Peter
I’d like to re-direct the discussion back to my original point, which got lost in the comments. I said that the central affirmation of the FV has been that the visible church is the body and bride of Christ, a more-than-human community.
John replied: “I believe in the visible church, but I wonder whether your formulation tends to the abstract ecclesiology that Darryl was exposing. I am not sure what you mean when you suggest that some privilege a ‘secret core of the visible church.’ Does your central ecclesiastical claim account for WCF 25.4?”
I don’t understand the first point. Could you explain how my formulation is abstract?
I can illustrate what I mean by privileging a “secret core of the visible” church by bringing up one of the central issues in the FV debate – baptismal efficacy.
What does baptism do? For many in the Reformed world, baptism unites the baptized to the visible church, but the membership in the visible church does not entail any real connection with Jesus or His Father, a connection reserved for that select invisible core of the visible church. Only that invisible core truly qualifies as “body of Christ.”
The FV claim is: If the visible church is the body and kingdom of Christ, and baptism is the entry rite into the visible church, then baptism joins the baptized to the body of Christ and makes him or her a subject of His kingdom. Baptism makes the baptized a member of the more-than-human community of the church; baptism makes the baptized a member of the body of Christ, which really is the body of Christ, that is to say, the human community joined to the Incarnate Son through the Spirit.
Now, once again to redirect the discussion back to my original question: Do you agree with the argument of the previous paragraph? If not, where does the logic break down?
Peter, would you be willing to make the distinction which WCF 25.4 (John’s earlier reference) makes between the pure and less pure, more and less visible?? You make the claim that “baptism makes the baptized a member of the body of Christ”? Good so far. But that language needs to be nuanced further if WCF 25.5 applies. If you can affirm the “more pure/less pure” distinctions, most of us high church Calvinists will gladly say, come join us! Surely many of the “pure evangelicals” in our denomination (PCA) want to affirm the more pure/less pure distinction without sacramental efficacy of any kind. On that score the FV and high church Calvinists are much closer to each other than to the evangelical party in our midst.
LikeLike
Yes, of course, churches are more pure and less pure. And the point, I assume, is: If the body that administers the baptism is so corrupt that it is no longer church, then its baptism has no efficacy. So, my formulation is “abstract” because I’m failing to ask the question, “Which church or supposed church is administering the baptism?” Is that what you’re getting at?
Sorry for the italics. I don’t know how that happened.
LikeLike
Peter, I wonder what this post does for your regard for N.T. Wright. He asserts that Christ is Lord of everything, as do many Kuyperians. So what does baptism confer with regard to Christ’s kingdom that I don’t already have by being person. This may not be a problem for you intellectually, but since some FVers advocate an expansive idea of the kingdom and affirm the Lordship of Christ over all things — as does Wright — then possible FV suffers from the reduced ecclesiology that afflicts many American Protestants.
LikeLike
Indulge my abstractitude. Let’s put aside the question of pure/impure, and consider only a “more pure” church. Does my argument about baptismal efficacy work in that case?
LikeLike
I am unsure what the purity of the church has to do with sacramental efficacy? Only inclusion in the visible church should matter (without regard to how pure of an expression, right?)
For instance, our congregation would never rebaptize a former Roman Catholic or anyone else from a Trinitarian background.
LikeLike
But to ask a couple of question of Peter:
1) Do you recognize a that covenant and election to perseverance (to invoke Augustine) are not completely overlapping? (That is to say that some are elect to eternal life and in the covenant and some are destined to fall away but in the covenant.)
2) Would you say that your formula of sacramental union with Christ is legal and covenantal but not necessarily partaking of saving efficacy?
LikeLike
To Bill’s questions:
1) Yes.
2) Here’s the nub of the discussion, I think. If “saving efficacy” means “efficacious to eternal life,” then the answer is No. Not everyone who is baptized into union with Christ in His body is eternally saved. If you’re asking whether baptized reprobates (or at least some of them) participate (for a time, in some way) in the benefits of Christ’s saving work in some lesser way, the answer is Yes. To go no further: The church itself is a product of Jesus’ death and resurrection, and so membership in the church itself involves participation in a benefit of Christ’s saving work.
To turn the question back to you: Does “legal and covenantal” include some sort of personal union with Christ? Or is it a “merely external” link? Are you meaning to contrast “legal” to “organic” or something similar?
LikeLike
The question is the heart of things. What is the church. Is “body of Christ” a metaphor or an organic incarnational reality?
I will let the Doctors of the Church give instruction.
LikeLike
The problem of course is that predestination that stops short of the Reformed insight that election is meant to give God’s people the comfort of assurance seems lost here.
LikeLike
How can there possibly be any comfort for me in the doctrine of “decretal” election, that God predestinated everything by the act of creating? Unless I have a copy of the decree with my name on it, I can’t know that I’m destined for the New Earth. I cannot think as God thinks, and to try and do so is blasphemy, as we all agree.
What “we” are saying is that in Ephesians 1 and most other places, “election” is God’s placing us into His body by conversion or baptism, whichever comes first so to speak. THAT is an election I can take to the bank, for I can look straight at God’s promises and trust them. There needs to be a good deal of care taken over the use of this word “election,” and I think that has been part of the problem of late.
LikeLike
[…] can find his post here. Be sure to read the comments because it involves a healthy discussion, and follow it through […]
LikeLike
Bill, I don’t see it that way. Quite the contrary in fact. I’ll try to write something more substantive on assurance later, but for now, only this incomplete and unsatisfying fragment: The search for INDIVIDUAL assurance in predestination is hopeless, since none of us has access to the decrees.
It seems to me that this search is actually motivated by unbelief, since it seems to be looking for a ground of assurance deeper than the promises of God in the gospel. God has addressed His promises to me as publicly as can be – and I don’t need anything more. I just need to trust Him.
LikeLike
Let me give a better answer Peter.
You asked:
“to turn the question back to you: Does “legal and covenantal†include some sort of personal union with Christ? Or is it a “merely external†link? Are you meaning to contrast “legal†to “organic†or something similar?”
The Protestant Scholastics hashed through this difficulty in a way that I find satisifying. I am saying that the covenant and election overlap but not perfectly. You can be in the covenant but not elect. We are agreed about this.
But this is exactly the what Protestant Orthodoxy (Olevianus and Turretin, for instance) meant when it distinguished the essence from the administration of the covenant.
The beauty of Scholasticism was the ability to take into account the “whole counsel of God” and thus be able to hedge our bets and make proper distinctions.
So, if you are part of the administration of the covenant you have a true union with Christ’s ecclesial body (administration) but not His mystical body (essence).
Would you agree with that?
LikeLike