# Someone help me get a very general outline on what



## etexas (Aug 24, 2007)

I had never heard of Federal Vision until coming to PB. OK in VERY basic term what is it? Please do not bombard me with a bunch of links that will take me hours to read! I know one of you PB "sages" can sum it up in some general fashion for me.


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## BobVigneault (Aug 24, 2007)

This article from "Popular" Christianity magazine does a pretty good job of summarizing a very complex topic. This was posted just a few days ago in this thread.


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## BobVigneault (Aug 24, 2007)

I guess on second look the consensus was that the article was more about the New Perspectives than FV. It's still worth the read because it's not real technical. You shouldn't pass up Dr. R. Scott Clark's site and his writings on FV.


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## wsw201 (Aug 29, 2007)

It's a little hard to sum up because it has become a moving target depending upon which FV advocate you are talking about. In general terms it starts with a wrong view of covenant. For the FV, covenant is defined as a relationship not necessarily as an agreement. Then it goes down hill from there.


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## RamistThomist (Aug 29, 2007)

Just don't listen to any stupid comments that identifiy Federal Vision with theonomy and Greg Bahnsen. If someone makes that connection, you can safely ignore the rest of what they say as uninformed.


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## Gryphonette (Aug 29, 2007)

*To move forward a trifle, a big problem is found in their definition of "saved".*

This is a copy-and-paste from a post I made at Lane's awhile back (which I can lay hands on because I first wrote it using Google Documents, BTW  ), and which includes a quote from the FV'er to whom I was responding:

FV'er: "...when one joins the visible church, he is now part of a new society - separated from the world, given a new name (”Christian”), having new social relationships with others, living life in and among the body of Christ, exposed to the preaching of the Word and the administration of the sacraments, subject to receiving brotherly love and favor from other church members, under the discipline of God’s ordained ministers and elders, invited to the Church Christmas party, the pig roast, eating donuts with other members in the fellowship hall after church, having one’s children in Sunday School, having one’s spouse getting training in the Bible and in the ethics of relationships, getting to hear glorious music sung in praise of God, getting to raise one’s hands and pray with the company of other believers, etc.. Now, to me, that is a lot of what salvation is - being a resident of Bethlehem rather than Soddom, living among Yahweh worshipers rather than among Molech worshipers."

Me: Well. I think we've found the disconnect, as I would not classify those things as being in any sense whatsoever "salvation".

But what it DID do was bring home to me something that I have doubtless read elsewhere - by Wilkins, I'm thinking - but which hadn't caused any pennies to hit the floor, which is that if one believes there is a lesser, temporal _salvation_, then there is going to flow from that a lesser, temporal _election_; a lesser, temporal _justification_; a lesser, temporal _regeneration_; a lesser, temporal _adoption_; and a lesser, temporal _sanctification_. (If there's a lesser, temporal glorification, though, I'm missing it.)

Considering how the FV tends to lessen to the point of obliteration any difference between the OC and the NC, and considering how prevalent in the Old Testament were typologies (is that the appropriate word?), I'm thinking that perhaps the FV views this lesser, temporal 'golden chain' to be essentially a typology of the real deal golden chain. Not very elegantly put, but maybe still comprehensible? _This_ regeneration, i.e. the lesser, temporal regeneration effected by baptism, foreshadows _that_ regeneration, i.e. the actual regeneration and new birth given by the Holy Spirit; _this_ justification, i.e. being officially placed in the Church, foreshadows _that_ justification, i.e. what the FV calls the "Final Justification", and so on.

I daresay this is an alternate way to explain those verses in Scripture declaring that "you and your children" would be saved so that all one's children _are_ saved, even though they might still not wind up in glory. If being in the Church is a type of "salvation", then by golly, everybody in the Church is elect, regenerated, justified, adopted, and being sanctified. In a lesser, temporal sense.

================

And the FV'er allowed as how this was a fairly reasonable explanation.


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## timmopussycat (Aug 30, 2007)

Spear Dane said:


> Just don't listen to any stupid comments that identifiy Federal Vision with theonomy and Greg Bahnsen. If someone makes that connection, you can safely ignore the rest of what they say as uninformed.



I know that one cannot fully identify Bahsen's Theonomy with Shepherdism (Shepherd denies the active obedience of Christ which Bahnsen affirms), but I would like to know why one should not identify Bahnsen with the FV camp given that some close to him have claimed him for FV.


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## sotzo (Aug 30, 2007)

> I know that one cannot fully identify Bahsen's Theonomy with Shepherdism (Shepherd denies the active obedience of Christ which Bahnsen affirms), but I would like to know why one should not identify Bahnsen with the FV camp given that some close to him have claimed him for FV.



