Butterfly House

American Ladies

2011-08-04T20:21:00.002-04:00

This year marked the second year with American Ladies Vanessa virginiensis. Our hostplants were more established, so I didn't find myself repeating last year's ritual of find Pearly Everlasting in the field every three days!

The new method for this year was to take small sections of Pussytoes Antennaria neglecta and root them in smaller pots. The former method was to simply add leaves to the container as needed; but this seemed to force the AL cats to make nests more frequently than they might do in nature. The new method allowed the cats to make nests in whole plants.

The method had mixed success. The major problem was that I inadvertently put a large cat in with several eggs and 1st instar cats. They all disappeared but one.

The overly hungry caterpillar...

The key to success seems to be to provide two plants per caterpillar.

JRC

Summer at the Butterfly House

2011-08-04T16:42:00.004-04:00

So where have the postings gone?

Basically, we've been busy (gardening, life, work) or gone (PA, NH). But in between, we've had various butterfly visitors.

May saw the release of several Spicebush Swallowtail and Black Swallowtails that had overwintered as pupae.

The girls also tried their hand at raising Cabbage Whites (translation: daddy fed the caterpillars).

Then summer began in earnest. We had many, many American Lady eggs laid on Pussytoes. Some of those came inside and we experimented with using whole plants as food, with mixed success. A friend "donated" a clutch of (unwanted) Black Swallowtails on parsley. We successfully raised the caterpillars to chrysalises on a new hostplant, Golden Alexanders -- only to have all but two pupae die mysteriously. Variagated Fritillaries, Monarchs, Spicebush Swallowtails, and Orange Sulfurs were all raised.

The exciting moment of Summer 2011, however, was finding 25 Pipevine Swallowtail Battus philenor caterpillars on July 12 that had stripped some Virginia Snakeroot Aristolochea serpentaria bare. This was a great moment because our pipevines had gone without caterpillars for their entire four year lifespans.

The cats naturally came in. Here's one, looking rather alien-like:

They're even cuter en masse:

Leaving for vacation on July 20 required turning all of our caterpillars loose on various hostplants. One consolation was that there was yet another batch of Pipevine Swallowtail caterpillars on the large pipevine Aristolochea macrophylla. Sure enough, on return we found five of those caterpillars -- along with many chewed leaves and frass, which suggests that the original 25 did not all perish.

A significant new change was the creation of a large caterpillar cage -- THE Butterfly House -- that will keep caterpillars off the back porch. The five PVS cats are currently testing it out for me.

JRC

In the Yard 8/4/2011

2011-08-04T16:14:00.002-04:00

Seen today between 1 and 3 PM (no pics):

5 Tiger Swallowtails Pterourus glaucus, including one dark-form female
1 Orange Sulfur Colias eurytheme
2 Cabbage Whites Pieris rapae
4 Buckeyes Junonia coenia
1 Variegated Fritillary Euptoieta claudia
3 Eastern Tailed Blues Cupido comyntas
1 Zabulon Skipper Poanes zabulon male
4 Tawny-Edged Skippers Polites themistocles, 3 male 1 female.
3 Peck's Skippers Polites peckius, all male.
1 Sachem Atalopedes campestris female.
several Silver-Spotted Skippers Epargyreus clarus

Oh: and one very large and fat Pipevine Swallowtail Battus philenor caterpillar. :)

JRC

Hairstreak Season Begins

2011-06-04T21:42:00.000-04:00

There was a fresh Banded Hairstreak Satyrium calanus in the yard today -- a dark form. This is much earlier than I usually see them. What does this portend for other hairstreak species this year?

JRC

May 22, 2011

2011-05-22T23:27:00.002-04:00

We went biking along the Potomac today. Wingstem Verbesina alternifola and Nettles Urtica sp. are in abundance there, along with Paw-paw trees. We saw several Eastern Commas, Spicebush Swallowtails, Zebra Swallowtails, Red Admirals, and a couple of Sulphurs. I looked on the Wingstem for caterpillars or nests of the Silvery Checkerspot Chlosyne nycteis, but no luck.

JRC

The Garden Plan

2011-05-10T15:41:00.003-04:00

In previous years, I would plan the garden on paper, lose the paper, find the paper, and then end up (because of meager art skills) with a plan that only somewhat approximated the real thing.

This year, the cluestick fell on my head: I can use Photoshop to label a photograph!

The new and improved garden plan...

JRC

May 7 - 10, 2011: Swallowtails and Ladies

2011-05-10T15:23:00.005-04:00

This week, the Black Swallowtails started emerging. There are 17 chrysalises that overwintered in the cage. A male emerged on 5/7 and a female on 5/9. Both were small and had more orange than usual on the underside.

Black Swallowtail Papilio polyxenes ♀

We also found six Cabbage White caterpillars on Yellow Rocket.

Cabbage White Pieris rapae on Yellow Rocket Barbarea vulgaris

And finally, we found 13 American Lady eggs on the Pussytoes in the garden.

American Lady Vanessa virginiensis egg on Pussytoes Antennaria plantaginifolia

The plan had been to leave them on the plant, since the caterpillars make nests that make them harder to raise in cages. However, by the next day, the eggs had been found by ants.

There are two eggs in the picture. The ant was working on the one on the right for at least half an hour, encircling it and working on it with his mouth. Presumably, he was aiming to detach it from the leaf and take it back to the nest.

In any event, we did not want the eggs to go for ant food, so we brought them inside on A. plant. sections that went into pots. The hope is that the plants will root and provide food for the caterpillars.

JRC

Religious Affections and Evangelicalism

2011-04-21T16:51:00.004-04:00

Helm describes Religious Affections as of central importance to evangelicalism:

[RA's] significance lies in its influence upon the evolving character of Protestant evangelicalism, as a phenomenon that identified itself (as David Bebbington has pointed out) partly by activism and conversionism: revivalism, massed choirs, large gatherings of people, the penitent bench, the centrality of the public testimony, and so on. Edwards’s Protestantism was of an older kind, but it nevertheless contained elements which, in other hands, contributed to developing the distinctive features of modern evangelicalism.

Is this fair? Can we draw a line from Edwards to Finney to Osteen?

I would argue not. First, Edwards believes that genuine affections are centered on the objective truths of Scripture. Affection for its own sake is of no value in Edwards' treatment. Affection that is accompanied by "God language", however effusive, is of no value to Edwards.

Further, Edwards distinguishes sharply between affection that is generated by the Spirit and affection that is generated by the methods of men. He is clearly aware of the dangers of "living on experiences."

Even when he seems to encourage affections, it is through the means of grace. That True Religion consists chiefly of holy affections appears from the nature and design of the ordinances and duties, which God hath appointed, as means and expressions of true religion. (RA, 242 I.2.9). Indeed, tellingly, he begins RA with Leviticus 9 and 10, the passage that forms the backbone for the regulative principle in worship.

We should not gloss over this point as simple old-fashionedness on Edwards' part. There is a huge fault line between Edwards and later revivalists. The "penitent bench" would not have been, for Edwards, a mere novelty or change in fashion. It would have been a man-made attempt to generate affections outside the God-appointed means of true religion.

Likewise, Edwards wrote "...it is no evidence that religious affections are of a spiritual and gracious nature, because they are great. It is very manifest by the Holy Scripture, our sure and infallible rule in things of this nature, that there are very high religious affections which are not spiritual and saving."

That is, he places no stock in the strength of affection; only in its movement of the will towards christian practice and the development of the character of Christ. It is hard to see how he can be held responsible for those who value "being on fire for the Lord"!

So evangelicals cannot really claim Edwards, unless they are willing to admit his criticisms at the same time.

And therein lies the value of Religious Affections. Even with its flaws, RA focuses the reader's attention on this question: Which evidences are legitimate tests of the work of God?

It cannot be but beneficial for a young Christian to discover that strong feelings, or spontaneous verses of Scripture, or much external zeal and piety, are no evidences of true religion; and that the fruit of Christian practice *is*. Even if we dispute Edwards' view of true religion (and we do!), and fault him for failing to consider faith and the Law in his account of affections -- still and all, he is much closer to genuine Reformed piety than he is to pietism or evangelicalism.

For this reason, I view Religious Affections as a flawed-but-helpful gateway out of excessive pietism and towards a spiritual life grounded in faith in the work of Christ for us. Edwards is not the answer; but he is on average a far better answer than one usually gets.

JRC

Religious Affections and the Law

2011-04-21T13:53:00.004-04:00

One of the striking features of Religious Affections is that Edwards ties affections to law-keeping but fails to carry this thought to its conclusion.

In favor of his thesis that True Religion, in great part, consists in holy affections, he cites Deut 10.12, 6.4 - 5, and many other passages that show that it is our duty to have right affections towards God. In this way, Edwards is echoing Augustine, who taught that God's justification of us is accompanied by the implanting of divine love, charity, so that we desire to fulfill the Law. (cf. Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, 4). For both men, a true work of God will result in love.

So this raises an important question: Does Edwards cross the Law/Gospel line? Is he, in effect, telling his readers to become law-keepers in order to validate the genuineness of their faith?

No -- but he's not as clear as he might be.

Religious Affections is a polemical theological treatise. Much like Thoughts on the Revival (which contains many of the same arguments), Edwards' aims are (a) to defend the legitimacy of religious affections in principle, and (b) to criticize pernicious practices that have arisen when people have placed undue weight on affections.¹

In short, Edwards aims to be a friend to the good and a critic of the bad. His intended audience includes those who view outward expressions of affection of any sort to be works of Satan. Against them, Edwards emphasizes the necessity of the fruits of the Spirit (love, hope, patience) as a legitimate and necessary part of true religion.

But it would have been far clearer, I think, if Edwards had explored more thoroughly the connection between affections and Law. What happens if a Christian has but a meager love for God? What if his affections are weak? Does this mean he has sinned, perhaps having hardness of heart? Or does it mean that he needs to be strengthened in his faith? Would it not be fair to say that a meager love for God is failing to keep the Law to love God with heart, soul, mind, and strength?

And in that case, we have well-worn theology concerning Christians who fail to keep the Law (cf. WCoF 17, 18, 19).

Indeed, Edwards' failure to put things in terms of law-keeping meant that he had to roll his own objections to legalism. The Puritans struggled mightily with legalism in the form of demanding dramatic conversion experiences from each other (cf. Tennant's Dangers of an Unconverted Ministry). In Thoughts on the Revival, Edwards takes great pains to criticize those who condemn others as "unconverted" on the basis of their lack of outward affections. Based on these criticisms, I think we can clear Edwards of the charge of placing his readers under the law.

But, if he had more clearly thought about religious affections as a species of keeping the Law, this would have been unnecessary and even obvious.

Next Post: Religious Affections and Evangelicalism -->

1. Helm views RA as a political treatise, aimed at defending the revivalists. It's an intriguing take, but the difficulty is that Edwards thinks of himself as laying down doctrine while defending the revivalists. And it's a strange "defense" that, like Thoughts on the Revival, sharply criticizes those whom he is defending. If Edwards is playing the politician, he is particularly inept at it. Perhaps it might be better to say that Edwards sees himself located on one side (the revivalists), but concerned to be both a friend to the good while opposing the bad.

Religious Affections and Faith

2011-04-21T13:04:00.004-04:00

Edwards' Religious Affections consists of a preface and three main parts. The first is a defense of the thesis that True Religion, in great part, consists in holy affections. He then goes on to distinguish between those signs which do not provide evidence of true religion, and those that do.

What is an affection, anyway? Edwards thinks of affections as movements of the will. For Edwards, an affection properly considered is that which moves the will towards an action. Love, hope, zeal, fear of the Lord: these are all religious affections. They all contain an element of emotion in them, but the chief thing is not the strength of that emotion, but rather that the will is moved towards the certainty of divine things, the development of the character of Christ, and Christian practice. What makes an affection sufficiently affective is that it moves one above indifference and towards a definite action. Indeed, Edwards believes that there is scarcely a difference between an affection and an exercise of the will.

Whether this is a Lockean conception of the will is beyond this writer; but what is clear is that Edwards has a particular view of the psychology of man, and he incorporates this view into his doctrine of Religious Affections (cf. Edwards' Freedom of the Will). For Edwards, the affections are bound up in the will so that genuine affections lead ultimately to action; whereas inclinations that carry us but little beyond indifference are "weak, dull, and lifeless wishes."

At this point, one pauses to ask the question: Should we accept Edwards' particular theory of psychology as part of our doctrine of religious affections? Even granting Edwards' basic observation that Scripture enjoins love and hope and joy upon us, still and all, must we go further and accept that our affections are identical to exercises of the will?

I think not.

The glaring absence in Edwards' description of religious affections is the role of faith. Nowhere mentioned by name, faith is the anti-elephant in Edwards' room of affections. Is faith one of the religious affections? If not, then is it not an action of the will? Or is faith prior to all of these affections? Surely faith is a part of true religion?!

And this omission is notable because the Shorter Catechism speaks of the work of the Spirit in this way:

Q. 30. How doth the Spirit apply to us the redemption purchased by Christ?
A. The Spirit applieth to us the redemption purchased by Christ, by working faith in us, and thereby uniting us to Christ in our effectual calling.

Q. 31. What is effectual calling?
A. Effectual calling is the work of God's Spirit, whereby, convincing us of our sin and misery, enlightening our minds in the knowledge of Christ, and renewing our wills, he doth persuade and enable us to embrace Jesus Christ, freely offered to us in the gospel.

There it is: the work of the Spirit on our wills is to persuade us to embrace Christ; that is, to work faith in us. Faith would therefore seem to be, on Edwards' account, a motion of the will -- and yet it is absent.

So the question now is, why did Edwards omit faith? What does he mean by it?

Two points help us sort out the puzzle. First, the purpose of Religious Affections is to help the reader sort out evidences. Faith is ultimately invisible, and Edwards is clear that he is not providing us with a rule by which one may infallibly read the heart of another (RA 262-263, Section III preface). So part of our answer is that faith is simply not an outwardly expressible affection. It is outside the scope of Edwards' question. Though faith is an exercise of the will, it is not an affection in the sense in which he is speaking.

This is confirmed by a read through Edwards' Justification by Faith Alone. In this piece, it becomes obvious that Edwards does not see the affections as salvific, but as fruits of a salvation that is acquired by faith alone, apart from any virtue in us.

But why then does Edwards make holy affections the very definition of True Religion? Clearly he understands that faith is central to our justification? What is doing?

And here, we are stymied for a simple reason. Edwards assumes that his reader already has a clear idea of what "True Religion" is supposed to mean! As careful as he is to define "affections", he gives us no inkling as to what "true religion" means, other to say that it consists of holy affections.

Putting all this together charitably, it seems safe to say that "true religion" is supposed to be something like "the fruit of genuine faith."

But the omission of faith, not merely in justification but also in the ongoing Christian life, is a profound flaw in Edwards' account. It goes to the heart of the Halfway Covenant controversy and the perennial Puritan question of "Am I really, really, really, really, really really saved?" What does one do if one assesses oneself to believe the Gospel, but not be practicing true religion as expressed by "vigorous" (i.e., will-influencing) affections? Edwards gives no answer.

Next Post: Religious Affections and the Law -->

Jonathan Edwards and Religious Affections

2011-04-21T12:34:00.006-04:00

Paul Helm has recently written several articles on Edwards' A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections. His conclusion is that Edwards vastly oversimplifies true religion, offering a confused definition of both affections and religion. Helm views Edwards' confusion as significantly influential on subsequent evangelicalism, giving theological cover to conversionism. Sean Lucas has joined the fray, along with our ~~Californian~~ ~~Pennsylvanian~~ ~~Delawarian~~ Michiganian correspondent.

In the space below, I would like to offer two arguments in support of Helm's thesis and one against. In the end, Religious Affections is a confused document because it does not address the role of faith (!) in religion, and because it does not thoroughly address the connection between affections and the Law in the Christian life. The reader of Religious Affections walks away unsure of whether one is saved by having the right affections, or one is shown to be saved by having the right affections. Likewise, a reader who experiences little in the way of high emotions is unsure of whether this is a problem, and if so, what the solution might be.

But RA provides little cover for modern evangelicalism and emotionalism. Instead, it is a useful pivot point for those coming out of evangelicalism. For though Edwards affirms the role of affections in religion, in the end he directs the reader away from subjective assessments of affections, and towards affections grounded in the objective work of God, communicated by God-ordained means of grace.

The interested reader is encouraged at this point to leave this post and read Edwards:

A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections
Justification by Faith Alone

and then Helm:

Part I
Part II
Part III

Next Post: Religious Affections and Faith -->

Coming out of hibernation

2011-03-20T18:50:00.002-04:00

The garden is awakening after a cold winter. Daffodils are in bud, hyacinths are emerging. Black-Eyed Susans are showing foliage, as are Pussytoes.

There's Pennsylvania Bittercress aplenty -- we pull that here, along with dandelions.

All of the trees are in bud: Dogwoods, redbuds, maples, spicebushes.

Things seem set for a good year.

JRC

Open Thread - The Roman Catholic Magisterium

2010-10-10T22:33:00.002-04:00

I've opened up this thread so that all interested might discuss matters begun over at GreenBaggins.

Questions on the table:

(1) Is the vow given in the rite of initiation into the Catholic Church a formal fallacy? I affirm.

(2) Is sola scriptura distinguishable from solo scriptura? I affirm.

(3) Is the Protestant secretly relying on his own opinions rather than on Scripture? I deny.

JRC

The Grace of Baptism -- Part 5

2010-08-20T07:14:00.006-04:00

Why Does it Matter?

Part 1: The Question on the Floor: Baptism's Effect; Scriptural Texts
Part 2: The Effect of Baptism in Reformed Thought
Part 3: The Efficacy of Baptism
Part 4: Interactions With Derksen's Arguments
Part 5: Why Does it Matter?

One might wonder why I've undertaken the effort to dispute Phil on this point. Certainly it is not to give aid and comfort to anyone teaching that baptism gives grace indiscriminately! With Derksen, I affirm that the grace of baptism is received by faith and applies to the elect at the time of God's choosing. I join him in denying that the grace of baptism is given to all recipients, in any sense.

Nevertheless, I've undertaken this project because Derksen's construction raises a large yellow flag that should concern us.

He has created a system in which baptism presupposes prior faith. This system begs for a Baptist practice. And indeed, those Presbyterians who came closest to Baptists (such as Thornwell) articulated an uncomfortably similar theology of infant baptism -- that it grants an external privilege only.

Derksen, a faithful Presbyterian, is in no danger of becoming Baptist any time soon. His view, however, separates the sign from the thing signified. What is signified in baptism is our justification and our union with Christ. What is given in baptism (on Derksen's account) is not justification and union with Christ, but merely confirmation of those things.

He has created a system in which the sign does not actually convey the thing signified, but merely confirms it. This small bit of daylight is too much daylight. The Reformers and their Confessions were comfortable attributing salvation itself as the effect of baptism, of attributing the thing signified to the sign. I encourage my brother Phil Derksen to do the same.

JRC

The Grace of Baptism -- Part 4

2010-08-20T07:10:00.016-04:00

Interactions with Derksen's Arguments

Part 1: The Question on the Floor: Baptism's Effect; Scriptural Texts
Part 2: The Effect of Baptism in Reformed Thought
Part 3: The Efficacy of Baptism
Part 4: Interactions With Derksen's Arguments
Part 5: Why Does it Matter?

Update: after writing this piece, I discovered that my own knowledge of the sources was incomplete. As a result, some of my criticisms of Derksen are downright unfair. If the reader wishes to see the original work, he may click
here for the original Part 4. But I'm not entirely proud of it; consider it deprecated.

So far, we have endeavored, with little reference to Derksen's arguments, to trace the Scriptural and Reformed view of baptism. The conclusion of the matter has been that all three agree: the sacramental effect of baptism is salvation.

But now we must reckon with the fact that Derksen supplies an impressive array of quotations from various Westminster Divines and other Reformed theologians that plausibly show that these divines thought of baptism as a "confirming, not converting ordinance." This part will therefore directly challenge the arguments of BWS.

(1) Derksen's over-relies on the Westminster Divines as the primary window for understanding the Confession.

Citing the Westminster Divines Rutherford, Gillespie, Ussher, and others, together with the Reformed theologians Cunningham, Manton, and Turretin, Derksen claims that these representatives of Reformed thinking taught his two theses:

In this installment we will begin to show that the Westminster Standards’ teaching on baptism is in full accord with the historical Reformed understanding of the sacraments, as was outlined in Part 1. That is, baptism does not intrinsically confer spiritual grace, but rather spiritually benefits only the elect. Or, as it has frequently been stated in historical Reformed language: the sacraments are confirming and strengthening ordinances, and not converting ordinances -- BWS Part 3.

The problem is that the language of the Confession is drawn heavily from the writings of Calvin and from previous Reformed Confessions. Derksen in particular omits any discussion of Calvin in reference to his second thesis. The result is that he ends up pitting statements from Rutherford and Cunningham -- unwittingly -- against the dispositive statements of Calvin that we have already seen.

(2) Derksen improperly conflates his two theses; as a result, he illegitimately takes evidence for the one as if it proved the other.

Take a second look at Derksen's quote above, which explicates his two theses. With the word "Or", he signals his anti-ex opere operato thesis is to be considered as logically equivalent to the claim that baptism is confirming and not converting. And in fact this is precisely how he reads his sources. Statements against ex opere operato are taken as evidence that baptism does not confer, but only confirms salvation.

We note that Derksen's sources are addressing the question of ex opere operato. Their opposing formula of "confirming, not converting" is specifically directed against the view that the act of baptism creates grace or faith of itself. Their opposition is certainly not directed against Calvin's view that in baptism, we are ingrafted into Christ.

For example, Derksen cites: Our divines do not say that the sacraments are exhibitive ordinances, wherein grace is communicated to those who have none of it, to unconverted or unbelieving persons. (Gillespie, Aaron's Rod Blossoming p. 233, cited in BWS part 4)

As an anti-ex-operato statement, this is clear. Baptism does not, via its action, give grace to the unconverted.

But as a denial that baptism exhibits and conveys justification, it is much less clear. Gillespie is certainly not saying that the divines reject the idea that sacraments exhibit and convey grace, since they most certainly believed this! (WCoF 27). Nor could he be denying that sacraments are effectual means of salvation, since the divines affirmed this also (WLC 161).

So some of Derksen's citations are being applied to an issue different from their original context. This criticism applies also to his citations of Gouge, Gataker, Reynolds, Willet, and Turretin. All of these gentlemen affirm that baptism is ineffectual without faith; none of them affirm that the effect of baptism is something other than salvation, or deny that baptism effects our washing of sins.

(Incidentally, many of his citations are taken from treatises on the Lord's Supper, which makes them less obviously relevant to baptism.)

(3) Derksen's reliance on Rutherford creates some difficulties.

Despite the forgoing criticisms, some of Derksen's quotes do substantially show that some Reformed theologians of the Westminster era held to the "confirming, not converting" formula for the sacraments.

Rutherford is his best example:

Baptism is not whereby we are entered into Christ’s mystical and invisible body as such, for it be presupposed we be members of Christ’s body, and our sins pardoned already, before baptism come to be a seal of sins pardoned; but baptism is a seal of our entry into Christ’s visible body, as swearing to the Colors is that which entereth a soldier to be a member of that army, whereas before his oath, he was only a heart-friend to the army and cause.”)
...We teach not that baptism constituteth the Church simply, as the Church, but that it is a seal of a visible membership. -- S. Rutherford, Due Right of Presbyteries, pp. 211, 218, cited in BWS, part 4

But what difficulties has Rutherford involved himself in! For he flatly contradicts Calvin and the 2HC here, that baptism ingrafts us into Christ.

As Rutherford develops his theology, he is forced to say,

Christ by his Seals [sacraments] rightly and in faith used, do not only confirm grace and pardon, but also really exhibit and give grace and pardon in a further degree, and a new measure of assurance to the conscience which there was not before...” -- ibid, 217.

Since Rutherford denies that pardon is the effect of baptism, there is nothing left for baptism to effect except assurance and "pardon in a further degree."

Dear reader, stop and contemplate what the phrase "pardon in a further degree" might mean. Is not our justification "done and done", once-for-all, at the moment of faith?

No doubt Rutherford believes this also, but it is difficult to understand his position on the sacraments as a proper window into the understanding of the Confession.

(4) "Converting" and "confirming" are not strict opposites.

The issue in the ex opere operato debate was whether (as some Anglicans had it) the act of baptism creates faith. Thus, baptism was claimed to be a "converting" ordinance.

The Westminsterian divines clearly rejected this position.

But the opposite of "converting" is not "confirming." There might be other options besides either of these.

And in fact, I have argued here that baptism is "initiating." It is not "converting", except in the very narrow sense of Calvin's "secondary instrument." The action of baptism does not create faith (though its sealing of the spoken promise of the gospel might). But nor is it "confirming", increasing a faith that already exists.

