2/27/07
T.E. Wilder
provides us with this valuable insight into the origins of Federal Vision
theology at http://puritanboard.com/showthread.php?t=19219
:
The Federal Vision people have
not done much more than take elements that were already around in the OPC and
put them together in new ways:
1) Attack on the covenant of works because the language is not in Genesis: John
Murray
2) Attack on the visible/invisible church distinction because the language is
not that of the Bible: John Murray
3) A generalized playing off of the language of the Bible against the ideas of
the Bible as organized in the Confessions: this is an extension by Norman
Shepherd of what Murray started.
4) Playing up paradox in theology, so that logical contradictions to the
Confessions are a mark of truth: Van Til
5) Engaging in typically Arminian exegesis of Biblical passages to promote the
contradiction and paradox: Van Til
6) Conflating faith and works: Van Til
7) A vertical axis typology and wild symbolic theology: Meredith Kline.
What the Federal Vision did was push these pieces around together with some
other old ideas from Dutch Reformed churches until they started to work as a
new system, much like those Trasformer [sic] toys that change between trucks
and robots.
The Federal Vision is the legitimate firstborn child of the OPC, and its
deviant theologies that have been tolerated throughout the entire existence of
the denomination.
Seminaries
become breeding grounds of heresy when full subscription to a reformed
confession is not required and enforced.
Each theologian is allowed to deviate, and over time there is a snowball
effect. The mass of errors then becomes
a monstrous whole, as we find in the Federal Vision theology. And this is not without further ill
effect. For we find many professed
Protestants, who once having embraced the Federal Vision theology, eventually
join the Romish Church. Thus we see in
practice what we read about in scripture: A little leaven leaveneth the
whole lump. (Galatians 5:9)
Toleration of
heresies in the seminaries is a rampant plague in North America. It besets not only Westminster Seminary East
and West, but virtually every other seminary.
Even Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary is not without problem in
this respect. Puritan Reformed
Theological Seminary allows men holding to various and sundry erroneous
deviations from the Westminster Standards and Three Forms of Unity to teach
courses.
A much sounder
principle of theological instruction is found in the Free Presbyterian Church
of Scotland. There, only full
subscriptionists to the Westminster Standards are allowed to teach, for only
ministers in the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland teach.