The Federal Vision was in large part born out of a negative evaluation of Reformed scholasticism. They were simply taking a common view of the Reformed scholastics that they coldly imposed their logic on Scripture, cutting off whatever did not agree with their “system,” who presented lengthy philosophical arguments and polemics in their sermons to impoverished congregations.

via New book unlocks Reformed history « Johannes Weslianus.

[And of course republished here.]

First, an excerpt from my post on Pictet on Justification (from 1997).

Much that would be of value to us is now out of print. Occasionally I stumble over such a treasure in the seminary library. Thus, I discovered Benedict Pictet’s Christian Theology translated from the original latin in the last century. Pictet was the nephew of Francis Turretin and the last orthodox pastor of Geneva. Tragically, his main opponent in his fight against a slide away from Reformed Theology was Jean-Alphonse, Turretin’s own son. Yet Pictet was no mere imitator of former days, but an original theologian in his own right.

Unfortunately, his work was expurgated by his translator in the chapter on reprobation, and useless footnotes trying to register disagreement with Pictet’s defense of the legitimacy of Roman Catholic baptism (i.e. converts from romanism need not be rebaptized) are inserted. My copy also had several torn pages. Nevertheless, reading Pictet was quite rewarding to me, and so I commend him to anyone interested in systematic theology. Of course, I have my disagreements (his sympathy for Mary’s alleged perpetual virginity, his vacuous view of the sacraments, his doctrine of the “spirituality” of God as he uses it to inveigh against “carnal” worship, etc), but I still think he is worth reading.

Hmm… sounds like I thought he was pretty Scripturally well-grounded in his system and my objection was to more modern Presbyterian departures… I did object pretty strongly to his views of the sacraments, though now I’m wondering if I read him right. I found more agreement than not with Turretin, and I didn’t think Pictet was supposed to be that different.

Or here:

Francis Turretin, the Reformed theologian of the seventeenth century, carefully distinguishes the Reformed view of infant faith from Lutheran and Anabaptist claims. Anabaptists denied any faith to infants so that they could justify their refusal to baptize them. Lutherans affirmed (rightly) that covenant infants were believers, but made no distinction between that sort of faith that is in infants and that which is possible for those who have matured cognitively and been taught verbally. In Turretin’s terminology, while infants do not possess “actual faith,” they do possess “seminal or radical and habitual faith” (Institutes, 15.14.2, vol 2, p. 583). Actual faith would include a profession of knowledge, intellectual acts, or hearing and meditating upon the word (15.14.3, vol 2, p. 584). Thus, Turretin understands Hebrews 11.6 to refer to actual faith and writes:

When the apostle says, “Without faith, it is impossible to please God,” he speaks of adults, various example of whom he in the same place commemorates and whom alone the proposed description of faith suits (Hebrews 11.1). Now it is different with infants who please God on account of the satisfaction of Christ bestowed upon them and imputed by God to obtain the remission of their sins, even if they themselves do not apprehend it and cannot apprehend it by a defect of age (15.14.7, vol 2, p. 585).

Nevertheless, while Christian infants don’t have or need adult faith in order to be saved, there is some change inaugurated in elect children within the covenant which grows and flowers over time—one which involves the beginning of faith at an infant level: “Although infants do not have actual faith, the seed or root of faith cannot be denied to them, which is ingenerated in them from early age and in its own time goes forth in act (human instrumentation being applied from without and a greater efficacy of the Holy Spirit within)” (15.14.13, vol 2, p. 586).

While Turretin’s major work was a massive three-volume theology that dealt with opposing views, his nephew, Benedict Pictet, publicized his positions in a much shorter and simpler Christian Theology. Pictet deals with the possibility of infant faith under his discussion of infant baptism. (pp 418-420). He divides baptized infants into four classes.

1. Those who grow up unbelieving and impenitent. For these “baptism sets forth nothing and seals nothing.”
2. Those who grow up unbelieving and impenitent until they are thrity or forty years old. For these, “baptism does not disclose or put forth its efficacy before they are actually converted.” (I have no idea why Pictet is so specific about the age. If I was forced to guess I might throw out the possibility that Pictet thinks that someone who is rebellious at the age of twenty may merely be a backslidden rather than a confirmed unbeliever. But again, I am guessing.)
3. Those who grow up as believers. In these, “while reason unfolds itself, piety and faith are discovered, corresponding with the good instruction of their parents. For such covenant children growing up believing, “we may say, that baptism has been efficacious, that God has forgiven their original sin, and given them such a measure of the Spirit, as renders them capable of embracing the offers of the gospel, when reason begins to dawn upon their minds.”
4. Those who die in infancy. In the case of such infants, “we cannot doubt but that baptism … is a public and authoritative declaration on the part of God, that he has forgiven them original sin, and granted them title to life; since infants cannot be saved without forgiveness of sins and sanctification.”

