I'm going to comment on some statements that Sean Gerety made on his blog. Sean is a Clarkian Scripturalist, as well as Thor's high priest.
The attack on justification by belief alone continues by Lane Keister and his associates at his Greenbaggins blog. This time Ron DiGiacomo, the so-called “Reformed Apologist,” has taken up the challenge.
Men like Doug Wilson, Peter Leithart, James Jordan, Steve Wilkins, Greg Lawrence, Joshua Moon, Jeff Meyers and the other Federal Visionist have made all these self-styled “Watchmen of Israel” look like impotent and incompetent chumps as they continue to attack the Reformed system exactly at its weakest point; the traditional threefold definition of saving faith.
Lane Keister has devoted years of tedious, long-suffering study to meticulously documenting, dissecting, and debunking the Federal Vision. Sean is real piece work to malign Keister as "an impotent and incompetent chump." But if all you've got is Thor's hammer, then everything looks like a nail.
Turretin had seven elements of saving faith. Per your Dutch buddy Bavinck Witsius had nine.
As for Manton, Owen and the rest. Yes, they often said contradictory things regarding the nature of faith and saving faith
Sean alleges that Lane and Ron are "unreformed," yet his cast of villains includes Manton, Owen, Turretin, Bavinck, and Witsitus. So who's unreformed?
or that high priest of paradox, James “Aquascum” Anderson?
This is part of Sean's ingrown narrative. He tries to discredit the traditional Reformed definition of faith (notitia, assensus, fiducia) by belated association with Van Tilian paradox. But, of course, the traditional definition long antedates Van Til.
Oh, and by the way, there's another little problem with Sean's contention: James Anderson isn't Aquascum. Perhaps Sean inferred that Anderson is Aquascum because Anderson happens to host that thread at his website, but that's a fallacious inference. For someone who prides himself on logic, Sean should try harder to avoid logical fallacies.
I understand that OPC elders like DiGiacomo are required to be versed in and even hold to Van Til’s theology of paradox.
i) To begin with, does Sean have any evidence that OPC elders are required to espouse Van Tilian paradox? Can he document that claim?
ii) Likewise, what is Sean's evidence that Ron is a lockstep Van Tilian? It's my impression that Ron has a rather independent view of Clark and Van Til, finding useful things in both men.
Which brings us to Ron DiGiacomo who, with the blessing of Lane Keister, has continued to undermine the very foundation on which the church stands or falls.
The claim that sola fide is "the very foundation on which the church stands or falls" is a Lutheran maxim. Why should a Calvinist accept that radically reductionist maxim? Although sola fide is a Reformed essential, the Reformed faith has more than one foundational doctrine. It's not as if sola fide is the singular foundation on which the church stands or falls.
Does Sean imagine that if we denied the Incarnation, Resurrection, Second Coming of Christ, Final Judgment, divine omniscience, sola gratia, sola Scriptura, the Exodus, or the calling of Abraham (to name a few)–the Christian faith would remain standing?
Dr. Alan Strange, a man who identifies himself as one of the “Watchmen of Israel,” fail miserably in his attempt to show that belief alone in the finished work of Christ alone doesn’t save.
...the profound confusion and darkness that has triumphed in the Presbyterian and Reformed world. A world where men actually deny salvation by belief alone while thinking they are defending the biblical doctrine of salvation when nothing could be further from the truth.
Notice that Sean has fallen into fundamental doctrinal error. We are not saved by faith alone. Rather, we are justified by faith alone. Justification and salvation are not conterminous. There's more to salvation than justification. Salvation includes unconditional election, monergistic regeneration, sanctification, preservation, glorification, &c.
For Sean to collapse salvation into sola fide is typical of anti-Calvinistic antinomians like Zane Hodges, Charles Stanley, Charles Ryrie, Earl Radmacher, Robert Lightner, and R. T. Kendall. This is just one indication of how far Sean has departed from the Reformed faith.
Like most bad arguments, this one fails right from the start. First, DiGiacomo begs the question by asserting that “most things we assent to . . .are not volitional,” i.e., that most of our beliefs don’t involve choice. How does he know this?
i) Does Sean think we choose to believe that a red rose is red. Do I will myself to believe that? Can I will myself to believe that a red rose is white? If I can, I'd be clinically insane.
ii) More to the point, Sean's doxastic voluntarism is typically Arminian: I choose to believe in Christ, as if belief is an act of the will.
So this is yet another example of Sean deviating from Reformed orthodoxy.
For these men faith, as opposed to belief, provides the vehicle by which they can attach an intangible and undefinable something-they-know-not-what that must first be wrought in the sinner before they can be saved. It is not Christ’s work alone completely outside of us that saves…
At worst, it is an addition to simple belief in the truth of the Gospel that falls perilously close to Paul’s anathemas in his letter to the Galatians and it robs Christians of their confidence and assurance they have in Christ. It turns our focus from Christ and his finished work to something within us and that is, by definition, dangerous.
