Baxter, McAtee, & Lusk on Final Justification

“To conclude, it is most clear in Scripture, that our Justification, at the great judgment, will be according to our Works, and to what we have done in the Flesh, whether good or evil; which can be no otherwise than as it was the Condition of that Justification.”

Richard Baxter
Puritan Neonomian

Advocating Final Justification

If one talks about “Final Justification” in terms of our works vindicating and agreeing with our forensic Justification which is/was by Christ alone there should be very little problem since Scripture talks about how our works shall follow us (Rev. 14:13). Further “Final Justification might be allowed as long as everyone agrees that all who were forensically justified will be finally justified without exception. However, to talk about a “final Justification” that somehow eclipses our forensic Justification is just Remonstrant trash. The same kind of trash being dished out by Federal Vision today;

“Final justification, however, is according to works. This pole of justification takes into account the entirety of our lives — the obedience we’ve preformed, the sins we’ve committed, the confessions and repentance we’ve done … God’s verdict over us will be in accord with, and therefore in some sense based upon, the life we have lived.”

Rich Lusk 
Federal Vision Remonstrant

As a brief aside here having interacted with the FV crowd quite extensively in days gone by, keep an eye out for the language above where we find the phrase “in some sense.” That is a weasel phrase that can mean just about anything.

Note, that while I do think that ever increasing obedience should be characteristic of the believer I would never think or say to myself that I really believed that my obedience would be connected to any final justification — even if in the way of vindication. Honestly, I know too well of my ongoing battle to put off the old man and put on the new man created in Christ Jesus to ever take hope in my “obedience performed,” for any kind of Justification. It strikes me that only someone not conversant with the depths of their own sin would write the way Lusk does.

We all would do well to remember our confessions;

“Notwithstanding, the persons of believers being accepted through Christ, their good works are also accepted in Him, not as though they were in this life wholly unblameable, and unreprovable in God’s sight; but that He, looking upon them in His Son, is pleased to accept and reward that which is sincere, although accompanied with many weaknesses and imperfections.”

Westminster Confession of Faith – 16:6

McAtee on Rev. Dewey Roberts’ Complaint About An Aspect of Federal Vision

On the whole I have been quite pleased with Rev. Dewey Roberts’ book “Historic Christianity and the Federal Vision.” I am glad he wrote it. I would recommend that people read it. I am glad I have read it. I do complain vigorously against his chapter wherein he seeks to tie Theonomy and Dr. Bahnsen to Federal Vision. That chapter alone threatens to make people question his integrity on everything else he has written in the book because people are apt to think… “If he got it so wrong on theonomy how can I trust his analysis in the rest of the book?”  I was able to get past that because I know the Institutional Reformed world has been wetting their beds for 40 years now over the issue of theonomy and I can’t expect someone who belongs to that Institutional tribe to not also be a bed wetter on the subject of theonomy. As such, I can denounce that particular chapter while still supporting people reading this volume.

One other problem I have with Rev. Dewey Roberts’ book critiquing Federal Vision is that he is repeatedly complaining about how FV talks about “Covenant Faithfulness being the way to salvation,” as if there is something wrong with the idea of being covenantally faithful as the way to salvation, or that such a notion is a wrong headed idea. Now certainly if one talks about the necessity of covenantal faithfulnes being the way to salvation apart from forensic Justification then there is a parting of the ways with Reformed orthodoxy since to talk like that puts us back in Pelagian-ville. However, once united to Christ it is the case that covenantal faithfulness is the way to salvation.

Rev. Roberts’ complains against FV;

“The doctrine of final Justification is based on the view that the members of the covenant must live in obedience to God’s laws in order to be finally vindicated. Covenant faithfulness is taught as the way to salvation.”

Rev. Dewey Roberts
Historic Christianity & The Federal Vision — pg. 347

Now, Roberts has expressed his concerns that such an arrangement could well make for self-righteousness as people who believe this would be prone to pride because they become convinced that they can fully meet all the law’s stringent requirements. And there is reason, given the old man in all Christians to want to be careful about communicating that error I am sure. However, the opposite problem that Roberts doesn’t speak much to is the antinomian implication found in Roberts seeming advocacy that covenant faithfulness should not be taught as the way to salvation. Do we really want to teach God’s people that covenant faithfulness is not the way to salvation for the forensically justified?

