This is the Bredo Heights Presbyterian Church Pulpit Supplemental. Let me get the microphone up here. And today, I'd like to start a series I've been wanting to do for a while, and I already asked Dewey Roberts' permission to quote extensively from his excellent book, Historic Christianity and the Federal Vision. And as I've mentioned in other podcasts, if you're a regular listener, which I don't have very many regular listeners yet, I only have, I think, 133 subscribers, but, you know, it doesn't matter. He wrote this book with that title, Historic Christianity and the Federal Vision, for the very same reason that J. Gresham Machen chose the title Christianity and Liberalism. And what Dewey Roberts pointed out in the book so far, is that others have written about the very serious doctrinal errors and heresies, like John Otis, of the Federal Vision, and also Guy Waters wrote an excellent book, Covenant Theology and the Federal Vision. Way back when the controversy was really starting to heat up in terms of the courts of the church but no one had really done a real detailed study of Historic Christianity and the federal vision and what this what he means by this is the fact as he documents really Incredibly thoroughly in this book There's nothing that the federal vision Heresy is saying or teaching that hasn't been said before It hasn't been rejected already And it's a real shame that really one of the ringleaders of the federal vision, Doug Wilson, is still being accepted in some reform circles. He's pretty much been ousted from every major reform denomination, but there's still individuals who are ostensibly reformed, at least in some sense of the term, who are still giving him a platform. And he comes up quite a bit in this book along with some of the other main proponents. But the reason this book is uniquely valuable is because it goes through the history of these doctrines and what Roberts shows Especially in the section on regeneration. We probably won't get to that today, but that really is one of the most important sections of this book. Regeneration. The doctrine of regeneration and the federal vision's indifference to that doctrine. You may recall, if you're familiar, I know it's out there on the internet, the federal vision statement that was signed by all of them, including Doug Wilson and all the other bad guys, including Lusk and Tim Gallant and other people I just was recently I was remembering Tim Gallant because I had a real nasty dust up with him on Facebook and he he was saying that when Paul says faith was credited as righteousness that that means faithfulness and everything and just just pointed out what Reformed theologians have pointed out for years what the Reformed pointed out against the Arminians who use the same argument and the Westminster Confession actually brings that up Not as though the grace of faith were imputed as if it was righteousness or that faith is righteousness But rather because of its connection to justification as being the sole instrument. It's often called the righteousness of faith or whatever But but anyway, he a gallant was real was real nasty and Facebook Discussion I have with him several years ago. But anyway, all those guys signed this joint federal vision a document And obviously, there's a lot in that document that's very bad. Not the least of which would be the fact that they deny the law gospel distinction. Now, I know exactly what they would say. I know exactly what they would say if you tried to say, well, you've got to maintain the law gospel distinction. Without that, you're going to fatally confuse the gospel. Well, we're not saying, I guarantee, I know exactly what they would say. They would say, we're not saying that we deny the law of gospel's distinction with regard to justification, we're just saying it's a hermeneutical principle because we don't like Lutheranism or whatever. But anyway, that's probably how they would respond to that. I want to get to the preface to the book. The preface to Dewey Roberts' book here is outstanding. And I want to get through that, but the issue of regeneration is profoundly important, and Roberts goes into some detail explaining and demonstrating that the federal vision in difference to regeneration is Pelagian to the core. It's Pelagian to the core. And the fact that they identify differences on regeneration, and most that are somewhat familiar with the controversy know that there's a guy named James Jordan. We recognize him. He's an older-looking fellow with gray hair, a white beard, and a clerical collar, always, who doesn't think that man even has a nature that can be regenerated. Apparently wrote a monograph about that if you listen to the program I did about Doug Wilson and deniers of justification my faith alone even when Doug Wilson listens to Clips of the worst of the federal vision heretics denying the gospel. He'll still say oh, no. No, they still believe they believe in Sola Fide Yeah, Steve Schlissel Schlissel believes in Sola Fide and I'm a Roman Catholic Cardinal myself. I mean, it's so ridiculous that it's like how could I Chris Arnson played clips of Schlissel attacking the gospel. And Schlissel is the worst one. I read the quotations from Otis' book, and Lusk and everything, and yet Wilson would say, no, no, no, those guys, they affirm Sola Fide. That's ridiculous. That's absolutely absurd. They most certainly don't. But the denial of regeneration or being indifferent to regeneration, saying, well, it's an in-house debate. It's an intramural debate. Some think that regeneration is a real thing. Some think it's not a real thing. The mere fact that you could bring yourself to be indifferent about being born again, about regeneration, about the heart of stone being replaced with the heart of flesh, those are the images that the scriptures use. is itself Pelagian to the core and shows that not only is the federal vision, it's not, it is not, it is not a variation within the realm of Presbyterian covenant theology. It is a comprehensive denial of pretty much every doctrine of the gospel. Like I