

On justification, during the Shepherd controversy at WTS, it was shown time and again that Calvin and Bucer and various Scottish Seceders (part of Shepherd’s background, with the Covenanters) and Dutch theologians had all said exactly the same thing. The faculty and the OPC both examined and exonerated Shepherd. There’s no doubt but that Shepherd’s doctrine of justification is the Reformed traditional doctrine. But it is not the American evangelical doctrine, and that’s why the more broadly evangelical (largely Southern) bloc in the presbyterian churches could not fathom it.

… I think excitement about being Reformed is grossly sectarian. Jesus did not die to make me Reformed, and going around tooting a Reformed horn compromises the gospel, in my opinion. My theological understanding is thoroughly Reformed; within that broad stream. But I’m not of Paul, Apollos, or Reformed. And if that’s part of what’s offensive about the FV, so be it.

Jordan recognizes, better than most, that Clark’s analysis of saving faith strikes at the heart of the entire Federal Vision, which perhaps explains why the “faculty [of Westminster Seminary] and the OPC both examined and exonerated Shepherd.”    That’s because Clark’s clear, logical, and biblical analysis strips away the Reformed veneer from the Federal Vision’s Romanish doctrine of justification which is nothing more than a scheme of salvation by faith and works.  That is why Jordan calls the fight over the Federal Vision “the Clark controversy with feet on it.”  Like Wilson, Jordan sees the relationship of fiducia to saving faith as the linchpin on which this entire controversy hangs.  And,  so there can be no doubt, Jordan howled on another blog:

Some men remain in the PCA because God has told them they have a duty to help the 7000 who have not yet bowed the knee to antichrist. They hatred of the Kingship of Jesus, which characterizes so much of the PCA, is with fighting. The Reformed faith is that faith includes fiducia, and this is still worth fighting for, regardless of how many antinominian blogs hate it.

As the writer of what must be in  Jordan’s fevered mind an “antinomian blog,” I confess he is right for admittedly all the wrong reasons.   The Reformed faith is that faith that includes fiducia.  This is a something Gordon Clark sought to correct.  The Federal Vision defines fiducia or trust in the sense of obedience.  To their credit, their understanding of the fiducial element of saving faith completely avoids Clark’s charge that the tri-fold definition of faith is tautological nonsense.  In this sense the Federal Vision’s understanding of faith is superior to the traditional Reformed understanding of faith.  Therefore, if Jordan is correct and his understanding of fiducia is allowed to stand, the Reformed faith differs in no substantial way from the Roman Catholic faith when it comes to the question of faith’s role in justification and the schism is over.  Worse, if Jordan is right, the Reformed are the schismatics.

The rise of the Federal Vision and the NPP is the reason why John Robbins reissued Clark’s Faith and Saving Faith and The Johannine Logos in one volume, simply, What is Saving Faith? This book, more than any other, is the antidote to the Federal Vision’s superhighway to Rome.  And, while I have no doubt that Clark’s analysis is correct, correctly identifying the Federal Vision’s incorporation of obedience as the necessary and definitional component that makes ordinary faith saving does not require that one agrees with Clark — although it certainly helps.  If someone wants to continue to think of faith in nonsensical terms while patting themselves on the back for maintaining a meaningless and unscriptural tradition that they called “Reformed,” who am I to stop them?  The question is; why are so many schooled in the traditional seminary infused tri-fold definition of saving faith so completely unable to correctly draw out from Wilson and the other Federal Visionists their transparent Romanish deception (Mr. Batzig excepted)?  Could it be that these adherents to this well-worn traditional definition are simply blinded due to their own fiducial cup that remains forever empty and can’t see it being filled by clever con-men like Doug Wilson?  It would seem so, and, sadly, the joke is on them.

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