No, the purpose of baptism is "initiatory." It unites us to Christ when (and not after) we believe. This is not merely Calvin's position, but it is expressed in the Reformed Confessions also, as we saw earlier.

"Converting" and "confirming" are false opposites, an unfortunate pairing born out of the ex-opere-operato conflict and pressed into a different service here.

(5) The baptism of infants argues against the view that baptism presupposes faith.

If baptism presupposes faith, then how can we baptize infants? Derksen is aware of this challenge, and he addresses it in BWS part 5. His argument in favor of infant baptism pursues the traditional lines of Reformed reasoning (which I affirm together with him). However, he does not answer the question, except to speculate that covenant children might have seed faith -- or they might not.

This is unsatisfactory. For if baptism of adults presupposes faith, then either baptism of children must be a different rite entirely from baptism of adults, or else the seed faith view must be correct. The first notion, that baptism of children has a different meaning than that of adults, has been tried in Reformed circles and rejected. The second view, that all children of believers contain seed-faith within them, is hotly contested.

But most telling is that Calvin denied that baptism of infants presupposed their faith. Contra Cunningham, he says,

Master. - If these things are requisite to the legitimate use of Baptism, how comes it that we baptize Infants?

Scholar. - It is not necessary that faith and repentance should always precede baptism. They are only required from those whose age makes them capable of both. It will be sufficient, then, if, after infants have grown up, they exhibit the power of their baptism. -- Geneva Catechism.

Far better to acknowledge that baptism means but one thing to all recipients: it is the objective seal of the truth of the Gospel, and the reception of the Gospel is the moment at which baptism takes its effect.

(5) Baptism is outwardly a symbol of initiation; its inward grace should correspond.

Baptism is outwardly a sign of solemn admission into the visible church. As an outward sign, it symbolizes initiation. Why then should we deny (as Rutherford does) that the inward reality is also initiation?

(6) Rebaptism is universally rejected

If baptism were a confirming ordinance, rebaptism would be perfectly legitimate. Just as communion confirms Christ's death for us, yet without re-sacrifice, so also a confirming baptism would confirm our justification -- and that sign could be continued indefinitely.

Instead, it is but once applied because it symbolizes (and therefore sacramentally effects) our once-for-all justification.

(7) Derksen (and those he cites) completely overlook the stated Confessional meaning of the sign.

The Shorter Catechism says this:

Q. 94. What is baptism?
A. Baptism is a sacrament, wherein the washing with water in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, doth signify and seal our ingrafting into Christ, and partaking of the benefits of the covenant of grace, and our engagement to be the Lord’s

What is signed is the ingrafting into Christ, the initiation into our relationship with Him. Likewise the Larger Catechism:

Question 165: What is Baptism?

Answer: Baptism is a sacrament of the New Testament, wherein Christ has ordained the washing with water in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, to be a sign and seal of ingrafting into himself, of remission of sins by his blood, and regeneration by his Spirit; of adoption, and resurrection unto everlasting life; and whereby the parties baptized are solemnly admitted into the visible church, and enter into an open and professed engagement to be wholly and only the Lord's.

The things signed are the things conveyed! Derksen, by contrast, has the things signed not conveyed, but merely confirmed. I humbly submit that the language of "confirmation" is not how the Standards describe the efficacy of the sacraments.

Increasing of faith? Yes. Signing, sealing, and applying the benefits of Christ? Yes. But "confirming the thing signified?" No.

To summarize: Derksen's arguments carry some weight, given his copious research into the views of the Westminster Divines. But his sources are concentrated too heavily in the Divines, not heavily enough in the early Reformers (especially Calvin), and they create odd difficulties on the very point he wants to establish. In short, Derksen has over-emphasized the views individual theologians to provide an idiosyncratic read of the Confessions.

In particular, Derksen's adoption of the "confirming, not converting" formula creates a false opposition. Baptism is neither; it is a kingly seal that testifies to God's promise, and it is an initiatory sacrament.

By contrast, the Westminster Confession presents a clear testimony, consistent with Calvin, Ursinus, 2HC, and the Gallic Confession that baptism effects what it signifies: namely, the washing away of sins and our union with Christ, at the moment of faith.

Charles Hodge deserves the last word:

How then is it true that baptism washes away sin, unites us to Christ, and secures salvation? The answer again is, that this is true of baptism in the same sense that it is true of the word. God is pleased to connect the benefits of redemption with the believing reception of the truth. And he is pleased to connect these same benefits with the believing reception of baptism. That is, as the Spirit works with and by the truth, so he works with and by baptism, in communicating the blessings of the covenant of grace. Therefore, as we are said to be saved by the word, with equal propriety we are said to be saved by baptism; though baptism without faith is as of little effect as is the word of God to unbelievers. -- C. Hodge, Comm. Eph. 5.17-33.

---

My central (and current) objection to BWS is that it conflates baptism as a means of grace with the efficacy of baptism as a sacrament. The two are quite different, the first referring to baptism's temporal effect at the moment of application, the other referring to baptism's sacramental effect, independent of the moment of application. Consequently, Derksen rejects several eminently Reformed statements of the sacramental effects of baptism, such as "baptism saves us" or "baptism unites us to Christ."

Consider the Word as a means of grace. It is used by the Spirit, in a moment of time, to create or to strengthen genuine faith. The benefits of Jesus’ work are then apprehended by faith.

If we consider the sacraments as a means of grace, focusing on their operation in time, then we find that sacraments do not create saving faith (at least not in their normal function as means of grace – the Spirit is of course not limited), for the simple reason that the sacraments are never found without the Word. A "seal" with no promise to seal is nothing. The seal confirms the promise, and so strengthens faith, but it does not create it.

It is precisely in this sense that Rutherford and Cunningham affirm that the sacraments are "confirming, not converting" ordinances. They specifically rejected the Anglican and Lutheran notion that the act of baptism creates new faith in the recipient. Berkhof puts this succinctly:

According to Reformed theology it is not, as the Roman Catholics claim, the means of initiating the work of grace in the heart, but it is a means of for the strengthening of it or, as it is often expressed, for the increase of grace. (Berkhof, Systematic Theology, p. 641).

So viewing baptism as a means of grace, in its operation in real time, I would agree with Derksen that baptism is a confirming, not converting ordinance: that is to say, the act of baptism does not, of itself, impart saving faith.

However, there is another question concerning baptism’s efficacy as a sacrament. This effect of baptism is not causal, not linked in time to the moment of administration. What does God do through baptism, as a sacrament?

The sacrament seals the promises of God – specifically, it seals the promise to cleanse us from sin, and the promise to unite us to Christ. What is signed is also what is effected. As the Confession states,

There is, in every sacrament, a spiritual relation, or sacramental union, between the sign and the thing signified: whence it comes to pass, that the names and effects of the one are attributed to the other. – WCoF 27.2

How can this be? Is it a mere fiction of language? Thus the Zwinglians, who make the sign empty by saying that it is a symbol only, with no effect. But their error, besides discarding the mystery of God, is to assume that the efficacy of baptism has to do with the action itself. It does not.

Instead, the efficacy of baptism is contained in the promises that it seals. The baptism itself is nothing – that is, merely a seal to the promise. The promise is everything. When the promise is believed, the baptism has had its effect – whether before or after (or rarely, during) the action of baptism itself. Thus the Confession again:

The efficacy of Baptism is not tied to that moment of time wherein it is administered; yet, notwithstanding, by the right use of this ordinance, the grace promised is not only offered, but really exhibited, and conferred, by the Holy Ghost, to such (whether of age or infants) as that grace belongeth unto, according to the counsel of God's own will, in His appointed time. – WCoF 28.6.

There is an element of mystery about this, how it is that God links the sign to the thing signified; but notwithstanding, we can understand at least that baptism points to the promise; when the promise is believed, the pointing has done its work.

It is this sense that baptism is considered an initiatory and saving rite. Sacramentally speaking, it confers what it signs: justification and union with Christ. It is this sacramental language that Calvin and other Reformers used so readily. Here is Ursinus:

There is in baptism a double washing: an external washing with water, and an internal washing with the blood and Spirit of Christ. The internal is signified and sealed by that which is external, and is always joined with it in the proper use of baptism. – Ursinus, Comm. Heidelberg Catechism, Qn. 70.

He then comments on "proper use" and "improper use" of sacramental language, saying that the latter is figurative or sacramental (Comm. HC, Qn. 72). Improper use includes such phrases as "Baptism saves us." The question then arises, Why does the Holy Ghost call baptism, "the washing of regeneration" and "the washing away of sins"? (HC Qn. 73).

The answer is in three parts, but his second is this: Because in the proper use of the sacraments, the exhibition and reception of the signs, and the things signified, are inseparably connected. (ibid)

Of modern theologians, there was division in terms of this usage. One finds that such as Dabney and Berkhof eschew the sacramental language. Berkhof goes so far as to say

In view of the fact that according to our Reformed conception, this baptism presupposes regeneration, faith, conversion, and justification, these surely are not to be conceived as wrought by it. (Berkhof, Systematic Theology 632).

Here is particularly concerned to contrast the Reformed view with the Roman Catholic.

Dabney:

But [sacraments] are not the channels or vehicles for acquiring the saving grace first; inasmuch as the possession of those graces is a necessary prerequisite to proper participation in adults. The efficacy of the sacrament, therefore, is in no case more than to strengthen and nourish saving graces. – Dabney, Lectures in Systematic Theology 740.

Nevertheless, Dabney does admit that baptism is an initiating sacrament:

As to baptism, we assign this reason why it is never to be repeated to the same subject like the Lord’s supper: It is the initiating sacrament, like circumcision. The man who is in the house needs no repeated introduction into the house. It "signifies our ingrafting into Christ." He who is grafted in once is virtually united, and requires no new union to be constituted -- Lectures, 747

Hodge on the other hand embraced the sacramental language, cheerfully claiming,

Unless the recipient of this sacrament be insincere, baptism is an act of faith, it is an act in which and by which he receives and appropriates the offered benefits of the redemption of Christ. And, therefore, to baptism may be properly attributed all that in the Scripture is attributed to faith. Baptism washes away sin (Acts xxii. 16); it unites to Christ and makes us the sons of God (Gal. iii. 26, 27) ; we are therein buried with Christ (Rom. vi. 3) ; it is (according to one interpretation of Titus iii.5) the washing of regeneration. But all this is said on the assumption that it is what it purports to be, an act of faith. -- C. Hodge, Systematic Theology, Vol. 3, 589.

One of Hodge’s concerns was to minimize the daylight between adult and infant baptism:

But baptism signs, seals, and actually conveys its benefits to all its subjects, whether infants or adults, who keep the covenant of which it is the sign. As a believer who recalls some promise of the Scriptures which he has read or heard, receives the full benefit of that promise ; so the infant when arrived at maturity receives the full benefit of his baptism, if he believes in the promises signified and sealed to him in that ordinance. Baptism, therefore, benefits infants just as it does adults, and on the same condition. -- Systematic Theology, Vol. 3, 590.

Clearly, there is a bit of ambiguity in the Reformed statements here, and it is fair to say that Derksen and I have attacked opposite ends of the question.

On the one side, rejecting ex opere operato, are those who focus on baptism’s effect in time. They (correctly) assert that baptism is not a "converting" ordinance, in that the act of baptism does not create saving faith. We can put Rutherford, Cunningham, Dabney, Ursinus, and Berkhof into this bin.

On the other, rejecting Zwinglian empty sign theory, are those who focus on the fact that in some mysterious way, God conveys the graces signified by baptism (justification and union with Christ), in the time of His choosing. We can put Calvin, Ursinus, various Reformed Confessions, and Hodge into this bin. Even Dabney and Berkhof admit this, though they pass quickly over it (as does Reymond).

Which is correct? Well, the reader will have already picked up that the first is correct in its proper temporal sense, while the second is correct in its proper sacramental sense.

My issue with Derksen, then, is simply this: he does not admit the validity of the sacramental language. That is, he rejects the language "baptism saves" or "baptism justifies" or "baptism unites us to Christ in his death" as unReformed.

In my view, this is overly strict. It creates an uncomfortable situation in which a preacher must teach Rom 6.3-4 in this way: "You were buried with Christ through baptism. But you weren’t really, and we mustn’t say this."

This cognitive dissonance is especially evident when Derksen deals with the term "applied" in the Catechism. On his account, the graces that are signed in baptism are not "applied" per se (that is, actually given to the worthy recipient); instead, the word "applied" must mean "confirmed." In this, he follows Cunningham, citing

[W]e take the position, that the doctrine that the sacraments are for believers, and assume the previous existence in worthy recipients of the great spiritual blessings with which faith is invariably connected, is far too explicitly and too fully set forth in the Westminster symbols, in accordance with the general doctrine of the Reformed churches, to admit of its being set aside or involved in uncertainty, on the ground of a single vague and ambiguous expression, even though there were greater difficulty than there is, in interpreting that expression in harmony with the general strain of their teaching. – W. Cunningham, The Reformers and the Theology of the Reformation, pp. 277-279, cited in BWS Part 4.

Baptism as it is such is a seal, and a seal as a seal addeth no new lands or goods to the man to whom the Charter and seal is given, but only doth legally confirm him in the right of such lands given to the man by prince or state, yet this hindereth not but baptism is a real, legal seal, legally confirming the man in his actual and visible profession of Christ, remission of sins, regeneration... (ibid, 211)

The reader can see Cunningham’s confusion clearly: he is hung up on the temporal effect of the sacraments, so that instead of embracing the sacramental language, he reinterprets the word "apply" to mean "confirm" (which is lexically absurd).

The alternative, and the one I recommend generally, is to clearly separate the temporal action of the sacrament as a means of grace, from the time-independent sacramental effect of baptism.

Next-->

The Grace of Baptism -- Part 3

2010-08-20T07:06:00.007-04:00

The Efficacy of Baptism

Part 1: The Question on the Floor: Baptism's Effect; Scriptural Texts
Part 2: The Effect of Baptism in Reformed Thought
Part 3: The Efficacy of Baptism
Part 4: Interactions With Derksen's Arguments
Part 5: Why Does it Matter?

Having considered the Scriptural and Reformed teachings on the meaning and effects of baptism, we need urgently now to consider the way in which baptism works. The use of the word effect can certainly mislead, leaving the reader with the picture of an action (baptism) preceding a state (salvation) and leading to it causally. This is far from the case. Rather, the effect is a relationship between the meaning of baptism and the state of salvation.

Baptism operates as a seal of the promises of God. As such, it testifies to the truthfulness of the preached Gospel, acting as a "liquid sermon." When the recipient therefore believes the promise, he has appropriated the meaning of baptism. In this sense, the baptism has had its effect.

Baptism as Seal

The word "seal" has changed primary meaning over time. Nowadays, a "seal" is viewed as a hermetic barrier, as in the phrase "Ziploc bags seal in freshness." For this reason, Reformed writers have sometimes presented the sealing function of baptism as an action that guarantees the result.

Derksen seems to lean in this direction:

Thereafter, also through the Spirit, the sacraments serve to seal and strengthen the faith of the converted (more on this arrangement coming in Part 6). -- BWS, Part 3

This use of the word seal ("to seal the faith") would have been entirely foreign to Calvin. For Calvin, sacraments are "seals" in the sense of a royal seal.

A king who wished to attest to the genuineness of a document would close up the envelope, place a dollop of hot wax on the joint, and stamp it with his ring. This process, much like signing the back of an envelope, attested that the document inside was none other than the king's true message (cf. Bedos-Rezak). It identified the document with the person.

This was the process of sealing that Calvin had in view when he spoke of the sacraments as seals:

The seals which are affixed to diplomas, and other public deeds, are nothing considered in themselves, and would be affixed to no purpose if nothing was written on the parchment, and yet this does not prevent them from sealing and confirming when they are appended to writings. It cannot be alleged that this comparison is a recent fiction of our own, since Paul himself used it, terming circumcision a seal, (Rom. 4: 11,) where he expressly maintains that the circumcision of Abraham was not for justifications but was an attestation to the covenant, by the faith of which he had been previously justified. And how, pray, can any one be greatly offended when we teach that the promise is sealed by the sacrament, since it is plain, from the promises themselves, that one promise confirms another? The clearer any evidence is, the fitter is it to support our faith. But sacraments bring with them the clearest promises, and, when compared with the word, have this peculiarity, that they represent promises to the life, as if painted in a picture. Nor ought we to be moved by an objection founded on the distinction between sacraments and the seals of documents, viz., that since both consist of the carnal elements of this world, the former cannot be sufficient or adequate to seal the promises of God, which are spiritual and eternal, though the latter may be employed to seal the edicts of princes concerning fleeting and fading things. But the believer, when the sacraments are presented to his eye, does not stop short at the carnal spectacle, but by the steps of analogy which I have indicated, rises with pious consideration to the sublime mysteries which lie hidden in the sacraments. -- Calv Inst. 4.14.5

Importantly, sacraments have an objective meaning, pointing the recipient to Christ. It is the word of the Gospel that is sealed.

In contrast, the "sealing" of Derksen (and others!) is something subjective. The faith of the believer is sealed.

If we wish to understand baptism aright, we must understand that it is an objective seal, testifying to the truth of the Gospel.

The Semantic Content of Baptism

Baptism, then, has a meaning. Its meaning is identical to the gospel message: that God washes us of our sins and unites us to Christ in his death. The sign of baptism is thereby united to the message of the Gospel, and the two speak with one voice. Baptism is thus a "liquid sermon", a physical seal of the truth given in the Gospel.

Moderns would therefore call baptism a "speech-act", an action that has semantic content (like the exchange of wedding rings). Baptism is a symbol that means washing of sins.

Receiving the Message of Baptism by Faith Brings About its Effects

Since baptism has this semantic content, what happens to the person who believes the message? When the gospel is believed, the believer is united to Christ. What baptism promises, has occurred. It is at this moment that baptism is effectual.

There is a sense in which it is legitimate to say that baptism "presupposes faith", for it is true in a logical sense that baptism is effectual for believers only. The promise of baptism has faith as an implicit condition (a condition made explicit by the preached gospel). But the term "presuppose" is misleading, for it conveys to some a temporal sense, that saving faith comes first and the effects of baptism after. Not at all. Rather, the moment of efficacy of baptism is the moment of faith. They are simultaneous because they are the same thing: to believe the promise is to make baptism, the seal of that promise, effective.

In the case of children baptized in infancy but believing at a later time, baptism's moment of efficacy is the moment of faith. It is at this later time that the message given years prior has finally been received. Baptism has (finally!) been effectual.

Likewise, in the case of believing adults, baptism is administered after faith; but its effect took place when the individual believed. The effect of baptism occurs before the moment of baptism! This appears to disturb our sense of cause-and-effect, but only if we think of baptism as an action with an effect. If instead with think of it as an action with meaning, then the meaning of baptism has already occurred -- and the effects go along with it.

This is difficult, but reflection on the nature of baptism as (a) an objective declaration of the promises of God, and (b) a sign with meaning, will help the reader to grasp that the efficacy of baptism is accomplished by the instrument of faith, and that the time of administration of baptism is neither here nor there.

Hence the Confession:

The efficacy of Baptism is not tied to that moment of time wherein it is administered; yet, notwithstanding, by the right use of this ordinance, the grace promised is not only offered, but really exhibited, and conferred, by the Holy Ghost, to such (whether of age or infants) as that grace belongeth unto, according to the counsel of God's own will, in His appointed time. -- WCoF 28.6.

Notice that both infants and adults are included in the "appointed time" clause.

To sum up: The efficacy of sacraments is faith.

Next -->

The Grace of Baptism -- Part 2

2010-08-20T06:42:00.019-04:00

The Effect of Baptism in Reformed Thought

Part 1: The Question on the Floor: Baptism's Effect; Scriptural Texts
Part 2: The Effect of Baptism in Reformed Thought
Part 3: The Efficacy of Baptism
Part 4: Interactions With Derksen's Arguments
Part 5: Why Does it Matter?

Calvin on Baptism

It makes sense to consider Calvin's writings, partly because he wrote several of the early Reformed Confessions and Catechisms, and partly because his work is pervasive in the Westminster Confession. He is the ursprung of much of the language in the Confession, including language on baptism; and he is therefore an important source for understanding that language.

When Calvin considers the Scriptural passages we reviewed in part 1, he says this:

What he intimated in the last verse — that Christ destroys sin in his people, he proves here by mentioning the effect of baptism, by which we are initiated into his faith; for it is beyond any question, that we put on Christ in baptism, and that we are baptized for this end — that we may be one with him. But Paul takes up another principle — that we are then really united to the body of Christ, when his death brings forth in us its fruit; yea, he teaches us, that this fellowship as to death is what is to be mainly regarded in baptism; for not washing alone is set forth in it, but also the putting to death and the dying of the old man. -- Calv Comm Rom 6.3

This is clear and direct: the effect of baptism is to put on Christ, first in the washing of sins, and then in being united with Christ in death.

The sacraments present, both to good and to bad men, the grace of God. No falsehood attaches to the promises which they exhibit of the grace of the Holy Spirit. Believers receive what is offered; and if wicked men, by rejecting it, render the offer unprofitable to themselves, their conduct cannot destroy the faithfulness of God, or the true meaning of the sacrament. With strict propriety, then, does Paul, in addressing believers, say, that when they were baptized, they “put on Christ;” just as, in the Epistle to the Romans...” -- Calv. Comm Gal 3.27

Here we see the first hints of our sacramental solution to the puzzle of efficacy: that the efficacy of the sacraments is faith. We also see reaffirmed here that the effect of baptism is that we "put on Christ", and that the sacrament effects what it represents.

For completeness, the reader is referred to his commentaries also on 1 Pet 3.19-22 and Acts 22.16.

From these four, a clear picture emerges:

(1) The effect of baptism is exactly what is figured in baptism: the washing of sins.
(2) That effect is not a property of baptism itself. Calvin was familiar with and rejected the ex opere operato theory. Rather, baptism testifies to the promises of God in a manner parallel to the testimony of the word. He says of agency, "Therefore, when the question is concerning remission of sins, we must seek no other author thereof but the heavenly Father, we must imagine no other material cause but the blood of Christ; and when we be come to the formal cause, the Holy Ghost is the chief. But there is an inferior instrument, and that is the preaching of the word and baptism itself." -- Calv. Comm. Acts 22.16.
(3) Therefore the effect is realized through faith in those promises.
(4) And thus the effect is realized only in the faithful. Baptizing anyone else is an "external baptism only" (ibid).

It is clear, then, that Calvin affirms Derksen's first thesis while rejecting the second. The effect of baptism is not confirmation of salvation, but salvation itself.

Continuing on to the Institutes, we find the exact same theology at work. Calvin sets forth the sacraments as "seals" of the promises of God (Inst 4.14). Because the word "seal" has been somewhat distorted in the discussions, it must be made clear what kind of seal he has in mind.

The "seal" for Calvin is a physical sign from the divine king that testifies to the truth of the spoken promise. The sacrament by itself, without the preached word, means nothing; together with the preached word, it is used by the Holy Spirit to bring about faith in the testified promise:

From the definition which we have given, we perceive that there never is a sacrament without an antecedent promise, the sacrament being added as a kind of appendix, with the view of confirming and sealing the promise, and giving a better attestation, or rather, in a manner, confirming it. -- Calv Inst 4.14.3

Some have taught that the "sealing" of the sacrament means something like "making its effect certain." But here it is clear what Calvin -- and those following him -- have in mind: that the "seal" is a sign from God to us, testifying that the promise is true. Baptism in particular confirms to us that God really does wash away our sins "in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."

We also see here for the first time the word "confirm." Baptism is said to "confirm", but in a different sense in which Derksen uses it. For Calvin, baptism "confirms" to every man that God's message is genuine. For Derksen, baptism "confirms" to the believer that he has been saved. Calvin's confirmation is one of objective truth; Derksen's, one of subjective appropriation.

This subtle shift of meaning from objective to subjective is at the root of Derksen's insistence that baptism does not confer salvation. It should also remind the reader of the root of the Baptist error (see A.A. Hodge below).

To be sure: baptism does provide us of assurance. But it does so by means of objectively assuring us of the truth of God's promises, not by confirming to us our participation in those promises. It points to the objective ground of our salvation, not to our subjective state. As Calvin says, baptism draws our eye to Christ (Inst. 4.15.2).

When Calvin turns to consider baptism, he says this:

Baptism is the initiatory sign by which we are admitted to the fellowship of the Church, that being ingrafted into Christ we may be accounted children of God. Moreover, the end for which God has given it (this I have shown to be common to all mysteries) is, first, that it may be conducive to our faith in him, and secondly, that it may serve the purpose of a confession among men. The nature of both institutions we shall explain in order. Baptism contributes to our faith three things, which require to be treated separately. The first object, therefore, for which it is appointed by the Lord, is to be a sign and evidence of our purification, or (better to explain my meaning) it is a kind of sealed instrument by which he assures us that all our sins are so deleted, covered, and effaced, that they will never come into his sight, never be mentioned, never imputed. For it is his will that all who have believed be baptised for the remission of sins (Matt. 28:19; Acts 2:38).