Again, this grave and very un-Reformed error asserts that there must be some intangible psychological change or feeling within us in order to be saved, and not simply the apprehension of Christ’s finished work alone completely outside of us and for us. This view of saving faith, which is all too common, turns the focus from the object believed toward the subjective state of mind and emotions of the believer.
i) To begin with, Ron has defined what he means. For instance, he's said:
Again, we assent to many things apart from a disposition of commitment.
The Reformed position on saving faith is that one doesn’t just intellectually assent to the gospel but rather men also willfully entrust themselves to Christ.
ii) In addition, here's another instance where Sean's position coincides with the anti-Calvinistic antinomians. In Reformed theology, saving grace is both external and internal. Justification is an example of something God does "outside" of us to save us. The imputation of an alien righteousness.
However, God also does some things to us or in us to save us, viz, regeneration, sanctification, glorification. God doesn't simply change our objective status in relation to himself (e.g. justification, propitiation), but changes us (regeneration, sanctification, glorification).
iii) Sean is borrowing a page from Lutherans and antinomians, who vehemently deny that the assurance of salvation can have any subjective conditions. For they maintain that once you admit any subjective condition as an element of assurance, you introduce a degree of uncertainty into the assurance of salvation.
Yet in delineating the assurance of salvation, the Westminster Confession appeals to "the inward evidence of those graces" (WCF 18.2). Once again, Sean is repudiating Reformed theology.
Now, before we continue, this is astonishing. Here we have an OPC elder and a man who calls himself the “Reformed Apologist” who insists that “an unbeliever can assent to Jesus having died for his sins without having saving faith.” But, to assent to a propositions is to believe that it is true, for belief is assent or agreement to an understood proposition, in this case the proposition “Jesus died for my sins.”
Sean lacks a grasp of idiomatic usage. It's customary in theological jargon to distinguish between "unbelievers," "professing believers," and "true believers." In idiomatic usage, "unbelievers" aren't simply people who lack a certain belief. Rather, they lack a certain quality of belief. Same thing with merely professing believers. Sean may dispute that distinction, but for now I'm simply drawing attention to the nature of theological discourse.
Who do you prefer, the so-called “Reformed Epistemologist” Michael “Hare Krishna” Sudduth
Unfortunately for Sean, that attempted counterexample backfires. Sudduth, the former Scripturalist. Winner of the Clark prize in apologetics.
That would be a paradigm case of someone who understood and assented to the very purest form of orthodoxy: Clarkian Christianity!
Yet he subsequently renounced the faith. But if saving faith just is assent to certain doctrinal propositions/articles of the faith, then how is his apostasy consistent with perseverance? How does one differentiate Sudduth from an elect believer?
Same thing with Ryan Hendrich. Sean considers Ryan to be a heretical apostate. But didn't Ryan understand and assent to the right doctrinal propositions prior to his subsequent misgivings?
If, as Sean would have it, Clarkian Christianity is the gold standard of orthodoxy, how can saving faith just be understanding/assent when some Clarkians subsequently defect from the faith? Did they lose their salvation?
This is yet another example of Sean denying major planks of the Reformed faith.
I have defined trust as belief in the reliability of someone or something.
That's an inadequate definition. It transfers trust from a trusting or reliant subject to a trustworthy or reliable object. But that's clearly separable.
For instance, I can believe that Secretariat is a good bet. I'm convinced that if I put money on Secretariat, that's a profitable investment. Secretariat is a proven winner.
That, however, is entirely distinct from making an actual monetary commitment to Secretariat. The fact that I believe Secretariat is trustworthy doesn't mean I will actually entrust my life savings to Secretariat's performance.
I may not bet on Secretariat because I don't approve of horse racing. I may not bet on Secretariat because it's inconvenient for me to make a trip to Louisville or Belmont Park to lay a bet. My belief that Secretariat is trustworthy is not the same as actually trusting in Secretariat. Belief in reliability is just an abstraction.
Likewise, I may believe that a Land Rover is a more reliable mode of transportation than an Alfa Romeo. That, however, doesn't entail any commitment on my part. I may buy the Alfa Romeo instead because I like Italian sports cars better than Land Rovers.
As I just explained, trust is *belief* of propositions in the future tense, such as “he will be good to me” or “this bank will keep my money safe.”
So by that definition, Sean doesn't trust OT history. After all, that's in the past rather than the future.
If I believe that Jesus died for my sins how is this not trusting that Jesus died for my sins?
