Since I’ve linked Jeff’s comments about Guy Waters book (by the way, I would really like to read the Westminster Theological Journal’s published interaction between Nick Perrin and Guy Waters, if anyone wants to send me their copy), I figure I should point out that I tried to help him out.

I had wondered where all the weird mischaracterizations in the Mississippi Valley report purporting to say something truthful about a movement they allege to exist called “the Federal Vision.” My answer came finally when someone sent me audiorecordings of lectures by Guy Waters that made a bunch of completely false claims about me.

Just to give one rather mild example: My attempts to disentangle the Covenant or works from a scheme of strict merit were claimed to be attempts to reject the “traditional” doctrine of the covenant of works. It was nonsense from beginning to end. A column I wrote for the local newspaper, where I presumed readers would be mostly dispensationalists, was treated as it was an attack on Reformed theology. Of course, one couldn’t know the original context from the web article, but that is my point: One phone call would have helped Waters immensely. Instead he spun fantasies about what I believe and teach and circulated these things among the brethren without my knowledge. These things became the basis for the Mississippi Valley Presbytery’s rather fantastic report.

So I emailed Guy and asked him to show me what he planned to write about me. I promised not to share it, of course. I figured that since one PCA minister is writing an attack on another PCA minister, the writer would want to make sure his work was as accurate as possible.

Well. No go. Waters was willing to let me seach through all the audio recordings (which he may or may not be planning to put in his book) but he wasn’t going to let me see what he intended to say until it was safely out in the public eye. This, he told me, was P&R policy.

Oddly, this policy did not prevent the forbidden manuscript from being freely passed out among the elders of Woodruff Road PCA (“All quotes in point #3 are taken from Guy Waters, “Covenant Theology Improved? Assessing the Federal Vision,” forthcoming, pp9-10.”). Nor was it withheld from the OPC Study Committee (which, of course, also practiced intellectual hygeine themselves by never bothering to contact me–though at least they didn’t boldly refuse contact).

So, when you read Waters book, remember that he self-consciously refused to interact with the people he is attacking. If you find responses to his claims become available, keep in mind that these responses could have been shared with him before his work was published.