Hence those who have thought that baptism is nothing else than the badge and mark by which we profess our religion before men, in the same way as soldiers attest their profession by bearing the insignia of their commander, have not attended to what was the principal thing in baptism; and this is, that we are to receive it in connection with the promise, "He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved," (Mark 16: 16.) -- Inst 4.15.1

It cannot be clearer: Baptism is an initiatory rite -- not merely into the visible church, but into Christ as well. It is a sign of our salvation, not a sign of the confirmation of our salvation.

As Calvin develops the theology of baptism, he definitely grants it the role of assuring the believer. But that assurance is not the confirmation to the believer that he has saving faith; it is the confirmation rather that God's promises are true (Cf. A.N.S. Lane, "Calvin's Doctrine of Assurance")

To sum up: Calvin's doctrine of baptism assigns it the role of an initiatory rite that testifies to the truth of the Gospel. It is a secondary instrument used to create saving faith, parallel to the function of the Word. As such, baptism's effect (realized by faith) is our salvation: our ingrafting into Christ, accomplishing the washing of our sins.

Reformed Confessions

The Gallic Confession

GC Chapter 35 says this of baptism: [Baptism] is given as a pledge of our adoption; for by it we are grafted into the body of Christ, so as to be washed and cleansed by his blood, and then renewed in purity of life by his Holy Spirit.

Here again, baptism is the initiatory rite whose effect is salvation. This is unsurprising, as the Gallic Confession was written by Calvin. Further, we see a necessary connection between the sign and the thing signified:

We believe, as has been said, that in the Lord's Supper, as well in baptism, God gives us really and in fact that which he there sets forth to us; and that consequently with these signs is given the true possession and enjoyment of that which they present to us. (GC 37)

This principle that the sacrament effects what it symbolizes falsifies Derksen's thesis; for baptism clearly symbolizes the washing of sins, and it must therefore effect the same.

The Genevan Catechism is more direct. After explaining the meaning of baptism, the "Master" asks:

Master. - But do you attribute nothing more to the water than that it is a figure of ablution?

Scholar. - I understand it to be a figure, but still so that the reality is annexed to it; for God does not disappoint us when he promises us his gifts. Accordingly, it is certain that both pardon of sins and newness of life are offered to us in baptism, and received by us. (Genevan Catechism -- emph. added)

2nd Helvetic Confession

The 2HC puts forth a developed doctrine of sacramental union, which solves the problem of instrument that we raised when considering Scriptural passages. It says,

[Sacraments], in their holy use, take upon them the names of things signified, and are no longer called mere water, bread or wine, but also regeneration or the washing of water, and the body and blood of the Lord or symbols and sacraments of the Lord's body and blood ... Therefore the signs acquire the names of things because they are mystical signs of sacred things, and because the signs and the things signified are sacramentally joined together; joined together, I say, or united by a mystical signification, and by the purpose or will of him who instituted the sacraments. For the water, bread, and wine are not common, but holy signs. And he that instituted water in baptism did not institute it with the will and intention that the faithful should only be sprinkled by the water of baptism; and he who commanded the bread to be eaten and the wine to be drunk in the supper did not want the faithful to receive only bread and wine without any mystery as they eat bread in their homes; but that they should spiritually partake of the things signified, and by faith be truly cleansed from their sins, and partake of Christ. -- 2nd Helvetic Confession 19

We notice here that the 2HC very comfortably ascribes cleansing of sins and partaking of Christ as the effects of baptism.

The 2HC further rebukes those who separate the sign from the thing signified:

Neither do we approve of the doctrine of those who speak of the sacraments just as common signs, not sanctified and effectual. Nor do we approve of those who despise the visible aspect of the sacraments because of the invisible, and so believe the signs to be superfluous because they think they already enjoy the things themselves, as the Messalians are said to have held."

Derksen does not in any way despise the signs. His position, however, insists that the sign does not convey what it actually signifies, but conveys rather the assurance of those things. Since assurance is in fact optional (cf. WCoF 18.3), this opens the door to viewing baptism as "superfluous." I consider this to be a "yellow flag" for Derksen. He is placing some unwarranted daylight between the sign and the thing signified.

To consider Ursinus here would belabor the point, but the interested reader is encouraged to read his Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism, qn. 70 - 73.

The point is that the Reformed community has affirmed in its Confessions, and following Calvin, that

(1) Baptism signifies washing of sins and ingrafting to (union with) Christ,
(2) The sacraments effect what they signify when received by faith, and
(3) That baptism effects washing of sins and ingrafting to Christ.

A.A. Hodge is representative of modern takes on the question:

"3. The sign in every sacrament is sacramentally united to the grace which it signifies; and out of this union the Scriptural usage has arisen of ascribing to the sign whatever is true of that which the sign signifies.

4. The sacraments were designed to represent, seal, and apply the benefits of Christ and the new covenant to believers. S. Cat., q. 92."-- A.A. Hodge, The Westminster Confession of Faith, ch. 27

"The real Baptist position -- as stated by Dr. Alexander Carson (p. 55) -- is, that the command to baptize is a simple and single command to immerse, in order to symbolize the death, burial, and resurrection of the believer with Christ. The true position maintained by other Christians is, that Baptism is a simple and single command to wash with water, in order to symbolize the purification wrought by the Holy Ghost." -- ibid, ch. 28, emph. added.

Notice Hodge's rejection of the subjective in favor of the objective sign, contra Derksen.

Hodge again: Baptism does not only signify, but really and truly seal and convey, grace to those to whom it belongs according to the covenant -- that is, to the elect -- ibid.

Here Hodge makes clear by the term "convey" that the effectiveness of the sacraments is to give to the elect its grace, the grace of the thing signified.

This is in stark contrast to Derksen's stated position, which is that baptism confirms to the believer his washing, cleansing, and uniting, and has its effect only after the reality has taken place. For Derksen, baptism effects the assurance of the believer in his salvation; in the Reformed statements above, baptism effects the salvation itself. Here is his account of the language of application:

In saying that baptism “exhibits” or “applies” spiritual benefits, it is meant that baptism is an instrument through which the Holy Spirit confirms and strengthens saving faith, in God’s appointed time. -- BWS, part 7.

Derksen uses sealing language, not to refer to the confirmation of the truth of God's promises, but to refer to the increase of faith:

In speaking of the sacraments as “seals” it is meant that they confirm and strengthen true, preexistent faith. -- ibid.

And he denies that salvation should be attributed as an effect of baptism:

The preaching and hearing of the Word is the principle outward agency through which the Holy Spirit initially conveys saving faith. Such faith is then sealed and strengthened by the Word, the sacraments, and prayer. -- ibid.

It is clear that for Derksen, salvation is not the effect of baptism.

This brings us finally to the Westminster Confession of Faith:

There is, in every sacrament, a spiritual relation, or sacramental union, between the sign and the thing signified: whence it comes to pass, that the names and effects of the one are attributed to the other -- WCoF 27.2.

There is a sign, there is a thing signified. When the thing signified comes to pass, the names and effects are attributed to the sign.

The obvious way to unpack this is to ask, "What does baptism signify?" It most certainly signifies our washing of sins (justification) and our union with Christ.

When that comes to pass -- which occurs at the moment of faith -- those things are attributed to baptism.

To summarize: Baptism signifies the washing of regeneration, cleansing from sin, uniting with Christ. Those effects, which are once-for-all, are conveyed at the moment of faith -- and are therefore attributed to baptism. In Reformed sacramentology, baptism is an initiatory sacrament, pointing to our justification and union with Christ.

Next -->

The Grace of Baptism -- Part 1

2010-08-20T06:36:00.016-04:00

The Grace of Baptism
A reply to Phil Derksen, Baptism in the Westminster Standards vs. the Federal Vision

Update: after interaction with Phil Derksen and further study, I've modified my earlier criticisms, which were not entirely fair. Part 4 has been entirely redone.

Part 1: The Question on the Floor: Baptism's Effect; Scriptural Texts
Part 2: The Effect of Baptism in Reformed Thought
Part 3: The Efficacy of Baptism
Part 4: Interactions With Derksen's Arguments
Part 5: Why Does it Matter?

The Question on the Floor: Baptism's Effect

Phil Derksen, a member of Black Hills Community Church in Rapid City, SD, has written a multi-part article entitled Baptism in the Westminster Standards vs. the Federal Vision (BWS). BWS refutes the teaching (often associated with the Federal Vision) that all those who are baptized partake of the grace of baptism in some sense.

Derksen's refutation advances two points.

(1) [T]he doctrine that baptism objectively effects a form of conversion in all who partake of it, is clearly opposed to the historical Reformed position that the sacraments are efficacious only for those who possess true faith.

(2) [T]he claim that baptism is the means by which persons who receive it are brought into the covenant of grace, and apprehend its benefits, contradicts the classical Reformed understanding that the sacraments are by nature confirming signs and seals to those who are already positionaly within the covenant. -- BWS, Part 1

For Derksen, the effect of baptism is to confirm to the believer the truths of his salvation, and most certainly not to directly accomplish it. He expresses it in the opposition (borrowed from Cunningham and Rutherford) that the sacraments are "confirming, not converting ordinances."

I want to express appreciation for Phil's careful work. He demonstrates without question the truth of (1), which is the most important point. We are in full agreement that the grace of baptism is only efficacious in any sense for the elect.

Nevertheless, thesis (2), that baptism is a confirming sign for those already possessed of salvation, is an awkward recasting of the Scriptural and Reformed doctrine of baptism. It appears to deny the teaching of the Scripture, Reformers, and Confessions that the sacramental effect of baptism is nothing less than salvation.

This paper aims to persuade the reader that baptism symbolizes, and therefore effects, our justification and union with Christ. The moment in time of this effect is not the moment of baptism, but rather the moment of faith. As the reader shall see, the key to baptism is its symbolic meaning: it seals (or testifies) to us God's promises of justification and baptism by the Holy Spirit. When those promises are believed, baptism has had its effect: salvation.

~~In the end, Derksen's opposition of "confirming" and "converting" rites is confused. Baptism is neither a confirming rite, nor yet a converting rite.~~

In the end, Derksen's opposition of "confirming" and "converting" rites, which is legitimate when considering baptism's temporal effect, is misapplied to baptism's sacramental effect. Sacramentally, baptism is an initiatory rite whose efficacy is accomplished at the moment of salvific faith.

Part 1 -- Scriptural Texts

The place to begin is the Scripture. Four important texts confirm that baptism signifies and therefore effects our cleansing from sin and union with Christ.

Romans 6.3 - 5
[D]on't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection.

Paul states here clearly that our baptism effected our burying with Christ unto death. For Paul, this burial through baptism initiates our participation into His death and resurrection, with the result that we are now united to Christ, participants in both the "justification that brings life to all men" (5.18) and also the life that Jesus "lives to God" (6.10-11).

The instrumental language here is troubling to exegetes because it attributes our burial in Christ to our baptism, which might suggest that baptism is the instrumental means of our burial. We know, however, from the Paul's preceding argument in Rom 5 that faith is the sole means of justification. Baptism is thus not the direct instrument of justification, but is efficacious in some other way -- a sacramental way, in fact, as will be explained in Part 3.

We see also in the text a connection between physical baptism and the "baptism of the Holy Spirit." The former is a symbol; the latter is the reality behind the symbol. Baptism symbolizes being made clean by the Spirit.

We must therefore observe clearly what the effect of baptism is here: to bury us with Christ.

The word "burial" is a figure of speech referring to our death to the sin nature and death to the law (Rom 7.4-6), thus granting us freedom from the penalty and power of sin (cf. Calvin's duplex gratia).

If we spoke without metaphor, we would say, "You were made participants in Christ's death through baptism; you were therefore made participants in his resurrection in the same way."

Now, it might be argued here that baptism symbolizes a past action: Paul is assuming that his readers have already been justified through faith, and that baptism symbolizes this fact to us, confirming our salvation. Unfortunately, the text does not permit this circumlocution. Paul's words cannot be construed to mean, "You were buried with Christ through faith, symbolized and confirmed to you by your baptism." Rather, he says a more difficult thing: "You were buried with Christ through baptism." In joining burial with baptism, he appears to make the (symbolic and sacramental) effect of baptism to be our actual burial, our participation in Christ's death.

Gal 3.26-27
You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

Paul here attributes the effect of baptism to be our clothing with Christ. This clothing is understood to be a clothing with the righteousness of Christ which covers our uncleanness and justifies us (cf. Zech. 3). For Paul, this has covenantal significance: all those in Christ are automatically children of Abraham -- that is, participants in the covenant. Baptism is thus an initiatory rite. Inwardly, it clothes us with Christ; outwardly, it signifies our inclusion in the covenant. For this reason, he argues, we do not need to be further circumcised.

We note here the close connection between baptism and faith. Those who are baptized into Christ are those who also have faith in Christ. This suggests a resolution to the puzzle of instrument that arose in Romans 6: that the effect of baptism is somehow dependent upon faith.

1 Pet 3.18 - 22
For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit, through whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also — not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at God's right hand—with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him.

Here, baptism is directly said to save us. Yet it saves not in the action (which is the washing away of dirt), but in the pledge of a good conscience. Once again, faith is required for the effect of baptism. More to our purpose, the effect of baptism is clearly salvation.

Acts 22:16
"A man named Ananias came to see me. He was a devout observer of the law and highly respected by all the Jews living there. He stood beside me and said, 'Brother Saul, receive your sight!' And at that very moment I was able to see him.

"Then he said: 'The God of our fathers has chosen you to know his will and to see the Righteous One and to hear words from his mouth. You will be his witness to all men of what you have seen and heard. And now what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on his name.'

With respect to our question, this passage is quite interesting, for Paul has already (presumably) trusted in Christ. Notwithstanding, his baptism is said to have the effect of washing away his sins.

Keeping in mind that justification is effected by faith alone, we still see that the language of Scripture, as above, is that baptism effects the washing away of sins.

The reader is also encouraged to consider Col 2.11-12 in this light.

In summary: The effect of baptism in Scripture is the application of the death of Christ to the believer: justification and union. Contra Derksen, the effect of baptism is not to confirm our salvation to us. In fact, such language is never (to my knowledge) used in the Scripture. Instead, baptism is used always as a symbol of the thing itself.

This raises the obvious question: How does the effect of baptism fit together with the clear teaching that justification is through faith alone. This question will be addressed in part 3, but first, we must confirm our reading of Scripture by testing it against the Reformed tradition. Did the Reformers agree that the effect of baptism was justification and union with Christ?

Next -->

Skipper Mystery Solved

2010-08-02T15:52:00.004-04:00

Every year at this time, I get one or more of these "little brown thingies." I'd always labeled them as Tawny-Edged Skippers, Polites themistocles.

Trouble is, Crossline Skippers P. origenes can look like this as well. So which is it?

Here were the shots from above, first the male and then the female.

The evidences in favor of Tawny-Edged were

(1) TEs are usually flat brown on the hindwing below. Crosslines usually have a spot-band around the edge of the disc. Confusingly, TEs may have a hint of spot-band, and Crosslines may not have it.

Example of Crossline(?) with spot-band.

In my case, I was looking at six individuals which uniformly showed no spot-band or maybe the barest hint of one.

(2) TEs are small, the size of Peck's Skipper. Crosslines are larger, the size of Dun Skippers. My individuals were all smallish.

Here's a size comparison:

On the other hand, the following evidences favored Crossline:

(3) Crosslines are the more common of the two.

(4) Crosslines are more likely found in yards and meadows; TEs on the edges of wet meadows.

I posed this question to several knowledgeable folk and got opposite answers. What to do? The answer came in the form of an article by Nick Grishin describing how to differentiate these two species by examining the genitalia of the male.

Quoth my wife: "You have got to be kidding me!"

So: I reverted to my childhood, got a net, and captured two males that were a little worn. They were placed in an ad-hoc killing jar, and their abdomens prepared for examination under the microscope. Here were the results:

With reference to Nick's article, can you make the call?

JRC

Carrol Co. 7/4/10

2010-07-05T17:43:00.004-04:00

The Carrol Co. butterfly count was a hot, dismal affair. The weather was mid-90s and sunny, and the butterflies were not happy. Notably absent were some typical favorites: Baltimore Checkerspot, Edwards Hairstreak, Appalachian Brown.

We did see these:

Gray Hairstreak Strymon melinus
Banded Hairstreak Satyrium calanus
Eastern Tailed Blue Cupido comyntas
Summer Azure Celastrina ladon
America Copper Lycaena phlaeas
Little Wood Satyr Megisto cymela
Common Wood Nymph Cercyonis pegala
Great Spangled Fritillary Speyeria cybele
Meadow Fritillary Boloria bellona
Pearl Crescent Phyciodes tharos
Viceroy Limenitis archippus
Red-Spotted Purple Limenitis arthemis
Snout Butterfly Libytheana carinenta
Hackberry Emperor Asterocampa celtis
Eastern Tiger Swallowtail Pterourus/Papilio glaucus
Spicebush Swallowtail Pterourus/Papilio troilus
Orange Sulfur Colias eurytheme, including one poor female who was tackled by a Hemiptera species.
Clouded Sulfur Colias philodice
Huge numbers of Cabbage Whites Pieris rapae
Least Skipper Ancyloxypha numitor
Little Glassy Wing Pompeius verna
Silver-Spotted Skipper Epargyreus clarus
Hordes of Wild Indigo Duskywings Erynnis baptisiae

This Orange Sulfur female has a reason for the unnatural pose

She's being consumed. :(

Three Tiger Swallowtails and an Azure have the right idea...

JRC

Frederick Co. 7/3/10

2010-07-03T18:26:00.004-04:00

Hit the powerlines again with the girls. Hot and sunny (mid-80s). We saw

Red-Spotted Purple Limenitis arthemis
Red Admiral Vanessa atalanta
Question Mark Polygonia interrogationis
Mourning Cloak Nymphalis antiopa

Great Spangled Fritillary Speyeria cybele
Eastern Tailed Blue Cupido comyntas
many Azures Celastrina sp.
Orange Sulfur Colias eurytheme
Clouded Sulfur Colias philodice
Cabbage White Pieris rapae
several Spicebush Swallowtails Papilio troilus
Eastern Tiger Swallowtail Papilio/Pterouros glaucus
Wild Indigo Duskywing Erynnis baptisiae
Sachem Atalopedes campestris
Least Skipper Ancyloxypha numitor

JRC

Frederick Co. 6/14/10

2010-07-01T16:17:00.004-04:00

Went to the powerline cut-through this day and saw a number of different species and a spectacular mating pair of Great Spangled Fritillaries. Conditions were sunny and 90s.

This pair landed on the grass stems and opened and closed their wings in tandem. It was a sight to behold. The darker-brown female is above.

A Northern Cloudywing Thorbys pylades

A very fresh Gray Hairstreak Strymon melinus

A Crossline Skipper Polites origenes
A male

and a female

An unknown skipper. Dun? Swarthy?

Another unknown skipper. Crossline? Northern Broken Dash?

Also seen:

American Lady V. virginiensis
Red Admiral V. atalanta
Question Mark P. interrogationis
Eastern Tailed Blue C. comyntas
American Copper L. phlaeas
Eastern Tiger Swallowtail P. glaucus
Spicebush Swallowtail P. troilus
Orange Sulfur C. eurytheme
Cabbage White P. rapae
Little Wood Satyr M. cymela
Least Skipper A. numitor

Notably absent this entire spring: Black Swallowtails (what happened to the thirteen I released fall 2009?!)

JRC

Carroll Co. 6/11/10

2010-07-01T16:03:00.004-04:00

On a lark, I went out to check the Carroll Co. sites in mid-June. To my surprise, Baltimore Checkerspot season had already begun! Conditions were clear and warm, turning to hazy with sprinkles.

Baltimore Checkerspot Euphydryas phaeton

Also seen were a Little Glassywing Pompeius verna

A Little Wood Satyr Megisto cymela

And an Orange Sulfur Colias eurytheme getting nailed by a Robberfly Asilidae sp.

as well:

Red Admiral V. atalanta
Red-Spotted Purple L. arthemis
Cabbage White P. rapae
Eastern Tailed Blue C. comyntas
Eastern Tiger Swallowtail P. glaucus
Appalachian Brown S. appalachia
Silver-Spotted Skipper E. clarus
Pearl Crescent P. tharos
Spicebush Swallowtail P. troilus
Mourning Cloak N. antiopa
Great Spangled Fritillary S. cybele

Overall a thin count...

JRC

American Ladies Vanessa virginiensis

2010-07-01T15:34:00.003-04:00

From the "Plant it and they will come" file ...

This spring I decided to plant hostplants for the American Lady. The most common are Pussytoes and Pearly Everlasting, both species of the genus Anaphalis. So I ordered some Pussytoes from Prairie Moon and within weeks, there were little nests containing multiple V. virginiensis caterpillars (discovered 5/31/10).

In fact, the plants were pretty much down to the nub, so it was necessary to quickly find more hostplants. The powerline near us yielded some Pearly Everlasting, along with even more nests. Here's one, with a 2nd or 3rd instar cat. The nests are made by folding up the leaves at the top of the plant with a kind of silk, and the caterpillar eats by scraping off the tops of the leaves while inside the nest. Needless to say, he also poops inside the nest, so everything gets rather messy.

All in all, 10 cats were discovered. Here are four of them in various stages:

The setup seen here, several plants in a Glad container with water, works well for Monarchs, but not so well for these -- there's not quite enough foliage to form a nest, perhaps?

A 5th instar cat

By 6/11/10, the cats began to pupate

and on 6/20/10 we got our first Lady!

Overall, the results were poor. Four cats died. One pupated near the cage zipper and got caught by mistake. One chrysalis failed to eclose. Four hatched successfully. The hope is that next year, when the Pussytoes are stronger and more leafy, we can bring more cats to adulthood.

JRC

Red Admiral Explosion

2010-05-15T15:58:00.003-04:00

The last three days have seen the emergence of a huge brood of Red Admirals Vanessa atalanta. We went for a butterfly walk today and saw approximately 75 individuals, along with...

Question Mark Polygonia interrogationis (4)
American Lady Vanessa virginiensis (2)
Red-spotted Purple Limenitis a. astynax (1)
Spicebush Swallowtail Papilio troilus (1, female)
Orange Sulfur Colias eurytheme (5)
Cabbage White Pieris rapae (5)
Eastern Tailed Blue Cupido comyntas (2)
Little Wood Satyr Megisto cymela (1)
Pearl Crescent Phyciodes tharos (2)
Common Sootywing Pholisora catullus (1)
Tawny-Edged Skipper Polites themistocles (1)
Sachem Atalopedes campestris (1)
Silver-Spotted Skipper Epargyreus clarus (3)
Horace's Duskywings Erynnis horatius (4)

Red Admiral Vanessa atalanta

Tawny-Edged Skipper Polites themistocles

Horace's Skipper Erynnis horatius

Red-Tailed Hawk Buteo jamaicensis

JRC

Sudden Hops Death

2010-05-06T23:37:00.002-04:00

The hops vine last year netted 30 Polygonia interrogationis adults. This year, it came up strong and then suddenly died. C'est tragique.

Soldier's Delight 5/5/10

2010-05-06T22:29:00.006-04:00

Soldier's Delight is a state park in Baltimore Co., MD. Its geology is unusual in that its rock formations are primarily serpentine, resulting in unusual flora, resulting in unusual fauna.

The big finds at Soldier's Delight are Falcate Orangetips and Elfins. Unfortunately I saw none of these, although a posted sign in the visitor's center announced that FOs had been seen on the butterfly walk of 5/2/10. The Orangetip hostplant, Lyre-Leaved Rockcress, was everywhere.

The other local specialty was out in force, however: Cobweb Skippers.

Cobweb Skipper Hesperia metea --

All in all, there were about 15 of these, including a female being chased by a quite amorous male. In the end, he chased her up my camera strap!

There were also several duskywings, including at least one Horace's:

Horace's Duskywing Erynnis horatius -- Duskywings are a pain to identify, but the short, naked palps (mouth parts) on this individual are convincing evidence that this is neither a Dreamy nor Sleepy Duskywing. *sigh*

Several Swallowtails were out: a Tiger and two Spicebush.

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail Pterourus glaucus (older references have Papilio glaucus)

Also seen: two Orange Sulfurs Colias eurytheme, c. 20 Pearl Crescents Phyciodes tharos (many in a strongly marked spring form), and an American Lady Vanessa virginiensis.

JRC

Myrtle Beach 4/10/10

2010-04-13T22:25:00.003-04:00

The annual pilgrimage to Huntington State Park yielded a couple of surprises.