That's an ironic way of casting the question. Assuming that Sean subscribes to limited atonement, then believing that Christ died for my sins is a second-order belief. A self-reflexive belief. If I exercise saving faith, then, by implication, Christ died for me. That's an inference involving a relation between something about me and something outside of me. Yet Sean just attacked that distinction. But maybe Sean espouses Amyraldism.
Straw man argument Ron. My axiom is Scripture.
Actually, Sean's axiom is Clark. Sean's canon is not the 66 books of the Bible, but the collected writings of Gordon Clark.
With that caveat aside, it should be clear that for DiGiacomo people can believe the gospel, believe in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, believe that Jesus died for them and that He alone is their righteousness, yet still be lost.
i) This is yet another example where Sean repudiates Reformed theology. Calvinism grants the existence of apostates who used to be orthodox professing Christians. They assented to the articles of faith. Their orthodoxy was unimpeachable. Not all apostates were orthodox prior to their defection, but some were. If saving faith is equivalent to mere assent, then Clarkians like Sean must reject the perseverance of the saints.
Put another way, what distinguishes the faith of an elect believer from the faith of a prospective apostate? It can't be assent, for both may give assent to the very same body of doctrine. At the level of assent, they are identical. So there must be something over and above mere assent which distinguishes an elect believer from an impending apostate.
In one sense that would be regeneration. The faith of an elect believer is grounded differently than the faith of a prospective believer. His faith is the effect of regeneration. It has a different cause.
But that, in turn, generates a different kind of faith. A different quality of faith.
Apostasy isn't necessarily the result of defective doctrinal belief, for some apostates were theologically impeccable prior to their loss of faith. Sean may deny that, but in so doing he denies another Reformed essential.
ii) Here's the ironic upshot: the Clarkian position parallels the Arminian position: there's nothing that distinguishes the faith of born-again Christian from the faith of one-time Christian. They both had the same faith. Believed the same theological propositions.
But, then you have also asserted that someone can assent to or believe the Gospel and still be lost. As Steve correctly points out above the problem is you also say that the unbeliever can assent to or believe the Gospel, believe in the finished work of Christ on his behalf, yet still be lost. Consequently, the unbeliever does have assent or belief (which is a contradiction in terms), yet lacks trust.
In Calvinism, there's a distinction between regenerate and unregenerate believers. Some professing Christians lose their faith. Abandon the Christian faith. That's because they were unregenerate. They had a socially conditioned faith. A rootless faith. A default faith. But then something happened which precipitated a loss of faith: an intellectual crisis, a personal tragedy, a conflict between Christian ethics and sexual sin, &c.
Sean can reject that, but in so doing he rejects Calvinism. Sean's theology is a witch's brew of Lutheranism, Arminianism, antinomianism, idealism, and residual Calvinism.
Finally, I'd like to say something about Clarkian Scripturalism in general. Sean is very quick to brand his theological opponents as "heretics," but what about his own position? Sean has made a hobbyhorse of attacking the Federal Vision. That's a useful decoy because it deflects attention away from his own position. Keep in mind that even in that respect, there are far more competent critics of the Federal Vision than Sean. Take Guy Waters and Lane Keister.
But in any case, showing how bad the Federal Vision is does nothing to make Sean's alternative orthodox. It's just a magician's flamboyant gesture to distract the audience.
Let's briefly consider what consistent Clarkianism amounts to. Clark didn't merely have a propositional theory of knowledge, but a propositional theory of reality. Not just a propositional epistemology, but a propositional ontology. For Clark, like Hegel, the real is the rational and the rational is the real.
If, however, human beings simply are propositions, then bodies are illusory. We don't have bodies. We merely have ideas of bodies.
Furthermore, how can Clark avoid pantheistic idealism? If humans are propositions, whose propositions are they? Are we reducible to ideas of ourselves?
Perhaps a Clarkian would try to avert pantheistic idealism by distinguishing between God's idea of me and my idea of myself.
If so, the problem with that attempted distinction is that propositions are abstract objects. I can't be a proposition if I'm an instance of a divine proposition about me. For a proposition is an exemplar of property instances. A proposition is not, itself, an instance, but the source of exemplifications.
Admittedly, some philosophers try to give a nominalist or fictionalist account of propositions, but that's hardly consistent with Clark's Augustinian realism.
If, then, reality is propositional through and through, and if, what is more, God is timeless (which Clark defended), then the entirety of Bible history is illusory, like a reel of motion picture footage. It has a static sequence. But time and space are illusory. No creation, no Fall, no Flood, no Abrahamic covenant, no Exodus, no Incarnation, no Crucifixion, no Resurrection, no Ascension, no Parousia. At best, that's an abstract representation of time and space. But nothing really happens. Nothing is physical. Nothing comes into being. Nothing dies.
Consistent Clarkianism is every bit as heretical as unitarianism or gnosticism or Mormonism or Swedenborgianism. Compared to that, the Federal Vision is chump change.