It is in regard to his third class that Pictet elaborates on the possibility of infant faith. It is clear from his discussion that he regards these children, not as converted in youth, but as brought into a saving relationship with Christ while yet infants. He writes:

But should anyone say, he cannot comprehend the operations of the Holy Ghost in these cases; we reply that the thing ought not to be denied, merely because we do not comprehend it. It is not more difficult to conceive the idea of the Holy Spirit restoring the faculties of the infant, and rendering them capable of receiving evangelical objects, as soon as reason shall dawn, than it is to conceive the idea of original sin, which is nothing else but the depravation of those faculties, inclining them to objects of sense. If we can conceive of the principle of evil before any act of it, why not the principle of good before any act of the same? If Adam had not sinned, his descendants would have been naturally innocent; and why cannot it be conceived, that the Holy Spirit places infants, who are born sinful, in some state of regeneration? The cause of our corruption is the proneness of the soul to follow the motions of the body [Note: I doubt that this account of the nature of original sin is correct. –MH]: why then should we not conceive, that the Holy Spirit prevents the soul from following those motions, and gives it the power of directing them aright?

While Pictet thinks these considerations are relevant to infant baptism, he doesn’t think that the regeneration of elect infants invariably occurs at the time of baptism. He replies to such ideas that

they may obtain all spiritual blessings from the very moment of their birth, but that these may be confirmed in baptism, which is the seal, pledge, or earnest of them; the infant, indeed, knows not what is taking place, but when he arrives at years of discretion, then he recognizes it, and from the knowledge of it, possesses every motive to holiness. Some infants are regenerated in the womb, and before baptism, others in baptism, others after: we assign no particular period.

The whole point of this little exercise was to call PCA self-styled “Reformed” Theologians to both a more Reformed and  more Biblical theology.

Benedict Pictet was translated and published by the Presbyterian Sunday School Board in the 1800s for the edification of readers. While some portions were expurgated and some rated a footnote of disagreement, this was allowed to stand as Presbyterian teaching:

As to the necessity of good works, it is clearly established from the express commands of God–from the necessity of our worshipping and serving God–from the nature of the covenant of grace, in which God promises every kind of blessing, but at the same time requires obedience–from the favors received at his hands, which are so many motives to good works–from the future glory which is promised, and to which good works stand related, as the means to the end, as the road to the goal, as seed-time to the harvest, as first-fruits to the whole gathering, and as the contest to the victory…

So good works are instrumentally related to entering into eternal glory. It is hard to imagine this being published today. Yet it sounds quite like what we find in the Westminster Confession on good works, as well as in Scripture.

Chapter 16:

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 Confession is translating the contemporary English translation of First Corinthians 6.22. Here it is in context:

20 For 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? For 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.

The Westminster Confession teaches that personal holiness (sanctification) is the means to the end, which is eternal life.

OK? Again, trying to get people to recover the Biblical theology of the Reformed Scholastics.

Since the Westminster Confession and Catechisms are the fruit of Reformed Scholasticism, one might survey my writing on the Westminster Confession and Catechisms and ask if I think, “they coldly imposed their logic on Scripture, cutting off whatever did not agree with their ‘system,'” I don’t have the energy to link everything I have done to promote Turrettin, Pictet, and Zacharias Ursinus (earlier, I know, but his commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism certainly reads like a Scholastic).

I do remember getting a distinct feel of “Calvin v. the Calvinists” reading Gaffin’s Resurrection and Redemption. One reason I wrote this was to show that he was wrong and that the Westminster Divines all affirmed the same centrality of union with Christ that Calvin did. Or, if that is not enough continuity for you, how about: “From Calvin to Turretin a faithful but forgotten legacy of opposing Romanist doctrine“?

I do have an issue with some developments in calvinism after the era of the Protestant scholastics precisely because I think many of the scholastics preserved calvinism in a way that later generations did not. I may be wrong. Maybe there is no difference. Or maybe Reformed baptists with wet babies is an improvement since the time of Turretin. But there is no way in the world that what I have written is anything like the FV stereotype portrayed above.

What about Norman Shepherd?

