The Ad Interim Study Committee Report On Federal Vision, New Perspective, & Auburn Avenue Theology

REASONS FOR RESERVATIONS?

The report claims that “precisely the point of the Standards’ use of the term and theological category of ‘merit.’ Merit relates to the just fulfillment of the conditions of the covenant of works” (LC 55, 174).” [lines 25-27, p. 2207] But this is untrue. The Confession and Catechisms only speak of the merits of Christ. Far from making merit a generic possibility for both Adam and Christ, Westminster teaches that a reason Christ became a true man was to provide merit—to “give worth and efficacy to his sufferings, obedience, and intercession.” In fact, at least one committee member still teaches this from his Church website (as of Sunday, 6/10/07). TE Ligon Duncan lectures, “What God is doing is not merited. Adam has not merited this. We use the phrase Covenant of Works, not to say that man earned these blessings, but to express the fact that this original relationship had no provision for the continuation of God’s blessings if disobedience occurred” (http://www.fpcjackson.org/resources/ apologetics/Covenant%20Theology%20&%20Justification/Ligons_covtheology/03.htm). Notice that not only does TE Duncan deny merit in the covenant of works, but assumes merit has reference to “earning” not simply to “the just fulfillment.” The committee is creating new doctrine in this statement that they themselves have taught against and has no basis in the Westminster Standards (not even the citations they use from the Larger Catechism).

This also indicates the portrayal of “Federal Vision”-related persons as producing revisions in this area are blatantly misleading. This was and still is the teaching ministry of First Presbyterian Church in Jackson, Mississippi.

The report states that there are “Federal Vison”-related persons who teach there is no merit. This claim is, in the committee report, technically untrue. All “FV”-related persons teach that both Adam and Jesus were bound to “perfect and personal obedience” (WCF 7.2). Thus, by the committee’s own new definition of “merit,” everyone affirms merit and there is no reason to claim otherwise. If the committee thinks denying merit is a serious issue, they must use a definition of merit that has some basis in the Westminster Standards.