First was a walk through the Sandpiper trail. As usual, the colony of Juniper Hairstreaks stayed well to the tops of redcedars.

But new this year were Henry's Elfin Callophrys henrici. I thought they were Brown Elfins, but the pics are convincing...

This individual nectared for a while on this plant of unknown identity. It has dark blue berries with a single large seed inside (an olive, perhaps?)

Around 4PM, two individuals were hanging out on some bushes with blueberry-like leaves and red berries. The lighting was unfortunate.

Update: is that egg-laying going on?

Second, the park has a powerline cut-through right near US 17. This cut-through is prime butterfly territory, awash in dewberries as a nectar source. I did see some poison ivy just emerging, though...

There were a large number of duskywings about. Some were relatively well-marked and large; others were less marked and noticeably small. I suspect that the majority are Horace's Duskywing (Erynnis horatius) with a couple of Juvenal's Duskywings (Erynnis juvenalis) thrown in. Let the reader decide!

A very frosted individual who would not pose properly...

Look, ma! No hindwing spots! The lack of spots is diagnostic for E. horatius.

There were also a large number of Silver-spotted Skippers Epargyreus clarus

In contrast to June behavior, these refused absolutely to pose for photos.

Of note was a small flock of American Ladies Vanessa virginiensis. These individuals were the smallest I've seen, easily 2/3 normal size or less. For comparison, these are sitting on dewberry flowers.

Also seen but not pictured: Black or Spicebush Swallowtail on the wing.

JRC

Question Mark Polygonia interrogationis

2010-03-28T21:33:00.003-04:00

On 8/24/09 we found Polygonia interrogationis eggs on the hops plant on the fence (Humulus lupulus).

By 10/24 we had released 30 individuals.

The eggs are laid extravagantly on hops, with the survival rate in the wild of less than 10%. There are two broods, a spring and a late summer brood.

The larvae hatch and start eating right away.

1st instar

3rd instar

5th instar

The pupae vary in color from brown to gray. The spikes on the abdominal casing are an identifying mark.

The black color on the hindwing is more common in the late summer brood.

Individuals show one of two colors below, a rich brown or a gray. All of these individuals ate the same diet and came, apparently, from the same parents, so I cannot account for the color difference.

JRC

Broad-winged Skipper Poanes viator

2010-03-28T21:24:00.002-04:00

We found this individual at the Baltimore Zoo on a fine day in August.

JRC

Dr. Fowler White on grace and justice

2010-02-12T10:25:00.002-05:00

I've asked Dr. White a couple of questions in regard to his interactions with Peter Leithart:

(1) Am I understanding your argument correctly, that חֵ֖ן and χαρις are not limited to situations involving demerit, but rather that “grace” is only proper as an English translation of those terms in situations involving demerit?

And this would be a matter of convention, for the sake of avoiding confusion?

What then do you make of Leithart’s contention that this convention is “too narrow”, signaling that he doesn’t wish to adopt the convention?

(2) What do you make of Leithart's “strict justice” argument: that Adam’s hypothetical obedience would have been disproportionate to the reward?

The floor is yours!

JRC

The Timelapse PlantCam

2010-01-16T13:45:00.002-05:00

OK, so I've been a slacker in my butterfly postings.

Still and all, my wife got me a great new toy for my birthday: the Timelapse PlantCam. Basically, it takes a single picture every hour (or other time setting), allowing you to set up time-lapse videos. It's weatherproof, yada-yada and very, very cool.

At the moment, I'm testing it out on the amaryllis we just planted. But it's real use will be in the garden come spring and summer: imagine being able to take garden pics every 10 minutes so as to "sample" the species visiting ...

(*gleefully rubs hands together*)

JRC

Product link:http://www.wingscapes.com/productdetail.aspx?id=WSCA04

Off-Topic: The Cash for Clunkers Program

2009-08-04T20:57:00.003-04:00

I'm not given to political commentary, and I'm not going to take a partisan stance. It's just that while waiting for my daughters' ballet, I asked myself, "How much value are we getting from Cash for Clunkers?" And I was surprised that I had not seen any articles running the numbers on this one.

Computations follow.

Let's take a better-case scenario. Assume that a clunker gets 10 mpg and is traded in for a 30 mpg mid-sized car. Assume further that the CfC program causes Joe Schmoe to trade his clunker in early by four years. Assume further that Joe drives 30,000 miles in one year.

On these assumptions, Joe's gasoline usage for four years with the clunker would be

4 yr * 30,000 gal/yr * 1 gal / 10 miles = 12,000 gallons.

With the new car, his gas usage would be

4 yr * 30,000 gal/yr * 1 gal / 30 miles = 4,000 gallons.

This means that Joe is saving 8,000 gallons of gasoline because of this program.

Assume further that gasoline's density is 0.77 kg/L and assume that gasoline is 100% isooctane, C₈H₁₈. Changing these assumptions could move my numbers in the direction of worse-case by a few percent.

A quick use of the periodic table can show that 1 kg of gasoline (isooctane) creates 2.444 kg of CO₂.

Thus we calculate:

8000 gallons saved * 3.75 L / gal * 0.77 kg gas / L * 2.444 kg CO₂ / kg gas = 56,456 kg CO₂ = 62 tons CO₂.

So we are paying $4,500 for 62 tons CO₂ saved, or $72.50 / ton. We compare this to the cost of a "certified carbon offset", which Wiki pegs at $1 - $30 / ton.

JRC

Carroll County Count 2009-07-04

2009-07-12T22:19:00.003-04:00

The weather was abnormally rainy from April through June, so butterfly sightings were low. But with optimism in our hearts and a good forecast from weather.com, we embarked on the annual Carroll Co., MD butterfly count.

Alas, the numbers were low. In all, we saw a mere 24 species. However, the favorites were accounted for.

Swallowtails:

None!!!

Sulphurs:

Orange Colias eurytheme
Clouded Colias philodice -- I'm slightly skeptical inasmuch as we only went by the lemon-yellow color, which is not a reliable separator from the Orange.

Hairstreaks:

Coral Hairstreak Satyrium titus
Edwards Hairstreak Satyrium Edwardsii

We have definitely established the presence of a colony of Edwards' in northern Carroll.

Red-Banded Hairstreak Calycopis cecrops

Coppers:

American Copper Lycaena phlaeas

Blues:

Summer Azure Celastrina neglecta/ladon
Eastern Tailed Blue Everes (Cupido) comyntas

Brushfoots:

Great Spangled Fritillary Speyeria cybele
Pearl Crescent Phyciodes tharos
Baltimore Checkerspot Euphydryas phaeton

The state insect of Maryland, but not so common ...

Buckeye Junonia coenia
Hackberry Emperor Asterocampa celtis
Monarch Danaus plexippus
Little Wood Satyr Megisto cymela
Common Wood Nymph Cercyonis pegala

Found a mating pair.

Appalachian Brown Satyrodes appalachia

These are common in wetlands.

Skippers:

Dun Euphyes vestris

This is a male, as indicated by the tawny patches above. The golden head is the key to separating this "which?" from Little Glassywing and Crossline.

Little Glassywing Pompeius verna

The identification keys are the white "glassy" patches on the wings of the female, and a white band on the antenna just behind the antennal club. Wouldn't ya know, the white band can't be seen in any of these pics. But we checked for it! In the last picture, a male is trying to wiggle his abdomen around to convince the female to mate.

Least Ancyloxypha numitor
Mulberry Wing Poanes massasoit

These bog denizens have a distinct landing habit: they land with wings closed for 1-2 seconds, then casually open up into the jet plane position seen here. As a result, I have yet to get a good shot of the underside.

Silver-Spotted Skipper Epargyreus clarus
Wild Indigo Duskywing Erynnis baptisiae
Horace's Duskywing Erynnis horatius

The silver spot on the forewing cell distinguishes this from the more common Wild Indigo Duskywing.

JRC

Galveston, TX 6/9/2009 - 6/12/2009

2009-07-10T00:57:00.005-04:00

In June we visited Galveston Island, TX. We expected widespread devastation from Hurricane Ike, but at least at the west end of the island, rebuilding was proceeding along. Certainly, the butterfly population was not suffering!

The state park was closed for "rebuilding" -- as a friendly ranger informed me after an hour of photography. Oops. It was a little unclear what needed to be rebuilt, though. The butterfly habitat was doing quite well.

The island has an impressive sulphur diversity. I saw Orange, Large Orange, Little Yellow, Dainty, and Dogface Sulphurs (surely I saw a Cloudless also?! My memory fails here).

Interestingly, there were many Queens on the island, but I could not find any obvious milkweeds there.

Sulphurs:

Orange Colias eurytheme
Little Yellow Eurema lisa -- these were ubiquitous; we saw over 100 of them.
Click for shots

Dainty Nathalis iole -- this individual narrowly missed death by Robber Fly.
Click for shot

Large Orange Phoebis agarithe (perhaps philea?)
Dogface Colias cesonia

Whites:
Checkered White Pontia protodice -- these entirely replaced the Cabbage White.
Click for shots

Male with pollen on his face. The male is extremely white, even more so than P. rapae.

The female is more strongly marked. This one was laying eggs on what appears to be Lepidium, Pepperweed.

Blues:
Reakirt's Blue Hemiargus isola
Click for shot

Hairstreaks:
Gray Hairstreak Strymon melinus -- everywhere I go!

Brushfoots:
Buckeye Junonia coenia
American Lady Vanessa virginiensis
Painted Lady Vanessa cardui
Click for shot

Queen Danaus gilippus -- I saw no milkweeds, but the Queens were common enough!
Click for shots

Phaon Crescent Phyciodes phaon -- these limited themselves to the edges of ponds. Update: it turns out that they were hanging out near their hostplant, Frogfruit Lippia nodiflora
Click for shots

Frogfruit, Lippia nodiflora

Swallowtails:
Black Papilio polyxenes

Skippers:
Fiery Skipper Hylephila phyleus
Southern Skipperling Copaeodes minima

JRC

Jesse H Jones Park 6/8/09

2009-07-09T23:45:00.003-04:00

Jesse H Jones Park, located just north of Houston's Intercontinental Airport, has some really nice butterfly habitat.

In the trip last month, I saw the following:

Palamedes Swallowtail
Spicebush Swallowtail
Pipevine Swallowtail
Red Banded Hairstreak
Gray Hairstreak
Pearl Crescent
Texas Crescent
Gulf Fritillary
Little Yellow
Orange Sulphur
Carolina Satyr
Funereal Duskywing
Horace's Duskywing
Common Checkered-Skipper
Little Glassywing?
Fiery Skipper
Southern Broken-Dash?

On a previous visit in 2008, I saw a White-Striped Long-Tail!

Click for Shots

Funeral Duskywing Erynnis funeralis

Southern Broken Dash Wallengrenia otho? I'm open to correction on this ID.

Common Checked-Skipper Pyrgus communis

This individual demonstrates the blue sheen that sometimes makes these seem like Blues in flight.

Texas Crescent Phyciodes texana

This individual had marked out a 40-ft swath of forest path as his territory. I found him pacing back and forth, lighting and puddling at times.

Gray Hairstreak Strymon melinus
Everywhere I go, there's a Gray Hairstreak! These butterflies are more ubiquitous than even the Cabbage White.

Little Glassywing Pompeius verna?

Frankly, I'm not happy with this ID. The antennae lack the white band behind the club that we use as a field mark here in MD. And the grizzled appearance inside the median is not like any P. verna I see here. However, it's a reasonably close match, and my memory of the topside matches P. verna best. So that's my story for now, until someone corrects me.

JRC

God's Covenant(s?)

2009-05-16T23:13:00.013-04:00

David Weiner, ever the gentleman, has requested that we pick up a conversation from a while ago: link.

The salient question was, Does salvation run in families?

I argue:

click to toggle

In the OT, what percentage of the saved were from the biological line of Abraham? Probably 99.99% or higher.

In the NT era in which we live, what percentage of the saved come from a Christian lineage? Harder to say, but greater than 50%.

So now consider again your statement, “For, I can not find any rationale for God choosing anybody other than His good pleasure and glory.”

Yet, He does give a partial rationale: “I will be a God to you and your descendants.” God’s kindness to Abraham is extended to Abe’s family *for the sake of Abraham.*

If God gave no consideration to families at all, then election would be equally distributed around the globe. Empirically, that’s not the case!

David responds:

click to toggle

Kindness, as in to Abraham and his family, and election have to be considered synonymous for the argument to hold, it seems to me. And, Scripture does not link the two in any explicit way. So, each of us is ‘free’ to interpret loosely. Not exactly what you would accept in your science classes, I assume.

I don’t want to proof text this discussion; but, Jeremiah 7:23 makes it very clear (probably only to me!) that the idea of God being a God to Israel was not about salvation. It was about blessing. That is unless one can actually earn salvation by works and I know we agree on that one.

I read Barna reports and so I know there are lots of statistics. But, do we really know the geographical distribution of election? I think we are dealing with a lot of anecdotal data here. Certainly not double blind sort of stuff.

This led to a new question: was the covenant with Abraham a covenant of salvation, or of something else?

I argue:

click to toggle

It seems to me, then, that this forces us to conclude that belief is a requirement to properly belong to the covenant. This is made explicit in Romans [2.28ff]. If we see belief as a requirement, unstated but implied in Gen. 17, then several different features come into focus:

(1) Why did God reject so many Israelites along the way, even though they were physically descended from Abraham? Unbelief. They didn’t meet the requirement of belonging to the covenant.

(2) Why did Jesus have to die on the cross for Jews? Because justification is necessary to be a child of God — and Jews as much as Gentiles need justification. One might be tempted to separate the issue of being a child of God and being a child of Abraham, but notice how closely Paul links them in Galatians [3.6-8, 26-29] and also Ezekiel [36.18ff]. Notice how closely Ezekiel links “being righteous” with “being God’s people.” For Ezekiel, salvation is necessary in order to be God’s people.

Even the promise to the physical descendants of Abe in Romans 11 is still conditioned on faith: “And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again.”

And David responds

click to toggle

It seems to me that Gen 17 describes a group of people who are called God’s people. And, God says that they will get a bunch of blessings if they only circumcise, an activity that did not require any faith. I know, a statistically invalid single data point, that when I was circumcised my parents were simply following a tradition. As I have said, they were reprobate. I don’t know how to describe what is Gen 17 other than temporal blessings in response to a ‘work.’ I simply don’t see any reference to eternal things or faith, for example. On the other hand, it seems offensive to talk about God’s people being reprobate. And, we know that Abraham’s offspring included a fair share of reprobates.

For me, the solution is to see that there are different covenants. And, the definition of ‘God’s people’ is used to identify the group in question and not to give an absolute definition. The Abrahamic Covenant is not the same as the New Covenant; the people referenced in each covenant are not the same people, although there is some overlap in a Venn diagram sense.

And this led then to a discussion of whether there are many covenants or one.

I argue that a "multiple covenants" view has to clear four hurdles to stand:

click to toggle

On the other, if we say “multiple covenants”, then we have to ask several important questions:

(MCov 1) Why does the Scripture appear to mingle the covenants so freely?

* Believers in Christ are said to be “Children of Abraham and heirs according to the promise.”
* Recipients of the Mosaic Covenant are told that they are being given the land “for the sake of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
* The sign of the Mosaic Covenant is the same as the sign of the Abrahamic Covenant.

and so on.

(MCov 2) Why are the Gentiles, who formerly were excluded from Israel, now included into Israel:

Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (that done in the body by the hands of men)— remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. — Eph. 2.11-13

(MCov 3) What is “the promise” that Paul speaks of in multiple places?

(MCov 4) Why do we see no hint in the New Testament of separate covenants each running their course throughout history?

And David responds with regard to MCov 2:

click to toggle

What I see here is first a description of the status of a group of people identified as gentiles. What then follows is a description of the status of the individual gentile who has received Christ. It is initially not about individuals; but, rather the group, in contrast to the group of people who were called Israelites (who were just a segment of those who came from Abraham; which is, of course, where the separation began.)

So what do we learn about the gentiles (before the cross):
1) you were at that time separate from Christ,
2) excluded from the commonwealth of Israel,
3) strangers to the covenants of promise,
4) having no hope
5) without God in the world

And these 5 items are summarized in the passage as their being “formerly far off.” Up to the cross, God had given the nation of Israel lots of promises and information (e.g., the Mosaic Law). He had not given this to all humanity equally. That does not mean that an individual gentile might not have known about the Mosaic Law or may have even tried to keep part of it. It just means that as a group, God had not given these things to them. Of course, each of the 5 items deserves about a book’s worth of explanation (particularly the word ‘covenant’ which as you can see is plural!); but, fortunately for you, I won’t subject you to that pain. (insert smiley face here) But, one thing I have to say about the description: it is not primarily about Israel. Israel is only mentioned as part of the description of the gentile’s pre-cross situation.

What does the passage say about their current status? Well, first of all it does not say anything about the status of the group. It only addresses the status of the individual saved gentile. And that is that they:

1) have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

Brought near to what? What does one get when they are saved? Jesus. Not, a part of Israel, the nation. Does saved Israelites also have Jesus. Of course. That is a similarity; but, it does not erase the differences.

and again

After much thought about how to address your questions here, it seems to me that starting with ‘membership’ is the best approach. So, here goes.

According to my reading of Galatians 3:16, the promises were spoken to (made to) Abraham and Jesus. Another way of saying this is that God made the AC with Abraham and Jesus. God, for example, did not make the covenant with the nation of Israel. At this point in the discussion, I don’t see how I could add clarity to the role of God, Abraham, or Jesus by adding a term like ‘membership.’

As to the content of the covenant, some applied to individuals and some to groups of people. I would say that these individuals/groups were ‘recipients’ of the promises included in the covenant. I can see how the term ‘membership’ could be applied to these recipients; but, again, I don’t see how that clarifies the term recipients (of the covenant promises).

Another term that enters the discussion is ‘covenant people’ or ‘people of the covenant.’ Again, it seems to me that discussing covenants with regard to a) the people with whom the covenant was made and b) the people who are the recipients of the covenant promises would foster more clarity.

So, how does one become a type a) or type b) person or group? Only by God specifying their role in a specific covenant. And, that He has done quite well with regard to all of the covenants which He specifically makes in Scripture. Thus, I would have to respectfully disagree with the statement that ‘membership in one covenant granted membership in another.’ That is not to in any way take away from the fact that national Israel was made promises in both the AC and the MC. However, in the AC God made the covenant with Abraham and not national Israel and in the MC God made the covenant with national Israel and not Abraham. Similarities and differences existing without any conflicts.

You asked about Ruth, I misunderstood the question, and you responded with:

“By what means?” Faith is the means of inclusion into the New Covenant, circumcision into the Abrahamic (in your understanding). So by what means was Ruth included into the Abrahamic Covenant?

Ruth became part of a group (national Israel) identified as a recipient of promises in the AC by marrying a member of the group (actually, she did this twice). She also may have been a recipient of the AC blessings promised to ‘all families’ by God giving her saving faith. (Ruth 1:16 may show this; but, I don’t see it specifically spelled out in Scripture.)

I’d also like to clear up any misunderstanding that I gave you as to how one gains inclusion in the AC. Your statement above shows that I gave the impression that it was circumcision. That would have been an error on my part; circumcision did not gain one entrance to the AC. It was simply a sign of who was included in national Israel (e.g., it was not a sign of the promises involving ‘all the families’). National Israel was, of course, one of the recipients of promises in the AC. I’d like to just point out that circumcision came many years after the institution and a few reaffirmations of the covenant itself.

Now we get to the real question:

where do we see in the Scripture a positive affirmation that the New Covenant is separate from the Abrahamic?

First, I would not say that the NC is ’separate’ from the AC. What I would say is:
a) The covenant that we call the NC is specified in Jeremiah 31:31-34. (I certainly don’ t expect any disagreement on this? I do expect disagreement with what follows. (insert sad smiley face))
b) The NC is made with national Israel. The recipients of the promises of the NC are national Israel.
c)The foundation of the NC promises is the death (blood) of the Savior. The covenant could not be instituted (even though it was described long before) until Christ died and paid for sin.
d) Sorry for what I have to say next; but, the church is not now receiving the blessings of the NC. The church is receiving the blessings of the AC (in Abraham, all the families of the earth shall be blessed).
e) To enable these blessings to flow to all people while Israel still awaits the blessings of the NC, God made a new creation, the church, Jew and Gentile in one body. This body receives those salvific blessings, because of the self same cross as was required to institute the NC, through faith in Jesus. Or, as Ephesians 3:6 says: “that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members (with the Jew) of the body (the church), and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus (AC promise to all the families of the earth [which would include the Israelites also!]) through the gospel.

So, my specific answer to your question is ‘no.’ There is no reason to expect a ’specific affirmation’ of separation. And, the reasons given above explain why that would not be required. Furthermore, the definitions of each covenant make it clear that they are not the same covenants.

The church is receiving the blessings of the AC because Jesus has paid the price of sin for ‘all the families of the earth’ and God created a new group, the church, a mystery, to receive these blessings. The new covenant only relates to Israel, although the death was also required for the enactment of that covenant. The fulfillment of the NC will have to wait for the second coming.

I’ll bet that there are just a few things in the above that you would like to point out as being not Scriptural. I am anxious to see what you have to say.

And I think this is more or less where we are: hashing through the four questions, and raising various issues in the process.

David, over to you.

JRC

Myrtle Beach Apr. 9 - 17, 2009

2009-04-26T14:49:00.008-04:00

It was windy and mid-60s most of our vacation, so the butterflies were scarce. However, I managed to find some at Huntington State Park. I also found a pipevine swallowtail in Paul Vallee's excellent garden. All of this was taken just prior to the wildfires at Myrtle Beach, which I believe went just north of this area.

JRC

Attenuated Bluet Enallagma daeckii? This ID is tenuous; if correct, it would be a record for the USGS survey.

Juniper Hairstreak Callophrys gryneus

Little Wood Nymph Megisto cymela -- form "viola"

Eastern Pygmy Blue Brephidium pseudofea

Salt Marsh Skipper Panoquina panoquin

Pipevine Swallowtail Battus philenor

Rough Green Snake Opheodrys aestivus

Objection 5 (and final) to REPT

2009-04-26T14:46:00.001-04:00

Objection 5 (and final!): REPT is not a uniformly “good and necessary inference” from Scripture.

Discussion here.

JRC

Objection 4 to REPT

2009-04-26T14:39:00.001-04:00

Objection 4: REPT takes the “Paleo-Calvin” out of Paleocalvinism.

Discussion here

JRC

Objection 3 to "REPT" (was, "W2K")

2009-04-26T14:29:00.003-04:00

I'm cleaning house, and this stuff needed to get links. Dr. Hart has requested that I substitute "Reformed Ecclesial Political Theory" for "Westminster 2-Kingdom theology." I'm happy to oblige

Obj 3: REPT drives an unnecessary wedge between philosophy and theology.

Discussion here.

JRC

Objection 2 to W2K

2009-03-21T19:58:00.001-04:00

Obj 2: The Scripture does not sustain a clean division between “public” and “private” faith.

Discussion starts here.

Objection 1 to W2K

2009-03-08T16:56:00.000-04:00

Objection 1: W2K reduces, rather than enhances, liberty.

Argument and discussion here.

An exposition of W2K

2009-03-04T01:27:00.004-05:00

Prolegomena Part 1

I'm hoping to provide a space here for Dr. Hart to exposit the W2K position. Doing so will require figuring out multiple authorship.

Update: this discussion has moved here.

JRC

My Own History with W2K

2009-03-03T23:43:00.004-05:00

Prolegomena Part 2

I first encountered explicit W2K theology while taking John Muether's Church and World class at Reformed Theological Seminary. I really liked the course. Dr. Muether challenged me in particular to consider the full implications of the spirituality of the Church and the dangers of the Church taking political power unto herself. It was at this time that I was first introduced to Meredith Kline's "Intrusion" concept -- that Israel occupied a special niche within God's redemptive plan, so that the Law was a republication of the Covenant of Works, yet not for salvation but rather for corporate probation.

At the time I was just emerging from dispensationalism and into a Reformed understanding of the Covenants. Kline's hypothesis seemed far too similar to the dispensational view of Israel, and I mostly rejected it.

This opinion changed when I took Jeff Jue's Church History classes at RTS. Dr. Jue patiently explained the typological nature of the Intrusion and Kline's careful distinction between salvation by grace through faith through the Abrahamic covenant and the distinct corporate and typological probation of the nation-state of Israel. It was essentially what Muether had explained, but sometimes I have to hear things twice.

Dr. Jue also recommended reading Kingdom Prologue and The Structure of Biblical Authority. This I did, and came out the other side amazed at the depth of Kline's thought and his skillful coordination of disparate Biblical ideas. I wrote a paper for the class comparing Calvin's view of Church and State to Kline's (and yes, I went for the cheesy title pun on Calvin and Kline). In it, I argued that Kline was essentially rearticulating Calvin's theology of Church and State. The paper got an A-. Dr. Jue disagreed with my thesis, noting that my understanding of Calvin overestimated his degree of separation between Church and State. Years later, I agree with him. :) Calvin was not a W2K guy.