was thinking, I was driving around just thinking, you know, what do we agree with the federal vision system? What do we agree with them about? Do we agree with them on assurance? No. How about ecclesiology? No. Sacraments? No. Justification? No. Sanctification? No. Do we agree with them on what faith is? No. What do we agree with him on? God exists. Jesus has something to do with salvation. But then again, we have that in common with a lot of Christian counterfeits. But the point that Roberts, I think, brings out in real clear detail, going to the word of God and going to the history of Christian thought, the history of Christian theology, is that you have historic Christianity And then you have this other thing that is NOT historic Christianity called the Federal Vision. So, I think that when you get to the section on regeneration, I think that will really be made crystal clear. Of course, the whole book makes it crystal clear. But real quick, before I start reading the preface, I wanted to share one other thing. I had the privilege, and boy I'll tell you, of all the blessings that God has poured into my life and my lap, I was invited to speak at the Reformed Evangelistic Fellowship. It used to be called Presbyterian Evangelistic Fellowship, but now it's called Reformed Evangelistic Fellowship conference in Birmingham, Alabama last summer. And those were recorded and I put them on sermon audio. And they wanted me to speak on, I mean, the topic was all things for the glory of God. Like, well, that's a pretty broad topic. So I did a message on predestination and God's sovereignty and salvation and for the glory of God and I can't recall what the other message I did was. Anyway, I had the privilege of sitting and listening to a man named Al Baker. And I'd never met Al Baker, I'd never heard of him before, but he preached the opening message of the conference. On Ezekiel chapter 11, and on the necessity of regeneration, it was one of the best sermons, it was one of the most powerful sermons I have ever listened to. And it brought home a truth that, of course, as a Christian, I understand that. I understand the necessity of regeneration. And if God doesn't do that, then forget it. No one's ever going to believe. No one will ever come to Christ. No one will ever repent or anything without God changing the heart of man morally and changing its seat of affection from being a God-hater to loving God and being at war with sin. And of course, there's the mixture. We have a love for God, a desire to be holy, we still have indwelling sin, and there's that war. But without that regenerating work of God's Holy Spirit, man is dead in his sins, lost, and under God's just condemnation, and there's never going to be anything other than that. And I was thinking about the essential truth of regeneration. In light of the fact that the federal vision guys actually identify regeneration as an intramural topic that they're not sure how they, you know, we're not sure how we would formulate it. We're not saying that it's an essential, it's just an intramural debate. Let me see if I can find the joint statement. It was deleted, the original PDF was deleted, but thankfully someone pulled it and put it on something else. Okay, yeah, here we go. Okay, yadda yadda yadda. I want to read the section on regeneration here real quick. Okay, baptism, regeneration. Okay, some points of intramural disagreement. Okay, I'll put a link to this in the description here so you can look at the joint federal vision statement. Listen to this. But there are also important areas of disagreement or ongoing discussion among those who are identified as federal vision advocates. Some of these areas would include, but not be limited to, whether or not the imputation of the act of obedience of Christ, as traditionally understood, is to be affirmed in its classic form. Some of us affirm this and some do not. So for them, This is a doctrine that you can take or leave, I guess. Some of them think that, yeah, regeneration is a thing, and some of them don't think it's a thing at all. And I have to wonder, what, how in the world... Could anybody be okay with being a partner, a ministry partner, with anyone that signed this? Okay, now look, let's see if they got, yeah. Okay, here's quite a group of men. John Barich, Randy Booth, Tim Gallant, Mark Horn, Jim Jordan, Rich Lusk, remember the quotations from him, Jeff Myers, Ralph Smith, Steve Wilkins, Doug Wilson, and Peter Lightheart. So these guys, you know, they see each other as brothers in the Lord, and we're all part of the reformed community, or so they say, and they think. But, you know, we're saying that whether or not personal regeneration represents a change in nature in the person, so are regenerated. Some of us say yes, others question whether we actually have such an essence that can be changed. All of us would affirm that we should have a high view of covenant renewal liturgy, But this does not necessarily mean we all agree on how high the liturgy should actually be. Okay, so do we even have something that can be changed? Of course, that's not the issue. That's not the issue. Never has been the issue. Regeneration represents a change in the heart and seed of our affections. God puts a love for himself in our hearts. He writes his law upon our hearts. He grants us repentance and faith. Those flow out of the new heart. Now does that refer to a change in our substance or anything like that? Of course not. Of course not. This is a spiritual change. This is a spiritual change. So they relegate the issue here. to the realm of intramural debate. Look, I can't help but notice this. Some of these areas would include, but not be limited to, whether or not the imputation of the act of obedience of Christ is to be understood in its classic form. Some of us affirm this and some do not. So whether or not Jesus's active obedience is imputed to our account, Well, that's just an area of intramural disagreement. And you start pointing out, no, that's an essential truth. That is the heart and soul of the gospel. Immediately, you'll