"I've just been told that I'm too Atonement-centered."  My sister in Christ was serious, humble, and a little confused. I said, "What do you mean 'too Atonement-centered'?" I had never heard the charge.  A Christian friend told her that she talked too much about Christ's death, which dealt with our guilt, due to sin. I responded that knowing and accepting this truth was the only way to a relationship with God, and that I didn't think it was possible to be "too Atonement-centered."  Few other doctrines go to the heart of the Christian faith like the Atonement.  Congregations sing at the top of their lungs: "My sin, not in part but the whole, has been nailed to the cross, so I bear it no more, praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!" The priestly work of Christ separates Christianity from Judaism and Islam.  Not surprisingly, the Cross has become the symbol for our faith.  Still, God's work on the Cross leaves us with plenty of questions. In fact, there have always been a few Christians who question whether we need the Atonement, including, in recent years, some evangelicals who have challenged the dominant understanding of Christ's death on the Cross as the substitute for our sins. 

At stake is nothing less than the essence of Christianity. Historically understood, Christ's Atonement gives hope to Christians in their sin and in their suffering. If we have any assurance of salvation, it is because of Christ's Atonement; if any joy, it flows from Christ's work on the Cross. The Atonement protects us from our native tendency to replace religion with morality and God's grace with legalism.  Apart from Christ's atoning work, we would be forever guilty, ashamed, and condemned before God. But not everyone these days sees it that way.  - Mark Dever  (Read the rest of the article here by Mark Dever)

Gage Browning

Post Tenebras Lux

Dustin Salter was the RUF pastor at TCU for many years, and he just recently became the RUF pastor at Furman.  On Wednesday, November 8th, 2006 Dustin and his two young sons were riding bikes, and Dustin fell off and hit his head.  He was care flighted to the hospital because of serious brain injury.  

Today, at 3:40 PM, Dustin Salter went to be with the Lord. Dustin was surrounded by family members at the time of his death, which was peaceful.

We grieve and rejoice simultaneously.  Please continue to pray for the Lord to provide for his wife Leigh Anne, and children Jacob, Nathan, and Meredith.  They will need both consolation and material provision in the days to come.  If you can help, you may want to contact Fort Worth Presbyterian Church for donations to his wife and family. 

I had barely gotten to know Dustin before he and his family moved to Furman, to be the RUF Minister there.  What I did know about Dustin was that he proclaimed the gospel passionately.  Dustin's last sermon was on Providence.  Here is an exerpt.

What do we know about God’s invisible hand? Four truths from Keller’s study on Romans that helped me so much:

1. There is a plan. It is not coincidental; it is providential. There was a plan for Joseph’s life the whole time, and there’s a plan for your life, too.

2. The plan is perfect. You know what I would have said if I was Joseph? “This is a bad plan, God. This is a bad plan! Don’t you have a plan B? Because if you have a plan B, now’s a good time to move there. Because I’m in the pit, I’m in the cistern, and by the way, there’s no water in here either. Can’t we move to plan B?” Proverbs 16:33 says, “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.” The plan is perfect. Coincidence says there is no plan, but providence says God is always accomplishing his plan for our good and his glory. Now, you read the story and you can say, “But this was such a bad deal for Joseph! An innocent man, who was continuously done wrong for the whole of his life. This is a crime.” And you’d be right. You’d be right if you have that objection. The only bigger crime occurred thousands of years later when Jesus Christ, a truly innocent man, died for a guilty man. That was a crime, that an innocent man would die for a truly guilty man.

3. The plan is exhaustive. When she was very little, our family called our now 2-year-old daughter, Meredith Hope, “The Rooster” because her hair stood straight up on her head, like a rooster. Jesus says that even the very hairs on your head are numbered by the Father, in Matthew 10. God knows every detail of our lives, down to the texture and the colors of Joseph’s coat. The plan is exhaustive down to the details.

Dustin is now a justified man, made perfect!    Well done Dustin.  You were a good and faithful servant.

Gage Browning

Post Tenebras Lux

The players cont...

Steve Wilkins holds a Bachelor of Science degree (in Pre-Law) from the University of Alabama and a Masters of Divinity from the Reformed Theological Seminary of Jackson, Mississippi. He has been an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church in America since 1976.   He has served as the pastor of Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church of Monroe, Louisiana since 1989.

Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church- Held the now infamous conference...2002 (Where it all began).

"The questions of when a man is 'regenerated,' or given 'saving faith,' or 'truly converted,' are ultimately questions we cannot answer and, therefore, they cannot be the basis upon which we define the Church or identify God's people... [The covenant perspective] enables us to assure Christians of their acceptance with God without needless [sic] undermining their confidence in God's promises (by forcing them to ask questions of themselves they cannot answer with certainty)." The Federal Vision, 67

"When someone is united to the Church by baptism, he is incorporated into Christ and into His body; he becomes bone of Christ's bone and flesh of His flesh (Eph. 5:30). He becomes a member of the house, family, and kingdom of God' (WCF 25.2). Until and unless that person breaks covenant, he is to be reckoned among God's elect and regenerate saints" (Summary Statement of AAPC's Position on the Covenant, Baptism, and Salvation (Revised), para 4.).

"If [someone] has been baptized, he is in covenant with God" Federal Vision, 67

"covenant is union with Christ" (p. 58)...and "being in covenant gives all the blessings of being united to Christ" (p. 58), which blessings he enumerates by appeal to Eph. 1:3, stating, "those who are in covenant have all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places" (p. 58).

“Because being in covenant with God means being in Christ, those who are in covenant have all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places. Union with Christ means that all that is true of Christ is true of us.”   Sounds pretty good on the surface.  But Pastor Wilkins goes on to explain...

“The elect are those who are faithful in Christ Jesus. If they later reject the Savior, they are no longer elect- they are cut off from the Elect One and thus, lose their elect standing. But their falling away doesn’t negate the reality of their standing prior to their apostasy. They were really and truly the elect of God because of their relationship with Christ.” Federal Vision, pg. 58. 

For Pastor Wilkins, there are real salvific benefits of being united to Christ even for those who apostasize.  He goes on to list all the salvific benefits of those united to Christ in a covenantal way on page 59. Again we see new definitions of terms that describe "saving benefits" that have traditionally been understood to be experienced for those who are actually justified.   

He goes on to say “Thus, when one breaks covenant, it can be truly said that he has turned away from grace and forfeited life, forgiveness, and salvation.” ibid 61

Lane over at Green Baggins said... "The decretal sense of election is here in view in the WCF, and it explicitly says that they *only* receive any saving benefits. What the FV has to do is invent a whole new vocabulary for every saving benefit so that there are two justifications, two sanctifications, two elections, two redemptions, one covenantal and one decretal. However, they inevitably confuse the one set of terms with the other, and have not distinguished at all the two different senses of justification, sanctification, redemption, etc."

So who are the recipients of the benefits?

WCF Ch.3

VI. As God hath appointed the elect unto glory, so hath he, by the eternal and most free purpose of his will, foreordained all the means thereunto. Wherefore they who are elected being fallen in Adam are redeemed by Christ, are effectually called unto faith in Christ by his Spirit working in due season; are justified, adopted, sanctified, and kept by his power through faith unto salvation. Neither are any other redeemed by Christ, effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, but the elect only.

For a more thorough treatment of the Federal Vision Controversy, visit Green Baggins.  He did a series on Federal Vision Part One and Part Two.

Third Piece of Jello

1.  Covenant Membership equals "salvific blessings" or "spiritual blessings in the heavenly places"

2.  Elect by choice, apostasy by choice

3.  Baptism and Assurance of Salvation

4.  New Terms and New Definitions/ Coming ever closer to NT Wright and Rome

Gage Browning

Post Tenebras Lux

I will catechize the ignorant;

I will visit the sick and the infirm;

I will support missionaries;

I will befriend the friendless;

I will lay hold of God by prayer and by the tears that flow from a grateful regenerated heart and I will plead God’s mercy on behalf of those I know and love and even on behalf of those I am yet to know because I am persuaded that He is able to make the blind to see, the dead to live and to make the unbelieving to believe. I know that is true because He did that for me and because He did, I will never give in to despair and I will never give up my hope. Who knows what God will do?"

Who are the players cont.?

John Barach- He pastored Trinity Reformed Church (URCNA) in Lethbridge, Alberta, from 1999 to 2002, and Covenant Reformed Church (URCNA) in Grande Prairie, Alberta, from 2003 to 2006, before taking the call to plant Reformation Covenant Church (CREC) in Medford, OR.