Any evidence cited by the "some close to him"?


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## timmopussycat (Aug 30, 2007)

sotzo said:


> > I know that one cannot fully identify Bahsen's Theonomy with Shepherdism (Shepherd denies the active obedience of Christ which Bahnsen affirms), but I would like to know why one should not identify Bahnsen with the FV camp given that some close to him have claimed him for FV.
> 
> 
> 
> Any evidence cited by the "some close to him"?



It was online scuttlebut at a couple of chat clubs a few months ago. I am sorry, I should have put "close to him" in quotes because it was second hand references to people like Roger Wagner. I don't know where Bahnsen stood precisely. But if he is not to be grouped with the FV, I would like to know in detail the reasons why not. I already know he cannot be fully aligned with Shepherdism and I would like to document why he can't be fully identified with FV.


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## NaphtaliPress (Aug 30, 2007)

timmopussycat said:


> sotzo said:
> 
> 
> > > I know that one cannot fully identify Bahsen's Theonomy with Shepherdism (Shepherd denies the active obedience of Christ which Bahnsen affirms), but I would like to know why one should not identify Bahnsen with the FV camp given that some close to him have claimed him for FV.
> ...


Have you seen Joe Moorecraft's article why Bahnsen would not be FV? Sorry, I don't have a link; I think it has been linked here on PB before.


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## Jim Johnston (Aug 30, 2007)

timmopussycat said:


> sotzo said:
> 
> 
> > > I know that one cannot fully identify Bahsen's Theonomy with Shepherdism (Shepherd denies the active obedience of Christ which Bahnsen affirms), but I would like to know why one should not identify Bahnsen with the FV camp given that some close to him have claimed him for FV.
> ...




read his apologetics works. he believed in a *qualitative* difference between regenerate and unregenerate. And, I doubt he held a causal view of perserverance rather than a fruit-to-root inference.


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## RamistThomist (Aug 30, 2007)

NaphtaliPress said:


> timmopussycat said:
> 
> 
> > sotzo said:
> ...



Here is John Otis' chapter
http://www.westminsterrpcus.org/modules/wfsection/article.php?articleid=7

To the rest:

Bahnsen gave powerful defenses of the imputation of Christ's righteousness. It is simply sloppy scholarship to equate him with Shepherd. Yes, he said he liked Shepherd as a professor. So what? So did a number of WTS students. What does that prove? Nothing.

Even a brief perusal of Bahnsen's work shows what me and Paul are saying. Like, go back to the original sources. Or listen to his stuff on Romans 3. In his ethics classes he gave brutal critiques of Romanist views of merit and justification (which is equated by some with FV views).


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## timmopussycat (Aug 31, 2007)

Spear Dane said:


> NaphtaliPress said:
> 
> 
> > timmopussycat said:
> ...



Thanks for the feedback.


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## Jane (Aug 31, 2007)

*Federal Vision*

Gryphonette: Some of your comments about a lesser justification, santification, etc. reminded me so much of when I was in the Worldwide Church of God and all of the idiotic doctrines they taught. That was legalism pure and simple. It sounds to me like this FV is legalism, too.

I believe the reason no one can understand it is because it contradicts the clear teaching of Scripture. It's one of those doctrines that has to be explained in such minute detail because they have made it so complicated due to the many Scriptures they are taking out of context. When the "student" has a question about a text that is very clear, the teacher has to go back and explain to the student why the text doesn't mean what it says. I went through that in the Worldwide Church of God. 

It takes 10,000 words to explain a heresy when the true doctrine that can be explained with five clear verses.


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## Gryphonette (Aug 31, 2007)

*Like the Worldwide Church of God? Oh, my!*



Jane said:


> Gryphonette: Some of your comments about a lesser justification, santification, etc. reminded me so much of when I was in the Worldwide Church of God and all of the idiotic doctrines they taught. That was legalism pure and simple. It sounds to me like this FV is legalism, too.
> 
> I believe the reason no one can understand it is because it contradicts the clear teaching of Scripture. It's one of those doctrines that has to be explained in such minute detail because they have made it so complicated due to the many Scriptures they are taking out of context. When the "student" has a question about a text that is very clear, the teacher has to go back and explain to the student why the text doesn't mean what it says. I went through that in the Worldwide Church of God.
> 
> It takes 10,000 words to explain a heresy when the true doctrine that can be explained with five clear verses.



Hoo, hoo! Wouldn't the FV hack up a hairball to hear that their doctrinal distinctives bear any resemblance whatsoever to those espoused by the Worldwide Church of God? 

It's just a hunch on my part, but I'm pretty sure the FV wouldn't be pleased at the comparison.


