I disagree with FV but it appears to be for reasons different than those of others in the PB, from what I can ascertain, reading other threads. What is the basic problem with FV?

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Mary Vanderkooi
Kale Heywott Church (KHC)
Soddo, Ethiopia

A few threads that might orient you:

Conditional Election - Where does FV differ from Historical Reformed Usage?
Wilkins' Presbytery exam examined by Rick Phillips

In a nutshell, the Scriptural position is that union with Christ is laid hold of by Evangelical faith. That is, it is born from above.

While the entire Congregation is preached to with the same promises and the same sort of injunctions, not all participate in mystical union with Christ simply by being a member of the Church.

There are several errors but chief among them is the idea that, when one is baptized into the Church, all are united to Christ and have the benefits of that union with Christ in some sense: all are in some sense forgiven of their sins, have peace with God, etc. The manner in which that status is maintained is by faithfulness to the Covenant so that, in the last day, those that are finally justified are those that did not forsake Covenant membership.

I'm certain there are those that will take issue with the basic explanation but the bottom line is that our union with Christ is not simply by being visibly joined to the Covenant of Grace. Baptism does not unite us to Christ. Faith does. Those that do not have faith that is born from above are in no sense forgiven of their sins. Do they hear the preaching of God and taste the heavenly gift? Are all members preached to with the expectation that all should fear lest any be found to be unbelieving?

Yes and yes. But none are justified in some sense. It is only those that have been elect from the foundation of the world, that have been regenerated by the Gospel, and have been given Evangelical faith that are united to Christ in His death and resurrection. The fact that the congregation is preached to with the expectation that all must respond in a way that only the elect truly can does not, in turn, imply that all are able to do so in some sense.

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Rich
Okinawa, Japan

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Impairing of justification by faith alone by positing a temporary justification based upon faith and works. A kind of baptismal regeneration wherein one receives temporary salvation through the administration of the sacrament, to be kept or lost on the basis of one's own faithful observance of the law and gospel. A failure to distinguish between law and gospel.

Then an assertion of eternal predestination without demonstration or elucidation of how election and reprobation work out in the covenant community coupled with deliberate obfuscation.

Finally constant schismatic and abusive behaviour towards and in the house of God.

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Rev. Daniel Kok
Pastor of Grace Reformed Church (URCNA)
Leduc, Alberta CANADA
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I found the remarks in this post particularly helpful.

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Ruben
Moderator

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Calvinistas Conversando - Reformed Discussion Board in Spanish.

Spanish Blog -Teologia en Mexico
English Blog -The Howling Wilderness

The two most sucinct summaries of FV I have heard yet. Thanks, boys.

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Dennis E. McFadden, Ex Mainline Baptist (in Remission)
Atherton Baptist Homes, CEO
First Baptist Church of Alhambra, Member, Transformation Ministries (CA)

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Thanks for your thoughtful replies, especially that of Semper Fidelis. Since FV is wrong about the temporary salvation concept (and I agree they are wrong), then are not the forms for infant baptism sorely defective? I'm familiar with the CR form but presumably other forms are similar. There are all these glowing promises of God pronounced over the wee one but never is the big condition mentioned "IF THEY HAPPEN TO BE ELECT". If one should add the big condition, then how is a convenant infant different from any other infant? One can say of all infants whatsoever that God makes glowing promises if they happen to be elect, even those infants born into Buddhist families.

Also how do Reformed people who reject the FV understand the condition of people who are born into Christian families but are finally reprobate, explicitly, by choice, no doubt about it. The author Peter DeVries comes to mind. I'd assume they were never saved in any sense whatsoever and, in retrospect, the promises and blessings pronounced in their infancies were, at best, half-truths, if not outright lies.

Lest any misunderstand, I'm NOT a secret FV sympathizer, nor am I trying to be sarcastic or smart-alecky. I've come to faith in God relatively recently, having been a covenant baby, a reprobate most of my life, and given a new heart three years ago. I really want to understand.

Gents, really appreciated those linked threads for the summaries, as well as Rich's. I don't spend much time on this subject so it is nice to get this sort of a thread on it to clarify.

