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Presbytery Summary

Presbytery Summary

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:04 am by Peter Leithart

Presbytery Summary 2017-09-07T00:04:01+06:00 Peter Leithart

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Earlier this year, the Pacific NW Presbytery of the PCA asked me to summarize my views on a number of points that have become controversial. Here is that summary.

As a preliminary, let me say a word about how the Confession functions in my theological work. I accept the Calvinistic covenant theology of the Confession and affirm most of its specific statements. I do not believe that the Confession is, or was intended to be, the final word on any point of theology. It does not say everything. On many points, moreover, the Confessional language is not my preferred language for theology, preaching, or teaching. For example, I am more inclined to call sacraments ?rites?Ethan ?signs and seals?E though I affirm imputation, I usually emphasize that imputation is rooted in the more basic reality of union with Christ (cf. WLC #69); and I use soteriological language with the same flexibility that Scripture does (e.g., Psalm 106:8; 107:13, 19; Isaiah 45:17, 22; 63:9).

There are, in my judgment, four main areas in which the conformity of my views to the WCF might be challenged: sacramental theology and especially the issue of baptismal efficacy; ecclesiology (especially the visible/invisible church distinction); election and apostasy; and justification. Let me attempt to clarify my own views, and how I see them in relation to the Confession.

1. Sacramental theology and baptismal efficacy.

Sacraments in general: I have been critical of the use of ?sign?Elanguage regarding sacraments. I do believe that sacraments are signs, but they are not signs in the way a Stop Sign is a sign. The sacraments are not merely given to us to teach us something or to remind us of something. Sacraments are ?performative?Esigns, both in the sense that they include actions and in the sense that through them the Spirit works to give Himself to His people. For these reasons, I prefer to say that the ?outward element?Eof baptism is washing with water, rather than simply ?water?E(WCF 28:2).

I have been critical of defining sacraments as ?means of grace.?E For similar reasons, describing sacraments as ?outward signs [of] inward and spiritual grace?E(WLC #163) captures only a limited scope of the sacraments?Esignificance, though I do not reject this language. My problem is with the notion of grace often implicit in such definitions. Grace is pictured as a substance or fluid channeled through the sacraments. With the Reformers, I believe that grace is God?s favor to His people, expressed the gift of the Spirit but also in gifts of all sorts, outward and physical as well as inward and spiritual. Sacraments are, precisely in their outwardness and visibility, among the gifts that God gives His people. Being visibly ?distinguished from those who are without?Ethe church by the sacraments (WLC #162) is one of God?s gifts.

I have been critical of the notion of ?sacramental union.?E My main concern here is that this concept can be employed to rob all sacramental passages in Scripture of their sacramental force. Romans 6, thus, is not about water baptism but the ?thing?Eto which water baptism points. I find that a deeply problematic way to proceed in developing a biblical theology of sacraments. From certain perspectives, further, the distinction between sign and thing signified dissolves: Baptism is not a picture of someone becoming a disciple, but the event of someone becoming a disciple (Matthew 28:18-20); the sign of eating and drinking together is the fellowship of believers with one another with and in Christ.

Other than these points, I do not disagree with WCF 27; WLC 161-164; WSC 91-93.

Baptismal Efficacy: My basic view has been that baptism, in the Confessional terminology, is ?the solemn admission of the party baptized into the visible church.?E Everything else I have written about baptismal efficacy is just an unpacking of this statement. Of course, that raises the issue of the nature and meaning of ?visible church,?Eon which more below.

Other than the quibble that the ?outward element?Eis ?washing with water?E(28.1; cf. WSC #94), I have no disagreement with WCF 28; WLC #165-167; WSC #94-95.

2. Ecclesiology.

Visible/Invisible Church: My views on the visible/invisible church distinction were formed in seminary by reading John Murray?s brief article ?The Church: Its Definition in Terms of ?Visible?Eand ?Invisible?EInvalid?E(Collected Works, vol. 1, pp. 231-237). I agree with Murray that the NT normally uses ?church?Eto refer to a visible and historical reality, either to a local community of believers who worship together Sunday by Sunday, or to all believers throughout the world along with their children. This visible and historical community has invisible dimensions, and it includes within it some who will fall away before Christ?s return and others who will be exposed as hypocrites at the judgment, but this visible and historical ?mixed body?Eis what the NT describes as ?the church.?E The Confession (25.1-2) does not apply body and spouse language to the visible church (though it does not prohibit such language, and cf. BOCO, Preface, Part 1). I believe that ?body?Eand ?spouse?Eapplies primarily to the visible church.

The ?visible/invisible?Edistinction sometimes appears to imply that there are two overlapping churches. I do not believe that this is what the Confession has in mind with the distinction. But I think it more biblical to insist that there is one church that exists in various conditions throughout history. During the current phase of history, the church is a mixed community, including both elect and reprobate. After the judgment, it will be purged of all tares and will be identical to the community of the elect. Throughout this history, it is a single community. Rather than use the visible/invisible distinction, I prefer to describe the one church as existing in both ?historical?Eand ?eschatological?Estates.