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## RamistThomist (Aug 31, 2007)

Here are some of Bahnsen's beliefs about imputation, salvation, atonement. I bring this up to show that Bahnsen cannot be used as a "source" for FV, although many will claim that he is. Therefore, such a post is a legitmate answer to the OP (In other words,, I am not rabbit-trailing this).

Also, theonomy is in direct contradiction with the FV and NPP views of "the law." I have in mind Don Garlington's schoarly commentary on Galatians. Many in that camp believe the law was an "eschatological crutch" (my words, not theirs) and no longer applicable in the church age (sounds like some Klineans and dispensationalism). Obviously, even assuming theonomy might be wrong, such a view contradicts, not assumes, theonomy. Back to the bahnsen quotes

Greg Bahnsen: By This Standard pg. 86 from the website http://www.freebooks.com where the book in its entirety is available in html- the actual page number in the book is: 59-60. (Actually the whole chapter 7 The Son's Model Righteousness nails the coffin shut...) 

Imitating Christ 

Christians should therefore be the last people to think or maintain that they are free from the righteous requirements of God's commandments. Those who have been saved were in need of that salvation precisely because God's law could not be ignored as they transgressed it. _*For them to be saved, it was necessary for Christ to live and die by all of the law's stipulations*_. Although our own obedience to the law is flawed and thus cannot be used as a way of justification before God, we are saved by the imputed obedience of the Savior (1 Cor, 1:30; Phil. 3 :9). *Our justification is rooted in His obedience (Rem. 5:17-19). By a righteousness which is alien to ourselves *"” the perfect righteousness of Christ according to the law "” we are made just in the sight of God. "He made the one who did not know sin to be sin on our behalf in order that we might become the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Cor. 5: 21). 

It turns out, then, that Christ's advent and atoning work do not relax the validity of the law of God and its demand for 
righteousness; rather they accentuate it. Salvation does not cancel the laws demand but simply the law's curse: "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law. having become a curse for us" (Gal. 3 :13). He removed our guilt and the condemning aspect of the law toward us, but Christ did not revoke the law's original righteous demand and obligation. Salvation in the Biblical sense presupposes the permanent validity of the law. Furthermore, the Holy Spirit indwelling all true believers in Jesus Christ makes them grow in likeness to Christ unto the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ" (Eph. 4:13, 15; cf. Gal. 4:19).

Another quote from chapter 9 - A Motivational Ethic Endorses the Law, pg. 71 (page 98 on the online edition)


Those who are genuine believers in Christ know very well that their salvation cannot be grounded in their own works of the law: "œ. . . not by works of righteousness which we did ourselves, but according to His mercy He saved us, . . . that being justified by His grace we might be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life" (Titus 3:5-7). *The believer´s justification before God is grounded instead in the perfect obedience of Jesus Christ (Gal. 3:11; Rem. 5:19); it is His imputed righteousness that makes us right before the judgment seat of God (2 Cor. 5:21).* "œA man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law" (Rom. 3:28).


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## RamistThomist (Aug 31, 2007)

While I usually ridicule copy/paste moves, the nature of the case here demands it. I am a big fan of "innocent until proven guilty" with regard to ministers of good standing in Christ's church.


From: http://www.cmfnow.com/articles/pt153.htm
All italics in original. Bolding and underlining mine. Please take time to read ...it took forever to format!
________________________________
The theological perspective of the Biblical writers, prophets and apostles both being witness, is that one who was perfectly righteous stood in the place of those who are unrighteous in God's sight, bearing the curse or penalty of their sin by dying in their place, in order to set them free from condemnation and secure their eternal benefit. There is no other way, as Peter indicates, for sinners to be "brought back to God." This _*makes maintaining the purity and truth of the gospel as the good news about judicial and substitutionary atonement a matter of infinite personal importance. It makes the self-conscious rejection of this central Biblical theme a matter of dreadful *_consequence. "For we know Him who said 'Vengeance belongs unto Me, I will recompense'.... It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Heb. 10:30-31). Our only hope is that Christ's saving death is received by God precisely as a "sacrifice for sins" (cf. v. 26).

*Justification: God's Judicial Declaration of Righteousness*

The judicial (penal) and substitutionary death of Christ for our redemption is set forth in the Bible as the necessary prerequisite for sinners gaining a right standing before the judgment of God. We are "justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 3:24). But how may a righteous God "justify the ungodly" (Rom. 4:5)? *God's verdict that the unrighteous are judged as righteous in His sight depends on His looking upon the person and work of Jesus Christ instead of the sinner's own record*. This is how He can remain "just as well as being the justifier" of those who have faith in Christ (Rom. 3:26). 

