Federal Vision Confusion

The Reformed establishment seems to have been falling over itself in an effort to shout down the "Federal Vision". If you are unfamiliar with the "discussion", this hubbub started after a ministerial conference in 2002 at Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church in Monroe, LA. Four pastors, who included Douglas Wilson, Steve Schlissell, John Barach, and Steve Wilkins (the pastor of AAPC), presented lectures on various topics relating to covenental theology. Some of the teaching at this conference raised eyebrows and hackles, and a not-so-gracious "discussion" ensued (with one denomination in particular declaring all four men "heretics" without anything resembling due process). In response, AAPC held at its 2003 ministerial conference a point/counterpoint discussion between the four presenters from the year before and four men asked to respond to their teachings (Morton Smith, Joey Pipa, R.C. Sproul, Jr., and one other I cannot remember at this time). While this seemed, for the most part, a fairly helpful time of discussion, the parties involved continued to seem to be talking "past" one another; again, one of the respondents dropped the "H" bomb on Wilkins and company (i.e., called what they were teaching "heresy"). An MP3 CD with all of the 2002 and 2003 lectures and Q/A sessions can be purchased here, so you can decide for yourself if this rhetoric was justified.

Later in 2003, Knox Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida held a colloquium, moderated by Calvin Beisner, to try to hash out some of the differences among discussants; papers from both sides of the discussion have been published recently in a book form, available here or here. While a step in the direction of open discussion (at least no one called anyone else a heretic), one still gets the sense that the two sides are talking past each other, and that leaves interested bystanders like me frustrated that no one is really addressing the issues being raised by the men on the Federal Vision side. This problem, in my opinion, has worsened of late, since a conference at Westminster Seminary California and an accompanying issue of Modern Reformation from the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals and Michael Horton. The MR issue can be found here, and the WSC conference recordings can be found here. In my humble opinion, both of these have done a massive disservice to the entire debate, especially when one considers how solid groups like the Alliance and Horton's MR have been in the past. In fact, laymen like myself rely on these folks to help us sort through just these kind of issues! I hope in future posts to address what I see as the shortcomings of these critiques, but, for his part, Doug Wilson has dealt nicely with them from his side of the argument on his weblog under the heading of "Auburn Avenue Stuff" found here; see especially the "Yelling at my windshield" posts for his response to the WSC lectures.

In the most recent developments, Steve Wilkins has co-edited a compilation of essays on the Federal Vision thinking, entitled, appropriately, The Federal Vision. This can be found here. I have not made it through all of the essays in the book, but James Jordan's is the most intriguing I've read in a long time. As I said, I hope to post more as I have time and insight.