Still and all, I continue to be impressed with Kline's basic thesis: that the OT judicial law was canon for the nation-state of Israel only, and that Israel represented a special suspension of God's common grace, never to be repeated until the eschaton. For this reason, I have never been attracted to the Bahnsen, Chilton, or Rushdoony forms of theonomy.

For Kline, as I understand him in Kingdom Prologue, there is a basic distinction between the City of Man and the Kingdom of God. The City of Man, first built by Cain under God's sanction, is under the reign of common grace and is to be ruled not as a theocracy but according to common grace; the Kingdom of God (located post-Christ in the covenant community) is ruled according to the Scripture.

While I appreciate Kline greatly, I am still troubled by an abiding question that first struck me in Dr. Muether's class: if a Christian happens to find himself in the position of magistrate, how then should he judge? Assuming that the job of the magistrate is to restrain evil (Rom 13), on what basis should (s)he define the word "evil"?

That is, if we can agree that the Church has the calling to preach the Gospel rather than to directly transform society -- and I do agree to this! -- still and all, what guidance can Kline's W2K theology give to the Christian who happens to be the magistrate?

The question is not academic. My pastor is a former FDA administrator; various members of my church work in the Federal government in various three-letter agencies. There is a real need for Christians in government to understand how to carry out their jobs with integrity and obedience. This need is amplified when we consider that in America, everyone is a participant in government. L'Etat, c'est nous. So how should we govern?

This question came rushing back to me as I watched, and then jumped into, the dialog on GreenBaggins concerning Church and State. The answer I received from self-professed W2K-ers (Dr. Hart, Zrim, and Todd) was that Natural Law should be the basis for governance, exercised in Christian liberty.

I'm perfectly happy with the notion of "Christian liberty." To my mind, ecclesiastical laws that bind the conscience beyond the warrant of Scripture are anathema.

But coming as I do from a philosophical bent, the notion of "Natural Law" raises all manner of red flags with me. First, Natural Law ethics has been thoroughly discredited in philosophy. And second, an appeal to Natural Law as the basis for deciding right and wrong appears to either (a) be a cover for smuggling in the Scripture, much as Roman Catholics use "natural law" to smuggle in Church teaching, or (b) be an appeal to an entirely different ethical standard entirely -- a form of heteronomianism. There are other objections also which will come in part 3 of this dialog, but this point is central for me.

So I stand now at this point: While I fully support the goals of encouraging the Church to be the peculiar and obedient people of God, and of encouraging the Church to concentrate on its mission of taking the Gospel to the nations; still, Kline's W2K appears to me to run off the rails when we hit the question, "How then shall we govern?"

Finally, I owe Dr. Hart an answer to this question:

Jeff, if God’s word is sovereign over all of your life, and you are a plumber, what does the Bible say about your practice of plumbing?

Dr. Hart, what I think you want me to admit is that Scripture prescribes neither copper nor PVC, so that plumbing is a "common" enterprise, governed by Natural Law.

Unfortunately, I don't think in that framework. Instead, I consider John the Baptist to be illustrative. When asked by tax collectors what they should do to show the fruits of repentance, he told them how the 8th commandment applied to their profession: Don't collect more than you are supposed to. When asked the same question by soldiers, he told them to refrain from extortion and false testimony.

For JtB, the moral content of the 10 Commandments was translated into their situations into specific ethical advice. He certainly didn't dither around the issue of the "commonness" of tax collecting!

Likewise, the Scripture might not use the words "copper" or "PVC." But if it turns out that some material (like polybutylene) is junky, then the 8th Commandment requires me as a Christian plumber to use something else. In the case of lead piping, the 6th Commandment would apply!

We sometimes don't see this, because in America a shoddy workman is usually out of work. But in many countries, or in certain sectors in American business or government, the only incentive to do a craftsmanlike job is God's command to "work as unto God and not unto men." This implies that God's commands have their tendrils in all that we do, since loving God and neighbor are commanded whether in the "common" sphere or the ecclesial.

What I'm suggesting is classic Frame-ian ethics: the Scripture helps us to read out the norms and the situation in light of our existential motives; the meaning of those norms in our situation is what we ought to do.

Interestingly, this approach still retains a high degree of Christian liberty. Unlike the theonomist who might wish to divine specific instruction on copper and PVC from the text of Scripture (or the symbolism thereof!), I am suggesting that the individual bears a large responsibility for determining what the Scriptural norms mean in his particular situation.

Hence, an outside agent may not be able to provide specific blanket advice in all situations. Thus, your reading of me that I have an "idea of a biblical position on everything Christians do" is quite wide of the mark. The Scripture leaves many details unspecified; and yet, every action that we take is either of faith, or else not. Our actions come out of a love for God and neighbor, or else not.

So Scripture *does* speak to all of life, from a normative perspective. And yet, it does not specify all of life, from a situational perspective. On this latter point, we agree.

It remains to be seen whether we can find other points of contact.

JRC

2K Theologies

2009-03-02T15:19:00.004-05:00

Part 1

The conversation over at GreenBaggins has sometimes drifted into a discussion of the relationship of Church and State. Among the different positions is what has been termed "Westminster 2-Kingdom Theology." With Reformed roots back to Luther's 2-Kingdom theology, the Westminster variety springs from a consistent application of Kline's structure of the Covenant.

One of the foremost advocates of W2K is Dr. Darryl Hart, adjunct at Westminster Seminary, California, and author of A Secular Faith: Why Christianity Favors The Separation of Church and State (Ivan R. Dee, publ.; distributed by Amazon and others). He has agreed to share his views here.

Dr. Hart, for the sake of your time and to keep things decent and in order, I would like to propose the following format.

First, I would like to explain my own contact with 2K theologies and W2K in particular. This will, perhaps, expose misunderstandings on my part; certainly, it could be a point of departure for the conversation.
I am hoping that you can then provide a clear Scriptural exposition of the W2K position.
Then, I will respond with concerns and/or points of agreement.
And you can have the last word.

Does that format work for you?

JRC

Raising Caterpillars 2008

2008-08-17T18:16:00.005-04:00

As of this week, we've had a banner year for caterpillar raising.

In July, we raised 29 Cabbage White Pieris rapae caterpillars and eggs found on a weedy mustard with yellow flowers in our yard.

P. rapae caterpillar on mustard Brassicaceae

P. rapae chrysalis. The "silk support girdle" is just barely visible around the middle. The chrysali ranged in color from green to brown.

Two weeks ago, I found a momma Variegated Fritillary Euptoieta claudia laying eggs on some violets; I collected 2 and now have two cats.

E. claudia caterpillar on Violet (viola sp.)

Then we found a Spicebush Swallowtail Papilio troilus egg, which hatched yesterday.

P. troilus egg on spicebush (Lindera benzoin)

Freshly hatched P. troilus with egg chorion still on him. Within two hours, he had consumed the egg-shell and was much darker

Then followed a veritable army of Milkweed Tussock Moth Euchaetes egle caterpillars. We're raising ONE and ONLY ONE.

The lucky Tussock Moth cat. He looks ready to pupate.

Then, three days ago, I saw a Monarch Danaus plexippus laying on the newly planted swamp milkweed. YES! With all said and done, we have 39 Monarch caterpillars and eggs. Yikes!

One batch of collected D. plexippus. Leaves on the left have cats; leaves on the right have eggs.

D. plexippus egg ready to hatch. Note the ribbed, cylindrical shape that contrasts with the spherical shape of Papilio eggs.

D. plexippus caterpillar consuming eggshell right after hatching

D. plexippus caterpillar hanging out on Swamp Milkweed (Asclepius incarnata). The hand is a child's, for size comparison.

This is a record for both number of species raised (4 5 6 7) and for total number of cats raised (72 legion, if all are successful).

Update: we've continued to find Monarch cats on the Asclepia incarnata. Go milkweed! Also, the dill produced a large Black Swallowtail caterpillar who will probably be a chrysalis by morning. I've also found a couple of Common Sootywing cats on lambsquarter, but I'm leaving them to overwinter in their leaves.

Update 10/23/08: In the end, many of the Monarch eggs didn't make it. It was my fault for putting the day-old caterpillars in with larger ones. They simply disappeared, and I fear they were cannibalized. With all that, we released 36 healthy Monarchs, 2 Variagated Fritillaries, and 29 Cabbage Whites this year, and we have one pupa each of Black Swallowtail, Spicebush Swallowtail, and Tussock Moth that are overwintering.

JRC

Brookside Gardens 7/18/08

2008-08-06T20:42:00.019-04:00

My good friend Scott and his son accompanied me to Brookside Gardens in Wheaton, MD on July 18. The gardens are lush and attract quite a number of butterflies (Click for shots).

Fiery Skipper

Peck's Skipper

Sachem Atalopedes campestris

This is a strongly-marked female. I saw no males on this day, but I have plenty in my garden!

Pipevine Swallowtail Battus philenor

This was a shy individual. Since I've been seeing Pipevines all over the place this year, it's unclear whether he is a native or a releasee from the butterfly house inside.

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail Papilio glaucus

I had fun taking shots of this female from about 50 yards away at the full 420mm extension of my camera's lens.

A much more cooperative male

A Silver Spotted Skipper Epargyreus clarus

An unknown beetle Coleoptera

But the main attraction is the indoor butterfly house that contains a mix of native, Central American, and Asian species. Some I could identify (hat tip: Sarah McVey's website has beautiful pictures and gave me a lot of solid leads on the IDs); others, not. If anyone has IDs for these, I would be grateful.

Nymphalids: Limenitidinae

The Common Sergeant Athyma perius

This Admiral relative looks very similar to species of the genus Neptis.

Nymphalids: Heliconiini

Zebra Longwing Heliconius charitonius

The light dusting on these individuals and the Sara Longwings that follow is pollen rather than a camera artifact.

Sara Longwing Heliconius sara

Postman Heliconius erato or H. melpomene
H. erato and H. melpomene are co-mimetic, and I have no idea which this is.

Tiger Longwing Heliconius ismenius

Isabella's Longwing Eueides isabella

After some debate, this appears to be an Isabella rather than a Tiger. What clenches it is the horizontal band across the middle of the forewing; this is broken in the Tiger but continuous in the Isabella, as here.

Banded Longwing Dryadula phaetusa

Unknown longwing

Nymphalids: Junonia

Chocolate Pansy Junonia iphita

Lemon Pansy Junonia lemonias

The Buckeye, Junonia coenia was here also, but I took no shots.

Nymphalids: Morphos and Owl Butterflies

Morpho helenor

Two images of the same individual with different lighting

Caligo sp.

Misc. Nymphalids

The White Peacock Anartia jatrophae

Clippers Parthenos sylvia
Two different subspecies are featured here:

P. sylvia lilacinus

P. sylvia philippensis

The Question Mark Polygonia interrogationis

Silver Checkerspot Chlosyne nycteis

Lacewing Cethosia sp.

Pointed Leafwing Fountinea eurypyle?

Unknown Nymphalid 1

Unknown Nymphalid 2

Doleschallia sp.?

Crimson Patch Chlosyne janais janais

Paper Kite Butterfly Idea leuconoe

Swallowtails Papilionidae

Variable Cattleheart Parides erithalion polyzelus

Xuthus Swallowtail Papilio xuthus

Great Mormon Swallowtail Papilio memnon agenor. This is a female; the species is substantially dimorphic.

Tailed Jay Graphium Agamemnon

Pipevine Swallowtail Battus philenor. These butterflies, native to MD, are bred in captivity, and it is unclear whether they remain in the house or are released into the wild. The former option is more likely, since bred butterflies might be disease vectors.

Hairstreaks Lycaenidae

Atala Eumaeus atala

Atlas moths!

The Atlas Moth Attacus atlas. My parents gave me a framed pair of these for my 12th birthday. It was an inspiration; how much more inspiring are these live ones!

The moths are sexed by the clear windows on the forewing. The female's window is large, with the point digging directly into the margin. These two are females.

Mating pair. The male is in the foreground, with its forewing window at a somewhat oblique angle to the margin.

JRC

Peck's Skipper Polites peckius

2008-07-28T01:24:00.002-04:00

Peck's Skipper is a somewhat common sight in Maryland, found mid-July every year. This individual was taken on July 18, 2008 at Brookside Gardens.

Shots below showing the class Peck's Skipper pattern. The lighter marks below can vary among individuals.

Above, the stigma is visible.

Several anatomical features can be seen here. The proboscis is double-barreled. The tip of the antenna is two-toned (orange above, darker brown below) and shows the hooked apiculus characteristic of (almost) all skippers. Additionally, the tibia on the legs have two spikes each.

JRC

The Fiery Skipper Hylephila phyleus

2008-07-28T00:21:00.005-04:00

The Fiery Skipper is a grass skipper common in the South, less so in Maryland. This particular individual was taken on July 18 at Brookside Gardens in Wheaton, MD.

The underside is distinctive, resembling few other grass skippers (compare to The Whirlabout)

Above, the orange color intrudes into the marginal brown bands on both the fore- and hindwing, resembling tongues of flame (hence the name "Fiery Skipper"). The black stigma that runs from the base of the wing to the cell indicates that this is a male. It releases pheromones that help the female find a suitable mate.

The view of the genitalia confirms that this is a male -- note the claspers.

Don't the faces look friendly? The white circle around the eyes is noticeable here.

One more artistic shot.

JRC

Allegany Co. Count 7/11/08

2008-07-19T21:02:00.011-04:00

This was my first foray into Allegany County, home to the uncommon and beautiful Northern Metalmark. As with Carroll County, the numbers were low, but a couple of unusual butterflies were sighted.

Count Results (from Bob Ringler): Click for Count Results

Not Tabulated Yet

Highlights

The show-stealer was the Northern Metalmark. These gorgeous creatures are two-toned. The dorsal side is dark brown with two thin metallic bands on margin and post-median. The ventral side is maple-colored with the same bands. The result is a butterfly that flashes two colors in flight. Flight, now, is rare with these. The Northern Metalmark is unquestionably the most sedentary butterfly I've seen. In fact, spotting them was a matter of looking for them on their choice nectar plants: Butterfly weed, a smallish species of sunflower, and goldenrod.

Northern Metalmark Calephelis borealis

The eyes are a striking steel-gray. This flower resembles New Jersey Tea, but I don't know what it is.

Below, the silvery bands are visible against the mapley-orange color.

Another treat was the Aphrodite Fritillary. This butterfly differs from the Great Spangled only in the hindwing below: the Great-Spangled has a cream band in the post-margin that the Aphrodite lacks. The result is that the Aphrodite appears more starkly silvered than the Great Spangled.

The Great Spangled shown in the two pics below was confused. He kept following the Aphrodite in an apparent attempt at mating. He was unsuccesful, but he did manage to provide an excellent comparison specimen!

Aphrodite Speyeria aphrodite
The Great Spangled is in the background. In the hindwing submargin, he has the cream-colored band, partially chewed on this side, that is lacking in the Aphrodite.

The lack of the cream hindwing band combined with the chocolate color of this individual (more typical of the female) brings out the silvery spots quite nicely.

To our great delight, a Zebra Swallowtail popped out of nowhere and sampled the Dogbane long enough for a photo shoot.

Zebra Swallowtail Eurytides marcellus

A Northern Pearly Eye almost escaped detection against the bark of the tree here.

Northern Pearly Eye Enodia anthedon

Roadside and Delaware Skippers joined the usual suspects (Silver-Spot, Dun, etc.) this year.

Roadside Skipper Amblyscirtes vialis on Birdsfoot Ticktrefoil

Delware Skipper Anatrytone logan below

Delaware Skipper above

We had a lone tattered representative of the first brood of Silvery Checkerspots.

Silvery Checkerspot Chlosyne nycteis

Other Shots

Little Glassywing Pompeius verna

Pipevine Swallowtail Battus philenor

Banded Hairstreak Satyrium calanus

American Copper Lycaena phlaeus

Buckeye Precis (Junonia) coenia. Surprisingly, not common in Allegany Co.!

Northern Broken Dash Wallengrenia egeremet

Monarda with 9 Silver-Spot Skippers (Epargyreus clarus) on it!

Grey Hairstreak Strymon melinus

JRC

Carroll County Count 07/05/2008

2008-07-16T15:16:00.010-04:00

The Carrol County, MD Butterfly Count 2008 had low numbers but interesting diversity. The weather was rainy in the morning but mostly sunny by late day. Accordingly, we found more species as the day wore on. The greatest disappointment was that the traditional spot for Baltimore Checkerspots yielded none this year (under complete overcast and light drizzly conditions).

Click for count results, from Bob Ringler

Pipevine Swallowtail 1
Black Swallowtail 5
Tiger Swallowtail 3
Spicebush Swallowtail 6
Cabbage White 118
Clouded Sulfur 2
Orange Sulfur 70
Unidentified white sulfur 1
CLOUDLESS SULFUR 1

SLEEPY ORANGE 1
American Copper 4
Coral Hairstreak 14
EDWARDS' HAIRSTREAK 1
HICKORY HAIRSTREAK 1

Banded Hairstreak 2
Gray Hairstreak 2
Eastern Tailed Blue 118
Summer Azure 4
SNOUT 1
Great Spangled Fritillary 56
Pearl Crescent 62
Question Mark 2
Unidentified anglewing 2
Mourning Cloak 1
American Lady 1
Painted Lady 1
Red Admiral 3
Buckeye 2
Hackberry Emperor 4
Appalachian Brown 26
Little Wood Satyr 17
Wood Nymph 11
Monarch 5
Silver-spotted Skipper 20
Wild Indigo Duskywing 11
Least Skipper 3
Little Glassy Wing 19
Sachem 1
Mulberry Wing 4
Black Dash 5
Dun Skipper 7
Unidentified grass skipper 9

Highlights:

We found an Edward's Hairstreak for the third consecutive year on a power line cut-through off of Schalk Line Road 1

Satyrium edwardsii

We found several Banded Hairstreaks

Satyrium calanus Dark form

Light form

The real treat was discovering that one of our Banded Hairstreaks was more likely a Hickory Hairstreak.

Satyrium caryaevorum. Note the blue lunule on the hindwing that protrudes out past the surrounding orange lunules. Note also that the pairs of lines in the disc are aligned with each other (contrast the shots of the Banded Hairstreak above).

A Mourning Cloak jumped onto the path in front of us.

Nymphalis antiopa

A Hackberry Emperor showed off his social skills.

Asterocampa celtis

On Little Pipe Creek we found a single Snout Butterfly, so named because of the unusual labia. Snouts are very cute.

Libytheana carinenta

In the same location, Bob noticed that one of my "Orange Sulfurs" was actually a Sleepy Orange.

Eurema nicippe

Unfortunately, he was unwilling to cooperate for photographs. We got just enough for an ID.

At Hashuwa Wildlife Management Area, we found a Cloudless Sulfur!

Phoebis sennae

This appears to be the year of the Pipevine Swallowtail. We saw one on the count (unusual), several in Allegany County, and I even found one in my yard. Too bad my pipevine isn't mature enough for caterpillars.

Battus philenor

More shots

Mulberry Wing Poanes m. massasoit

The markings below have merged into a single patch, which makes this part of the nominate subspecies. Harry Pavulaan is trying to establish the boundaries of the various subspecies; we appear to be on the southern end of the range for this one.

Buckeye Precis coenia

Painted Lady Vanessa cardui

Least Skipper Ancyloxypha numitor

Coral Hairstreaks Satyrium titus

Common Wood Nymph Cercyonis pegala

Appalachian Brown Satyrodes appalachia

Little Glassy Wing female Pompeius verna

JRC

Mercer Arboretum 06/09/2008

2008-06-25T21:55:00.005-04:00

Mercer Arboretum is a botanical garden in north Houston. It has an extensive herb garden, several butterfly-friendly gardens, and outstanding diversity in its species.

Gulf Fritillary Agraulis vanillae

click for shots

Funereal Duskywing Erynnis funeralis
Click for shot

Southern Skipperling Copaeodes minima
Click for shot

Texan Crescent Phyciodes texana
Click for shots

Dun Skipper Euphyes vestris
Click for shot

Polydamas Swallowtail (Gold Rim) Papilio polydamas
Click for shot

Fiery Skipper Hylephila phyleus
Click for shots

Clouded Skipper Lerema accius
Click for shot

Broad-Winged Skipper Poanes viator
Click for shots

Southern Broken Dash Wallengrenia otho
Click for shots

Northern Broken Dash Wallengrenia egeremet

Click for shot

Red-Banded Hairstreak Calycopis cecrops

Click for shot

Whirlabout Polites vibex

Click for shot

Spicebush Swallowtail Papilio troilus

Click for shots

Tropical Checkered Skipper Pyrgus oileus

The feature that distinguishes this from the Common Checkered Skipper is that the fringe on the forewing merges into a pure brown line instead of being checked as on the hindwing.

Click for shot

San Antonio Zoo 6/12/08

2008-06-23T00:54:00.005-04:00

The San Antonio Zoo has been well-planned in several ways. My favorite is their smallish butterfly house. Like many enclosed butterfly habitats, this one is stocked with Central and South American staples: Tiger Mimic Queen, Morpho, Postman, and so on.

Unlike many habitats, the butterflies are up close, and children are taught and encouraged to let a butterfly crawl onto the finger (without damaging the butterfly!). As a result, the butterflies are no longer a hands-off, eyes only experience. Instead, my daughters became interested in their behavior: How can I get this butterfly to land on me? And, Daddy, can I get a Blue Morpho to land on me? (Thanks, Diego!)

Click for shots

Cattleheart (Parides sp.)

Dryadula phaetusa

Papilio androgeus with tails missing

The Grecian Shoemaker (Catonephele numilia)

C. numilia underside

Anartia fatima

Unidentified Nymphalid

underside

Same being shared between friends

Morpho sp. on Homo curiosa

Heliconius sapho pair. The female is uninterested and the male hasn't quite figured that out yet.

JRC

Guadalupe River State Park 6/13/08

2008-06-20T14:28:00.004-04:00

Just north of San Antonio is Guadalupe River State Park. The park is lovely, though picnickers will need to beware of house flies. I had about 45 minutes to go hunting ...

Queen (Danaus gilippus)

click for shots

I saw a couple of different females on thistle. They sipped nectar from each flowerlet as they moved around the flower in a circle.

Sleepy Orange (Eurema nicippe)

Click for shot

Dun Skipper (Euphyes vestris) coexisting peacefully with an unidentified beetle.

Click for shot

JRC

The Woodlands, TX 6/17/08

2008-06-18T22:48:00.004-04:00

We just got back from vacation in Texas. Part of the time was spent in The Woodlands, a booming town just north of Houston.

"Booming" is a term of mixed value; one of the downsides is that most butterfly habitat is now gone. However, I did find a couple of gems:

The White-M Hairstreak Parhassius m-album

Underside. This individual had a slight tear in the right wing, and the brilliant metallic blue of the top side of the left hindwing is just visible through the crack. Note the red spot on the hindwing is set in from the margin, a clear diagnostic.

A close-up of the hindwing showing a bare patch where scales have rubbed off of the wing. The ridge structure of the wing is visible.

An in-flight showing the striking blue color of the top-side. My sister's toe was the trigger for the flight. The blue top-color is another clear diagnostic for the White-M.

Also seen but not depicted here:

Gulf Fritillary Agraulis vanillae
Palamedes Swallowtail Papilio palamedes
Common Checkered-skipper Pyrgus communis (or albescens?)
Red-banded Hairstreak Calycopis cecrops
Texan Crescent Phyciodes texana
Fiery Skipper Hylephila phyleus

And that was it!

JRC

Audrey Carroll Audubon Sanctuary

2008-05-25T16:03:00.002-04:00

I had a delightful butterfly walk through the Audubon sanctuary in Carroll Co.

Count:

3 Eastern Tailed Blues (Everes comyntas)
1 Azure (Celastrina sp.)
15 Cabbage Whites (Pieris rapae)
4 Orange Sulfurs (Colias eurytheme), including one white-form female
11 Pearl Crescents (Phyciodes tharos)
4 Red-banded Hairstreaks (Calycopis cecrops) -- a time-of-year record for me here.
click for shots

The lighting here was dim, but this shot captures the hairstreak in characteristic behavior: rubbing the hindwings together. A peek of the brilliant blue hindwing top is just visible.

3 Silver-Spotted Skippers (Epargyreus clarus)
click for shot

1 Zabulon Skipper (Poanes zabulon)
click for shots

My wife's favorite: the "Jet Plane" pose

2 Spicebush Swallowtails (Papilio troilus)
1 Black Swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes)
1 Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus)

JRC

The Church in Frame's Frame, Part IV

2008-05-19T21:12:00.004-04:00

Previous Parts: Part I Part II Part III

What follows is the Tri-Perspectival Model employed in critique of two other models, the Dispensational and Federal Vision models. The purpose of this critique is not so much to bash adherents of either, as if "my model works better than yours." Rather, the purpose is two-fold: to provide illustrations of the utility of multiple perspectives, and to provide a possible rapprochement between Federal Vision adherents and opponents.

