So although the election of Israel is by grace, there is an important place for continued faithfulness. Individuals can belong to the chosen people, yet lose their elect status by faithlessness and disobedience. Branches can be broken off “because of unbelief” (Rom. 11:20). When we consider divine rejection, we should not argue that the discarded branches were never really elect. There is a place or such reasoning, but it pertains to a different kind of election … in this context it is possible to lose one’s election. The discarded branches were indeed elect at one time, for they were part of the tree of Israel. Israel as a nation was really elect, before God declared them to be “not my people,” and they became elect again, when God declared them to be “sons of the living God.”
The same is true of the New Testament church. It would not be right to say that Judas, or Ananias, or the apostates of Hebrews 6 and 10 were never elect in any sense. They were elect in the sense that Israel was elect. Indeed, when Calvinists worry about the implications of Hebrews 6 and 10, it is useful for them to consider that the apostates in these passages are very much like Old Testament Israel: they “have once been enlightened, . . . tasted the heavenly gift, . . . shared in the Holy Spirit, . . . tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age.” (Heb. 6:4-5). Israel experienced all these things throughout Old Testament history and particularly during the earthly ministry of Jesus. But they rejected him and joined those who crucified the Son of God. So those church members who turn away from Christ “are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace” (6:6).
Note how Hebrews 4:4-6 emerges out of the references to Israel in chapters 3 and 4. The Israelites, blessed as they were with enlightenment, the heavenly gift, the Holy Spirit, the word of God, and the powers of the coming age, nevertheless hardened their hearts against the Lord (3:7-11, 15). The writer therefore urges Christians to “make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience” (4:11).
So God continues to break branches off the tree of redemption. Even those who have been freshly engrafted can be broken off because of unbelief (pp. 324-5).
~John Frame, Doctrine of God, p. 324-325
I don’t want to use labels, but well, you do the math…
HT: Eric P
Pingback: once more with feeling » A nation both elect and holy?
I’m dialing the number for a conference call with Horton, Sproul and the SJC as we speak . . . I smell heresy amuck . . . you know, this kind of conditionality is in Peter Lillback’s The Binding of God, but he’s somebody like Frame, so I guess he can say all that and not be shot at ?!?
Frame is eloquent. Thanks for posting that.
Steven, what year was this book published?
2002, I think.
It won a bunch of awards.
Steve, I won’t answer your question on my own blog. But here I will tell you that I think the entire FV is an attack on Frame. He’s politically untouchable so he has to watch his children get killed for punishment.
I remember visiting profs at RTS Jackson and being told that John Frame was a relativist and Vern Poythress was a pluralist. I’m quoting. That was in 1995. Power has been acquired since then so that something can be done by the people in question.
Go read Frame’s defense of himself from his attackers. Those defenses from attacks on The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God are reprinted in the back of his Doctrine of God book. I think you will find those attacks familiar both in tone and content.
I could see it as a way to make sure Frame’s legacy got nipped in the bud.
I think there’s also an amazing amount of ignorance. I don’t mean that as a prejorative, but rather simply an admission of fact. The majority of “average joes” who are “worried” about the current controversy have never read Frame’s books. They’ve never heard of Schilder. They’ve only read selected Murray.
They certainly don’t know the broader history that goes back to the 17th and 16th centuries, and so they get swept up in this all.
Unfortunately they start putting the wrong issues together and come up with some really really wide-of-the-mark conclusions, thus creating a new, and way worse, system of theology.
Steven,
Excellent point. I remember a discussion in seminary at the turn of 2000 about conditionality in the covenant via Edwards, Calvin, Turretin and Frame of course, but that was related to how this thing gets wrapped around Shepherd, Murray, Schilders and WTS 20 years ago. It is astounding that these discussions from aeons ago have seem to have gone unnoticed, or perhaps its because when someone wants to quote from Protestant scholastics, the address is in Greenville, SC or Escondito, CA . . .
Yeah, and unfortunately many attracted to the FV have reacted by giving the scholastics over to those groups, simply assuming that the modernists’ interpretation is correct.
This is false, of course. The Protestant scholastics are some of the most interesting thinkers in the history of the Church. Many of them are surprisingly sacramental, and all of them are catholic.
“Scholastic” does not mean “rationalist.” Some of the Dutch mixed these terms up, I think, because I see scholastic used that way now.
Infinity and simplicity, two very scholastic doctrines, put the nail in rationalism’s coffin.
I asked this over at Mark’s blog, but I should ask it here. Does anyone have a primary source for Frame’s view of Communion – Paedo vs. Credo?
Thanks.
al sends
I’ve heard it from people who know him. I am not aware that he has written on the topic. He may prefer to describe himself as “early” communion.
Poythress, on the other hand, discusses this in a past edition of St. Anne’s Pub.
All,
So, you guys think the Frame is in line with the FV? I am not so sure. Frame has addressed the idea of a breakable new covenant and said this,
“For such reasons, unregenerate people sometimes do enter the church. They are ‘in’ the New Covenant from the church’s point of view, because they have subscribed to that covenant. They are not in it from God’s point of view, for they are not elect in Christ.”
The unregenerate are not really in the new covenant, they just appear to be from our perspective. They are not elect in Christ. In other words, no union with Christ for the unregenerate. Would any FVist say this?
This quote can be found here:
http://www.thirdmill.org/answers/answer.asp/file/99721.qna/category/th/page/questions/site/iiim
Well, I think we’re just equivocating here. I believe that “the tree of redemption” which has branches broken off from it (in the blogged quote) is a sufficient enough analogy to appease any FVer.