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Kevin
Far East
Deacon, Int'l Church

Leslie:

Not every promise and blessing of God comes apart from means. The means of faith appropriates Christ and all His benefits (Heidelberg Catechism, Q&A 21). In baptism we are promised salvation in its fullness; those who reject these promises incur greater wrath for their unbelief (see Hebrews 4:1-2; Romans 9:1ff.). The sacraments, are after all, the visible gospel and confirm what God has promised in His word (as signs and seals).

So it is not a lie to promise something with a condition so that if the condition is not fulfilled the promise will not come to fruition. Nor is it Arminianism because God Himself fulfills the condition in the life of the elect.

Furthermore there are many promises that are unconditional for the believer and reprobate within the covenant. "I will be your God and you will be my people." Unto the Israelites were the covenants, promises, law and adoption (Romans 9:1-4) That they rejected these things by no means makes God's promise illegitimate. His eternal covenant is established and continues with or without the faith of many of those who are covenant children. For God is faithful to a thousand generations and will always provide the seed of the woman through the seed of the woman. (Genesis 3:15; Psalm 105:8; Acts 2:39).

But you are correct in stating that such never had eternal salvation though they certainly enjoyed many outward benefits of the covenant for a time (Hebrews 6:4-8). The problem with the FV is that they posit a temporary salvation which shares many components of eternal salvation and thus jeopardizes the finished work of Christ.

Or, to get at it another way than Daniel does, we can say that baptism initiates us into the visible church, and it is faith that initiates us into the invisible church. These two things may be connected (in the case of some of the elect) or not (in the case of the reprobate). When one is initiated into the visible church, one receives the benefit of being treated as a believer until that person is shown otherwise. This increases the condemnation of those who apostatize and show themselves never to have been a part of the invisible church at all. The Federal Vision collapses the visible/invisible church distinction.

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Rev. Lane Keister
Teaching Elder, PCA, North Dakota (working out of bounds in a CRC and an RCA church)
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As an Founders SBCer I haven't looked that closely at the FV issue. However, from what I have read in this present thread it sounds to be that Jonathan Edwards dealt with something similar in his church by in the day.

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Ivan Schoen, Pastor
Maranatha Baptist Church
Poplar Grove, Illinois USA
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One of my main problems with the FV is that once you are a covenant member through baptism the call is to covenant faithfulness (which in practice is often works) rather than to conversion. Indeed conversion is almost frowned upon as an abrogation of the primacy of the external covenant. Therefore the FV would see Edwards "Sinners in the hand of an angry God" as an unwarranted demand for inner conversion which is entirely inappropriate.

The FV do not therefore in my mind preach the full Gospel.

To be fair the FV would say that the modern call to conversion is an experiential approach that verges on synergistic Arminianism and they do have a point, but the answer is to reform our unbiblical practices, not to cease to preach the full Gospel.

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Mike
London City Presbyterian Church
London
England

"Surely, we wish to be orthodox, but we must first learn what real orthodoxy is. Surely, we wish to be progressive, but we must first have a basis to progress from."

Excellent points by Daniel and Lane. I just want to add my own two cents.

I think what you need to understand with respect to how God brings redemption to mankind is a distinction between the Covenant of Redemption (CoR) and the Covenant of Grace (CoG). One simple way of stating it is that we are elected because of the Covenant within the Godhead to save a particular people to the glory of God to the uttermost but that CoR is worked out, in time and space, by a visible administration to people who work within the things revealed and means.

If you think about the "golden chain" it includes some things that are hidden from us as well as some things that we experience in the here and now.

Romans 8:28-30
Our own knowledge of our salvation is not based on the things that God foreknew or upon His predestination. Rather, our knowledge is of an external and internal call, a turning from our sin and unto Christ in Evangelical faith, and then a sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit that flows out of our justifcation. We don't even have experience of our glorification for it is a future hope.

But, because we know Who we believe and rest in Him for salvation, we are able to "connect the dots" and have some connection to the chain that is in the eternal decree of God and we have confidence on the basis of our trust in Christ that God is the author and finisher of our faith.

It is really inappropriate, then, to speak about God's hidden decree in a way that speculates about whether or not it was futile for men to be issued Promises within the CoG in the first place or, as part of its regular administration, to be constantly preached the Word toward the conversion of hearts or the building up of the Saints.

We live and work within the things revealed. It is actually against the Word of God to speculate and say: "What is the point of these means if somebody was never elected in the first place?"