A Critique of the Dispensationalist Model

A tri-perspectival view of the Church allows for easy analysis of the dispensational model of the church. On the dispensational account, the true Church is the invisible church, and the visible church is a mere human institution that lacks genuine sanction by God. In fact, for John Darby, the visible church as it is now is a corruption and an exaltation of a human institution to replace God's pure bride¹. He laid the apostasy of the Church of England at the feet of the visible church and the practice of infant baptism in particular -- that the Church of England mistakenly believed that God actually did something through the sacraments². Only at the beginning of the "gospel age" was the visible church the actual Church of God³, but it quickly apostasized because it was built by men rather than God.

Progressive dispensationalism has softened Darby's view considerably. No longer is the visible church a corrupt structure that pretends to be God's true church. Rather, the visible church is seen as "a present reality of the coming eschatological kingdom." ⁴. This is clearly a positive development!

Nevertheless, the various dispensational models so emphasize the existential perspective that the normative perspective completely recedes into the background. As a result, the visible church is despised instead of honored. The "family", covenantal nature of the church is denied entirely, and church membership is downplayed or omitted entirely.

As a result, the dispensational church is unable to practice robust church discipline. What does it mean to excommunicate someone from a dispensational church? Nothing at all; he has the perfect freedom to go down the road to the next church.

Further, the dispensational church is unable to make anything of the federal holiness of children of believers. It's not that 1 Cor 7 is explicitly denied; rather, it has no force in the practical theology of dispensational churches.

All of these unfortunate features come about by a distortion of perspectives: an overemphasis on the existential; an underemphasis of the normative.

A Critique of the Federal Vision

In many ways, the Federal Vision's⁵ view of the church represents a polar opposite from the dispensational view. In the Federal Vision, the Church on this side of eternity is visible only:

The Church

We affirm that membership in the one true Christian Church is visible and objective, and is the possession of everyone who has been baptized in the triune name and who has not been excommunicated by a lawful disciplinary action of the Church. We affirm one holy, catholic and apostolic church, the house and family of God, outside of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation. In establishing the Church, God has fulfilled His promise to Abraham and established the Regeneration of all things. God has established this Regeneration through Christ—in Him we have the renewal of life in the fulness of life in the new age of the kingdom of God. We deny that membership in the Christian Church in history is an infallible indicator or
guarantee of final salvation. Those who are faithless to their baptismal obligations incur a stricter judgment because of it.

The Visible and Invisible Church

We affirm that there is only one true Church, and that this Church can legitimately be considered under various descriptions, including the aspects of visible and invisible. We further affirm that the visible Church is the true Church of Christ, and not an “approximate” Church. We deny that such a distinction excludes other helpful distinctions, such as the historical church and eschatological church. The historical Church generally corresponds to the visible Church—all those who profess the true religion, together with their children and the eschatological Church should be understood as the full number of God’s chosen as they will be seen on the day of resurrection.⁶

For the FV, the "invisible church" is an eschatological category (it is commonplace to push the language of WCoF 25.1 to mean that "invisible church" at any moment in time consists of all people who ever will be saved, even if they are currently not saved or even not yet born), while the church in this age is the visible church. Importantly, the visible church on the FV account is not "approximate" but rather the genuine family of God.

If we see the FV account of the Church in contrast to the dispensational, a salutary feature appears: the Federal Vision wishes to restore to the Visible Church a sense of proper belonging. Where dispensationalism (which has always exerted a pull in Presbyterian circles, even after official denunciation) despised the normative perspective, the Federal Vision restored the normative perspective to a place of honor. So much the good.

However, the emphasis on the normative becomes (in my opinion) so great that it distorts the other perspectives. In particular, the existential perspective is positively disparaged. The FV discourages introspection, emphasizing the unknowability of God's decrees and the fallibility of our own assessments about our own salvation⁷.

The cost of doing so is that the approximate nature of the normative perspective becomes denied entirely: "We further affirm that the visible Church is the true Church of Christ and not an approximate Church."

One particular problem is what to make of the Reformation. In 1517, the Visible Church in the west was the Roman church. If we must affirm that the Roman church was "the Church, and not an approximate Church", then it becomes difficult to see how Luther's excommunication bull was anything other than a direct expression of God's rejection of his teachings.

Likewise, as we stand 500 years beyond the Reformation, with Protestantism splintered into hundreds of discernible fragments, identifying the visible church is an approximate business in itself. Do Pentacostal churches count? How about Oneness churches?

In short, the Federal Vision's identification of the Visible Church with the Church of God amounts to an overly optimistic estimate of our knowledge. It conflates without sufficient warrant the Church that we see (and who is indeed authorized to act as God's Church!) with the Church that we cannot see.

Now, the conflation is not total. There is a clear acknowledgment that not all who belong to the church now will be welcomed as members of God's church in the eschaton. But entirely identifying the Visible Church with the present Church and the Invisible, with the eschatological Church has the undesirable side effect of creating confusion about the salvation of the current members of the Church. Are they, or are they not, children of God as mentioned in John 1.12?

It is my opinion that the "covenantally elect" language that caused so much trouble for Steve Wilkins was logically necessitated by the desire to entirely identify the present Visible Church as the present Church of God. One reads in his treatment of Ephesians 1, for example ("The Federal Vision", ch. 2) an insistence that because Paul addresses the Church in Ephesus without distinction, that therefore, Paul is attributing the language of Ephesians 1 to each Church member without distinction, "head for head."

Out of his treatment of such passages then flows the covenantal election schema, since Wilkins (very reasonably!) does not believe that the entirety of the Ephesian church, "head for head" is actually eternally elect. There must be some other kind of election -- and the rest follows.

Well ... the mistake lies at the beginning. Paul's knowledge of the Church is just as approximate as ours. The special apostolic gifts notwithstanding, Paul was not possessed (as far as we know) with any salvation-o-meter that allowed him to single out the elect within the Ephesian church. Nor were they all possessed, "head for head", of such infallible assurance as to be certain of whom he meant.

But rather, Paul speaks to the visible church in Ephesus as an approximate church on two grounds:

First, that the church has a right to be called the body of God (this half corresponds to the "judgment of charity" notion).

Second, that the members themselves are federally holy: they *ought* to be possessors of salvation, even if they are not. (In this limited sense, one could admit the language "covenantally elect", though it seems too confusing for proper use as a term).

In short then, the Federal Vision overcorrects for nascent dispensational tendencies by reading questions about the identity of the Church primarily through the normative lens. The result is a theology that has trouble interfacing with standard readings of the Confession. As recent events have witnessed, and regardless of "who is right" with respect to the Federal Vision controversy, the adherents to the Federal Vision have trouble making the basic case that their theology is "genuinely Reformed."

In my opinion, the central trouble is the predominance of the normative perspective in their teachings (though not expressed in that language!)

These critiques do not imply that other combinations of perspectives represent the "perfect" way of viewing the Church. In general, the normative perspective will have a tendency to over-estimate the Church, including those who do not belong simply because we ought to give supposed brothers the benefit of the doubt.

By contrast, the situational perspective will tend to cut out genuine believers who struggle with besetting sins, while wrongly including hypocrites who know how to act Christianly.

And the existential perspective likewise tends to underestimate those whose consciences trouble them while overestimating the complacent.

Clearly, no combination of the perspectives will allow us perfect ability to peek into the decrees of God and see the Church as He does. But together, these perspectives, each mandated by Scripture, provide us with the best estimate possible of the Church of God.

As a personal appeal, I would ask my Federal Vision brothers to consider whether tri-perspectivalism might satisfy their concerns more fully.

JRC

1. It is on this confusion and error that popery, Puseyism, and the whole high-church system is built. They have not distinguished between the building which Christ builds, where living stones come to a living stone, where all grows to a holy temple in the Lord (that is, where the result is perfect), and that which man avowedly builds, though as God's building, and where man may fail and has failed. I am entirely justified in looking at the outward thing in this world as a building, which in pretension, character, and responsibility is God's building; yet it has been built by man, and built of wood and stubble, so that the work is to be burned up in the day of judgment which is revealed in fire. Yea, more, I may see that corrupters have corrupted it; and that, if any have dealt with it in this character, they will be destroyed. In a word I have a building which Christ builds, a building in which living stones come and are built up as living stones, a building which grows to a holy temple in the Lord. I have also what is called God's building, as that which is for Him and set up by Him on the earth, but which is built instrumentally and responsibly by man, where I may find very bad building and even persons corrupting it. -- JN Darby, The Church -- The House and the Body. This site has the works of Darby, which contain many such quotes.

2. The sacraments or ordinances, for there is a sacramental system, are the earthly administrations of revealed privileges, an outward system of professed faith, and a visible body on earth. Life and membership of Christ are by the Holy Ghost. We are born of the Spirit, and by one Spirit baptized into one body. To say we are members of Christ by baptism is a falsification of the truth of God, by confounding (directly contrary to scripture) the external admission to the earthly profession with life from God; and it is the falsification of the meaning even of the sign. It is the other sacrament, not baptism, which (even externally) exhibits the unity of the body. The Lord's supper is in its nature received in common. The assembly or Church participate. Hence we have (Eph. 4), "one Spirit, one body, one hope of your calling." This belongs to the Spirit and spiritual persons. "One Lord, one faith, one baptism"; such is the outward profession and faith of Christ. The confounding the outward administration by ordinances with the power of the Spirit of God is the source of popery and apostasy. It is pitiable to see how Augustine (a truly godly man personally, who felt what life and the true Church were, when the outward thing had become grossly corrupt) writhes under the effort to conciliate the two -- ibid.

3. J.N. Darby, What is the Church as it was at the Beginning? And What is its Present State?

4. Blaising and Bock, Progressive Dispensationalism, p. 258.

5. A standard disclaimer must be noted here: the Federal Vision is not a monolithic movement. The critique in this article is leveled at the Joint Federal Vision statement; quotations of views of individuals such as Steve Wilkins should not necessarily be imputed to others. That said, certain themes emerge in the writings of self-identified Federal Vision adherents.

6. The Joint Federal Vision Statement.

7. The Federal Vision, pp. 29-32, 56-57. Doug Wilson takes a more nuanced (though still on balance negative) approach to introspection, while Mark Horne wants for children in particular to think of themselves as Christians without having to worry about their unknown state of election.

The Church in Frame's Frame, Part III

2008-05-19T21:00:00.006-04:00

Previous Parts: Part I Part II

Recap: The Church is complicated because it is the company of God's eternally elect, but it is also a family. When we think of the church as God's bride, we think in terms of purity and personal possession of salvation. The church defined in this way cannot be seen by human eye. But when we think of the church as a family and as the means by which God brings the Gospel to the nations, we are thinking of the Church as it functions in space and time. We therefore have a problem of knowledge as we approach the church: Who properly belongs to it?

This problem cannot be solved by a simple appeal to election. While it is true that God accepts only His children as genuine members of his body into eternity, our lack of "election-o-meters" prevents us from applying election as an operational test for church membership.

Nor can the problem of knowledge be solved by a simple appeal to outward profession of faith. The Scriptures make clear that not all who name Jesus as Lord actually know Him as such.

Further, it appears to be God's plan to leave this tension unresolved on this side of eternity. The parable of the Wheat and Tares suggests that God leaves tares within the church until his appointed time¹. And the fact that family members of Christians are considered "holy" -- even if unsaved (1 Cor 7.12-14) eliminates the possibility of defining the church cleanly as "those who possess saving faith."

And yet, the Church is Christ's body; we must affirm that unbelievers do not properly belong to it. It is for this reason that Paul urges the Corinthians to "expel the wicked man from among you."

How then are we to understand the church? Whom should we consider as belonging to the church?

I contend here that the problem of knowing the church only admits of partial solutions viewed from different perspectives². In the final analysis, we do not have access to God's decrees, and we cannot see the Church as God sees it. What we have instead is several different Scripturally mandated ways of measuring the Church approximately.

If we ask, "To whom do we owe an obligation to treat as a brother in Christ?", we are asking a normative question. The answer to that question describes a set of people whom we may call "the Church"; we are measuring the Church by the yardstick of ethical obligations that naturally exist by virtue of belonging to Christ's family.

Yet we recognize that the members of this set of people do not necessarily possess salvation, so that the Church as measured by ethical obligations does not correspond perfectly to the Church as God sees it. So we might ask a second question: "Who displays the fruit of belonging to Christ?" This fruit might include outward professions of faith as well as visible demonstrations of the fruit of the Spirit. The answer to that question also describes a (different) set of people whom we may call Christians -- Christ's people. We are measuring the Church according to visible observation of their fruit.

And yet again, we recognize that some who have the appearance of Christ's followers can yet be in unbelief, while some who belong to Christ can sin grievously for a time. Thus, the Church as measured by visible observation of fruit still does not correspond perfectly to the Church as God sees it. In particular, many struggle concerning themselves: do I belong to the Church? So each individual must consider a third question, "Do I believe the Gospel and trust in Christ?" Here each man measures himself in relationship to the Church by discerning whether he legitimately belongs to it.

Now two things should be clear from the outset. First, none of these metrics is fool-proof. The Scriptures insist that people can belong to the Church visibly, or display a kind of false fruit of salvation (cf. 1 Cor 13), or imagine themselves to be saved, and yet fail to truly belong to Christ's people (Matt. 7.22).

But second, none of these metrics can be disposed of. Because our view of the Church is limited, it can be tempting to grab on to one of these perspectives as "the way" to see the church. Hence, the Roman Catholics view the Church almost entirely through the normative perspective; modern evangelicals, through the existential. Yet Scripture pushes us to admit that none of these perspectives is so dispositive as to preclude the others.

So our task, then, is to consider three different ways of measuring the Church: a "tri-perspectival" view of the Church. None is sufficient by itself; but each can be found in the Scriptures at various points.

The Normative Perspective

Here we ask the question, "Whom should I treat as a member of the Church?" The Scripture demands this question at several points:

1. Hebrews 13.1 exhorts us to "Keep on loving each other as brothers." And again, Gal. 6.10 tells us to "do good to all people, and especially to those who are of the household of the faith."

Now the question becomes, whom must we treat in this way? That is, as I consider my special obligation to do good to the household of faith, whom should I treat in this way?

And the answer is clearly, those who visibly profess Christ and belong to His Church. From the perspective of my obligations, if only to err on the side of caution, I must treat all who profess Christ as if they are legitimately a part of Christ's people.

In other words, the normative perspective on the Church leads us to define the Church in terms of a visible boundary: visible church membership. No other answer to the question will do. I could not, for example, choose to not love Alice on the grounds that her behavior "proves she is not a Christian"; without the warrant of formal excommunication, such an action amounts to the hand rejecting the foot.

2. Hebrews 13.17 exhorts us, "Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account."

To whom must I submit? To the leaders of my church. Here, the normative perspective leads us again to define the church in terms of its visible leadership. I cannot (unless I leave the church) choose which elders I will submit to and which I will disregard.

3. 1 Cor 7.12-14 asserts that the children of believers are "holy." In what sense? Certainly, all agree that children of believers are not automatically saved, nor automatically sanctified from within. But they are holy, "set apart", in this sense: they have a special obligation above those outside the church to believe and obey the Gospel. To whom more is given, more is required.

They are normatively holy, people who ought to be and have every reason to be Christians even if they are not.

So from the normative perspective, we get a strong sense of the "family" and "government" character of the Church. From this perspective the Church includes some who might not be actually saved: false brethren, false leaders, apostate children. Those people do not have a real right to belong to God's fellowship, and yet God in His providence leaves them in place until such time as He chooses to cut them off.

We, on the other hand, must err on the side of caution with regard to their membership, because we are not wiser than God and because we have no direct knowledge of the salvation of individuals.

The Situational Perspective

We do, however, have the ability to read the actions of professing believers and measure them for two purposes: avoiding false teachers, and exercising church discipline. This perspective is called the "situational" in that it assesses the observable situation. It measures the church according to what we can see.

If we used only the normative perspective to measure the church, we would wrongly allow unbelief to persist within the church. While God's providence is ultimately sufficient to deal with this, He has also commanded us to measure the lives of others in limited ways in order to preserve the purity of the Church.

1. In Matt. 7, Jesus positively commands his followers to avoid false teachers, telling them, "Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So then, you will know them by their fruits. Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.' -- Matt. 7.15-23 NASB

2. Likewise, 1 Cor 5 enjoins the church leadership to expel self-named Christians who unrepentantly practice lawlessness.

Here, the situational perspective refines the normative perspective: we owe love to church members and submission to church leaders, but that love and submission are not so absolute that we blindly accept their every action as legitimate.

Thus, we get a sense of how the two perspectives can combine in cases of church discipline: the behavior of the believer is weighed specifically by the church leadership, who are then given the authority to require repentance (on the basis of an individual's church membership) and in extremis to pronounce an individual outside the normative boundary of the church: that is, to excommunicate.

The Existential Perspective

In addition to assessing our ethical obligations to others and to observing the fruit of other believers, the Scriptures also tell us to assess ourselves.

1. As Paul wrestles with the Corinthians concerning their following of false teachers and questioning of his authority, he turns the tables and commands them, "Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith" (2 Cor 13.6).

This self-examination brings out what could be called the existential perspective. It asks each individual to assess who he is in relationship to the Church: Do I belong? Do I believe in Christ?

Self-examination is enjoined or implied in various passages. Sometimes, it is more internally focused, as 2 Cor 13.6 above, or as Jesus insinuates to Nicodemus in John 3 ("You are the teacher of Israel, yet you do not understand these things?"). Sometimes, it is externally focused. James 2, for example, brings the reader to the point of self-examination with regard to his own works and their consistency with professed faith.

From this perspective, each individual bears responsibility for knowing whether or not he is a part of the Church.

Interaction between Perspectives

Many of the common functions of church government show interactions between the perspectives. For example, church discipline begins with an assessment of the outward behavior of the individual, with a goal towards self-assessment by the individual (leading hopefully to repentance). In the extreme, that individual may be declared normatively to be outside the Church.

We see in church discipline the various perspectives at work, while recognizing that none of them is a perfect measure of who properly belongs to the church -- saved individuals can be wrongly excommunicated; unsaved individuals can be overlooked by church leadership.

The practice of communion also combines the various perspectives. With whom should we partake communion? With all who belong to the Church visibly. But as we partake, we are also asked to examine ourselves and to reaffirm that we, partaking of the one loaf, also belong to Christ's body.

Likewise, our assurance that we belong to Christ draws on each of these perspectives. Clearly, there is a large existential component here; it may indeed be so strong as to constitute what the Confession calls an "infallible certainty." And yet, we also take comfort from the evidence of the fruit of the Spirit in us (situation) and also from the claim made on us by baptism (normative).

Correspondence with the Confession

Some might wonder how well the tri-perspectival view of the Church corresponds to the picture given in the Westminster Confession, since tri-perspectival language is, superficially, very different from the language of the WCoF.

The three perspectives taken together -- especially the normative -- correspond to the Visible Church of 25.2 and 3. Sections 25.4-5 correspond to the problem of knowledge; we use the practices of any given Church to try to discern whether it is legitimately a part of God's Church.

Ch. 26 ("The Communion of the Saints") corresponds strongly to the normative perspective, while 27-30 (Sacraments and Church Censures) combine all three. The question of Assurance in ch. 18 addresses the existential perspective.

In other words, the tri-perspectival model attempts to reorganize our Confessional approach to the Church without modification (at all!) of the Confessional content.

Why re-organize, then? Most importantly, our tri-perspectival model demonstrates the unity between the Visible and Invisible Church. The two are not separate entities; rather, the Visible Church *is* the Church -- as far as we can see. It has the right to the name of Christ. But also, the Visible Church consists of our perspectives; therefore, it does not have an absolute right to the name of Christ. Its boundary is an imperfect approximation of the boundary of God's elect.

This is entirely in harmony with the Confession. However, it prevents one important misconception. As John Murray noted³, the language of the Confession can sometimes lead some to a wrong belief that the visible and invisible churches are two separate entities. Not so: rather, the Visible Church is our way of knowing the true, Invisible Church of God.

The Bidirectional Nature of the Perspectives

Thus far, we've seen the three perspectives as three legitimate but imperfect ways to reach behind the veil and perceive God's Church. But as it turns out, the three perspectives also correspond to the ways in which God communicates the gospel to the lost.

Normatively, the Church has the authority to preach the Gospel and to declare the boundaries of heresy. In the end, how can we know that those nice Mormons who "believe in Jesus" are nevertheless not Christians? Because they reject the testimony of the Church as expressed in the Nicene Creed -- which in turn rests on good and necessary inference from Scripture.

Situationally, God communicates the gospel through the actions and relationships of its members. "By this", says Jesus in John 13.35, "all men will know that you are my disciples: that you love one another."

Existentially, the work of the Spirit, which normally comes through the preached Word and administered Sacraments, convicts men of sin and their need for repentance.

Thus, the Visible Church is not merely a concept needed to solve our problem of knowledge. It does indeed function in that way, but moreover, the Visible Church is the functioning of God's Church in the here and now.

Thus, we have two ways of thinking about the Visible Church:

(1) The Visible Church is our best view of God's true and Invisible Church, refined by means of the various perspectives.

(2) The Visible Church is the family of God in the here-and-now, authorized to act as God's Church in the proclamation of the Word and the administration of the Sacraments.

JRC

1. Sometimes it is argued that the designation of the field as "the world" in Matt. 13.38 precludes thinking of the Tares as members of the church. But this argument strains at gnats. The point of the parable is that the wheat and tares are indistinguishable until they bear fruit -- which could hardly be the case if the wheat were all within the church and the tares without!
2. Here I will be drawing on the perspectivalism of John Frame. See here and here, as well as Frame's Doctrine of the Knowledge of God.
3. John Murray, Christian Baptism, Chap. 3.

Morgan Run Butterfly Outing 4/26/08

2008-04-27T00:11:00.004-04:00

Morgan Run NEA is a reasonable drive from us, so my daughter and I decided to see what spring butterflies were out and about.

We saw 24 Cabbage Whites, 20 Eastern Tailed Blues (1 dark form; the rest blue), 4 Juvenal's Duskywings, 4 Pearl Crescents, and a Tiger Swallowtail.

And acquired 15 dog ticks in one hour. Hikers beware!

Eastern Tailed Blue (Everes comyntas)

This individual, a male based on the dark margins and blue coloration, is taking in salts. He has a wingspan of about 1" or so.

JRC

The Church in Frame's Frame, Part II

2008-02-17T15:04:00.007-05:00

Part I

The Church is a Family

In the previous post, I argued that the Church is the company of God's eternally elect. But now as we examine the pattern by which God expands his people and thus causes the church to grow, we discover something startling: God's plan from the beginning has been for the Church to grow by means of human families. This fact leads naturally to a tension between the church as we see it and the church as only God can see it: the visible and invisible aspects of the Church.

When God created Adam and Eve, he created them to be the firstborn of a holy race¹:

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." -- Gen. 1.27 - 28

We often focus on the ruling nature of man, but sometimes lost is the significance of the juxtaposition of vv. 27 and 28: Adam and Eve were intended to propagate the image of God. Their mandate was to create a people who would have fellowship with their creator.

And of course, this mandate was frustrated by the fall. We see this in the dashed hopes of Eve in Genesis 4, when she begets a son by the help of the Lord (cf. 3.15), and yet her son turns out to be an agent of sin rather than the seed who crushes Satan.

And yet, the vision of a holy race is re-promised in 3.15 with the protoevangelium. It is further articulated in the restatement of the mandate to Noah (9.1 - 3).

Most importantly, the vision of a holy race is explicitly articulated in the covenant God makes with Abraham. God intends to create a people for Himself within Abraham's family. Of course, His purposes are larger still. He intends to bless all the nations through Abraham. Some of the Gentiles (Ruth, Rahab) will be incorporated into the holy race through adoption. But at this stage in the development of the people of God, His primary means of multiplying His worshipers is through the family.

This has some important implications for the descendants of Abraham. First, all of the males receive the sign of purity, the sign of cutting away of the sin nature, the sign of circumcision. More importantly, all of Abraham's descendants are ethically obligated to keep God's commands, and not merely by way of external obedience, but from the heart (Rom 2.28, 29, with reference to such passages as 1 Sam 15.22, Hos. 6.1-6). But also, all of Abraham's descendants have a certain right, though not absolute or inalienable, to participate in the worship of the Lord. In fact, nominally, Israel is a people, a race, set apart and holy to the Lord. We may even speak of them as "historically elect" with the clear understanding that this term means "chosen out of the nations and obligated to be holy" rather than "chosen to be a part of God's remnant."