Mr. Barach says some interesting things...

'But how do you know that God chose you? – The answer is that you’ve had the special experience. You’ve been baptized. All God’s salvation—from election to glorification—is found in Christ. And when you were baptized, God promised to unite you to Jesus Christ. That’s what it means to be baptized into Christ. You’re united to Jesus and all His salvation is for you. At baptism, God promises that you’re really one of His elect…Doubting your election when God has promised it to you is sin." – John Barach, answering a letter to the editor on messiahnyc.org.

"Every baptized person is in covenant with God and is in union then with Christ and with the triune God. The Bible doesn't know about a distinction between being internally in the covenant—really in the covenant, and being only externally in the covenant, just being in the sphere of the covenant. The Bible speaks about the reality, efficacy, of baptism. Every baptized person is in Christ and therefore shares in His new life.... We need to say [to every baptized person] Jesus died for you personally and we mean it, to them, head for head, everyone of them" ( John Barach- ("Covenant and History," tape 3).

Doug Wilson is often considered a contributor to the FV.  Here's some of what he says...

Doug Wilson- Pastor of Christ  Church Moscow, Id (CREC) and editor of "Credenda/Agenda" magazine.

"A theological liberal in a mainstream denomination should be considered covenantally a Christian, even though he denies the virgin birth, the substitutionary death of Christ, the resurrection, and the final judgment." Douglas Wilson, Judas was a Bishop, in CREDENDA AGENDA, Vol. 13, Number 2, p. 12 All this [John 15] means that a man can be genuinely attached to Christ and yet bear no fruit. He is as attached as the fruit-bearing branch is. They both partake of the root and fatness of the tree. Sap flows to both branches. The fruitless branch tastes the heavenly gift. He has been enlightened (Heb. 6:4). And when the process of apostasy comes to completion, he tramples underfoot the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified "(Heb. 10:29). Douglas Wilson, Stumbling into Apostasy, CRE-DENDA AGENDA, Vol. 13, Number 2, p. 16

"What does a faithful shepherd do with a savage wolf? He fights. And where do savage wolves appear? “For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them” (Acts 20:29–30). So, are these men in the covenant? Of course they are, which is why they are so dangerous." - Douglas Wilson, “Judas Was a Bishop,” Credenda Agenda: Presbyterion vol. 13, no. 2. Accessed at http://www.credenda.org/issues/13-2presbyterion.php?type=print.

“And so here is one of the rare places in which we would suggest an improvement on the language of the Confession. A problem is created when we affirm a belief in two Churches at the same moment in time, one visible and the other invisible.” (Wilson, Reformed is Not Enough, P. 74.)

"In order to understand this, we have to refer to Hellenism again. The Hellenistic mind tends to see the ethereal, spiritual realm as the "real" one. That which is material and earthy is beneath all true philosophic consideration. There is a religious version of this about, and this is the attitude which sees the "invisible" Church as the "true" Church and the "visible" Church, at best, as only an approximation of the true Church." (ibid, 70)

The Second Piece of Jello

1.  A new look at baptism and election (either uncomfortably close or holds to baptismal regeneration).

2.  Definition of "Covenant" and "Christian"

3.  Denial of the WCF terms, the "Visible and Invisible" Church.

Richard Phillips helps sum some of this "jello" up.

Richard Phillips said- "Douglas Wilson boasts of "recovering the objectivity of the covenant," the subtitle of his book Reformed Is Not Enough. This means I can know objectively I am right with God because I am in the church. He exults, "Covenants of God have a physical aspect, like an oak tree." 18 Presumably, the point is that we can physically climb into it.  This is supposed to deliver us from the so-called plague of "morbid introspection" - that is, from ascertaining the presence of a real and personal faith that brings me into relationship with God through Jesus Christ. I am freed from all this simply by noting that I am physically in the church and therefore in covenant with God. This emphasis would not be so dangerous if its proponents, such as the Auburn Avenue theologians, allowed for the distinction between the visible and the invisible church that is so essential to the system of doctrine taught in the Westminster Standards. But since they insist that there is no other church than the one that is visible and physical, their emphasis on ecclesiology over soteriology and the external over the internal is all the more alarming."

Gage Browning

Post Tenebras Lux