One of the discouraging aspects of the “federal vision” brouhaha, is how blatantly and publicly ministers under vows to pursue the peace and purity of the Church will go out of their way to find complicated formulas and then use an “fv” failure to affirm these formulas as an excuse for making blatantly false accusations that these men fail to affirm or teach “the gospel.”
The “Covenant of Works” is a great example. There are people who question if claiming that Jesus was under a “Covenant of Works” (depending on how that is defined) is the best way, or the most Biblical, to describe what He did for sinner.
OK, that may be right or wrong. But claiming that anyone in the Reformed world is teaching that we are not saved exclusively by what Jesus accomplished, which we could not accomplish ourselves, nor even even contribute to, is simply spreading falsehood. Everyone not only says under questioning, but also consistently preaches and teaches that we are saved by the person and work of Christ and not by anything in ourselves. Even our faith in Christ is a gift from God.
The lack of rigor that is now being exemplified in the anti-fv crusade is not only displeasing to God because it misrepresents other believers, but it also is a straightforward method for mass “IQ-reduction” in the Reformed tradition. People with academic credentials are saying by word and example that it is perfectly reasonable to attribute ideas to people that they not only fail to hold, but hate and abominate, on the basis of a postulated series of logical connections that they find highly dubious.
Do conservative Lutherans understand that we are save by what God did in Christ and not by our own actions? Yes. Do they believe in a covenant of works? No. According to our present hysteria, this entire tradition is preaching another Gospel.
This is just silly and it is leading to a church culture of anti-intellectual superstition. A debate about the Covenant of Works is just fine. A claim that the basic Evangelical Gospel is being “re-defined” is simply defamatory and the refuge of people (as far as it can appear to any intelligent person) who know they have no real case.