God's favorable verdict upon us of justification instead of condemnation requires that He take into account the work of Christ, first that we may be acquitted. This is contained in Paul's short but unforgettable expression, "justified by His blood, " which is the means by which believers are "saved from the wrath of God" (Rom. 5:9). Without gaining pardon for their offenses, sinners cannot receive a favorable judgment from God; thus the penalty of sin was discharged by Christ shedding His blood in their place. God's written indictment against us has been blotted out; Christ has "taken it out of the way, nailing it to the cross" (Col. 2:14). But there is more. God's favorable verdict of justification requires that He take into account the person of Christ, as well as His sacrificial work.

*Justification is not simply God's decision to treat the sinner as innocent (acquitted) for the sake of Christ's redemptive work. It also entails the judgment that we are deemed positively righteous in His sight -- appraised and declared to be just. This is what it means "to justify." *But how can that be a judgment which is according to truth, unless Christ has become the object of God's assessment as our substitute -- that is, unless Christ is judged in our place? Paul explains that "of Him are you in Christ Jesus, who was made for us... righteousness" (1 Cor. 1:30). *Despite the unrighteousness of our internal character, when God looks at our legal record He finds the righteousness of Christ which is substituted and treated as genuinely our own. It seriously misconstrues the Biblical testimony to think of this as a some kind of "legal fiction." *Although the righteousness by which we are justified is an "alien righteousness" because it is that of Christ -- certainly not our own accomplishment and not our actual character -- it is nevertheless constituted as our very own. God does not see sin and call it righteousness (which would be a lie), but rather when He looks at our record He sees not sin but righteousness, this being the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ. The status of our substitute has actually become our own status according to the judgment of God. "The one who experienced no sin was made sin on our behalf so that we might in Him become the righteousness of God" (2 Cor. 5:21). *In this assertion the substitutionary nature of our salvation stands out boldly, speaking of our sin being imputed to the Savior, while His righteousness is imputed to us.*

In this verse, to "become righteousness" cannot by any stretch of the imagination mean that our internal nature has been replaced, "elevated," or "infused" with the actual, sin-free purity, confirmed obedience and just disposition of Christ Himself. The disappointing personal experience of believers, not to mention the unfailing word of God (e.g., Gal. 5:17; 1 John 2:1), reveal how preposterous a notion that is. Even more, if 2 Corinthians 5:21 means that our internal character has been made over into one which is actually righteous, then by parallel the verse would mean "“ heretical horror! -- that Christ lost His holy virtue and righteous disposition when He was "made sin"; He would be construed to have actually, personally become a sinner (or be "infused" with sin).

God's word consistently portrays the judicial or forensic character of justification. The Greek verb ("to justify") itself indicates this. In secular Greek literature it takes the sense of "to account or deem as righteous," and in the Septuagintal Old Testament it is never chosen in those rare cases where the Hebrew word had a causative meaning (rather than declarative). In New Testament literature, no verb which has the same kind of Greek ending and which denotes moral qualities carries a causative force (i.e., "to make" devout, holy, etc.), but uniformly the sense of "to deem" or assess (as devout, etc.). "To justify" means to declare a verdict or demonstrate (vindicate) that someone is just. Earthly judges are required to "justify the righteous and condemn the wicked" (Deut. 25:1), which can hardly mean that the judge "makes" or "causes" the innocent defendant to be righteous. Rather, "to justify" stands in contrast with "to condemn" -- to render a negative verdict. When judges "condemn," they do not "cause" the guilty to be made wicked. 

Likewise, when Paul sets God's "condemnation" of sinners over against "justification" (Rom. 5:18; 8:33-34), the latter cannot mean making sinners righteous, unless to be consistent (and blasphemous) God is said to cause the condemned to be unrighteous! Justification is God's legal judgment -- His pronouncement of the verdict that someone is just in His accounting. The blessing of justification rests "upon the man unto whom God imputes [reckons] righteousness" (Rom. 4:6). And as indicated above, such a pronouncement or reckoning envisions a true change, specifically here, of objective legal status for the sinner (not a change of internal moral character or subjective transformation). It is by faith that the sinner has imputed to his account the righteousness of Christ (faith-righteousness) and henceforth is "reckoned" as righteous (Rom. 4:3; cf. 3:22; 9:30; Phil. 3:9). This is "the gift of righteousness" spoken of in Romans 5:17, which must in the nature of the case denote objective bestowal and not inward renewal. Paul subsequently refers to the same theological truth when he affirms: "Through the obedience of the one [Christ] shall the many be constituted righteous" (Rom. 5:19) -- that is, appointed to the standing (status) of righteous (cf. Paul's use of this verb in Titus 1:5, which has numerous N.T. parallels).

