What exactly is useful about this essay? What do we learn from JMF here that we can't or haven't learned from those who are not pluralist when it comes to the doctrine of justification?

Am I intolerant of the FV? You bet I am. I just spend 8 years doing little else but dealing with the academic and ecclesiastical consequences of the FV.

The FV is a profoundly dangerous movement because it corrupts the gospel and corrupts Reformed theology. I think John is dangerous because I think he's a sort of theological gateway drug to moralism. Like the moderates (e.g. Charles Eerdman) at Princeton leading up to 1929 John is a facilitator. He may be personally orthodox but he's quite critical of confessionalists like me who insist that everyone in our churches be orthodox.

In the long run its the facilitators that do the real damage. Without the Charles Eerdmans and the others like him, maybe the confessionalists wouldn't have been routed the way they were. The moderates made it possible for error to win because they were tolerant of error.

In its most extreme forms the FV is fairly easy to spot as serious error. In more moderate forms its harder to spot. It took me a while to figure out what John Barach was doing with baptism and union with Christ.

People reading JMF on justification might come to think that well, perhaps the FV isn't so bad after all. No, it's really bad. It's as bad as the PCA, the OPC, and the URCs, and the RCUS, the RPCGA, and the OCRCs say it is -- but what do they know, most of them (except the PCA) are just small churches (says JMF) and their views don't count.

Yes, we can learn from everyone but I guess I take the view that, in a place like the PB, readers, especially those who are new to the Reformed faith, ought not to be encouraged to read writers such as JMF or those with whom he keeps literary company.

It seems to me that it is a fundamental, sacred duty of a Reformed minister to be absolutely clear and unequivocal about what the gospel is. The gospel is good news, that Christ has accomplished something for us and that is received through faith (trusting, resting, receiving) alone.

The gospel is not that we all baptized persons are united to Christ in baptism and therefore historically, conditionally elect, justified, adopted and that those benefits must be retained by grace, through faith and works. This is not a message that should be tolerated or encouraged in the least.

John Frame has tolerated and encouraged the FV. Yes he dissents personally from this view or that (e.g. Shepherd's denial of the imputation of the active obedience of Christ) but he doesn't think that we ought to be critical of those who advocate them.

I appreciate John's apologetics and his staunch defense of the inerrancy of Scripture. His writing on justification hasn't been nearly as helpful, however. Indeed, it's been less than helpful.

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R. Scott Clark, D.Phil
Professor of Church History and Historical Theology

"For Christ, His Gospel, and His Church"
Associate Pastor
Oceanside URC
The Heidelblog