To solve this perhaps we should resurrect the way the Puritans used to speak on obedience. They would make a distinction between “evangelical obedience” which is required of all saints with the result that covenant faithfulness was indeed the way of salvation for those in Christ, and “legal obedience” which was an obedience that was not resting on Christ’s obedience for us and in our stead. That kind of obedience can never be characterized as covenantal obedience and it cannot be required as the way of salvation because it bespeaks reprobation with its implicit belief that one’s obedience is making God a debtor who will owe the obedient one salvation.

Now, it could be the case that Rev. Dewey Roberts would agree wholeheartedly with all this but it seems to me as I read this book the way he complains about FV expecting that covenantal faithfulness as the way to salvation is seen as not wholesome to Rev. Dewey. However, to complain like Rev. Dewey has to my mind suggests that covenantal unfaithfulness is perfectly acceptable as the way to salvation. Now, again, it must be said that covenantal faithfulness as the way to salvation is never going to meet the standard of faithfulness that is required to be characterized as absolutely and fully faithful but at the same time the covenanted who are moving ever upward in terms of faithfulness on their way to salvation by God’s grace alone understand always, in the context of their obedience, that their only hope is nothing less than Jesus and His righteousness. Indeed, it is because they understand that truth that they so earnestly desire to be found to be covenantally faithful on their way to salvation.

I mean we really don’t want to teach, do we, that for the Saints the way to salvation is covenantal unfaithfulness?

The Totalitarian State & Its Wreckage on Community

“The totalitarian state … wages war against the community, because the community is a powerful rival government. It works to weaken the community, the family, the church, and vocation in order to strengthen its own power.”

R. J. Rushdoony
Inst. of Biblical Law Vol. II – p. 82

Whether it is sodomite marriage, the encouragement of trans-genderism the exploitation of our children, or the pushing of pedophilia, you can be sure that the tyrant state is behind it all pushing the destruction of community, family, and church so as to be without competition in the matter of ruling and governance. It is in the interest of the tyrant state to pursue a social order that maximizes atomistic individuality for where there is atomistic individuality there is no other corporate or covenantal entity which can challenge the god-state.

The pushing of multiculturalism fits in this agenda. Multiculturalism destroys previous community boundaries leaving the individual naked to understand and identify themselves only as against the backdrop of the God-State. Likewise postmodernism and post-postmodernism pushes this agenda for if there is no unifying transcendent truth then each man by their autonomous self decides what is truth for them. This destabilizing of the concept of stable transcendent truth thus feeds into the climate that demands the atomistic individual.

If you believe in family, church, and community the State is your enemy. Not only that but everyone who works for the State is your enemy inasmuch as they keep the beast operative.

This problem now though is complicated by the fact that the Church in the West is just as compromised as every other of our Institutions. Further, the clergy, exceptions notwithstanding, are likewise part of the problem and not the cure.

The flip side of the RJR quote is the necessity to build strong families in strong churches and so being a contributing member to strong communities. This of course requires a shared Christian faith as the adhesive that glues the family/church/community together. There will be no resisting the degenerating and dissolving work of the State or Corporate America or the Lugenpress without a shared faith informing these covenant entities. In the words of Benjamin Franklin, “Either we hang together or we hang separately.”

In the context of all this remember you are going to be a minority. If you want to fight against atomistic-individualism as coming from all comers in the culture you’ll have to determine you’re going to do it as a member of Gideon’s small army. The fact that they we’re outnumbered by the Normies should not concern us and should only serve to strengthen our brotherhood and reputation in the future.

Keep in mind the well-known lines from the rousing St. Crispin’s Day Speech given by the king in Shakespeare’s Henry V;

‘We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.’ 

McAtee Contra Dewey Roberts in Defense of Bahnsen and Theonomy

What then are Bahnsen’s fundamental flaws with respect to the law? His emphasis on being obedient to the law in exhaustive detail brings about a possible conceit that such obedience is actually possible for the believer…. The moral law is the rule for the obedience of the believer, but no Christian can perfectly fulfill it. To the unbeliever, the law is a fearful threat of impending doom.”

Dewey Roberts

Federal Vision and Historic Christianity — p. 196

Roberts really jumps the shark in this chapter titled, “Federal Vision and Theonomy,” from his book “Historic Christianity and the Federal Vision.” In this chapter Roberts seeks to tie Federal Vision to theonomy and in doing so Roberts reveals that he is a clown, who on this subject is NOT to be taken seriously.

Keep in mind that I write all of the below as a adamant opponent of Federal Vision.

Regarding the quote above,

1.) Bahnsen never taught the necessity of obedience to God’s law in exhaustive detail. Bahnsen taught the necessity of obedience to God’s law in exhaustive detail in the context of the law’s general equity. Roberts is wrong.

