Actually, I like Tim Enloe. Really, I do. Still, he as a bad habit of characterizing a conversation in an interesting light. Actually, I only barely recognize the conversation that Tim summarizes in what we can only hope will be his closing post on the subject. I think he re-works the conversation in the way he does because the conversation didn’t really go that well for him.

http://www.dougwils.com/index.asp?Action=Anchor&CategoryID=1&BlogID=6077&Data=3003#posts

Well, at least the important issue of what “reform” even is has been put on table by all this. Those who think the Reformation formulations are the end of the discussion have revealed an attitude which would have prevented the Reformation itself from happening, because they don’t recognize the possibility of fruitfully engaging the tradition understanding that it isn’t a self-contained, self-justifying whole.

1.) I never even came close to saying that there isn’t any possibility of fruitfully engaging the Reformed tradition. Nor, do I necessarily think of it as a self-contained, self-justifying whole, though it could very well be. It all depends on whether or not the people who engage the Reformed tradition ever end up doing so fruitfully. I’ve read a great deal on the engagements so far and I see a lot of good fruit but the good fruit I see is a reclaiming of the Reformed tradition. All the so called “extensions of the Reformed tradition” that I’ve read (especially on justification) is just pretty lousy stuff, that should not satisfy anybody who realizes the depth and width of all that justification by faith alone touches.

2.) As to my attitude … well, I kind of like Ronald Reagan on this score. Reagan said, “trust but verify.” I trust Tim but having looked at what is being offered as a replacement for justification by faith alone, whether it is from Reformed Catholicism, Federal Vision, or New Perspective I can honestly say that I can not verify that it isn’t just another arrangement of justification that is analytic and process at its core.

My concerns in all this have been chiefly the restricting of “the Gospel” both in proclamation to others and belief by others to an explicit consciousness of JBFA – a restriction which seems to prevent “the Gospel” from being readily seen in the Gospels, the Book of Acts, and 1 Corinthians 15.

1.) Tim’s problem here is that he is reading the Gospels, Acts, and I Corinthians 15 in isolation from the rest of the Bible. It’s like saying because you can’t find the name of God in the book of Esther therefore the Bible really isn’t about God. This is nonsense.

2.) I would say that justification is found all over those books that Tim cites if only implicitly. Justification, soteriologically speaking touches everything, therefore if one finds a soteriological fact in any book there will be some way in which justification will eventually be involved.

3) Tim greatly mischaracterizes the conversation because I’ve clearly admitted that people can be justified apart from an explicit consciousness of jbfa. What I have denied is that someone can explicitly deny justification by faith alone and still be considered as justified.

4.) By Tim’s downgrading the importance of justification by faith alone Tim has revealed that it is, for him, no longer the hinge upon which Reformed theology turns. All I can do is recommend people read Buchanan’s book on Justification or Owen’s book on Justification or Chemnitz’s writing on Justification, or Turretin’s writings on Justification or …. (Let me guess Tim … these are all standard Reformed manuals.)

Tim’s downgrade on jbfa and the downgrade that we are seeing through much of the Reformed Church on this doctrine is, in my estimation, an attempt to rebuild Christendom with those who clearly deny jbfa. Christianity is being assaulted and our numbers are dwindling and there seems to be ostensibly Reformed people with opinions that one way to rebuild the crumbling walls of Christendom is by removing those doctrines that divide the epistemologically self-conscious Reformed Biblical believer from those who are seen as sharing our Christian morality. If this project is successful Christendom will go into full eclipse. It is only a Reformation Biblical worldview that includes jbfa that can successfully rebuild a genuine Christendom.

Other than that, my concern is with the demonstrable massive historical ignorance of the Reformed community as a whole regarding the state of the Church prior to the Reformation, including but not limited to (1) the continuity of the Reformers with previous tradition, (2) their knowledge of and creative interaction with issues our standard Manuals never mention, and (3) the simply grossly uncharitable sloganeering about other theological viewpoints. These issues remain as legitimate points of discussion regardless of any regrettable flaring up of personal stuff.

As to the above

(1) Anybody who knows Church History understands how much certain early Church fathers influenced the Reformed. The doctrines of the Reformation didn’t jump out of the Reformers heads as Athena jumped out of Zeus’ head. For Tim to suggest that anybody who disagrees with his profundity doesn’t know Church history is just silly. I’m glad to admit the continuity of the Reformers with previous tradition. Is Tim glad to admit the substantial discontinuity of the Reformers with previous tradition?

