As one can see from my side notes, Norman Shepherd wrote about part of the OPC report on justification.

Dr. Scott Clark of Westminster Seminary made the following retort:

What do we hear from Rev Shepherd?

Quote:
Now there can be no objection to calling good works the fruit and evidence of saving faith.

No objection? This is the language of concession not affirmation. Let’s try this: “There can be no objection to speaking of the deity of Christ….” What? “No objection?” How about: “We confess that good works are ONLY the fruit and evidence of justification”? That is REFORMED language. That a trained theologian and minister of the gospel cannot get the ABC’s of our doctrine of justification correct is really shocking.

I don’t agree with Dr. Clark’s appraisal. One reason I would disagree is that I can think of when the “language of concession” can be a true affirmation of the truth. Imagine that you are defending the humanity of Christ against those who insist that such affirmations are denials of Christ’s deity. One day, an old friend and former comrade accuses you of denying Christ’s deity saying that your affirmations of Christ’s humanity entail this result. It is easily imaginable that you might gently say, “There can be no objection to speaking of the deity of Christ,” and then go on to assert that Christ is also truly human. There would be nothing in such a statement that would warrant the claim that you didn’t really believe that Jesus is God.

A second reason I don’t agree: Ironically, the “reformed” language of the Westminster Confession of Faith does not affirm that “good works are only the fruit and evidence of justification.”

First, because nowhere do the confession or catechisms ever refer to fruit from justification or evidence of justification. Why does Dr. Clark not refer to “fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith,” if he is so concerned about Reformed language? I don’t know. I do know that in his theses he states,

40. # The doctrine of “obedient faith” as formulated by Norman Shepherd teaches a complex instrument of faith and therefore denies sola fide and solo Christo.

I have no idea how “obedient faith” can be a denial of “sola fide and solo Christo” without “true and lively faith” being guilty of exactly the same crime. Are the divines not guilty of “a comples instrument”? (The claim that faith must be “simple” is itself an addition to the Confession and Catechisms of the Presbyterian Church as far as I can tell; though I’ll happily be corrected if someone can show me where I missed it). In fact the divines explicitly explain what a “lively faith” is in their chapter on justification (11):

Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification: yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love.

So this faith is not “dead” and that means it does not fail to “worketh by love” (c.f. Galatians 5.6). So how is this not an “obedient faith”? In what sense is Norman Shepherd teaching anything novel?

The second reason the “reformed” language of the Westminster Confession of Faith does not affirm that “good works are only the fruit and evidence of justification” is because in the affirmation about the fruit and evidence of “a true and lively faith,” the Westminster Confession does not say that this is all that can be said about good works. Like Luther inserting “alone” in Romans 3, Dr. Clark has inserted and capitalized “only” in chapter 16, paragraph 2 of the Confession. Here is the true Reformed doctrine:

These good works, done in obedience to God’s commandments, are the fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith: and by them believers manifest their thankfulness, strengthen their assurance, edify their brethren, adorn the profession of the gospel, stop the mouths of the adversaries, and glorify God, whose workmanship they are, created in Christ Jesus thereunto, that, having their fruit unto holiness, they may have the end, eternal life.

The last phrase is a partial quotation of Romans 6.22 from the English version of the Bible contemporary with the Westminster Assembly. Here is the verse in the ESV in context:

[20] When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. [21] But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? The end of those things is death. [22] But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. [23] For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So, in addition to being fruits and evidences of “a true and lively faith,” they are also means to an “end”: eternal life. This coordinates with what the Westminster Larger Catechism says about the covenant of grace:

Q. 32. How is the grace of God manifested in the second covenant?
A. The grace of God is manifested in the second covenant, in that he freely provideth and offereth to sinners a mediator, and life and salvation by him; and requiring faith as the condition to interest them in him, promiseth and giveth his Holy Spirit to all his elect, to work in them that faith, with all other saving graces; and to enable them unto all holy obedience, as the evidence of the truth of their faith and thankfulness to God, and as the way which he hath appointed them to salvation (emphasis added).

One can read standard Reformed Orthodox sources to see this spelled out (e.g. Francis Turettin, Benedict Pictet).

I am still of the opinion that Dr. Norman Shepherd is a faithful preacher of the Gospel and a truthful teacher of the Reformed Faith. It certainly seems, at this point, that he is far more able to teach the Bible and the Reformed Heritage that the later Gaffin. If anything, Dr. Clark’s rhetoric only confirms me in this opinion. How else can I respond to someone who condemns others for not using “Reformed language” when he himself is the one deviating from it and even revising it?