Sprooul and the Covenant, aka AURBURNISM

[John 6-37]

I was saddened to hear today from a "paltalk calvinist" say what you will find below, that the covenant if grace is CONDITIONAL. Comments welcome...

http://www.trinityfoundation.org/horror_show.php?id=2

Tabletalk Rewrites the Covenant (http://www.trinityfoundation.org/horror_show.php?id=2)





Friends, The February 2004 issue of Tabletalk, a monthly magazine published by Ligonier Ministries, contains a lethal misrepresentation of the Covenant of Grace. In its February 18 "devotional," we read these words: "The book of Hebrews uses this story [of ancient Israel] as a basis for warning Christians to persevere, thereby proving that the new covenant can be broken as well [as the Mosaic could].... "The fact that Hebrews gives real warnings and teaches that the new covenant can be broken might seem strange to those of us from a Reformed background. After all, are not the elect secure in their salvation? Surely it is not possible for the elect to lose their salvation?... How then can these warnings be real? "The answer lies in the concept of covenant. When God makes a covenant, He makes a covenant with both believers and unbelievers, with both the elect and the reprobate.... Human beings are responsible to keep the covenant...." Nothing could be further from the truth. First, Hebrews says that the new covenant is better than the old Mosaic covenant: "But now he [Christ] has obtained a more excellent ministry, inasmuch as he is also Mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises [than the Mosaic covenant]. For if the first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second." Second, the new covenant, says Hebrews, is better because it cannot be broken: "I will put my laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God and they shall be my people. None of them shall teach his neighbor and none his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' for all shall know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them " (Hebrews 8:10-11). There is no possibility of these things not happening: "All shall know me." Third, God does not make the new covenant, the Covenant of Grace, with both the reprobate and the elect, despite what Tabletalk says. The Covenant is made with the elect only. Question 31 (and many other questions as well) of the Westminster Larger Catechism makes this perfectly clear: "Q.31 With whom was the Covenant of Grace made? "A. The Covenant of Grace was made with Christ as the second Adam, and in him with all the elect as his seed." In the new and better covenant, God the Father made an agreement with God the Son, Jesus Christ. Acting as the Mediator, as the Representative and Substitute for his people, the elect, Jesus Christ, fulfilled all the conditions of the Covenant of Works that Adam had failed to fulfill. Jesus procured all the blessings of salvation for his people, and that salvation he gives to them all as a free gift. What Tabletalk is teaching is false doctrine. Tabletalk's covenant is the basis of the Antichristian Neolegalism that is sweeping through Reformed churches. This false covenant does not recognize the role of Christ as Mediator. Instead, it requires believers to fulfil unspecified conditions of the covenant in order to keep their salvation. In this false covenant, there is no room for Christ as the Substitute for and Representative of his people, who alone met the conditions the holiness of God requires for salvation: perfection. In this false covenant there is no room for Christ as Savior. In this false covenant, the doctrine of the imputation of Christ's righteousness as the necessary and sufficient ground for salvation of sinners is denied. In this false covenant, sinners are told that they themselves must meet the conditions of salvation, the "oblgations of the covenant," and by their own "covenant faithfulness" obtain the blessings of the covenant. If they love the brethren and the truth, the writers, editors, and publishers of Tabletalk must issue an immediate apology to their readers, and a correction and retraction for these false statements. Their failure to do so will justifiably cause many more to doubt the doctrinal soundness of Tabletalk. For three years Tabletalk gave Douglas Wilson, a proponent of Neolegalism, a platform for his views; now the magazine is giving George Grant, a featured speaker at the Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church (which is the primary source of Neolegalism in the PCA), a platform for his views. When taken to task two years ago for saying in Tabletalk that Peter was the head of the church, the editor of Tabletalk refused to issue a correction or retraction to his readers. So the magazine's record is not good. The question we must ask is, Will Tabletalk repudiate Neolegalism and its proponents, or will it continue to teach it and to give the proponents of Neolegalism a platform? John Robbins The Trinity Foundation March 4, 2004 For further reading go to www.trinityfoundation.org (http://www.trinityfoundation.org/)

[wildboar]

The Trinity Foundation has also released a book written against the "federal vision" of men such as Douglas Wilson. The Standard Bearer reviewed it in its most recent issue. http://www.prca.org/current/Standard_Bearer/volume80/2004aug01.htm#Not%20Reformed%20at%20All:



Not Reformed at All: Medievalism in “Reformed” Churches, by John W. Robbins and Sean Gerety. Unicoi, Tennessee: The Trinity Foundation, 2004. 153 pages. $9.95 (paper). [Reviewed by the editor.]