get quotations from Vines, Gattaker, and Twiss. Those theologians from the Westminster Assembly, well, they had questions about the imputation of the act of obedience of Christ. And there were speeches made against it. They weren't, they didn't all understand it in exactly the same way. The thing is, though, if you read the histories and you look at the documents that are available to us about the Westminster Assembly, they were refuted by Goodwin and others, by a fellow named Featley as well. And there were others that stood up and spoke and pointed out that the broken covenant of works necessitates the imputation of the obedience of Christ to that covenant. That's what gives us a right to eat from the tree of life. It wasn't just that Adam avoided temptation. He also had to positively obey, just like we positively obey. That's why our standards, the larger and shorter catechism, have two-sided questions for every commandment in the Decalogue. What does the commandment require? What does it prohibit? What does it forbid? What is forbidden in the first commandment? What is required in the first commandment? Okay, so we have to produce that act of obedience without the obedience. and satisfaction of Christ. There's no grounds for justification. So for them to say this is a point of intramural disagreement? So these guys sit down with each other, so Peter, Lightheart, so you think that the act of obedience to Christ impugns us? No, I don't think so. Okay, okay, brother, that's fine. That's cool. So how do we get justified? Well, justification takes the form of deliverance from sin's bondage. But isn't that like a subjective transformational category? Yeah. But then you don't believe in forensic justification. Oh, no, no, no. I believe in forensic justification. I've just added to it. Forensic plus is not forensic at all. Forensic plus, faith plus, works of love, faith formed by charity or whatever, Fides Formata Caritate or whatever, that's not what the Bible means by faith and that's not justification, that's not how we're saved. Okay? So I don't want to get distracted by reading this joint federal vision statement, etc. So, alright. I'd like to start reading Dewey Roberts and I got his permission to read from his book and like quote it extensively So I'm gonna do that and make a bunch of comments along the way here, but Roberts Dewey Roberts really was uniquely Equipped and qualified to write on the topic of the federal vision and this book is Outstanding if you've not read it and you really want to understand what is the problem with the federal vision? Why is the federal vision not? another flavor of Reformed Covenant Theology, but it's a different religion altogether. It is a false religion altogether. You want to read Robert's book. Here's what he says. The writing of this book is the result of several providential circumstances in my service to the church, particularly as a member of the Presbyterian Church in America's Standing Judicial Commission, the SJC. First, I was a juror on the SJC in 2007 when a complaint against Louisiana Presbytery for providing safe harbor to the theological errors of Teaching Elder Steve Wilkins was upheld by the higher court. Second, I was appointed as the prosecutor for the trial of Louisiana Presbytery in March 2008, when the SJC brought charges against the lower court for failure to comply with a decision of the higher court in the case. That trial was only the second time in American Presbyterian Church history that a General Assembly or its commission has censured a presbytery. In 1837, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of America censured the Second Presbytery of Philadelphia for failure to discipline the heretical views of Albert Barnes. Okay, so 1837, so it was a long, long time ago. Third, I was the chairman of the SJC panel in 2009 that upheld the first complaint against Pacific Northwest Presbytery for its refusal to censure Teaching Elder Peter Lightheart. Fourth, I was the representative of the complainant, Ruling Elder Gerald Headman, in the hearing before the full SJC in March of 2013 concerning the second complaint against Pacific Northwest Presbytery in the matters of Peter Lightheart. Over a period of six years, I was a juror, a prosecutor, a panel chairman, and the representative of a complainant in some of the most important cases concerning the federal vision that have been decided by reformed churches in the 21st century. The trial documents of those cases, particularly the cases concerning Peter Lightheart, taught me many things that I would not have learned by reading the various pieces of literature of the federal vision proponents. Thus, I began work on this book in earnest sometime in 2012 with a series of sermons I preached to my congregation clarifying the differences between the Christian faith and the federal vision. And that's what shepherds are supposed to do. That is what they are supposed to do. When you have wolves that are gobbling up sheep, you expose them. If you know about it and say, well, let somebody else do that, oh, I'm not going to really address that, then you're not really functioning the way a shepherd should. If you know that there's wolves in the midst, you have to address that. Let me give you an example. There was a guy that used to be a member of the church here at Birtle Heights who left before I got here. Thankfully, he is the biggest New Perspective Federal Vision devotee I've ever met. Barring one other guy I met while I was in seminary, who was as bad as they come, Stephen Wedgworth. I don't know what he's doing now, no idea, don't care either. I'm just saying, when I was in seminary, it was kinda like, who's the Federal Vision fanboy in seminary? He was the guy, Stephen Wedgworth was. So this guy that was a member of the church here had left and of course was going to a CREC church up in Bristol or Mendota or something like that. St. Peter Presbyterian Church. And on Facebook, I was told, he invited all of his friends, including many members of the church here, to come to St. Peter Presbyterian