Francis Turretin is a leading exponent of classical Reformed orthodoxy in the latter part of the seventeenth century. In answer to the question whether faith alone justifies, Turretin observes: “The question is not whether solitary faith [fides solitaria], that is, separated from the other virtues, justifies, which we grant could not easily be the case since it is not even true and living faith; but whether it alone concurs to the act of justification, which we assert: as the eye alone sees, but not when torn out of the body. Thus the particle alone does not modify the subject but the predicate, that is, faith alone does not justify, but only faith justifies; the coexistence of love with faith in him who is justified is not denied, but its coefficiency or co-operation in justification [Ita particula sola non determinat subjectum, sed praedicatum, id est, sola fides non justficat, sed fides justificat sola: non negatur coextistentia charitatis in eo qui justificatur, sed coefficientia vel cooperatio in justificatione].

Turretin is saying that “alone” must not be understood as an adjective modifying “faith” so that justifying faith would have to be viewed as “solitary,” or in isolation from its working or from its manifestation in obedience to Christ. Rather, “alone” is to be understood adverbially as pointing to the distinctive role played by faith in relation to the other gifts and graces with which it is invariably associated. Only faith justifies. Only faith to receive, accept, and rest upon Christ for justification and salvation from eternal condemnation. This is what Turretin means when he says that faith alone concurs to the act of justification.

But this faith which alone concurs to the act of justification is not, in fact, alone. It is not solitary. A solitary faith is not a true and living faith and therefore cannot be a justifying faith. Turretin does not deny the coexistence of love with faith; for faith without love would be a dead faith just as love without faith would be a dead work. But he does deny the coefficiency of love with faith in justification. Turretin is here insisting that although justifying faith must be true and living – otherwise it could not justify – the ground or cause of justification is in no sense to be found in the believer himself. The ground and cause of justification is Jesus Christ and his righteousness. To be justified one must abandon all personal resources and lean wholly upon Christ. This is what is done in faith. Faith is wholehearted trust in Christ and by this faith the believer receives, accepts, and rests upon the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ alone for justification.

The analogy of the eye which Turretin uses is one that is frequently found in Reformed authors to accent the distinctive office of faith in relation to justification while preserving what must be said about the vitality of this faith. The eye alone sees. The ear or the nose or the arm do not see. There is no other instrument of vision but the eye alone. However, there is no such thing as a seeing eye in isolation from the body. The eye sees only as it is organically joined to the body. Similarly, justification is by faith alone, but a faith, which is alone, does not justify. This is the teaching of James and Paul and it has been characteristic of Reformed theology.

If you get the collection of hate mail from the PCA historical center–the gossip that was used to pressure the Seminary to fire Norman Shepherd even though they found him orthodox (Duh)–you will find at least one letter that claims the only precedent for Shepherd’s views were those of Francis Turretin. This is not said as a vindication but as an accusation. We are assured by the defender of the faith that Turretin wrote such heresy because he was “a rationalist.” Shepherd’s known use of the scholastics got him in trouble. (A long time later Shepherd came to agree with Ursinus rather than Turretin on the imputation of the active obedience of Christ. But that is simply a specific issue. It hardly means that Shepherd has no appreciation for the scholastics or conform’s to Wes’ sterotype.)

The fact is there are a bunch of different views on the Scholastics among people considered “Federal Vision.” There are different views in the same person depending on the topic under consideration. But why look at reality when a stereotype will serve?

In my opinion and according to my (fallible) memory, the typical “anti-scholastic” rhetoric will be found when someone wants (or is perceived to want) to appeal to the alleged authority of the alleged Scholastic consensus rather than engage in what the Bible actually says. Such laziness and idolizing of human tradition (at least as perceived) will indeed draw out a polemical response. But that is not the same thing as what is being claimed above. And if I am wrong, then the fact remains that there is wide diversity of thought about Protestant Scholasticism. The stereotype is false.

In truth, one would be closer to reality to point out that “FV”-types do not have much sympathy for experiential pietism and revivalism. That too could result in false stereotypes but it would be a better place to start an investigation.

As far as I can tell, the idea of an anti-scholastic mindset comes from the fact that I really love much of John Williamson Nevin’s published writing on Calvin’s view of the Eucharist, the Church, and union with Christ, or that I appreciate N. T. Wright–and they may have said something that is stereotype of the Protestant Scholastics.

Well, I don’t agree with Nevin (and probably not with Wright but I haven’t seen much to make me confident I know his mind on such things), just like I didn’t agree with the earlier Gaffin. I don’t agree with Hodge or Dabney when they claim that Calvin’s views on the Lord’s supper were never transmitted in the creeds and confessions and theology of the later Protestants. In point of fact, reading Nevin and Calvin and Turretin and Pictet along with Ursinus has been the cause more of theological convergence than conflict.