(2) Tim keeps mentioning his “standard Manuals” without defining which exact books he has in mind. Now, I’m not the Medieval Church Historian that Tim is but I’ve done a great deal of reading that I’m pretty confident extends well beyond Tim’s “standard Manuals.” This “standard manual” line is just a sophisticated way to disparage somebody who doesn’t agree with Tim.

I will continue to insist however that on this point Tim is just plain upset that people haven’t come to the conclusion that he or his favorite authors have come in light of these “non-Standard manuals.” I will repeat, yet again, there is a host of ways to read the Reformation, the theological/philosophical/cultural influences on the Reformers, and what I call the “psycho-history of the Reformation.” For Tim to insist that his reading must be the standard that measures all other readings is just disingenuous.

Still, I’m all for taking on all comers. The Reformation has nothing to fear from Tim’s non-Standard manuals with their speculation about the Reformers psycho-history.

(3) I quite agree that history can’t fit on a postcard. So, I understand Tim’s concern about sloganeering. Still, I won’t apologize to those who are self consciously against jbfa for any sloganeering I involve myself in. The reason that people are so offended by sloganeering so quickly, I suspect, is because the slogan has hit its target.

I’ve stuck my toe back into the justification – Federal Vision debate over at Doug Wilson’s place.

http://www.dougwils.com/index.asp?action=Anchor&CategoryID=1&BlogID=6077&qdata=2314#posts37240

My conversation partner is Mr. Tim Enloe. Tim’s specialty is Medieval Church history and he is quite well read and extraordinarily intelligent. I can genuinely say that I would love for Tim to teach Church history to my children.

However, Tim is wrong on justification by faith alone. Tim is part of a burgeoning movement called “Reformed Catholicism” (a kind of step-child of Federal Vision). The problem with this movement is that it can be lauded or denigrated depending exactly on how one defines the movement. For Tim, Reformed Catholicism at least means no longer insisting on justification by faith alone as, as Calvin put it, “the hinge of the Reformation.” In this denial one is left wondering what is “Reformed” about “Reformed Catholicism.”

Tim has disavowed that justification by faith alone (jbfa) is the doctrine that is central, has primacy, and should be esteemed. Now, this doesn’t mean that Tim doesn’t believe in some form of jbfa but it does mean that in his reducing its importance to the point that it should no longer serve as a divider between orthodoxy and unorthodoxy Tim has left the Reformed reservation.

We need to understand that jbfa is a river in which all the tributaries of Reformed soteriology flow. Should we mess with jfba, by necessity we must also alter our thinking on other doctrinal issues like penal substitutionary atonement, total depravity, sanctification, perseverance of the saints, and others. Tim’s desire to altar jfba understandings will inevitably lead to altering Reformed theology as a whole.

Below is a reproduction, on my end, of the conversation with Tim at Mablog.

Come on Tim … just admit it … all your huffing and puffing is masquerade on your part seeking to hide your desire for a Kuhnian paradigm change. In all your denials of the centrality of jbfa and in all your bashing of “ossification” and “repristination,” and in all your lamenting about “dying in the doldrums of rote repetition, self-righteousness, and sheer fear of the unknown and different,” what we are seeing is merely the means of a bully who is trying to force and/or shame people into his preferred paradigm change.

By the time we buy what you are selling there is very little of the Reformed trademark left. Indeed, I would guess that the only reason that you maintain the word “Reformed,” (as in “Reformed Catholicism”) is that you hope that in doing so you can dupe Reformed people into thinking that they aren’t really leaving a set identifiable theology for a radically different set identifiable theology.

What we desperately need is people to nail their colors to the mast. What we desperately need is for people like Tim to admit, “Reformation theology has outlived its usefulness but that’s ok because I have thought of something better that will take its place.” At least then everyone would know that the notion of “Reformed” is being cast aside for something new and improved.

I never said there was no way to choose among competing psycho-history schools that will put us in the mind of the Reformers. That is you, once again, putting words in my mouth that will serve to advance your narrow minded intolerant cause. The point was that I’m not buying your revisionist school. Further, the point was that there are plenty of other schools out there that read the psycho-history differently that can be appealed to in defiance of your preferred interpretation.

Turning to the matter of corrections. Clearly when a movement is in error corrections are needed. However when a movement is not in error it would be error to embrace corrections. So all your whining about Reformed people not accepting corrections reduces down to the issue between us, which is … “Does the Reformed movement need to accept corrections.” You seem to suggest the affirmative in massive doses. While, I, on the issue of justification, have yet to see any corrections that are an improvement. I certainly don’t see them in the Federal Vision writings of which I’ve read a great deal. So, when you come up with some corrections that actually are beneficial let me know and I’ll be more than glad to consider them.