Church, which is not a Presbyterian church, but to come hear Steve Wilkins. So I had to stand up and make an announcement. Steve Wilkins is a heretic. Steve Wilkins is not a faithful teacher of the word of God. He's a purveyor of a false gospel. And we want to warn you not to listen to so-and-so and go to this thing to go listen to him. Because he's a false teacher. And we felt as a session, we needed to warn people about this. And so we did. And that's what you're supposed to do. When you know that there's wolves and someone's trying to Bring the sheep that you're responsible for to come listen to a wolf. You say, sheep, congregation, this guy is dangerous. You don't want to go listen to him. He's part of a system of theology that has denied the gospel over and over again, and you don't want to go listen to him. Okay, so Roberts has been up to his eyeballs in this stuff for many years, so he's uniquely qualified to write on it. He continues, in addition to the trial documents and the various cases before the SJC, I have also read the writings of people on both sides of this issue. Guy Prentiss Water's two books, Justification and the New Perspectives on Paul and the Federal Vision and Covenant Theology and Cornelis P. Venema's The Gospel of Free Acceptance in Christ are, in my opinion, the best books that expose the soteriological errors of both the Federal Vision and the New Perspectives on Paul. and just stop in the quotation here, I would agree with that. I've not read, um, Venema's larger work, but his little, his abridged version of his dissertation called, um, getting the gospel right. So it's like a 50 page little paperback. If you, if someone that, you know, wants to understand what is the new perspective on Paul, like what is that and why is it so dangerous? Um, Venema's little book, um, makes it real clear. And it's a, it's a book you could read in, in, um, just a couple hours really. Okay. The denominational reports of the Presbyterian Church in America, the OPC, and the RCUS all make very valuable contributions in identifying the errors of these views. Now, he moves immediately into the federal vision and what's wrong with it. What is wrong with the federal vision? And the preface here, we're not even going into the specific doctrines. And he deals with all of them in the book. But listen to this paragraph, these paragraphs and these quotations. This is very important stuff, says Roberts. The Federal Vision represents a full-scale frontal attack against all the essential doctrines of the gospel that is disguised as an attempt to improve the Reformed faith. He is correct in that regard. Listen to that again. The Federal Vision represents a full-scale frontal attack against all the essential doctrines of the gospel that is disguised as an attempt to improve the reformed faith. Okay, stop there for a moment. They say, well, it's the federal vision. It was a vision, a dream. Of what? Denying the Christian faith? I mean, that's how it's been described. It was just, you know, guys getting together and just sharing some of their views. No, it wasn't that. It was a departure. It was a frontal assault on the doctrines of the gospel. Now, did the federal vision guys say that? We're here to deny the Christian faith and perish eternally and take as many people to hell with us as possible. Of course not. What, have they all said, no, we're reformed? Have they all, have they said, no, we deny all those reformed confessions. They all say that they affirm them. But when you look at what they're saying, and look at the doctrines that they teach, and look at how they speak out of both sides of their mouths, they're denying everything. It is a full scale frontal attack against all the essential doctrines of the gospel And it's disguised as an attempt to improve the Reformed faith. So they're not arguing, well, we should tweak this and tweak that and make this a little more biblical and make that a little more biblical. And that's what they always do. That's what they always do. When you listen to Steve Schlissel talk to John Otis, you guys are more reliant on these old confessions than you are the Word of God. But then you look at the way Schlissel interprets the Word of God and you recognize There's no concern for context. There's no concern to make sense of anything in scripture that doesn't overthrow entire chapters of scripture in other places. Okay, listen. This book agrees substantially with the analysis of the federal vision in the books and articles written against it by Guy Waters, Cornelis Venema, R. Scott Clark, John V. Fesco, John Otis, and David J. Inglesmile, and others. After contemplating this manuscript, I came across the following quote from R. Scott Clark, Professor of Church History and Historical Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Escondido, California, concerning the federal vision and the new perspectives on Paul. Okay, this is an excellent quotation. Quote, it is an historical fact that moralism, the confusion of justification with sanctification, never dies. It just goes dormant periodically. The Reformation defeated 1,000 years of moralism, only to see forms of it re-emerge in the Protestant churches even before Luther died. It's resurfaced in the remonstrant theology, that's Arminianism, in Richard Baxter, and in those Orthodox Reformed whom he influenced, in the Scottish Neonomians in the 18th century, in the Oxford Tractarium movement in the 19th century, in Charles Finney. It has more or less dominated American Protestantism, whether evangelical or liberal, for most of American history. Over the last few years, in the NAPARC world, NAPARC is the North American Presbyterian and Reformed Churches. And in satellite groups, the Orthodox have won several strategic victories in the courts and assemblies of the Reformed Churches. The following denominations or federations have rejected the federal vision and new perspectives on Paul in related forms of moralism, justification by grace and cooperation with grace, in no particular order from memory. The United Reformed Churches, so