In several published writings, I have argued that soteriology and ecclesiology are two sides of the same coin. My reasoning is: Salvation has been achieved already in Christ, though it is not yet consummated. Salvation involves the restoration of man, and since man is created as a social/relational being, salvation necessarily involves the restoration of human society. The church is the redeemed society, the social form of the ?already?Eof the salvation of the human race. I agree that there is no ?ordinary possibility of salvation?Eoutside the visible church (WCF 25.2), but I also believe that it?s theologically accurate to say that the church is the site where salvation has been achieved (imperfectly), where sinners commune with the Father through Christ in the Spirit.

Ecclesiology and Baptismal Efficacy: If baptism admits the baptized into the visible church, and if the visible church is the body of Christ and the ?already?Eof salvation, then baptism admits the baptized into a share of that salvation, just as all Israel shared in the redemption from Egypt. This does not mean that everyone who is baptized is saved eternally; most of those redeemed (Exodus 15:13; Deuteronomy 7:18) from Egypt fell in the wilderness (1 Corinthians 10:5). Nor does it mean that everyone who is baptized has the same share in the benefits of Christ?s work, or the same degree and sort of communion with God in the Spirit. But if the church truly is the body of Christ, and the members are members joined to the Head, there can be no ?merely social?Emembership in the church.

3. Election and apostasy.

Election: I have no disagreements with WCF 3. As I understand WCF 17.1, those who are ?accepted in his Beloved?Eare the elect. I agree that God has decreed who will finally be saved, and that there will be neither addition to nor subtraction from that. Yet, the life-history of a reprobate might include membership in the church, temporary faith, participation in the life of the saved community, communion with the Spirit, all of which, however, falls short of a

persevering and eternally saving relationship with God in Christ.

Apostasy: The elect cannot fall away. But apostasy from a state of blessing is a real possibility, and involves a real loss. A baptized person who turns from Christ is not just an unbeliever; he is a disinherited son, a rebellious subject of Christ?s kingdom, a branch cut off the tree. He has fallen from grace (Galatians 5:4), and made shipwreck of his faith (1 Timothy 1:19).

4. Justification.

I have published two main papers on justification. In the first, I examine passages in Scripture where ?justification?Elanguage is used to describe not merely a verdict (?not guilty?E but describes an act of deliverance (to ?justify?Eis to judge one?s enemies and liberate or vindicate the oppressed). I do not believe this is not in conflict with the Confession?s teaching on justification; I am identifying another Scriptural usage of the language, and suggesting that this additional Scriptural nuance needs to find a place in our theology of justification. In the second, I examine some historical formulations of justification, and argue that these formulations are sometimes infected with an unbiblical dualism between legal status and real identity. This is not in conflict with the Confession, in that the Confession states that in justification God ?accepts their persons as righteous?E(11.1). The justified are not merely ?legally?Erighteous; because we simply are what God declares us to be, we are the righteous.

Strictly, I believe that what is reckoned to us is not Christ?s obedience per se (cf. WCF 11.1), but the verdict God passed on Christ?s obedience in His resurrection (Romans 4:25).

There is a relation between my work on justification and my work on baptism in one important sense: If, as I argue, baptism grafts the baptized into the body of Christ, and He is the Risen Righteous One, then the baptized share in some fashion in that righteous standing. I cannot offer a Confessional defense of this view, but there is precedent for such a view within Reformed theology, evidence for which I could provide on request. There is also a corporate/historical dimension to justification: Israel as a nation was ?vindicated?Eby the restoration from exile (Isaiah 54:17; Jeremiah 51:10) and by deliverance from judgment (Joel 2:23). In an analogous way, one may speak of the church as being ?vindicated?Eand of the members of the church as sharing in that ?vindication.?E

To add some points to this summary: There are at least three related underlying assumptions in the work I’ve done on sacraments, ecclesiology, and soteriology.

1. All this work is part of an assault on vestiges of gnosticism that have infected Christian theology, East and West, Protestant and Catholic, for centuries.

2. In particular, this gnosticism has manifested itself as a discomfort with temporality, finitude, and bodiliness. Far from seeing these as unfortunate limitations on human existence, I see them as simply the conditions of created human existence, conditions that we know, on the highest authority, to be “very good.” My understanding of apostasy has largely been an effort to take time seriously, including God’s activity and work within time (though of course God’s work is not exhausted by time); my work on sacraments is in part an effort to take the physical character of baptism and the Supper as part of the material for theological reflection, rather than as a (somewhat unfortunate) second-best way to commune with God.

3. Personalism is a crucial assumption throughout my work. As Frame has said, Christian faith is unique in claiming that God is an absolute Person (not a relative person; nor an absolute force). I have tried to work that insight through in sacramental theology, ecclesiology, and soteriology. For instance, it makes no sense to me to suggest that a baptized member of the church has a purely “external” or “legal” relationship with the covenant or with God. God is not the kind of Being with whom one can have anything less than a personal relationship. That relationship, as Frame points out, might well be one of enmity; but it cannot be impersonal.

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