The Flaws of the Federal Vision (FV) and of its Truly Reformed (TR) Opponents
19 December 2024
Some have been wondering how it is that the old guard of the CREC is failing its own members now. I believe the fatal flaw in their Federal Vision is presumption. The Federal Vision was all about the “objectivity of the covenant.” They insisted Christian hope should be grounded on objective, outward things like baptism, and that serious, self-searching concern for inward integrity of heart was morbid “navel-gazing.” This led to a piety focused on outward things. Their mantra “Fight, Laugh, Feast” is a good summary. They billed themselves as better than the “Truly Reformed” churches because they had functional and happy families. Forgetting that many outright unbelievers have the same.
This thinly-veiled worldliness, not being grounded in solid heavenly hope, makes a man helpless in the face of worldly reproach. Consequently, as soon as CREC leadership began to fear they could be exposed as “racists,” they started sacrificing their own members to the mob.
We need repentance from mere outward Christianity. “Rend your heart, and not your garments” (Joel 2:13).
This problem is not isolated to the CREC, however. It is a besetting sin of modern Christendom. Thus many churches outside the CREC, even those that pride themselves that they are not the CREC, have shown the same cowardly response to worldly pressure.
Take, for example, the opponents of the Federal Visionists, the Truly Reformed. While they profess stricter adherence to the historic confessions, they have many besetting sins, one of the worst of which we could describe as “orthodox worldliness.”
This appears first in doctrine: the Truly Reformed churches are skilled at masking modern error as historic truth. Take the OPC for example. The liberal feminist Aimee Byrd claimed to hold to confessional orthodoxy, and many defended her dissembling. The OPC and PCA both gave cover to Mika Edmonson, who tried to meld the faith of Machen with that of Martin Luther King. The OPC and Westminster Seminary never disciplined K. Scott Oliphint, though he undermined God’s very immutability. This is not to mention the toleration of David Van Drunen, who claims historic Reformed doctrine requires a magistrate indifferent to religion, and who denies even the natural reality of race. Thus those who teach things heretical and nonsensical are given a pass for the veneer of confessional orthodoxy they maintain. No wonder FV men do not take these men’s “confessional” critiques seriously.
This orthodox worldliness appears also in worship. Presbyterians have departed from Presbyterian worship, adding a hundred hot new things—litanies, vestments, holy days, and so on—while defending these popular novelties as historically Reformed. Furthermore, it appears also in church government. We declare that Presbyterian polity is strictly bound to Scripture and prevents the tyranny of men. But then we abuse that polity to uphold error, and defend “senior pastors” who boss the church like CEOs. Truly Reformed orthodox worldliness also appears especially in life. And here is where our enemies have the most occasion to mock us. For example, we sully the name Reformed when we celebrate watching worldly movies as an exercise of “Christian liberty,” and these “Confessional Reformed” churches tolerate or even promote outright perversion—homosexual desire, effeminacy, women teachers, unnatural intercourse—and show their shamelessness by twisting Scripture to support it. In the meantime, our families are a spiritual train wreck. Our women ruin marriages by discontentment and infidelity. Our children have no discipline, cannot sit still in church, and grow up to despise their parents and the faith. Then we have the audacity to defend our failure in the name of God’s sovereign election. Our widespread familial dysfunction sets our people up to be led astray by unorthodox or compromised teachers, if they simply speak of masculine authority. Case in point, Doug Wilson.
Add to all of this the recent persecution of the “Postwar Consensus Deniers.” If you oppose the race that murdered Christ, if you want to preserve your own, if you refuse to twist Gal. 3:28, you will be hounded as departing from “the Confessions,” a wax nose for worldly egalitarianism.
Now of course the Truly Reformed churches are not alone in their worldliness. Their opponents have little in which to boast themselves today. But what sets the TRs apart, and makes them worse than others, is that they hide all of these evils under the banner of confessional subscription. They will even take their critique of CREC types, and employ it to prevent true reformation in their own churches. Any effective opponent of the evils listed above has heard this line: “You’ve lost the plot. Don’t major on the minors."
The Confessions rightly focus on the main things of the faith, and rightly call for sincere, self-searching heart religion. But God forbid we turn this good thing to the evil end of excusing sin and error in church. Such “orthodox worldliness” is gross hypocrisy. The great need of our day is solid godliness, grounded in sincere saving faith in Christ. Only on this rock will Christians weather our present storms. Heart-searching calls for self-examination are the antidote to mere cerebral Christianity.