the URC, condemned it. The OPC condemned it. The PCA condemned it. The BPC, the Bible Presbyterian Church, condemned it. I was there for that. I was still in that denomination then. The Reformed Church in the United States, the R.C.U.S., condemned it. The O.C.R.C., the Orthodox Christian Reformed Church, the Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America, the R.P.C.N.A., the Reformed Presbyterian Church in the United States, the R.P.C.U.S. It isn't over, however." Now, picking up with Roberts, he says, Clark rightly identifies this problem of moralism or legalism as existing for a thousand years before the Reformation, which would go back to Pelagius. It resurfaced after the Reformation with the Remonstrants through Arminius, with Richard Baxter, with the Neonomians of Scotland, with the Tractarians, and the Church of England, with Charles Finney, with Albert Barnes, and with others. Interestingly, this book traces the same historical connections between the Federal Vision theology and the various moralism heresies of the past, including several more that are not mentioned in his brief quote. Listen, the federal vision new perspectives on Paul are moralistic or legalistic systems as Clark observes. They are not new. They are just the same old salvation by works scheme from the past dressed up in new theological nomenclature to confuse the undiscerning. Now Roberts continues, in a more recent article, Clark goes beyond identifying these movements as merely moralism and singles out one of them, the Remonstrants, as Pelagianism. As he says, and this is quoting R. Scott Clarke, quote, the Remonstrants always find a way to put the believer on the hook for his final salvation. You hear that? The Armenians did that. The Armenians always found a way to put the believer on the hook for his final salvation. There you have the phrase, final salvation, one of Piper's favorite phrases that he got from Daniel Fuller, of course. Here, continuing with Clark, grace is never really free. It is never really amazing. As with Rome, grace is reduced to a helper. The remonstrants wrote of the assisting grace of the Holy Spirit and that Jesus Christ assists us poor sinners if only we are ready for the conflict and desire his help and are not inactive. Here, the true nature of the remonstrant doctrine of perseverance emerges. God helps those who help themselves by cooperating with his assisting grace. This is quite another picture of salvation. Here, God has not parted the Red Sea and led us through by the hand as it were. Rather, according to the remonstrants, to the Arminians, God has covenanted to co-act with those who do what lies within them. The remonstrance turned reformed theology into the Pelagian covenant theology of Franciscan theologian Gabriel Biel from 1420 to 1495. Those who meet these antecedent conditions, the remonstrance turned the covenant of grace into a covenant of works, cannot be plucked out of Christ's hand. If only we read the first few lines and then let our eyes slip down to the quotation of John 10, 28, we might get entirely the wrong impression. Once, however, we read the words in between the picture, Now, listen. Of course, that is not Clark's opinion alone concerning the Remonstrants. The Synod of Doric called the Remonstrants Pelagians eight different times in their response to them. Okay, soften the quotation. I remember that from the very first time I ever read the Canons of Doric, a long time ago. I noticed that they kept calling the Armenians Pelagians. They kept saying, they have thus brought out of hell the Pelagian error. Now listen, here's Roberts, what Clark and the Senate of Dort say about the remonstrance can also be said about other forms of moralism that have surfaced since the Reformation, including the most recent forms known as the Federal Vision and the New Perspectives on Paul. These movements are not only moralism, but also Pelagianism. And that was what was a bit new for me, was to think of the federal vision as not just as sort of Arminian but as Pelagian. And to think of Arminianism not as well as semi-Pelagian. It is Pelagian. It's Pelagian because they locate the decisive factor in man. You can talk about assisting grace all you want if you don't think grace is irresistible. then the decisive factor ultimately is in man. Man has the natural capacity, even if he's aided by divine grace, he still has the trump card, he still is the decisive factor. Salvation hangs decisively on what the creature does independently of God. In the ultimate sense, that's Pelagianism. A missionary friend in Ukraine emailed me with concerns that students trained in a reform seminary there have adopted Federal Vision views after graduation. Some of the Federal Vision advocates have made mission trips to the former Soviet Union countries, infecting ministers with the poison of their system. My own mission trips to Russia have revealed how deep those inroads are. Legalism is, and always has been, the greatest enemy of the Church because it is a denial of the Gospel. Moralism is legalism. Pelagianism is legalism. Both are natural religion and both deny the gospel. He's right. And that is absolutely infuriating and heartbreaking that this federal vision nonsense has been exported to places like the Ukraine that desperately needs good teaching and solid ministers and teachers. That is so upsetting to read. Federal Vision and Pelagianism. Listen closely now. Most modern authors agree that the errors of the Federal Vision and the new perspectives on Paul are at least the heresy of Semi-Pelagianism, which was condemned by the Council of Orange in 530. The errors of the Federal Vision are certainly within the Pelagian spectrum of heresies. Pelagianism, Semi-Pelagianism, Arminianism, Neonomianism, and Roman Catholicism. Over 50 quotes from 30 of the greatest theologians of the church over a period of 1500 years from Augustine to Gerhardus Vos as Pelagianism to one degree or another. The great theologians of the past unanimously defined Pelagianism and its offshoots primarily in terms of the