Also, the notion that being in and among these means is pointless and a person might as well have never been a participant in the CoG if they were never truly elect is roundly rejected repeatedly by the Scriptures themselves. This anticipates your question about advantage.

Romans 3:1-4
This anticipates those who would even argue that people have no opportunity to respond to the Gospel and are not under any responsibility to it. When speaking of the Jews (Covenant people) who have rejected Christ, Paul states this:

Romans 10:14-21
The Christian religion and understanding of God's election is not meant to be something, ultimately, where we try to determine the point where we've arrived and, in lieu of a decision card, point to our "election card" and assume that our fear and trembling in the process of sanctification has ended. We are repeatedly enjoined to live as if we believe we have been justified and to corporately care about how everyone is progressing in sanctification and, in fact, whether or not a man might never have been converted.

We are not simply supposed to be concerned about ourselves but about the entire Body. We are to be fearful lest any be found to be unbelieving:

Hebrews 4:1-10
This we will surely do because we have trusted in Christ but we never take it for granted and the Promises of God are given to us as an audible and historical act of God's utter faithfulness to save us and, by Word and Sacrament, impel us all toward His holy ends.

Thanks again to Semper Fidelis. I don't have the knack of quoting previous posts, but if I understand you right, you are saying that the advantage of covenant infants in the church is analogous to the advantage of infants born into Jewish homes in the B.C. era. It is simply that they have the advantage of exposure to the corpus of teaching regarding God. From a strictly human point of view, conversion should be easier, not quite so radical as it is for a Buddhist. Yet there is also a disadvantage in this, in that the condemnation of an ultimately-reprobate covenant infant is greatly increased. I still don't understand why the CR form for the baptism of infants sounds like a FV document, promising the forgiveness of sins etc. without the mention of either "if elect" or "if later converted".

I would also say that the advantage is that spiritual blessing has historically been given along geneological lines. That is to say that children are blessed to have parents that instill in them a love of God and a family that serves the Lord. The fact that the Lord grafts in wild shoots (as many of us are) does not exclude the fact that He also still blesses in great abundance geneologically.

Again, election works itself out in time according to the CoG. It is the reason why Christians don't just pop up at random and we don't see the same proportion of Christians in Muslim homes as we do in Christian homes.

Even when you interview Baptist parents, close to 100% of their kids end up making professions of faith and they are baptized. Election is not some blind force of fate where children are saved apart from means. Pagan parents tend to raise more of the same except, in God's grace, He calls some graciously into His Kingdom. But His Kingdom is still big enough to allow for His blesssing to occur in abundance within families that, by His grace, He utilizes the Church to train up all her disciples - young and old.

Paul commands parents, just as Moses did, to train children up in the fear and admonition of the Lord. God utilizes those means for maturation and conversion.

Again, election cannot be thought of as a concept where we try to peel back the curtain and wonder if God has elected our children. He commands us to raise them in the fear and admonition of Him. This implies discipleship and, just like older believers, we all fear lest any be found to be of an unbelieving spirit. Whether or not God has elected a child in my household or an adult with a mature profession is not for me to speculate. My command is to be built up together with all. And because I serve a gracious God, I assume the best of the means He provides through me toward the goal of raising up a Godly inheritance.

This is, in my opinion, one of the problems with FV that is often overlooked. A very balanced response; thank you.

The PCA at its 2007 General Assembly adopted 9 points of the "Declarations" or summaries of the findings of the PCA's Ad Interim Study Committee on Federal Vision found on page 2235 (Section IV) of the committee report contained in the 2007 General Assembly minutes, saying FV theology was out of accord with PCA beliefs in those 9 ways.

Point 2 of the 9, for example, found at the link below, says this about one of the points attributed to FV theology, "The view that an individual is 'elect' by virtue of his membership in the visible church; and that this 'election' includes justification, adoption and sanctification; but that this individual could lose his 'election' if he forsakes the visible church, is contrary to the Westminster Standards."

I discuss this report in my Xanga blog of the Louisiana Presbytery (LaP) meeting of today.

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HaigLaw, ruling elder
Grace PCA, Shreveport, LA
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Quite a change of events I would say. Thanks for the update.

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Chris Coldwell
Lakewood Presbyterian Church (PCA), Member
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That is about as succinct and to the point as I've seen.

Thanks!