As Israel moved through her history in the OT, her designation as a holy race came into tension with the designation of God's people as His eternally elect. The simple fact was that many of Abraham's descendants themselves were not eternally elect, beginning with Esau. This fact created a problem not merely for systematic theologians but in the reality of Israel's experience. While Israel was normatively obligated to be holy to the Lord, a significant proportion of Israel -- a majority at times -- were idolaters. This was the burden of the prophetic oracles such as Amos. God's response to this situation was two-fold: first, to promise an eschatological age, a New Covenant, in which the heart would be circumcised; and second, to pursue a program of pruning out the branches that did not properly belong to Israel because of their lack of holiness. We can see this at work in the time of the Judges; in the books of Samuel and Kings; in the Bablyonian captivity; and ultimately in the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. In all of these, God preserved the remnant that He knew to actually be His, and provided judgments that prefigured the eschaton (cf. Joel) to winnow away those who were not.

Israel's theologians had a hard time understanding the tension between God's election and His means of growth. It was easy for them to mis-read their family descent from Abraham as an actual entrance into relationship with God, or for them to place confidence in the performance of sacrifices In fact, one way of putting the Jew/Gentile problem in the early church is that the Judaizing party had come to mistake the plan of growth through a holy race for election itself. More succinctly, they mistook "historical election" for "eternal election."²

Hence, the emphasis on circumcision: if you wanted to be "chosen by God", you had to become a part of the race. This is of course backwards, and Paul refutes it clearly in Galatians 3. Peter also, in his own way, refutes this thinking in Acts 10. Why are the Gentiles given the sign of cleansing and the outpouring of the Spirit? Because they demonstrate the fruit of God's regenerating work in themselves; they are already a part of the holy race.

With the church, now, the growth plan shifts in emphasis. The full extent of the Abrahamic covenant, that he would be the father of many nations, is now implemented much more through evangelism and the fulfillment of the Great Commission. But this fact does not annul the growth of God's people as a holy race, His work through the family. The Great Commission does not set aside the growth plan. Rather, it merely brings adoption to the fore as a more prominent means of growth.

We see this in part in 1 Cor 7.14, in which the families of believers have been "sanctified." Not made holy in the sense of magically turned into believers by virtue of parentage (cf. Luke 3.8), but sanctified in the same sense that Israel as a whole was sanctified: set apart and obligated to be holy. Children of believers are not themselves automatically believers, but they should be. That is to say, from the perspective of human contingencies, the children of believers have every opportunity and therefore have even less excuse than the pagan for disbelieving the Gospel (cf. Rom. 3.1-2).

We see this further in the commands given to families in Ephesians 5. Husbands, wives, children, and parents are all obligated to act in the Lord towards one another. Noticeably absent is any exemption for children who are unbelievers. Paul gives no qualification that children are to obey their parents in the Lord, unless they happen to not belong to Christ. No, the obligation is laid upon all children with the expectation that "this is right." The ethical obligations enjoined upon Israel are also enjoined upon all who belong to the Church (cf. 1 Cor 5, 6).

Even empirically, we see that God calls people by means of families as well as evangelism. Around the world, historically, Christianity has been a family affair. Given the safe assumption that all whom God has effective called have come to faith, it is worth noting that God has apparently chosen to disproportionately elect children of believers.

And finally, the continuation of the plan to grow a holy race is seen in the language employed to describe God's people. They are "children of God", "brothers of Christ", "brothers of one another", "a holy nation."

So within the Church, as within Israel, God's plan of growth by means of family continues. This plan of growth, along with the very real evangelistic problem of pseudo-faith (cf. Matthew 13), creates the same tension in the Church that was present in Israel: the "Church as we see it" is not the same as "the Church as God sees it."

In the New Covenant, the promised Holy Spirit helps to better define the boundaries of the Church, but He has not (apparently) chosen to make those boundaries crystal clear. Our knowledge of the Church, as with many things, is "through a glass, darkly."

The next post will consider our knowledge of the Church by means of various perspectives.

JRC

1. I am indebted to a conversation with Dave Durant for the particular way of putting this. Also present here are ideas from O. Palmer Robertson and John Murray.
2. It also seems that the schools of the Pharisees mistook remnant theology (the notion that God had chosen a remnant by grace) for covenantal nomism (the notion that their status was "in the covenant" unless they fell away by failing to keep the law).

The Church in Frame's Frame, Part I

2008-02-13T21:18:00.002-05:00

For various reasons, the PCA has recently become embroiled in a debate over this question: What is the Church? Who belongs to it? What can we say about those who are visibly members of our church, yet do not have true, fruitful, and persevering faith?

The questions are a direct result of the tension inherent in the Scriptures between God's eternal decrees to save His people and His visible outworking of those plans. On the one hand, the Church is the set of those who are effectually called by God to salvation. On the other, the way in which God works out His calling, seen especially in the government of the Church and also His special consideration for the family, requires us to honor the boundaries of the Church as we see it.

I will argue that the tension between the decrees and their visible outworking denies us the ability to view God's Church through a single lens. There is no salvation-o-meter by which we may measure "the true Church as God sees it." That leaves us collecting knowledge about the Church by means of various perspectives. The Scriptures speak at times of the Church in terms of our ethical obligations to a visible body; at times, in terms of the fruit that we see in ourselves and others; and at times, in terms of our own knowledge of our faith and participation of the promises of God. These three perspectives cohere together to give us approximate knowledge of the Church of God.

The Church is the Company of the Elect

Most obvious in the Scriptures is that the Church is Jesus' bride for whom He died, the flock for whom He laid down His life. This perspective is brought out clearly in the writings of John (John 10; Rev. 5.9-10; Rev. 21), Paul (Eph. 5.25-27), and Peter (1 Peter 1.1-2). The death of Christ for His people is the basis for their forgiveness of sins (Eph. 1, Rom. 5), enabling them to be God's justified people (Rom. 3). Hence, it is the fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham to "be a God" to his descendants, to Eve that her "seed would crush the head of the serpent", and to Israel concerning the new covenant that would remove the principle of sin and death.

In short, when Scripture speaks to and of the Church, it often speaks of it as "the Church as only God can see it" in all of its glory throughout time, the company of the elect who form together a temple in whom God dwells and is worshiped (Eph. 2).

While this view of the Church is in some sense eternal -- "eschatological" -- it would be a mistake to believe that it is a view only possible or practical at the end of time. Far from it; when Paul writes to the church in Rome, he clearly presents their present experience as an intrusion of the eschatological into their lives. Hence:

What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. -- Rom 6.1-7

Here, as elsewhere, Paul argues from the Roman Christians' participation in the eschatological new life, resurrection, and freedom from sin to their behavior in the here-and-now. He is speaking to them as if it were a settled issue that they have been granted the salvation that characterizes membership in the people of God. The same kind of language is evident throughout the epistles, both Pauline and catholic (e.g., 1 Pet 1).

In systematic terms, of course, we are talking about nothing more nor less than the invisible church of WCoF 25.1.

Further, it is clear in Scriptures that God considers this Church, the company of the elect, to be "the real Church." That is to say, those who do not believe and are not elect have no real right to be there. Instructive on this point are 1 Cor 5, 2 Cor 6.14-18, and Matt 13.24ff).¹

More can be said about this Church as God sees it, the "invisible church." It's probably best to let the Scriptures speak for themselves.

Rom. 1.6-8
Eph. 1.18-23
Eph. 3.4-12
Eph. 5.22-33
Phil. 1.1-11
Col. 1.17-23
1 Tim. 3.15
Heb. 12.18-24

But one necessary point needs to be made in preparation for what follows: Our knowledge of this church is necessarily incomplete. There are those who imagine themselves to be a part of it, and yet are not (Matt. 7.21-23). There are teachers who participate in the fellowship of the saints, yet have no legitimate part in it (Jude, 2 Cor 11.1-15). Conversely, there are those who worry about their salvation and yet definitely belong to Christ (Rev. 2.8-11). This body to which we belong, the Church, looks fuzzy to our eyes.

The next post will examine the visible outworking of God's plan in the Church, and why it is that we must speak of and honor the visible aspect of the Church.

1. John Murray makes this point in "Christian Baptism", ch. 3.

The Nature of Saving Faith

2008-02-11T20:42:00.001-05:00

Can Faith Be Equated With Faithfulness?

"To believe is to obey." This was the thesis of Pastor Dave's sermon this Sunday. He and his wife had lunch with us afterwards, and it gave an opportunity for talking with him about this very point, which has in God's providence been one of my ruminations over the last couple of weeks.

Dave's sermon, incidentally, developed the point by examining why it is in Luke 9 that Jesus did not meet with Herod despite the fact that Herod seemed eager. Why not? Because disobedience -- cutting off the head of John the Baptist, say -- amounts to a denial of God's truth, amounts to unbelief. Clearly, Herod's eagerness to see Jesus was something other than faith.

Dave didn't mention 1 Cor 10 or Heb 10.26-39 in this context, but such were obviously in the background. To disobey is to deny; hence, to believe is to obey.

This was interesting for me because of recent conversations concerning the nature of saving faith (here , here, and here). Is it legitimate to speak of saving faith as "faithfulness"? Is it legitimate to require that saving faith include obedience as a part of its definition? Is it legitimate to require that saving faith be purely receptive of the grace of God? At the back of these questions are concerns on the one hand about legalism, and concerns on the other about antinomianism.

All of these questions are raised by a pair of recent books, the latest in the ongoing Protestant quest to nail down "saving faith" to the systematic subflooring with nary a bubble. These two are Covenant, Justification, and Pastoral Ministry and A Faith That Is Never Alone. The former is a product primarily of Westminster Seminary West and argues (I am told) for a hard separation between faith and obedience in a definitional sense. The latter is a product primarily of Norm Shepherd and those influenced by him, including many Federal Vision lights. It argues, apparently, that faith must include obedience by definition; that is, that faith is faithfulness.

Both are on my reading list, so the summaries above are second hand. Certainly, this post will not be an attempt to interact with either work!

Rather, I thought merely to blog some preliminary thoughts about faith viewed from two perspectives. From the "black-box", empirical perspective, faith looks like faithfulness. When we open up the box and peer inside, it turns out that faith proper is an instrument that receives God's grace, which leads necessarily to obedience. In other words, the inner workings of faith do not properly include obedience; and yet, living faith is always necessarily obedient.

Think about faith as it is presented in James. Not merely in chapter 2, but in the whole of the epistle, the burden of James is this: if your faith is genuine, then it will be seen in the works of your hands (Jas 1.26, 3.13, 4.4 but also 1.3-4, 1.5-8, passim). Or as I often say to my students, "You don't really know something until you know it in your hands." James says in effect, "You don't really believe something until you believe it with your hands."

The author to the Hebrews presents the contrapositive: that those who disobey are unbelievers. So for instance, he warns

So, as the Holy Spirit says:

"Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts
as you did in the rebellion,
during the time of testing in the desert,
where your fathers tested and tried me
and for forty years saw what I did.
That is why I was angry with that generation,
and I said, 'Their hearts are always going astray,
and they have not known my ways.'
So I declared on oath in my anger,
'They shall never enter my rest.' "

See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first. As has just been said:

"Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts
as you did in the rebellion."

Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the desert? And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed? So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief. -- Heb. 3.7-19

Time does not permit examining Jesus' take on saving faith (think for example of the fruitful soil of Matt. 13 or the Rich Young Ruler of Luke 18), nor even Paul's confirmation that the disobedient are unbelievers (1 Cor 5.11-13, Eph. 5.6 || Col. 3.6, Tit. 1.16).

All of this is strong confirming evidence that to believe is to obey. We might call this the 'empirical perspective' on faith. From the outside without any access to the inner workings of faith, what does it look like to believe? It looks like obedience to God's commands. As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.

In many pastoral settings, this is exactly what is needed. Indeed, as I work with students in my Ethics class, we talk often about integrity as a person; that is, having actions that are consistent with our stated beliefs.

The 'empirical perspective', then, can include obedience within faith as a matter of operational definition. If we think of faith as a kind of black box whose inputs are the promises and commands of God and whose output is obedience, it makes sense to view 'faith' as faithfulness.

But it turns out that not all pastoral problems can be solved by this approach. Indeed, one of the problems that Paul frequently felt the need to counter in his ministry was the problem of legalism.

By "legalism", I don't mean what Wright is so anxious to clear the Pharisees of -- a kind of merit-gaining by means of racking up righteousness points. Nor do I mean the addition of human laws to God's law; nor strict scrupulousness in keeping God's law. All of these are, of course, kinds of legalism.

But the more general definition of "legalism" that fits best what Paul argued against is this: legalism is obedience to the Law in the power of the flesh.¹

It's immediately obvious that legalism in this sense can look exactly like our black-box definition of faith. Inputs: commands and promises of God. Outputs: obedience (at least by the metric of the legalistic community).

And yet, Christians all agree (following Paul) that legalism amounts to a different gospel -- unbelief! Or better, pseudo-belief.

How?

To get at this, we must follow Paul and open up the black box, examine what goes on inside the inner workings of faith.

And when we do, we find that the faith that saves is not actually itself obedience to the Law. Instead, for Paul as he addresses the Romans, Galatians, and Philippians, faith is an instrument that lays hold of the promises of God and receives as a result the work of God: justification, sanctification, adoption, the indwelling of the Spirit. Faith in this sense is separate from obedience to the Law.

We can see this most starkly in Luther's favorite epistle, Galatians. Crucial for Paul in his argument there is that we receive the Spirit by trusting in the promises of God over against obeying the Law (Gal. 3). He insists that we are justified by faith apart from performing works of the Law (Rom. 3, 4)².

This is mind-bending. Our black-box definition of faith was comfortable in including obedience as a part of its definition. Yet the inner workings of faith are set, apparently, apart from obedience. How?

The key (I think) is to view the black box as consisting of two components under the hood. Faith itself is that which lays hold of God's promises. As a result, God acts. He unites us to Himself, working in us through the power of the Spirit. As a result of that action, we are changed, both in initial salvation and also in its ongoing expression of sanctification. The result of that change is ... obedience.

Now, the relationship between our faith and God's work in us is inseparable from a causation perspective. Genuine, living faith will always result in God's work, resulting in obedience. Hence, the black-box perspective is operationally valid.

However, it is also incomplete. To those who labor under the illusion that their flesh-generated obedience is the same as the work of the Spirit, it must be told: faith is a receptive, not generative, instrument. 'Faithfulness' is not faith; it is the outcome of God's work in us that comes through faith.

Put another way, an emphasis on the work of the Holy Spirit is an irreducible part of teaching on faith and obedience. Without that teaching, legalists are led from bad to worse. With it, we can say to both antinomians and legalists: "The cure is to believe."

JRC

1. I am indebted to Jack Miller for this definition. It makes sense of Paul's frequent coupling of the flesh/Spirit dichotomy with his faith/works of the Law dichotomy. It also makes sense of the Pharisees' simultaneous reliance on the Law *and* antinomian tendencies -- both of which are sourced from the flesh nature.
2. Utterly unconvincing are solutions that try to make Paul's disparagement of fleshly obedience to the Law mean something limited: Jewish separatism from Gentiles, or adherence to OT ceremonial law. To argue thus makes light of Paul's robust view of the Law, which was in line with Jesus' (cf. Gal. 5.14). The "curse of the Law" was not visited on Jesus because Gentiles ate pork!

Great Spangled Fritillary (Speyeria cybele)

2007-12-26T21:17:00.000-05:00

Brown, Big, and Bold.

This is the best way to describe the Great-Spangled, a frequent visitor to my garden and one of the first butterflies I encountered upon moving to MD over fifteen years ago.

The shots below were taken in a neighbor's yard in June. Early June through late July is the best time for them; on one July 4 outing, we saw over 125 in a single locale.

The Fritillaries were formerly viewed as close relatives of Crescents and Checkerspots, but more recent studies showed them to be related to the Longwings, Heliconidae. As a result, the latter family was merged into Nymphalidae and a new subfamily was formed: the Heliconiiae, of which the Fritillaries are a member.

A note on pronunciation: I grew up saying "FruhtILLery", which as it turns out is a British rendering. Americans in the know say "FrIHtulary." Watevah.

Species description
Click for shots

Frederick CO, 2006.06.18

Frederick CO, 2006.06.18

Admirals (Limenitis)

2007-12-25T19:14:00.001-05:00

The Admirals are a beautiful but somewhat underappreciated group of butterflies spanning from California to Maryland and from Wisconsin to Texas. Generally, they are medium-sized dark butterflies with white banding resembling military stripes, but this banding is absent in the Red-Spotted Purple. The Viceroy (L. archippus) is the genus outlier, with orange and black markings that strongly imitate the Monarch.

The common and famous Red Admiral is only distantly related to the Admirals.

Click for shots

Lorquin's Admiral (L. lorquini)

A West Coast specialty. This individual was seen in San Diego July 2, 2005 in a small stand of trees near a stream.

Weidemeyer's Admiral (L. weidemeyerii)

Durango, CO (Wilderness Trails Ranch) Aug. 20, 2004
A western admiral, somewhat uncommon.

The Red-Spotted Purple (L. arthemis astyanax)

Gorgeous and very common in Maryland. The lower picture captures somewhat of the iridescent sheen that comes off of the upper wings in fresh individuals. This individual, seen in North Bay, MD Aug. 31, 2007, is lapping up salts off of the road surface, a common practice for some species. Red-Spotted Purples tend to do this frequently and can often be seen on rotting fruit, horse manure, etc. Here's a relatively rare shot of one on a flower (Buddleia):

The White Admiral (L. arthemis)

No pics. :( Within the last thirty years, this species and the above, L. astyanax, were merged by taxonomists into a single species. Essentially, L. arthemis is found north and west, while L. arthemis astyanax is found south and east. There are records of this one in Maryland, but I only know of someone who knows of someone who claims to have seen two in his lifetime. OK, then. On to...

The Viceroy (L. archippus)

This is probably the world's most famous mimic species of all. The renowned Monarch feeds on milkweed species and causes a vomiting reaction in birds; the Viceroy looks nearly identical and (so it has been conjectured for about 100 years) benefits from Batesian mimicry.

Except that recent studies have debunked all that and find that Viceroys taste bad in their own right.

Oh well. They still are gorgeous.

Carroll Co, July 4, 2007. The black stripes on the hindwing that cut across the veins make a "V" for Viceroy; this is a reliable mark both above and below that distinguishes from the Monarch.

Red-Banded Hairstreak (Calycopis cecrops)

2007-12-25T13:54:00.000-05:00

The Red-banded Hairstreak is unusual in that its larvae feed on dead leaves on the forest floor. According to the literature, foodplants include various oaks and sumacs, including staghorn sumac, but I've never seen any individuals on or near sumac.

The individuals I've seen have shown a tendency towards shade or sun/shade edges in the forest. They also show a proclivity for water, and I've had more than one occasion to scoop one out of a pool.

These are very common in the South; I see them routinely in Houston, and have also seen individuals at Antietam, Myrtle Beach, Lisbon, North Bay, in our back yard, and elsewhere.

Species description
Click for shots

Myrtle Beach, SC Apr. 5, 2007

North Bay, MD Aug. 29, 2007

Scooped from our kiddie pool Aug 23, 2006

Temporary Justification Excursis: Definitive Sanctification

2007-12-15T14:49:00.000-05:00

Previous parts: Part I Part II

So far, the discussion of temporary justification has focused on the relationship of Dort to the theology of Non-Elect Covenant Members. Before focusing on Dort V, I wish to consider the concept of "definitive sanctification" and its relationship to justification and perseverance. I claim here that a genuine change takes place upon faith, and that this change is a guarantee of perseverance. I further audaciously claim that denial of this change amounts to an abandonment of monergism.

In this post, Xon put forward this idea:

"elect Bob and reprobate Sam experience the same things, but God does not sustain Sam; hence, he falls away."

That is, there is no ontological change wrought in the believer *except* for the direct operation of the Spirit which can be withdrawn according to the desires of God.

click to toggle Xon's full comments

Another problematic point in Dordt (I'm simply plagiariazing James Jordan on this observation), which is not directly related to the current discussion but still touches on 'FVish' issues. Dordt says that regeneration involves the elect being given an 'incorruptible seed" for a new heart. It speaks as though ONLY the elect are given this 'new heart.' But then it also speaks of the Holy Spirit being sent to preserve the faithful. But why do the faithful need preserving if they already have been given an 'incorruptible' heart?

The tension in Dordt is that it waffles (a few times; I have no systematic objection to this wonderful confession of the Reformed faith) between trying to speak of some 'a priori' differentiation between elect and reprobate other than God's decree, on the one hand, and trying to speak of the biographical experience of the elect and the reprobate, on the other.

The FV position, to me, is a claim that the 'a priori' difference is in the decrees of God. Bob is elect and Sam is reprobate b/c God decreed it that way. But that's pretty much all we can say with certainty, from Scripture about Bob and Sam's 'differences.' Bob and Sam are both baptized, they both are active in their local covenant community, they both seem to receive the Word with great joy, etc. And it's not just that Sam is 'faking' like a hypocrite. This is not just an epistemological problem of we finite humans being unable to tell who the 'genuine' believer is and who the 'fake' is. Sam may not be a 'fake' at all. He may very well genuinely enjoy a relatoinship with God, the wrestling guidance of the Holy Spirit, etc. In fact, at any particular 'cross-section' of their respective lives, Sam may be closer to God than Bob is. The difference between Bob and Sam in the decree of God works itself through time, biographically. Sam eventually apostasizes, loses faith, is excommunicated, etc. Until this happens, things are much more mysterious than we Reformed often want to say. We often want to cram these mysteries into tight categories of "elect over here" and 'reprobates over there," and then simply acknowledge that we don't know which camp Bob or Sam is in. But FVers think (as I read them) that there's something more going on than that in the experience of Sam.

But here comes Dordt, saying that the 'orthodox' position is that only the elect ever receive this 'new heart' called regeneration (which is itself a different usage of 'regeneration' than that of the original reformers, of course). So, presumably, when Bob and Sam both have their initial experience of faith (Bob's pemranent, Sam's temporary), Bob receives this 'new heart' which Sam doesn't get.

This move is logically unnecessary (Since Scripture teaches that the Spirit preserves the faithful, there is no need for God to give the elect an 'incorruptible' heart on the 'front end.' God will preserve them moment-by-moment in the faith, and they are just as secure that way. Plus, the giving of an initial 'incorruptible' heart seems an awfully close analogue to Deism, making God an unnecessary appendage to future perseverance.)

~~A similar comment is made as an aside by Mark Horne while engaging Samuel Miller's arguments:~~

"On other terms such as “born from above,” “born again,” “reborn,” etc, I would very much like to see a non-circular argument that these refer to an interior transformation worked directly by the Spirit which irreversibly guarantees persevering faith–that is, “great moral change, wrought by the Spirit of God, which must pass upon everyone before he can be in a state of salvation."

Mark Horne has since clarified (comm. 60-63) that he definitely believes in some kind of ontological difference between NECMs and ECMs; he just does not see it in the terms "born again."

What Xon apparently wishes to preserve is the continued dependence of the believer on the sustaining work of the Spirit, and I wish to stand with him on this point.

But more needs to be said, for the Scriptures *do* speak of an irreversible change wrought in the hearts of believers. This change, described as "definitive sanctification" by John Murray, as "regeneration" by John Calvin and Dort, and as being "dead to sin" in the Scripture, forms a part of the basis for our assurance of salvation.

Thus, if we are to faithfully present to the Church the promises of God, we must also present this one: all those who truly believe have died to sin, have been sealed with the Spirit, and thus are assured of God's faithful, continued work to preserve them to the end.

Hence, I've put forward a provocative thesis: Xon's premise is an abandonment of monergism. I aim to prove this below.

John Murray summarized an important aspect of Reformed soteriology in his teaching on definitive sanctification. In short, Murray taught that sanctification in the Scriptures often refers to "some decisive action that occurs at the inception of the Christian life and one that characterizes the people of God in their identity as called effectually by God’s grace."

Important here is that DS (a) is decisive, "once-for-all" and (b) characterizes the identity of the recipient as effectually called.

First and most importantly, what is the Scriptural basis for such a teaching?

The inadequacy of the Old Covenant can be described in this way: while the Israelites were given the promises of God, still they were unable to obey God's commands (Josh. 24.14-27). Hence, though they were within the scope of God's covenant, they lacked the resources -- specifically, the work of the indwelling Spirit -- needed to be obedient and faithful (Hos 1-3). In short, covenantal nomism was a failure.

(In fact, the nature of the Spirit's work is indistinct in the Old Testament. Clearly, believers did at times experience the work of the Spirit -- cf. Gal. 3.14, Ps. 51.11. But such work was not as direct or continual as in the New Testament. This should lead us to be cautious in applying, e.g., Saul's experience in 1 Sam 19.23-24 to believers post-Pentacost, or to reckon his experience as typical for an NECM).