doctrine of grace and secondarily in terms of the doctrine of man. There are subtle differences in the various forms which moralism or legalism has adopted over the centuries. But those differences are dismissed by the great Southern Presbyterian theologian, James Henley Thornwell, in the following quote. And by the way, I have always thought that myself. I have always thought there is no difference between moralism and legalism and Pelagianism and semi-Pelagianism. They're all the same thing. They're all a naturalistic understanding of salvation where God is not the sole cause of salvation. They're all the same in that regard. As long as you say that salvation hangs decisively upon something the creature does, even with the help of grace, infused grace, and grace makes it all possible, if you say that the decisive factor is within the sinner, that is a form of Pelagianism. At the end of the day, there's men save themselves, and then there's God save sinners. God helps us save ourselves, is we save ourselves. it's the same thing. Because grace can be taken for granted, grace is not going to be the decisive thing, it's decisive in making it possible, but at the end of the day it hangs decisively upon what man does independently of God. Now listen to James Henley Thornwell, this is a really great quotation. Now the reigning error of Arminianism, Pelagianism, and this Neonomianism, for they are all substantially the same, they rest upon identically the same principle, in utter disregard of the true scripture doctrine of grace, and a fatal misapprehension of the present condition of man in the sight of God. The friends of these systems will all admit that a man is justified by grace, but when they undertake to explain their meaning, grace is no more grace. The source of the error in many minds is the unfounded notion that grace is whatever is opposed to merit." It's almost like he knew about the Federal Vision. Federal Vision, they disparage the concept of merit more viciously than anyone I've ever heard. There's no merit at all. There's no covenant of works. There's no merit. Man never puts God in debt. God can never be put in debt by his creatures. Even Adam before the fall, it's all grace. Says Roberts, anyone who has read much of the writings of the Federal Vision authors will be aware how often they oppose grace to merit. Yep, I've seen it zillions of times in their books. Thornwell's remarks are therefore both historically accurate and prescient. Exactly, they were almost like foretelling. In one sense, it is not worth our time to debate whether the views of the Federal Vision are actually closer to Arminianism, Pelagianism, Semi-Pelagianism, Romanism, or Neo-Nomianism, because all of those systems are substantially the same in their utter disregard of the true scripture doctrine of grace and a fatal misapprehension of the present condition of man in the sight of God, as Thoreau said. Yet, the Federal Vision generally denies or mutes the subjective grace of the Holy Spirit in their emphasis on baptismal efficacy, which makes them on that point more Pelagian than Semi-Pelagian. See, I never made that connection until I read Roberts. I always thought, now you can look at their errors on baptism, baptismal regeneration, and, you know, baptism puts you in an objective covenant relationship with God or something like that. You can treat that separately from their other issues about justification, and soteriology, and regeneration. They are all connected. I should have known that. I should have known that, but Roberts taught me this. Their understanding of baptism, that is why they don't care about regeneration. Regeneration is of no consequence to them, because regeneration really deals with the invisible church, and they don't believe that there is an invisible church. They deny that distinction. Of course, it's impossible to deny it altogether. What they did was they got rid of the invisible church distinction and have invented a new distinction, covenantally elect versus decreedly elect. But anyway, it's all necessarily connected. You'll see all these things are connected to each other. All the errors are connected to each other. In other instances, their positions will be closer to semi-Pelagianism or Neonomianism. A. A. Hodge correctly taught that Pelagianism is a complete self-consistent system of theology. Now listen very closely to this Hodge quote. A. A. Hodge said this. This is excellent. Quote, there are in fact, as we might have anticipated, but two complete self-consistent systems of Christian theology possible. Okay, now, remember what I just said? There's either man saves himself or God saves man. Saying, no, no, no, grace is God helping man save himself. There's no difference between saying that and saying man saves himself. Because what's the decisive factor in that equation? Saying man saves himself or God helps man save himself. What's the decisive factor in both, man, and what he does? Listen to Hodge, he is exactly right. There's only two complete self-consistent systems of Christian theology possible. One, on the right hand, Augustinianism completed in Calvinism. Two, on the left hand, Pelagianism completed in Socinianism. He's right. At the end of the day, it's God save sinners or men save themselves. And people have tried to come up with a million middle ways of saying that, but as soon as you have Christ plus something else, at the end of the day, in the thinking of the Apostle Paul, it's works alone, no Christ in the equation. Christ will be of no benefit to you. Listen. And third, Arminianism comes between these as the system of compromised and is developed semi-Pelagianism. End quote. Now listen to Roberts. Semi-Pelagianism is an unstable theological system which is always vacillating between the two completely self-consistent systems. He's exactly right. It always drifts one way or the other. It either becomes Augustinian or it just denies grace altogether and men save themselves and becomes pure Sassanianism. Semi-Pelagianism sometimes leans more toward Pelagianism and other times more