Lux Lucet

 Can the Presbyterian Church in America be Saved? by Sean Gerety.  The Trinity Foundation, 158 pages.  $9.95. 

The Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) is in trouble.  In many of the denomination’s churches, the central teaching of Christianity – which is that sinners are saved by believing the Gospel of Jesus Christ apart from any good works performed by them – is being supplanted by a clever substitute called the Federal Vision (FV) or New Perspective on Paul (NPP) that defines saving belief in such a way that it includes good works.  Of course attacks on salvation by belief alone are not new within the church; read Paul’s epistle to the Galatians for an account of this very thing in the first century.  The Roman Catholic Church-State, the largest visible church on earth, would later suppress this doctrine, also known as justification by faith alone, for a thousand years.  In the sixteenth century, salvation by belief alone was the central issue at stake in the Protestant Reformation.  Men such as Martin Luther and John Calvin –  correctly distinguishing between justification and sanctification, between a sinner being declared righteous by God and the process of that sinner becoming more like Christ – understood and taught that good works contribute precisely nothing to salvation but are the fruits of salvation already accomplished. That much of the PCA , an heir of the Reformation, could fall away from sound Gospel teaching is a remarkable thing.  How did the PCA get into such a mess?  Is there any hope of it getting out?  These are questions Sean Gerety addresses in his new book Can the Presbyterian Church in America be Saved?            

Gerety’s crisply written book (the main body of the text is a brief 88 pages) falls into three main sections: 1) a discussion of the Report of Ad Interim Study Committee on Federal Vision, New Perspective, and Auburn Avenue Theology adopted by the PCA in 2007, 2) an analysis of how Van Tilian epistemology and apologetics have undermined the ability of many PCA church officers to respond effectively to the Federal Vision challenge, and 3) a refutation of key errors used by Federal Vision (FV) supporters to advance their ideas.  A brief conclusion follows.

While acknowledging that the PCA’s report did well in concluding that FV/NPP theology strikes at the vitals of the faith, Gerety also points out that the report has its flaws.  He writes,

Sadly, one of the major problems with the report is that it doesn’t actually identify the men who are advancing the FV/NPP agenda within the PCA and elsewhere as false teachers,but rather as “brothers” in Christ.  Ironically, the report begins by stating “The committee…affirms that we view the NPP and FV proponents in the PCA as brothers in Christ,” yet by the end of the report it’s clear that these NPP and FV proponents hold to and teach doctrines that are completely out of accord with the vitals of the Christian faith, specifically as they touch the doctrine of justification and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness.  Could anyone imagine Paul addressing the Judaizers who were disrupting the peace of the churches in Galatia as brothers in Christ? (12)

In Galatians, Paul, using some of the strongest language in the New Testament, pronounced an anathema on anyone who would teach a false message of salvation.  Yet the authors of the report, who seem to think that God hates the sin but loves the sinner, preemptively declare that those advancing a false gospel in the PCA are brothers.  Gerety on the other hand does not make that mistake.  Correctly applying the report’s conclusions about the FV to the men who teach it, he adds,     

If the FV/NPP men are brothers in Christ then so are Romanists, Liberals, and every other sub-Christian cult member.  I realize the writers of the report were trying to be charitable, and it is ultimately the job of the courts to determine whether or not the FV men in the PCA are in fact heretics as a matter of due process or simply believers who have been , to use Paul’s language, “bewitched” by the doublespeak of the modern Judaizers in the FV/NPP movement.  However, there are times when saying nothing is in order, and this was one of those times.  Identifying even one of these men as “brothers in Christ” is sheer presumption.  If men hold to a qualitatively different system of doctrine, including a drastically different scheme of salvation, then these men are not “brothers” in any sense. While it is the job of the courts to adjudicate those charged with heresy and promoting another gospel, that doesn’t mean that those teachers of the Federal Vision are not heretics or that they should not be correctly identified as such simply because the courts have so far remained silent.  (13)

This is the sort of language that offends some and often leads to complaints about “tone.”  It could even get one banned from posting on certain blogs.  But Gerety’s on solid ground here, and I find his statement refreshingly honest.  Putting Gerety’s argument in syllogistic form it runs thus: All who teach false gospels are heretics, the FVists teach a false gospel, therefore the FVists are heretics.  This would seem to be pretty straightforward argument.  It’s valid and certainly Biblical.  Yet the authors of the PCA report were unable draw the proper conclusion required by their premises.  By failing to reach the proper conclusion about false gospel teachers, that they are heretics and not brothers in Christ, the report’s authors left a major chink in the PCA’s armor.   