From these considerations we learn the distorted character and deadly danger of suppressing the judicial or forensic nature of justification. It refers not to the inward regeneration or sanctifying renewal of the believer (infusion of righteousness), but to God's declaration that the ungodly stands before Him now as just. This verdict comprehends both the acquittal of the sinner's guilt through substitutionary bearing of the condemnation due and God's accounting of Christ's righteousness as the believer's own new legal status. Since Scripture asserts that God "justifies the ungodly," we know that justification cannot be based on anything in the sinner by which he might boast, whether his faith or his works (cf. Eph. 2:8-9), both of which are imperfect and tainted in this life. The only hope we can have is that God would look to the righteousness of Christ Jesus our Lord as the ground of His justifying declaration. 

The "irreformable" decree of the Roman Catholic Council of Trent pronounced anathema upon anyone who teaches that in justification the justice of God (as "formal cause") looks upon the vicarious righteousness of Christ, rather than the inwardly just character of the believer (infused with sanctifying grace). God's own word, by contrast, anathematizes any such teaching -- whether promulgated by Rome or by an angel from heaven -- which so thoroughly falsifies both the nature and the ground of justification. It is natural that the grace of God and the believer's assurance are so pervasively missing in the Roman Church since it has lost the judicial and substitutionary character of salvation. In short, it has lost the good news (gospel). Praise God for "the abundance of grace, even the gift of righteousness" by which believers may enjoy "the justification of life" (Rom. 5:17-18). Because justification is not grounded in our faith or works, but rather the perfect righteousness of Christ apprehended by faith, we may be confident that "those whom He justified, them He also glorified" (v. 30) -- in which case nobody can lay anything to the charge of God's elect or ever separate them from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (v. 33-39).

More Than Justification

We recognize, then, that to eradicate the judicial or forensic nature of salvation would be to distort and misrepresent the grace of God in the gospel. Maintaining salvation's judicial character has first-order importance for Biblical orthodoxy. Gloriously, the good news proclaimed in God's word is news about judicial pardon, about a substitute undergoing our condemnation, and about God graciously effecting a legal exchange between the righteous one and the unrighteous many. This is not at all to say, however, that God's "saving" work for sinners is restricted to judicial concerns -- that God's only concern is to deliver His people from a guilty verdict and eternal condemnation. Salvation also brings renovation, regeneration -- veritable re-creation.

As we noted before, the richness of God's mercy is realized in the fact that Christ saves us from sin and its consequences. Man's moral dilemma encompasses not only the guilt of sin but also its pollution of his character: his waywardness, evil desires, disinclination to good, slavery to sin, or depravity. When our first parents transgressed God's law, sin entered the world, bringing "judgment unto condemnation" upon all their posterity (Rom. 5:12, 16, 18). But more: with the guilt of this sin came spiritual death upon all men. "As through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin.... by the trespass of the one the many died" (5:12, 15). Our objective, judicial problem before God brings with it a subjective, internal corruption which is nothing less than complete spiritual deadness. To use Paul's words, prior to God's gracious salvation, we "were dead through trespasses and sins" and were like the rest of mankind "by nature children of wrath" (Eph. 2:1-3). In our natural state we are slaves to sin (John 8:34), unable to submit to God's law (Rom. 8:7-8), and unable to receive the things of God's Spirit (1 Cor. 2:14).

God's grace in Christ saves sinners not only from the objective guilt of their sin, but also from the internal pollution and power of their sin as well. Discussion of this latter blessing would take us beyond the scope of our study into an exploration of regeneration, sanctification, and glorification. Suffice it to say that when God's saving work is finally done, His people will have been delivered from sin and all of its consequences! 

The point which needs to be made is simply that, while acknowledging (praise God) that salvation has more than a judicial character as presented in the Scriptures, we are untrue to the gospel if we portray salvation as having anything less than a judicial character or treat it as somehow a trivial or peripheral concern in the Biblical perspective. Those who are guilty of breaking God's holy law are nevertheless forgiven and declared righteous before the judgment seat of God by faith in Jesus Christ, who bore in their place the condemnation they deserved. How can any true believer be unmoved, indifferent or lack passion about that amazing truth?

The judicial and substitutionary nature of salvation is at the very heart of the Biblical gospel. Around this truth evangelicals must unite at the end of the twentieth century if we would perpetuate the purity and glory of the good news that "Jesus saves."

Well you get the picture.


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## RamistThomist (Aug 31, 2007)

If this is Federal Visionism, then we should just call off the ball game and go home.


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