Sows and corn

One of the most strident voices raised against the Federal Vision is the Green Bagginses blog.  I eventually realized after months of engaging the folks there in biblical argument and debate that it was a waste of my time.

I also found myself in a near constant state of agitation at what was happening with the lynching of Steve Wilkins.  The Rev. Wilkins is one of the best Presbyterian exegetes living today, and he was being forced out of the PCA by Lane Keistner and his gang of exegetical illiterates.  His offence is reading the Bible through the lens of the historical covenants – the Federal Vision.

For a reason that I cannot explain I posted at the Bagginses site this week.  My intention was to remain pure by simply making a comment, and refusing to be drawn into another pointless discussion.  Instead, I found myself interacting on two threads.

I have put my finger on something that may explain the impossibility of an accord between the FV and its Reformed enemies – a crippled and malformed exegesis driven by rigidly systematic, not literary, considerations.

For example, in the parable of the sower, the Lord uses the picture of a plant that grows, but is strangled by weeds and thistles, so that is becomes fruitless.  I pointed out that a plant can only become fruitless if it was fruitful before.  Otherwise we have a meaningless statement.

Keistner’s brilliant reply was to point out that ginomai also means to be, to support his assertion that the plant always was fruitless.

It is true that ginomai san sometimes mean to be, BUT, it depends on the context and the way it is being used.  There was no acknowledgment of this elementary, pre-school, fact.

Keistner’s blanket drag and drop has the effect of turning the parable into a non sequitur: the plant was strangled and it was fruitless.  No link between being strangled and fruitlessness, just strangling of an already fruitless plant.  Why put these two things together if there is no link between them?

Do you see what I mean by crippled exegesis?  Strictly speaking it isn’t exegesis at all, but plain incompetence.

What drives this kind of response is the prior commitment to the doctrinal view that there is no such thing as true apostasy.  There are only two kinds of people in the world – the elect and the rest – and only the elect can ever be called true Christians.  It is impossible under any circumstances for one of the others to be regenerated and bear fruit, and then fall away.

Texts mean nothing, the doctrine is everything.

The result is the pitiful handling of the sacred text that we have seen.  They treat the word of God the way a sow treats a bag of corn, in Martin Luther’s memorable phrase.

Truly eating and drinking

My view till recently was that in the Supper we receive the benefits of the Lord’s passion and resurrection, namely, justification, the Holy Spirit, and so on.  But the text does not say that we receive the virtue (power) and benefits of the Lord’s passion and glorification, but the Lord himself.

Turns out this is the traditional Reformed position!

Say what?

No, really.  This from Calvin’s eucharistic rite:

that we may with a constante and assured fayth, receave bothe hys bodye and bloude, yea, verelye CHRIST himself wholye.  (William Huycke’s English translation, 1550).

Dudley Fenner, one of the Westminster Divines, expalined the sacrament as :

.. an instrument whereby truly is communicated by the work of the Holy Ghost to our faith, the very body and blood of Christ. (The Whole Doctrine of the Sacramentes).

This is of course the doctrine of the Book of Common Prayer 1662, and was the view of Thomas Cranmer its author, who teaches us that Christ’s body and blood are truly communicated to us in the Supper, not just the sign of them.

The Reformed doctrine differs from Rome’s in denying the transubstantiation of the elements and the sacrifice of the Mass.  But it agrees with it in teaching that Christ’s body and blood is truly and really communicated to the believer.

This is done by the Holy Spirit.  There is a deep mystery here, since Christ is absent from us on earth, because he is in heaven, and not omnipresent in his humanity, being truly man.  Christ may be present in his deity, but certainly not in his incarnation.  

Nevertheless the Holy Spirit achieves this mystery, and we believe it, because the Bible teaches a true feeding upon the actual human body and blood of Christ.

This is the Reformed doctrine of the Real Presence.

Now pick up your jaws from the floor and think about it.