toward Augustinianism. He's right. Reformed churches and the Pelagian heresy. Now listen to this section. It might seem unimaginable that any form of Pelagianism could appear within a Reformed church. Yet it should not surprise us. Reformed churches have often been infected by Pelagian doctrines in the past and will continue to face this problem until the end of time. In words that now appear prescient, Gerhardus Voss wrote over a century ago in Reformed Dogmatics that the apparent failure of the covenant to live up to the breadth of God's promises concerning baptized covenant children would be the way in which Pelagianism could enter into the reform doctrine. Quote, we here face the difficulty that the covenant relationship appears powerless to bring covenant fellowship in its wake. We get a covenant that remains unfruitful, a barren juridical relationship and ought to be appears to take the place of the glorious realities that mention of the covenant brings to our minds. This is, in fact, the point where, by means of the covenant idea, the Pelagian heir could gain access to the reformed doctrine." Now listen to Roberts here. In other words, Voss foresaw the day that some people, seizing on the reality that not all baptized covenant children truly live in the fellowship of the covenant, would try to make changes to the doctrine of the covenant to account for this apparent contradiction. Those changes, Vos said, would provide the opportunity for Pelagianism. to be taught under the banner of Reformed doctrine. This is exactly what has happened with the Federal Vision movement. The Federal Vision proponents have tinkered with the doctrine of the covenant in order to try to reconcile God's promises concerning children of the covenant with the reality that not all of them appear to be living in fellowship with God. In doing so, they have substituted their doctrine of baptismal efficacy for the efficacious grace of the Holy Spirit and placed the responsibility for the fulfilling of the covenant on the individual rather than God. That is a Pelagian modification of the Sacrament of Baptism, the Doctrine of Grace, and the Doctrine of the Covenant." Right on the money. I mean, right on the money. Okay, now I'm going to skip a little bit of this section here. Move on to some other things. I think are more important. Listen to this section. This is kind of Roberts is overview of his approach in the book and this is really important He says my approach in this book was confirmed to me as the right one when I read an article by Archibald Alexander in Princeton versus the new divinity now. I bought that book. I bought a used copy of it because Roberts Recommended it and especially Charles Hodge. I wrote an article on regeneration. It's 50 pages long and it's outstanding and I'm gonna I might do a whole podcast on Hodges Pointing out the the importance of the doctrine of regeneration which which will highlight the fact that the federal vision's indifference to that issue of regeneration is absolutely fatal to their whole system listen I Alexander, Archibald Alexander, the guy after whom Charles Hodge named his son A. A. Hodge, Archibald Alexander, along with several other professors at Princeton Seminary in the early 19th century, so in the early 1800s, was involved in exposing the theological errors of a new divinity taught by Charles Finney, Albert Barnes, and others within the Presbyterian Church. Stop for a moment. It always makes me cringe to think that Finney was a Presbyterian. Charles Finney, Anyway, I don't want to get off on that, but to think that he actually was an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church shows you how the credentialing process and the ordination process obviously had a lot to be desired. The Princeton professors identified those errors as a revival of Pelagianism. Archibald Alexander's comments on the best way to combat such errors is very telling. Listen to this quotation. I have this like highlighted, underlined, and like comments in the margin. Listen to this. This is Archibald Alexander on how you deal with these kinds of errors. There has never yet been an instance in the history of the church of the rejection of any doctrines of the gospel where the opposers of the truth have been contented to stop at the first departure from sound doctrine. If they who first adopt and propagate an error are sometimes restrained by habit and by a lurking respect for the opinions of the wise and good, as also by a fear of incurring the center of heresy, from going the full length which their principles require, yet those who follow them in their error will not be kept back by such considerations." Okay, stop there. When I see something like that, I always think of open theism. What is open theism? It's the remonstrance. It's the Arminians. It's the insistence that man must have libertarian free will. See, the Armenians would have said, no, no, no, we believe in the sovereignty of God and that God is omniscient and God knows all things and God has a sovereign decree. But their theological grandchildren took it a little further. They said, look, if the future is settled and God already knows all of it, man doesn't have free will. Man's freedom is an illusion. And so as they contemplated that, they came up with, okay, fine. We'll say that God doesn't know the future then. So the man can have real freedom. I mean, think about it. If God knows the future in exhaustive detail, it cannot be anything other than what he knows it to be. And so free will is a myth. Okay. So Alexander is exactly right. Now listen to what he goes on to say. Indeed, the principles of self-defense require that men who undertake to defend their opinions by argument should endeavor to be consistent with themselves, and thus it commonly happens that what was originally a single error draws after it the whole system of which it is a part. On this account, it is incumbent on the Friends of Truth to oppose error in its commencement. and to endeavor to point out the consequences likely to result from its adoption. And to us, it