Magma2
Puritan Board Sophomore
Here's a selection from the piece "Within The Bounds of Orthodoxy?:An Examination of Both the Federal Vision and the New Perspective on Paul" by Joseph Minich (http://www.biblelighthouse.com/covenants/within_the_bounds_of_orthodoxy.htm).
This is a piece that is strongly endorsed, not surprisingly, by both Steve Wilkins and John Frame, so you can probably guess how the above question is answered, but I post the section below mainly to illustrate how Van Til´s "paradoxical" view of God and Scripture has contributed to the current controversy over justification. Something a few here (Paul Manata among others) still don´t get, not to mention the folks over at The Council of Chalcedon.
It should be clear from even this short selection that Minich is no defender of Gordon Clark and is clearly biased in favor of Van Til in his understanding of the current controversy (not to mention the Clark/Van Til controversy of the 40's). However, he does a decent job drawing a connection between Van Tilianism and the Federal Vision "“ particularly the role Van Til's heretical and irrational view of the Trinity plays in the heresies of the FV. Of course, for Minich neither Van Til´s view of Scripture and the Trinity, not to mention the teachings of the Fed Visionsists, constitute anything as extreme as heresy, but just another justifiable perspective in God´s "œmultifaceted" and "paradoxical" self-revelation. As Minich says in defense of Wilkins, Shepherd, Wilson and the like; "œThere is nothing in Federal Vision theology which cannot be reproduced in scholars who seem to be immune from charges of heresy."
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This is a piece that is strongly endorsed, not surprisingly, by both Steve Wilkins and John Frame, so you can probably guess how the above question is answered, but I post the section below mainly to illustrate how Van Til´s "paradoxical" view of God and Scripture has contributed to the current controversy over justification. Something a few here (Paul Manata among others) still don´t get, not to mention the folks over at The Council of Chalcedon.
It should be clear from even this short selection that Minich is no defender of Gordon Clark and is clearly biased in favor of Van Til in his understanding of the current controversy (not to mention the Clark/Van Til controversy of the 40's). However, he does a decent job drawing a connection between Van Tilianism and the Federal Vision "“ particularly the role Van Til's heretical and irrational view of the Trinity plays in the heresies of the FV. Of course, for Minich neither Van Til´s view of Scripture and the Trinity, not to mention the teachings of the Fed Visionsists, constitute anything as extreme as heresy, but just another justifiable perspective in God´s "œmultifaceted" and "paradoxical" self-revelation. As Minich says in defense of Wilkins, Shepherd, Wilson and the like; "œThere is nothing in Federal Vision theology which cannot be reproduced in scholars who seem to be immune from charges of heresy."
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The Clark/Van Til Controversy
While I don't typically endorse the writings of John Robbins, he is right that the current controversy is at least partly related to the controversy between Cornelius Van Til and Gordon Clark
in the early decades of the twentieth century.[350] The debate between Clark and Van Til had to do with the relationship between the creature's knowledge of truth and God's knowledge of truth. Van Til emphasized the qualitative difference between human and divine knowledge, which meant that our grasp of reality was only an analogy of God's own grasp, and that mystery was inherent to the Christian
faith. As some have argued, theological paradox in grounded in the ultimate ontological reality of the Trinity.[351] That is, we cannot get beyond the issue of "paradox" anymore than we can see our own eyes. All of reality is grounded in the Trinity, and God is that against which all knowledge etc. is to be known and tested. It is the fact that He is the ground of all truth and reality that makes it impossible for Him to be the subject of scrutiny in the same way as things within creation. Why? Because He Himself is the foundation of the tools of analysis and the categories to which the tools can be employed. They are explained and real only with reference to Him, not the other way around. But since God (being) is triune, reality is
multifaceted, and inherently relational. As such, all of reality has a paradoxical quality to it. This does not mean that the cosmos is contradictory, but that it exists in fundamental relatedness. Nothing can be understood without reference to other things, just as God is no more one than three. Unlike Van Til, (And later Smith) Clark rejected "paradox" as inherent to the Christian faith,[352] instead proposing that the Christian faith could be deduced from revelation much like geometrical answers from a set of given axioms.
This relevance of this to the current debates is best manifest in two lines of evidence. First, it is interesting to see that it was Van Til and his followers (Frame, Bahnsen, etc) who were
openly supportive of Norman Shepherd during the controversy at Westminster Theological Seminary. Whereas many criticized Shepherd for his contradictory formulations, his Van-Tilian observers understood the difficulty of walking the "fine line" of theology and exegesis as something reflective of real Christian theological struggle. His critics, on the other hand, usually criticized him for contradicting himself. A recent example of this is David VanDrunen's recent article in the Banner of Truth.[353] Self-consciously faced with the decision interpreting Shepherd's language in an orthodox or an unorthodox manner, VanDrunen decides that it seems most likely that Shepherd is unorthodox. (Apparently because his statements are "inconsistent") As
it applies to the Federal Vision controversy, Cal Beisner was
ultimately turned off to the Federal Vision because they did not seem to give enough credit to logic.[354] Indeed, he refers to this as the "root of the problem," and even alludes to John Robbins critique of Van Til.[355] While it is not true that Federal Vision theologians do not feel the pressure of logic, as is manifest in their endorsement of many scholastic distinctions to be found in Turretin, Ursinus, and Dabney, they do not require an understanding of divine things before they believe them. That is, logic's pressure is an "afterthought" to acceptance, not a condition. Indeed, Lusk is clear that questions of logic must ultimately be dealt with.[356] Furthermore, this does not
mean that Federal Vision advocates call for the adoption of irrational positions. (Nor that their opponents are all avid Clarkians) Rather, they call for the acceptance of categories which are not always clear, which is not to say that they are contradictory. In fact, they spill a lot of ink trying to explain their positions in propositional form and with helpful analogies. Like the doctrine of the Trinity and the incarnation, the issue is not one of blindly accepting contradiction, but of believing despite remaining mystery. That is, God reveals more than enough to enable His children to avoid irrationalism, but little enough that faith and trust are still required. More provocatively, if it wasn't mysterious, it would not be Christian, because it would not
be Trinitarian. Provocation aside, the picture I am painting is
summarized by Lusk, "In one sense, a good deal (though by no means all!) of the controversy taking place right now over covenant, salvation, the sacraments, and apostasy, is between those who are content to let loose ends dangle mysteriously and those who insist on tying up every last one."[357]