2.) Would Roberts have clergy so emphasize the inability of God’s people to honor God’s law that it becomes possible that God’s people no longer bother even paying attention to God’s law?

3) Bahnsen never came close to teaching that the believer could keep God’s law in its exhaustive detail so that the believer ended up conceited. Bahnsen understood the necessity of the law to convict and expose as well as the necessity of the law as a guide to life.

4.) If I were to avoid preaching on every subject wherein my hearers might possibly come to carnal conclusion I would never preach a word. The same was true for Bahnsen. What people might possibly do upon Bahnsen emphasizing the truth is not the same as what Bahnsen (or anybody) intends for them to do.

5.) Is Robert’s desire that we preach the law in such a way that all believers say to themselves, “Well, since I can never keep God’s law perfectly therefore I shall never try to keep God’s law.” Clearly Roberts preaching on the law so emphasizes the believers inability to keep the law perfectly that it is possible that some people will hear that they shouldn’t ever bother seeking to honor God’s law.

6.) Bahnsen never denied that to the unbeliever God’s law is a fearful threat of impending doom.

Elsewhere Dewey Roberts writes,

“Second, he (Bahnsen) emphasized obedience to the law so strenuously that he often comes close to the dangerous Pelagian spectrum of errors. Pelagius, as we have seen, taught that mankind could live in obedience to God’s requirements. ‘Theonomy in Christian Ethics’ often makes it seem that the believer can fulfill all of God’s laws. There is very little emphasis on the threatening aspect of God’s law…. Concerning the law, Pelagius taught;

‘But we do praise God as the Author of our righteousness, in that He gave us the law, by the teaching of which we have learned how we ought to live.’

 

Pelagius, likewise, almost completely discounted the threatening aspects of God’s law and saw the law as a gracious act of God which revealed the way the righteous should live.”

Dewey Roberts
Historic Christianity & The Federal Vision — p. 197

1.) Look Dewey, just as a woman is either pregnant or not pregnant so someone is either a Pelagian or he is not a Pelagian. The whole idea that someone is “close to the dangerous spectrum of Pelagian errors” is like a woman being close to being pregnant. Either she is or she isn’t. Either Bahnsen is Pelagian or he is not. If he is not then shut your ignorant trap. I mean if you don’t your close to committing libel. (Did you get the joke in that last sentence Dewey?)

2.) I read Theonomy in Christian Ethics. I did not put it down upon finishing it, thinking, “Wow, now I can go out and perfectly fulfill all God’s laws.” So, I guess we should say Dewey, that when YOU read “Theonomy in Christian Ethics” that YOU wrongly came away from it thinking that it SEEMED to teach that the believer could not fulfill all God’s laws.

3.) Now, about that weasel word “seemed.” Seemed to whom? Seemed to whom by what standard? It seems to me that on this score you’re an idiot. But it only seems that way. In reality it might not be that way.

4.) There is little emphasis on the threatening of God’s law in ‘Theonomy in CHRISTIAN Ethics,’ because Bahnsen was writing to Christians. Christians have already been delivered by Christ’s work on the Cross from the threatening of God’s law and so arise as a people who are zealous for good works. Bahnsen in his book is instructing the believers who are zealous for good works as to what those good works look like. As the Heidelberg Catechism teaches Dewey;

Question 91: But what are good works?

Answer: Only those which proceed from a true faith,5 are performed according to the law of God,6 and to His glory;7 and not such as are founded on our imaginations or the institutions of men.8

Tell me Dewey, is the Heidelberg Catechism here, because it does not threaten with the law here, “close to the dangerous spectrum of Pelagian errors?”

5.) I don’t care who talked about “the law as a gracious act of God which revealed the way the righteous should live.” whether it was Pelagius, Socinius, or Fosdick, if they were talking about the law in its usage as a guide to life they were or would have been absolutely correct and for anybody to deny that makes them a full blown antinomian.

6.) And speaking of Antinomianism, honestly Dewey, these criticisms sound to my ear to be the criticisms of someone close to the dangerous spectrum of Tobias Crisp or John Saltmarsh errors.

Extremist Hate Group, SPLC, Has Employee Arrested For Domestic Terrorism

Southern Poverty Law Center attorney among 23 arrested for domestic terrorism

“An attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center was arrested for domestic terrorism in a group of 23 who allegedly violently attacked the future site of an Atlanta police training facility.