appears that nothing is better calculated to show what will be the effect of a particular error than to trace its former progress by the lights of ecclesiastical history. So you see what Dewey Roberts is going to do here? He's going to point out Every single thing the federal vision guys said, everything they're saying, has been said before by Pelagians and other heretics in church history. Now, the heretics never tell you they're heretics. And in certain company, they'll work hard to sound orthodox, to sound like they know what they're talking about, to sound like they're biblical. But what Alexander points out is you gotta nip this stuff in the bud before it becomes a full grown tree. And you need to do that by, listen to that again. You need to oppose error in its commencement. And to us, it appears that nothing is better calculated to show what will be the effect of a particular error than to trace its former progress with the lights of ecclesiastical history. Okay, so if all this stuff has been said before, what were the outcomes of those errors? Where did those errors lead? When federal vision stuff was being said about objectivity and baptismal regeneration, and there's no such thing as regeneration, it just puts you in this objective covenant relation with God, and then you have to fulfill the conditions of the covenant yourself, and it's all by grace, and God's still sovereign, but all these, this whole mess of theology, what did it lead to? What kind of progress did it make in the past? And that's what Robert's book shows, is that these things have come up before, and here's what they led to. Now, Robert says, I agree with Alexander that the best way to show what any heresy is, including the federal vision, is to trace its former progress by the lights of ecclesiastical history. As much as the federal vision already represents a significant departure from historic Christianity, It will be much worse in the hands of its second and third generation followers. They will take the system to its logical conclusions. If the system stops short of full blown Pelagianism at the present time, it will not do so in the future. He's right. He's exactly right. Spot on the money. Spot on the money. Now the final section of the preface here, he goes through some of the leading Proponents of the errors here, and he lists them and gives kind of who they are, where they live, the publications that they're responsible for, etc. Number one, Peter Lightheart. Number two, Steve Wilkins, the guy that we had to warn people here not to go listen to. Three, Doug Wilson. Doug Wilson. And I don't care if Doug Wilson believes in an amber ale, or an oatmeal-style form of this Pelagian cyanide, both versions of it will kill you. Both versions of this heresy will kill you. James Jordan is another one. Norman Shepard, of course, Schlissel, Mark Horne, Ralph Smith, John Barrett, Rich Lusk, and Joel Garver. Additionally, this book will quote from N.T. Wright and Norman Shepard, etc. So that's the end of the preface. Good, really good stuff and he's right on the money. Okay, so then he, chapter one is called What is the Federal Vision? I have a lot of stuff highlighted in there. And then the Federal Vision and Regeneration. I've highlighted most of this chapter because it's so, so, so important. And he did a great job of reading thoroughly and finding some of the key quotations here. And this stuff is just vitally, vitally, vitally important for us to understand and know. And I hope, I think it'd be great if someone got a copy of this book, Historic Christianity and the Federal Vision by Dewey Roberts, into the hands of anybody today that is doing stuff with Wilson and the Moscow gang and cross-politic and all that stuff. So they can see. As much as those guys like to be cute and make up words on the fly and say that they're really reformed and everything else. They're not. And this stuff is absolute theological poison. I will not believe for a second that any of them have moved away from it until I hear them identify these people as heretics. and say, these guys have taught this stuff, they need to be censored, they need to be ignored, and you need to warn people about them because what they teach is fatal to the gospel. And our first loyalty is to Jesus Christ, to the gospel, to the truth, and to what God actually does in the salvation of sinners. So I hope this introduction has been helpful to you. There's gonna be a lot more on the federal vision I'm gonna give a lot more quotations from Dewey Roberts and show how this stuff really is just old heresy recycled repackaged And I'm hoping that that will be edifying and encouraging to alert people to the danger that this stuff poses and also to make people have a greater joy and a greater appreciation for the truth. Error like this, when it comes up, it makes me love the true gospel even more. It makes me so thankful for the biblical doctrine of faith. What belief in the gospel. It's not faith formed by charity or faith mingled together with love. It's not faith with works of love organically connected to it. Faith is simply receiving and resting upon Christ alone. It's not working or anything of the kind. A faith that works is not the same. Justification by a faith that produces works and a faith that works is not the same thing as justification by faith and works. It makes me appreciate the gospel all the more. It makes me want to preach it with more passion and to protect the sheep that God has given me with even more fervor. So, thank you for watching or for listening. This is Pastor Patrick Hines of Bridwell Heights Presbyterian Church, and you've been listening to the Pulpit Supplemental Podcast. You can find us on the web at www.bridwellheightspca.org. Our sermons are streamed through sermon audio, and you can listen to that on the iTunes podcast version of Bridwell Heights Presbyterian Church. Feel free to join us any Sunday morning for worship at 11 a.m. sharp at 108 Ridgewell Heights Road in Kingsport, Tennessee. And may the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.