Continuing his comment on the report, Gerety points out that,

Even a report as succinct and thorough as the PCA’s that correctly identifies the deadly heresies of the Federal Vision and the so-called “New Perspectives” only has value insofar as those who voted in favor of the report’s passage are willing to take action based on the report’s findings.  Without direct and decisive court action the PCA’s report on the Federal Vision and New Perspectives remains nothing more than an empty exercise which allows men in the PCA to delude themselves and others into thinking the church has addressed the problem. (19)

So far, the PCA has been unable to take effective action against any FVist in the denomination.  Why that is occupies much of the rest of the book.

According to Gerety, the problem with the PCA’s FV critics is that they cannot think clearly.  Having rejected the sound, non-contradictory, Biblical hermeneutic of the Westminster Confession in favor of Cornelius Van Til’s unbiblical notion that the Scriptures contain apparent contradictions, many of the denominations FV critics have rendered themselves unable to defend the doctrine of justification by faith alone.  In discussing the failure of the PCA’s FV critics, Gerety quotes Cornelius Van Til stating, 

“The law of contradiction…as we know it, is but the expression on a created level of the internal coherence of God’s nature.  Christians should therefore never appeal to the law of contradiction as something that, as such, determines what can or cannot be true” [emphasis in the original]. (24)

Gerety continues,

Therefore, if someone were to contradict the proposition that sinners are justified by belief alone, Christians should not appeal to the law of contradiction to show that justification by a combination of faith and obedience is false. (24)

For those untutored in Van Tilian interpretive principles, the statements “justification is by faith alone” and “justification is by faith and works” are easily recognized as contradictory, (see Romans 11:6).  But for the Van Tilian, these two opposites really aren’t opposite at all.  In fact they can quite easily be made to fit into the same doctrinal system by appealing to the erroneous notion that the Scriptures contain apparent contradictions.  And if the FV teaching on justification is simply another in a long line apparent contradictions, how can any Van Tilian mark an FVist as a false teacher and separate from him?  Gerety puts it this way,

These men [Van Tilians] have been trained to embrace contradictory nonsense and even to view it as a high spiritual calling.  That’s why most don’t even realize that when someone contradicts the central truths of the faith they have effectively denied those same truths.  So when Federal Visionists say they affirm justification by faith alone apart from works, but then affirm a scheme of salvation premised on their own faithful obedience to the demands of a conditional covenant, most Van Tilians can’t seem to grasp that to contradict the doctrine of justification by faith alone is to effectively deny it.  While perhaps a bit uncomfortable, most are simply willing to “live with one more unresolved antitheses” as they chalk up their intellectual impotence in dealing with these Federal Visionists causing division in the church to charity.  After all, when someone says they believe in justification by faith alone shouldn’t we believe them?  If that were the case then I guess pigs can fly and antichrists don’t lie. 

It seems no matter how much sand the FV bullies kick in the PCA’s face, it’s not enough to call forth an adequate response from those charged with guarding the doctrinal purity of the denomination.  I say adequate response, because it’s not as though there haven’t been attempts to put a stop to the FV within the ranks of the PCA.  Gerety gives credit where credit is due.  But his point is that those attempts so were vitiated by Van Tilian epistemology and hermeneutics that their results were at best inconclusive, and at worst ended up in victory for the FV heretics.

The last four chapters of the book show Gerety to be a skilled Scripturalist exegete.  Here, he refutes many of the FVist’s most serious errors: the misinterpretation of the term “the obedience of faith,” the three-part definition of faith that includes fiducia, and the conflation of justification and sanctification.  Particularly impressive is Gerety’s discussion of “the obedience of faith.”  Against the FVists (and even against some Christian commentators) Gerety concludes that the obedience of faith means, “to do as we are commanded, that is repent (which is a change of mind) and believe the Gospel” (79).

  Gerety wraps up his book with the conclusion

Had men – or even enough men – been trained in Clark’s non-contradictory and Biblical epistemology and apologetic, along with embracing his simple and non-tautological definition of faith and saving faith, things might be different and the rise of the Federal Vision would have been averted.

That is why unless men in the PCA are willing to learn these lessons, and especially those lessons from the man most have been trained to vilify or simply ignore, Gordon Clark, they will remain il-equipped to confront “the issue for this generation.” The courts of the PCA will continue to shrink from effectively dealing with the false teachers of the Federal Vision, and the PCA’s slide into apostasy will be complete.

 This statement is right on target and sure to be unpopular with the men who most need to hear it. 

Can the Presbyterian Church in America be Saved? is a worthy addition to The Trinity Foundation’s catalogue by a man who clearly understands the Bible and the Scripturalism of Gordon Clark and John Robbins.  By writing this book, Sean Gerety has done a great service to the cause of the Gospel, and I strongly recommend it to anyone who loves the doctrines of grace and seeks a deeper understanding of the FV controversy that is roiling the doctrinal waters in the PCA and the broader evangelical community.