Thomas Webb Jurgens, 28, was rounded up with the other violent protesters for throwing Molotov cocktails, fireworks, rocks, and bricks at the facility.

Liberals and others have expressed outrage over plans to build a $90 million police training facility over 85 acres just outside the city.”

The reason I post this is due to the fact that this extremist hate group (the SPLC) had the chutzpah to list Charlotte Christ the King Reformed Church as a extremist hate group back in 2020.

Our crime according to the SPLC? Our crime is that we are “White Nationalist.” Actually, if they had said, “White Christian Nationalist” they would have been more precise.

Our Church Fathers believed that races were distinct and should organize themselves into nations that would likewise be distinct and we merely concur with those who have gone before, contra the Marxist bubbleheads in the Church today;

” [The] differences between the Caucasian, Mongolian, and Negro races, which is known to have been as distinctly marked two or three thousand years before Christ as it is now. . . . [T]hese varieties of race are not the effect of the blind operation of physical causes, but by those cause as intelligently guided by God for the accomplishment of some wise purpose. . . . God fashions the different races of men in their peculiarities to suit them to the regions which they inhabit.”

Charles Hodge (1797-1878)
Systematic Theology, Volume 2, Chapter 1, Section 3 (1872–73)

“You can’t change my mind about God having made us the way we are. The yellow man and the white man and the black man. God made our races. I know the Marxists and the bubbleheads say: “Oh, that’s old-fashioned baloney! Everybody should get together and intermarry and pretty soon there won’t be races, and where there are no races there won’t be any hate, and if there’s no hate, there won’t be any war.” Oh, for cotton batting to stuff in the mouths of people who don’t know better than that!

A.W. Tozer

“I don’t believe [racial integration] is what the Bible teaches. Even though we may have transgressed the boundaries of nationhood and of peoplehood, it seems to me that God did create man of one blood in order that he may dwell as different nations throughout the world. But after the fall, when sinful man cosmopolitanly – meaning by that, with a desire to obliterate separate nationhood, with a desire to build a sort of United Nations organization under the Tower of Babel…attempted to resist developing peoplehood…[God confused the tongues of men]…because men had said, ‘Let us build a city and a tower which will stretch up to heaven lest we be scattered’… Pentecost sanctified the legitimacy of separate nationality rather than saying this is something we should outgrow… In fact, even in the new earth to come, after the Second Coming of Christ, we are told that the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of the heavenly Jerusalem, and the kings of the earth shall bring the glory and the honor—the cultural treasures—of the nations into it… But nowhere in Scripture are any indications to be found that such peoples should ever be amalgamated into one huge nation.

“In another fourteen years, the future looks bleak for White Christians everywhere. In 1900, Europe possessed two-thirds of the world’s Christians. By 2025, that number will fall below 20% — with most Christians living in the Third World of Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Then, nearly 75% of the world’s Catholics will be Non-Western Mestizos or Black Africans. Right now, Nigeria has the world’s largest Catholic Theological School. India has more Christians than most Western nations. And Jesus is more and more being portrayed with a dark skin. By 2050, more than 80% of Catholics in the U.S. will be of Non-Western origins. Only a fraction of Anglicans will be English. Lutherans, Presbyterians and other mainstream denominations will find their chief centres of growth in Africa, Asia and Latin America — often syncretistically absorbing large quantities of Pre-Christian Paganism as revived Voo-dooism and increasing ancestor-worship. This “Christianity” rapidly degenerates into an immigrationistic, prolific and socialistic jungle-religion.”

Dr. F.N. Lee circa 2011
Christian-Afrikaners pg. 87

These kind of quotes can be repeated countless times over. The fact that the SPLC, a Christ hating organization if there ever was one, put me on their extremist hate list, only says to me that I must be doing something right.

However, the point of this post is to point out that it is the SPLC who are the haters and their slush fund of circa 500million dollars, can’t obviate who the haters really are.

Keep in mind that the extremist hate group known as the SPLC works hand in glove with the FBI and other FED agencies in order to “help” the FEDS keep an eye on extremist hate groups. Don’t miss the irony of the largest extremist hate group in America (the SPLC) being the organization that the FEDS go to in order to identify “extremist hate groups.”

Clearly, this is the case here of the FOX guarding the Henhouse. Clearly, the only ones who land on these extremist hate lists are those who hate what the extremist hate group, (the SPLC), love.

Neither I, nor anybody in the Church I serve has been arrested for rioting and domestic terrorism like this SPLC lawyer employee listed above.