The really sad thing in the Reformed church today is that we are awash in a sea of innovative errors by factions on every side. There are the Federal Vision errors. There are the R2Kt virus errors. There are the New Perspective errors. There are the Peter Enns inspiration errors. Indeed, it is easier to accept some error of some sort then it is to return to the old paths.

And of course in the end to embrace any of the errors of the well intentioned people who are promulgating them will not bring us or them closer to what they say they want, but instead will usher in a new dark age.

You didn’t like the article by which the church stands or falls. How about Calvin’s words instead?

Justification by Faith Alone is the hinge of the Reformation.

If we get rid of the hinge then the door no longer works Tim.

In my estimation the whole work of Federal Vision, like the work of the New Perspective is a work dedicated to eliminating the barrier of jbfa that keeps Christendom from being rebuilt along the lines of some other kind of understanding of justification. Now, I’m a big believer in Christendom, but a Christendom that is refashioned at the cost of justification by faith alone is not a Christendom that I’m interested in simply because it wouldn’t really be Christendom.

So my advice is that has much as Federal Vision has to recommend it (and there really is much to recommend it) in the end Reformed people cannot build bridges to Federal Vision precisely because of its abandonment of justification by faith alone. It is a poison to Reformed thinking that is every bit as dangerous as R2Kt poison.

A different poison to be sure, but a poison all the same.

Last night I spent a few minutes, at the request of my daughter Anna, with a college student who was denying the existence of God. He was a Empiricist / Verificationist who was demanding physical sensory evidence for proof of God’s existence. He refused to accept the absurdity and self-defeating nature of his position. With that conversation still ringing in my head I thought I would quote Bahnsen on the problem of Empiricism / Verificationism.

“When the unbeliever contends that nothing in man’s temporal, limited, natural experience can provide knowledge of the metaphysical or supernatural, he is simply taking a roundabout way of saying that the Biblical account of God who makes Himself clearly known in the created order and Scripture is mistaken.

This begging of the question is sometimes veiled from the unbeliever by his tendency to recast the nature of theological truth as man-centered and rooted initially in human, empirical experience. However, the very point in contention between the believer and the unbeliever comes down to the claims that Christian teaching is rooted in God’s self-disclosure of the truth as found in the world around us and in the written word. There is no reason to think that theology would be intellectually required to be built upon the foundation of human sense experience, unless someone were presupposing in advance that all knowledge must ultimately derive from empirical procedures. But that is the very question at hand. The anti-metaphysical polemic is not a supporting reason for rejecting Christianity; it is simply a re-wording of that rejection itself.

PHILOSOPHICAL SELF-DECEPTION

We are brought, then, to number (1) above, the first and foundational step in the case against metaphysics. What are we to make of the assertion that ‘all significant knowledge about the objective world is empirical in nature.’? The most obvious and philosophically significant reply would be that if the preceding statement were true, then — on the basis of the claim — we could never know that it were true. Why? Simply because the statement in question is not itself known as the result of empirical testing and experience. Therefore, according to its own strict standards, the statement could not amount to significant knowledge about the objective world. It simply reflects the subjective (perhaps meaningless!) bias of the one who pronounces it. Hence the anti-metaphysician not only has his own preconceived conclusions (presuppositions), but it turns out that he cannot live according to them (Rom. 2:1). On the basis of his own assumptions he refutes himself (II Tim. 2:25). As Paul put it about those who suppress the truth in unrighteousness: ‘They become futile in their speculations (Rom. 1:21)!

FURTHER DIFFICULTIES

There are other difficulties with the position expressed by (1) as well. We can easily see that it amounts to a presupposition for the unbeliever. What rational basis or evidence is there for the position that all knowledge must be empirical in nature? That is not a conclusion supported by other reasoning, and the premise does not admit of empirical verification since it deals with what is universally or necessarily the case (not a historical or contingent truth). Moreover, the statement itself precludes any other type of verification or support other than empirical warrants or evidence. Thus the anti-metaphysical opponent of the Christian faith holds to this dogma in a presuppositional fashion — as something which controls inquiry, rather than being the result of inquiry.

That anti-metaphysical presupposition, however, has certain devastating results. Notice that if all knowledge must be empirical in nature, then the uniformity of nature cannot be known to be true. And without the knowledge and assurance that the future will be like the past (e.g., if salt dissolved in water on Wednesday, it will do likewise and not explode on Friday) we could not draw empirical generalizations and projections — in which case the whole enterprise of natural science would immediately be undermined.”

Dr. Greg Bahnsen
Always Ready — pg. 187-188