Thus, the promised New Covenant included not only the fruition of the sacrificial types but also the promise of the indwelling Spirit to "write the Law on the hearts" (Jer 31, Ezek. 37). Importantly, the work of the Spirit is specifically designated as an antidote to apostasy.

Now as the New Covenant is proclaimed in the Gospels and epistles, it is expressed in a variety of terms:

being "brought from death to life" (Eph. 2.1-5)
"dying to sin" (Rom. 6.1-14, 7.6)
"being crucified with Christ" (Gal. 2.20)
being "transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of the Son (Col. 1.13-14)
Being given "eternal life" (John 3.14-18, 5.24, 6.32-51)
Being made a son of God and heir of a promised inheritance (John 1.12, Rom 8.15-17, Gal 3.26-29).
Being predestined to adoption (Eph 1.5)
Being sealed with the Holy Spirit as a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance (2 Cor 1.22, Eph 1.14)
Being given a "new man" or "new nature" created to be like Christ (Eph. 4.22,23; Col. 3.10)
Entering into God's rest (Heb 3) -- though Gaffin reads this as exiting this life and entering heaven.

Now to answer Mark's query above: there are several strands of evidence that indicate that Definitive Sanctification is irreversible. First and foremost, we should note that the language is that of permanent change in status. It is difficult to imagine that the metaphor of "dying to sin" could include later becoming alive to sin once more. It is likewise difficult to understand how God could give "eternal life" that could actually be temporary, or how He could predestine a person to an adoption that he would later not receive.

Second, at no point in Scripture is it ever predicated that one of these changes is reversed. To be sure, there are warnings against "falling away" (to be addressed in another post). And it is possible to read those warnings as indications of real contingencies for people described by the list above. But in the end, we search in vain for any clear indication that such a reading is certainly correct.

So for example, we read in the parable of the soils of people who show faith for a time and then fall away (Matt 13). But Jesus does not say of them that they received eternal life, then lost it. In fact, in the parable, it appears that these were doomed from the beginning by virtue of their "soil." The construction of the parable suggests that there was an underlying ontological reality from the beginning that guaranteed their apostasy, and that the faith they exhibited above ground did not come from the root of genuine faith.

To analyze Matthew 13 in detail here would carry us too far afield. The main point still stands: the various warning passages do not, in the end, provide dispositive evidence that one can receive the items listed above and then lose them. The closest we might come to such a passage would be Hebrews 10.29, yet even that passage is by no means clear.

Third, the passages above are passages of promise intended to shape the Christian's self-image, leading to a particular attitude towards sin and a confidence in future salvation. These promises can only make sense if the changes made are permanent ones. We see this most clearly in the Roman and Corinthian epistles:

Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. -- Rom 6.8-12

You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you. -- Rom 8.9-11

Here, Paul is asking the Romans to see themselves as irreversibly dead to sin and indwelt by the Spirit. On that basis, they are to trust the Spirit to give life and put to death the misdeeds of the body. If DS were irreversible, it would make no sense for Paul to tell them to reckon themselves as dead to sin, or to trust that the Spirit *will* give life to their mortal bodies.

So given that Definitive Sanctification is a reality for the Christian, what can we say of it? Xon wishes to register the opinion that Definitive Sanctification is not an autonomous change, but rather one maintained by the Spirit.

I fully agree. Romans 8 and Galatians 2.20 and 5.16-26 seem proof positive that the fruit of the new nature is the result of the ongoing work of the Spirit, so that if He were to withdraw His hand, our "new nature" would come to naught.

At the same time, the language above is so, well, "definitive" that we must insist that the Scripture presents the change as a *change in us*, a new ontological reality.

So from the Scriptures, we are left with this picture: Definitive Sanctification is a real change in us that is maintained and empowered by the Holy Spirit. We simply don't have enough information to say more than this, but it appears to be the case that DS is both *real* but also *dynamically maintained.*

The direction I've taken here coincides with the teachings of Calvin and Dort. Calvin labeled the change wrought in the believer as "regeneration."[1] He says,

click to toggle Inst. 3.3.9

Both [mortification of the flesh and quickening of the Spirit] we obtain by union with Christ. For if we have true fellowship in his death, our old man is crucified by his power, and the body of sin becomes dead, so that the corruption of our original nature is never again in full vigor. If we are partakers in his resurrection, we are raised up by means of it to newness of life, which conforms us to the righteousness of God. In one word, then, by repentance I understand regeneration, the only aim of which is to form in us anew the image of God, which was sullied, and all but effaced by the transgression of Adam. -- Inst. 3.3.9

For Calvin, the possession or otherwise of "regeneration" was the distinction between the elect and the reprobate:

click to toggle Inst. 3.2.11

I am aware it seems unaccountable to some how faith is attributed to the reprobate, seeing that it is declared by Paul to be one of the fruits of election; and yet the difficulty is easily solved: for though none are enlightened into faith, and truly feel the efficacy of the Gospel, with the exception of those who are fore-ordained to salvation, yet experience shows that the reprobate are sometimes affected in a way so similar to the elect, that even in their own judgment there is no difference between them. Hence it is not strange, that by the Apostle a taste of heavenly gifts, and by Christ himself a temporary faith, is ascribed to them. Not that they truly perceive the power of spiritual grace and the sure light of faith; but the Lord, the better to convict them, and leave them without excuse, instills into their minds such a sense of his goodness as can be felt without the Spirit of adoption. Should it be objected, that believers have no stronger testimony to assure them of their adoption, I answer, that though there is a great resemblance and affinity between the elect of God and those who are impressed for a time with a fading faith, yet the elect alone have that full assurance which is extolled by Paul, and by which they are enabled to cry, Abba, Father. Therefore, as God regenerates the elect only for ever by incorruptible seed, as the seed of life once sown in their hearts never perishes, so he effectually seals in them the grace of his adoption, that it may be sure and steadfast. But in this there is nothing to prevent an inferior operation of the Spirit from taking its course in the reprobate. Meanwhile, believers are taught to examine themselves carefully and humbly, lest carnal security creep in and take the place of assurance of faith. We may add, that the reprobate never have any other than a confused sense of grace, laying hold of the shadow rather than the substance, because the Spirit properly seals the forgiveness of sins in the elect only, applying it by special faith to their use. Still it is correctly said, that the reprobate believe God to be propitious to them, inasmuch as they accept the gift of reconciliation, though confusedly and without due discernment; not that they are partakers of the same faith or regeneration with the children of God; but because, under a covering of hypocrisy, they seem to have a principle of faith in common with them. Nor do I even deny that God illumines their minds to this extent, that they recognize his grace; but that conviction he distinguishes from the peculiar testimony which he gives to his elect in this respect, that the reprobate never attain to the full result or to fruition. When he shows himself propitious to them, it is not as if he had truly rescued them from death, and taken them under his protection. He only gives them a manifestation of his present mercy. In the elect alone he implants the living root of faith, so that they persevere even to the end. Thus we dispose of the objection, that if God truly displays his grace, it must endure for ever. There is nothing inconsistent in this with the fact of his enlightening some with a present sense of grace, which afterwards proves evanescent. -- Inst. 3.2.11

It is clear, then, that for Calvin in whatever external sense the reprobate might "believe" (and it might be in such a sense as to deceive even himself), he is never for a moment delivered from death or the possessor of the living roots of faith.

Also important here are Inst. 3.14.7,12; 3.17; 3.18; 3.21.7; and 3.23.

The Canons of Dort saw in regeneration the promise of perseverance:

Those people whom God according to his purpose calls into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord and regenerates by the Holy Spirit, he also sets free from the reign and slavery of sin, though in this life not entirely from the flesh and from the body of sin. -- Dort V.1

So it is not by their own merits or strength but by God's undeserved mercy that they neither forfeit faith and grace totally nor remain in their downfalls to the end and are lost. With respect to themselves this not only easily could happen, but also undoubtedly would happen; but with respect to God it cannot possibly happen, since his plan cannot be changed, his promise cannot fail, the calling according to his purpose cannot be revoked, the merit of Christ as well as his interceding and preserving cannot be nullified, and the sealing of the Holy Spirit can neither be invalidated nor wiped out. -- Dort V.8

Concerning this preservation of those chosen to salvation and concerning the perseverance of true believers in faith, believers themselves can and do become assured in accordance with the measure of their faith, by which they firmly believe that they are and always will remain true and living members of the church, and that they have the forgiveness of sins and eternal life. -- Dort V.9

For Dort, regeneration is the linchpin in the argument for monergistic perseverance. God has begun a work; He will be faithful to complete it. If we could mess up our own salvation, we would.

But also in Dort, regeneration flows from union with Christ. Hence, all who are united with Christ receive the promise of perseverance that comes from the sealing of the Holy Spirit.

Thus, there is a genuine ontological difference in Reformed theology (and Scripture!) between the NECMs and the elect. The former have not received DS; the latter have. The former have not died to sin; the latter have. The former have not been brought from death to life; the latter have. The former do not have a deposit guaranteeing their inheritance; the latter have.

Finally then we come to the exchange here:

JRC:

"If anyone is lost, it cannot be on account of God's unwilli[n]gness to make good His deposit."

XH:

"I'm not sure about this. I wouldn't call it God 'not making good.' God never had any intention of preserving that person to the end. Either the 'deposit' was different for that person than for the elect, or (probably a more natural way of speaking) the deposit is contingent upon remaining faithful. Deposit/earnest are legal/covenantal concepts, and the covenant can have terms. There is no need to insist that the 'deposit' in Eph. 1 refers to an unbreakable contract."

Let's examine this objection in more detail.

Xon is postulating that a deposit could be given by God, but subject to certain conditions. Certainly this is possible.

But now we consider the sad case of Alice, who believes (temporarily) and dies to sin, comes to life in Christ, is predestined to adoption, forgiven of sins past present and future in Christ, and is given the deposit of the Spirit guaranteeing her inheritance.

And ten years later, she falls away and dies a reprobate.

What can we say of her reprobation? It seems that we must either say

(a) Alice chose of her own free will to fall away, OR
(b) God chose of his own free will to stop maintaining her faith.

If (a), then perseverance is synergistic. If (b), then what condition did Alice possibly fail to meet that would cause God to cease to maintain her? It was not her lack of perseverance, for that was caused by God.

One might object that God simply elected to allow her to have faith for a time, so that her falling away is ultimately contingent on election. But in that case, we cannot say that God sealed her with the Spirit as the guarantor of her inheritance. Rather, He sealed her with the Spirit as a guarantor of ... well, her inheritance if she maintained it.

But we cannot say that the deposit was given contingent upon remaining faithful. For in the end, Alice was not dropped because she was unfaithful; she was unfaithful because she was dropped. The contingency rested not with her, but with God.

In short, monergism requires unconditionality. Put differently, a salvation that is solely the work of God cannot be thwarted by human contingencies.

But one may say, "Salvation is contingent on faith as an instrument" -- and this is true. But the faith itself is also the free gift of God. God in his election does not leave our faith "to chance."

So also, when God seals us with the regeneration of the Spirit, with definitive sanctification, He is pledging to us that our perseverance has not been left to chance. It is guaranteed to the end.

1. Calvin's use of "regeneration" is somewhat more in keeping with Titus 3.5. For the second generation Reformers, the term took on quitea different meaning, the work of the Spirit preparatory to faith.
2. It is worth noting that there is equivocation here in Xon's language vis-a-vis WCoF 17.1-2. For Xon, the elect are those who persevere to the end according to God's choice. For WCoF, those whom God has chosen to be elect will persevere according to the changes wrought within them. The set is the same, but the causality is subtly changed.

Temporary Justification II -- Election and Dort

2007-12-12T21:06:00.000-05:00

Previous Parts: Part I

So far, I've argued that the FV notion of "Temporary Justification" is in real (not apparent) conflict with the Canons of Dort, Article I.

With Xon's help, this thesis has been shaped a bit (see below). Now, the second piece of the argument will be advanced:

That TJ is Contrary to the Second Canon of Dort

Update on where we are:

(1) It appears that TJ needs to be modified as follows:

TJ: Some people acquire the verdict of 'forgiven' that they then lose.

click for Xon's comments

But clearly, as Rich Lusk's quote shows, what we are talking about is some sort of 'quasi-justification'. Something that is not necessarily the same as what we usually think of as 'justification,' but close enough that the it makes sense to use the word. This is what I tried to describe in TJ: a judicial verdict that brings about a positive change in status, but only temporarily. And you have modified TJ slightly here into "a judicial verdict of 'forgiven' from God." And that's an okay modification to make, especially since you seem to have some FV quotes to back up the word 'forgiveness' being used.

But anyway my point is just that we need to be extra clear as to what we are talking about when we say 'justification' in J1. FVers are not saying that 'justification' in the full sense described in the Westminster Standards can be acquited, then lost. So I think we need to build some sort of qualification into J1. Perhaps we should continue to use the description given in TJ, so something like this results:

J1: There is a verdict of 'forgiven' that can be acquired, then lost.

The point is that FVers do not deny that there is also a verdict of 'forgiven' which can never be lost. So we have to be sure to speak of these things in a way that makes it clear that we are not discussing 'justification' full stop, as though there is one such thing as 'justification' and now we are debating whether it can be lost or not. We are really discussing two things that are subject to both similarities and differences. Similar enough to both be called 'justification.' But different enough that one is permanent and one is temporary.

(2) One way of sharpening the FV position is that the Elect Covenant Members and the Non-Elect Covenant Members have the same experiences on the "front end" of salvation. The difference is that God, at some point, withdraws His hand from the NECM, resulting in a falling away. In this way, the FV continues to affirm monergism while at the same time allowing that (covenantal) salvation can be lost.

click for Xon's comments

The FV position, to me, is a claim that the 'a priori' difference is in the decrees of God. Bob is elect and Sam is reprobate b/c God decreed it that way. But that's pretty much all we can say with certainty, from Scripture about Bob and Sam's 'differences.' Bob and Sam are both baptized, they both are active in their local covenant community, they both seem to receive the Word with great joy, etc. And it's not just that Sam is 'faking' like a hypocrite. This is not just an epistemological problem of we finite humans being unable to tell who the 'genuine' believer is and who the 'fake' is. Sam may not be a 'fake' at all. He may very well genuinely enjoy a relatoinship with God, the wrestling guidance of the Holy Spirit, etc. In fact, at any particular 'cross-section' of their respective lives, Sam may be closer to God than Bob is. The difference between Bob and Sam in the decree of God works itself through time, biographically. Sam eventually apostasizes, loses faith, is excommunicated, etc. Until this happens, things are much more mysterious than we Reformed often want to say. We often want to cram these mysteries into tight categories of "elect over here" and 'reprobates over there," and then simply acknowledge that we don't know which camp Bob or Sam is in. But FVers think (as I read them) that there's something more going on than that in the experience of Sam.

But here comes Dordt, saying that the 'orthodox' position is that only the elect ever receive this 'new heart' called regeneration (which is itself a different usage of 'regeneration' than that of the original reformers, of course). So, presumably, when Bob and Sam both have their initial experience of faith (Bob's pemranent, Sam's temporary), Bob receives this 'new heart' which Sam doesn't get.

This move is logically unnecessary (Since Scripture teaches that the Spirit preserves the faithful, there is no need for God to give the elect an 'incorruptible' heart on the 'front end.' God will preserve them moment-by-moment in the faith, and they are just as secure that way. Plus, the giving of an initial 'incorruptible' heart seems an awfully close analogue to Deism, making God an unnecessary appendage to future perseverance.)

(I have to point out now that this is actually the outer reaches of FV space. Jordan's position is controversial even to other FVers. Doug Wilson and he have gone back and forth (amicably) on this topic. FYI.)

(3) At this point, JRC has made the audacious claim that this point surrenders monergism. Clearly, JRC's definition of monergism is different from XH's!

(4) And now, XH has also offered the hypothesis that "All blessings, special or common, come from Christ" -- specifically (apparently) from His death on the cross.

click for Xon's comments

But any grace that a person recieves from God, be it 'common' or special, can only come on account of Christ. It is Christ who has reconciled the world to God, and this must be true of the whole world, in whatever sense the whole world is indeed reconciled. Many people are not in fact ultimately reconciled to God; they are judged and go to perdition. But these folks, even the rankest unbelievers, nonetheless experience 'common grace,' as we say. But this common grace must have been secured by Christ on the cross, mustn't it? Otherwise how can God show grace (even the merely common kind) to sinners?

So Christ's death is applied to all people, in some sense. Any time a reprobate person receives a temporary blessing from God in his earthly life, that's Christ's death on the cross working to his benefit.

This hits precisely at why I have a problem with Dordt, and it's not b/c I deny any of the TULIP letters. I affirm all of them; but Dordt takes a few of them beyond what they logically entail. All we need the "L" of TULIP to mean, for example, is that Jesus died for the elect only with respect to eternal salvation. But Dordt goes on to say that Christ died for the elect only, period. (I'm paraphrasing, clearly.) This leaves us in quite a fix, as Scripturally nothing is more obvious than that all people benefit in some way from Christ's death. (Just the establishement of a Christian civil order, of western civilization, could be a very modest way in which this is true.)

So this leads us to the Second Canon of Dort. First, it is important to note that Dort sees Jesus' death operating to save the elect both from eternal punishment and temporal:

God is not only supremely merciful, but also supremely just. His justice requires (as he has revealed himself in the Word) that the sins we have committed against his infinite majesty be punished with both temporal and eternal punishments, of soul as well as body. We cannot escape these punishments unless satisfaction is given to God's justice. -- Article 1: The Punishment Which God's Justice Requires

Since, however, we ourselves cannot give this satisfaction or deliver ourselves from God's anger, God in his boundless mercy has given us as a guarantee his only begotten Son, who was made to be sin and a curse for us, in our place, on the cross, in order that he might give satisfaction for us. -- Article 2: The Satisfaction Made by Christ

Second, we note that Dort republishes the free offer of the Gospel expressed in John 3 and 6:

Moreover, it is the promise of the gospel that whoever believes in Christ crucified shall not perish but have eternal life. This promise, together with the command to repent and believe, ought to be announced and declared without differentiation or discrimination to all nations and people, to whom God in his good pleasure sends the gospel. -- Article 5: The Mandate to Proclaim the Gospel to All

The picture created by Dort is that all who believe "shall not perish"; that is, they receive a promise from God of eternal (rather than temporary) life. That this promise is intended decretally is confirmed:

But all who genuinely believe and are delivered and saved by Christ's death from their sins and from destruction receive this favor solely from God's grace--which he owes to no one--given to them in Christ from eternity. -- Article 7: Faith God's Gift

And finally, we note the proposition of "limited atonement":

For it was the entirely free plan and very gracious will and intention of God the Father that the enlivening and saving effectiveness of his Son's costly death should work itself out in all his chosen ones, in order that he might grant justifying faith to them only and thereby lead them without fail to salvation. In other words, it was God's will that Christ through the blood of the cross (by which he confirmed the new covenant) should effectively redeem from every people, tribe, nation, and language all those and only those who were chosen from eternity to salvation and given to him by the Father; that he should grant them faith (which, like the Holy Spirit's other saving gifts, he acquired for them by his death); that he should cleanse them by his blood from all their sins, both original and actual, whether committed before or after their coming to faith; that he should faithfully preserve them to the very end; and that he should finally present them to himself, a glorious people, without spot or wrinkle. -- Article 8: The Saving Effectiveness of Christ's Death

Now, the following conclusions can be drawn about the theology of Dort with respect to NECMs:

(1) The "those and only those" language prevents, in the eyes of Dort, attributing "saving faith", "the Holy Spirit's other saving gifts", and "cleansing by his blood" to any but those whom he faithfully preserves to the very end.

(2) We thus see again the Bifurcation Principle of Dort at work: that Dort drives a wedge between the decretally elect and the decretally non-elect, and restricts certain language to be reserved for the elect alone.

(3) This reservation of language is not simply an arbitrary normative rule ("We don't say things like that around here!"), but rather reflects exegetical readings of certain texts.

Specifically, Dort is connecting the language of John 3 and 6, Romans 8, Ephesians 2, and so on to the content of their teaching.

Hence, even if we came up with entirely new terms, such as "Temporary Non-attribution of sins", Dort would still reject an exegesis that found support for such terms in the texts of those passages.

So now, Xon, what of your hypothesis of Universal Death: "But any grace that a person recieves from God, be it 'common' or special, can only come on account of Christ. It is Christ who has reconciled the world to God, and this must be true of the whole world, in whatever sense the whole world is indeed reconciled."? This proposition is very reminiscent of "Chuck" Hodge's words:

[Christ's death] is the ground on which salvation is offered to every creature under heaven who hears the gospel; but it gives no authority for a like offer to apostate angels. It moreover secures to the whole race at large, and to all classes of men, innumerable blessings, both providential and religious. It was, of course, designed to produce these effects; and, therefore, He died to secure them. In view of the effects which the death of Christ produces on the relation of all mankind to God, it has in all ages been customary with Augustinians to say that Christ died 'suffcienter proomnibus, efficaciter tantum pro electi—' sufficiently for all, efficaciously only for the elect. There is a sense, therefore, in which He died for all, and there is a sense in which He died for the elect alone.--Charles Hodge, "For Whom Did Christ Die?"

Except that your claim is somewhat stronger: *all* of God's grace flows from Christ. I wonder about this. For example, I've always associated common grace with the "it is good" of the creation.

But no matter; let's take it as it stands. Does it therefore follow that (a) Jesus' death secures a blessing for the NECMs that can reasonably be called justification, and (b) that any passages of Scripture teach this?

That will really have to be taken up in the third post, but for now it suffices to note that the BF perspective of Dort claims certain passages in its support, which would automatically put the Federal Vision at odds if the latter reads those passages in some other way. Foremost in my mind here is Ephesians 1-2, but also the phrase repeated so often in John, "eternal life." So in particular, if Dort reads, say, Romans 8.28ff as affirming the "Golden Chain", but the FV reads it covenantally, then there is a gap between the two systems.

If then enough exegetical decisions "go the other way", then the gap becomes really large, even if the FV might agree with Dort's language wrt the "decretally elect." In the end, after all, the systematic categories are secondary to the Scripture. If Dort and the FV agree on the systematics but disagree on the exegesis, then what real agreement is there?

A related question: the parable of the wheat and the tares suggests that the leniency towards the tares is for the benefit of the wheat, not the tares. This fits with the many OT passages in which Israel's judgment is postponed "for the sake of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." It also fits with the notion of final judgment being postponed for the sake of the elect in 2 Peter 3.

Could it be the case that the benefits extending to the NECMs (which I do not wish to deny, thinking of Heb 6) are simply exaggerated versions of common grace rather than lesser versions of special grace?

Finally, an observation. From October 31, 1517 onwards, one of the major thrusts of the Reformation was a repudiation of the notion that one could lose one's salvation (except perhaps in extremis acc. to Luther). The 95 Theses were a revolt against the Indulgences because they preyed upon people's fears of loss of grace, using those fears as a hook to motive compliance with the sacramental system.

Likewise, Arminianism was rejected not so much because of its emphasis on free-will entrance into the kingdom, but because it opened the door to free-will exit from the kingdom (no more than a crack: Remonstrant's Proposition 5). One piece of evidence that this is so is the disproportionate ink spilt on perseverance in Dort, over against the very tentative questioning of perseverance in the propositions of the Remonstrants.

Thus, the perseverance of the (true) saints was seen not simply as an abstract affirmation of decrees -- i.e., all that God wants to maintain, He will maintain -- but rather as a Biblical affirmation of assurance: If you have salvation, you cannot lose it.

The FV accepts this in decretal theory, but in covenantal practice¹ it plays up the necessity to persevere rather than the assurance of perseverance.

It is that piece of monergism, the assurance of perseverance, that I believe FV may be abandoning.

In short, the conflict between the FV and Dort 2 is this: Dort 2 appears to restrict the justifying benefit of Christ's death to those who are decretally elect; the FV expands it to (temporarily) include NECMs.

Thoughts?

JRC

1 I should say, "in rhetoric"; I haven't visited any FV churches. I just feel like I know Christ Church through many issues of Credenda back in the early days before "Federal Vision" was a buzzterm.

The American Copper (Lycaena phlaeas)

2007-12-12T19:16:00.001-05:00

The American Copper is a beautiful little gem that flies in MD in late June and early July. My first sight of one here was in summer 2006, but July 2007 yielded a bumper crop. There were about 25 sightings, including one at Watkins Park in Mt. Airy, one in Lisbon, and multiple in northern Carroll Co.

Species description
Will Cook's Shots
My Shots

Schalk Rd, Carroll Co. 7/4/2007

Schalk Rd, Carroll Co. 7/4/2007

Watkins Park, Carroll Co. 6/30/2007

Egg laying!
Watkins Park, Carroll Co. 6/30/2007