Not Reformed at All exposes the theology of Douglas Wilson. The book responds to Wilson’s Reformed is Not Enough: Recovering the Objectivity of the Covenant. Since the theology of Wilson is essentially that of the movement of covenantal universalism now troubling conservative Reformed and Presbyterian churches in North America, Not Reformed at All exposes the entire movement in which Wilson is a leading figure.

I use “exposes” advisedly. Robbins and Gerety show, not only that Wilson’s theology is not Reformed according to the Reformed confessions, but also that it is lightweight. It is not rooted in the Reformed tradition. What roots it has in the past are planted in medieval thinking. Hence, the book’s subtitle. In addition, Wilson’s theology is illogical, contradictory, and incoherent. Much of his teaching is mere assertion—“pontificating”—rather than demonstration from Scripture and the confessions. As if this were not bad enough, Wilson’s signature style, unworthy of the gospel, is a “facile glibness and an adolescent smart-aleckness.”

Emperor Wilson of Moscow has no clothes.

At its heart, the book is a criticism of the covenant theology of the “federal vision,” as its proponents like to call it. What sets this criticism apart from almost all others is its penetration to the root of the heresy: the teaching of universal, conditional, resistible, losable covenant grace. Most other criticisms of the theology of the “federal vision” are content to address the denial of justification by faith alone. For whatever reason, they steer clear of the doctrine of the covenant out of which the teaching of justification by faith and works arises, according to the teachers of the false doctrine themselves.

Robbins and Gerety take hold of the heresy at its root. “It is appalling that at this late date, some glib writer who claims to be Reformed can assert that the Covenant of Grace is made with elect and reprobate alike—and be widely believed” (p. 118).

In the course of their refutation of Wilson’s covenant theology, the authors prove from Scripture and the Reformed creeds that the covenant, its promise, its blessings, and its salvation are particular—for the elect in Christ alone.




This is God’s sovereign Covenant of Grace, and it is wholly efficacious; no one and nothing can thwart it. This Covenant is made exclusively with Christ and the elect, to whom alone the promises of life and salvation belong. At this state in his extended argument [in Romans], Paul uses the doctrine of election (individual, of course) to defend God against the charge that he has not kept his covenant promises to the Jews, and his Word is of no effect. Paul’s argument is, in summary, that God had made no promises of salvation to all the children of Abraham, nor even to all the circumcised, but to his chosen people only. Just as God’s election is of some only, and Christ died for some only, so in the Covenant of Grace the promise of salvation is to some only. The Covenant is not a promise to all men, not even to all those that are circumcised or baptized, but only to those chosen by God in Christ from before the foundation of the world. Paul writes: “But it is not that the Word of God has taken no effect. For they are not all Israel who are of Israel, nor are they all children because they are the seed of Abraham; but, ‘In Isaac your seed shall be called’” (Romans 9:6-7) (pp. 92, 93).



There is astute reference to the biblical theology that plays a powerful role at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia and elsewhere in promoting the covenant doctrine of the men of the “federal vision.”




Christian theology is eternally true, firmly settled, and rigorously systematic; and it precedes all events. It is God’s thoughts that produce events. Wilson’s error, of course, is not unique to him; it is an error at the heart of the Biblical theology/redemptive history movement, which makes the chronological order in which God revealed truth to men more basic and more important than the logical order the truths themselves possess in God’s mind (p. 97).

[Robert R. Higby]

I genuinely hope and pray that Wilson's apostasy from the true gospel, as well as that of the PCA and OPC in general, will be exposed for all to see! Nonetheless:

Much of his teaching is mere assertion—“pontificating”—rather than demonstration from Scripture and the confessions.

I am glad that this quotation unwittingly confesses that just as Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy base truth on 'scripture PLUS tradition', historic Protestant churchmen are equally as guilty of basing proposed truth on scripture PLUS tradition! The sectarian denomination of my upbringing proposed 'the Bible and latter-day prophet' (the so-called 'spirit of prophecy') as the basis of truth--as also do many pentecostals. Same thing--it is merely a debate over which approach has more humanistic 'power'.

For the thousandth time, unless God in his sovereignty destroys Protestant sectarianism totally and forever, we will never have a New Reformation. Instead, we will have another thousand years and more of pagan servitude--far worse than the last!