To then say but this isn’t “real” election, simply means that for systematic terms you’re calling eternal election “real.” It doesn’t take away the other statements, and yes, I’m sure most all of the FVers would concede this (notably Wilson).
The biblicists would protest that we need to reevaluate our priority of “real” and “less than real” on biblical terms, but they wouldn’t disagree that there is in fact a distinction.
I go to RTS-O and I think you have to understand Frame to get what he is writing here. Frame is a trained philosopher and therefore he loves distinction. When it comes to election he has two different categories which are eternal election and historical election. Eternal election is God’s decree from before creation concerning which people comes to know the riches of His grace. Historical election is from the perspective that there are people who are visibly elect. They have the sign of the covenant, they participate in means of grace, but there hearts are far from God. For example, not all of the Israel was true Israel, but in some sense they were all apparently elect. With Frame he distinguishes both categories of election. God transcendently ordains his eternally elect but God immanently calls a historical elect. These categories are also found in the Doctrine of God.
“With Frame he distinguishes both categories of election. God transcendently ordains his eternally elect but God immanently calls a historical elect. These categories are also found in the Doctrine of God.”
Yes, that’s where I’m quoting from.
There is eternal and historical election. These categories are not identical, but they are overlapping in time.
Steven W,
Hmm. I thought the difference between Reformed non-FVers and FVers was that one group says that the historical outworking of the covenant does not involve union with Christ, whereas the other group says that it does. Is this incorrect? Or are you saying that this is a mere verbal dispute?
Troy,
I think this is where we have to follow Frame’s love of distinctions. He is clearly using “elect-in-Christ” to mean “eternal election.” This is a more systematic use of “in Christ.”
FVers, following biblical theology are using “in Christ” to mean historical election. There may be some initial “shock value” to this shift, but I submit that Frame is doing the same thing when he speaks of branches being broken off the “tree of redemption.” The tree is Jesus, right?
So within FV there are degrees of how “much” a reprobate can receive while in the “historical election” category. Some of the high-end FVers (“FV dark”) want to say that there is no difference until the separation from Christ takes place. I guess the “difference” is in God’s will, but not necessarily at the point of historical election.
Doug Wilson, on the other hand, represents a more moderate position, restricting regeneration and justification to the category of eternally elect. This is fairly mainstream in Reformed history. Calvin calls it “common operations of the Spirit,” but we typically read “common” as shared by all humans- in or out of the church. A careful reading of history, especially Dort disputes, shows that this phrase was actually wider, applying to more and less common blessings.
Steven W,
I do not see any difference between what Frame is saying and the traditional visible/invisible church distinction. And if it is the case that Douglas Wilson is saying what Frame is saying with different terminology (systematic vs. biblical theology), then all the dispute in this area between FVers and Reformed non-FVers is really a mere verbal dispute. Is this correct?
For the most part, yes. However, “the traditional” is no longer a functional adjective. We’ve witnessed a convergence of several traditions in North America, so much so that I don’t honestly know what is and what isn’t traditional.
You might recall John Murray rejected the term “invisible” church. The Dutch tradition largely agrees with him on this (perhaps that is where he got it from), and you can see the various positions on that issue by investigating the Dutch Liberated theology of the 1940s. The Canadian Reformed Church has been fairly cautious in all of this, since they have a legacy that overlaps with the concerns FV and Norman Shephrd. Dr. Van Dam’s response to the MARS statement evidences that this still continues today.
Another problem is that the Southern Presbyterians have a very low regard for the visible church. For them it is “just” the visible church, and it is improprer to predicate covenantal blessings to it.
Going further back in history, the high-calvinists of the 17th century were very suspicious about allowing varying senses to the term “election.” Frame’s formula would not sit well with the supralapsarian tradition, nor much of the Banner of Truth vareity neo-Puritans.
All of this is why the FV controversy is what it is. If it were just a couple of wing-nuts taking things one step too far, most people could agree. The situation is actually much more complicated of course, and the failure to note historical trajectories (Frame and Westminster Philly) has only muddied the waters.
I’m a little confused as to why this discussion has only focused on what Frame says about “historical election,” but not to what he also says about “eternal election,” which is the title of the very next section in his book(!). Why not allow Frame to speak for himself on the issue of eternal election? Here are some excerpts from pp. 325-330:
“But in Scripture there is also an election that cannot be lost and that is not at all conditioned on human faithfulness or works. We saw earlier that the election of Israel is, ultimately, the election of Jesus Christ as the faithful remnant. Although branches of the tree of redemption can be broken off, Christ himself can never, since the Cross, lose his fellowship with the Father. He was “chosen before the creation of the world” (1 Peter 1:20). So those who are “in Christ,” who belong to him inwardly and not merely outwardly, who are the true Israel, can never lose their salvation. They are elect in a stronger sense than was the nation of Israel as a whole and in a stronger sense than is the general membership of the visible Christian church….”
“Membership in this covenant is, of course, by God’s choice, God’s election. Election in the new covenant is similar to election in the old, but there are differences that are appropriate to the differences between the two covenants. Most significantly, for those chosen to be “in Christ,” eternal salvation is certain: ‘For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified’ (Rom. 8:29–30). The logic is inevitable. Anyone whom God savingly foreknows, he predestines to be conformed to the likeness of Christ. (That is, he writes the word on his heart.) And anyone so predestined receives an effectual call from God sometime in his life, a summons into fellowship with Christ, an order he cannot decline.14 Those whom God calls, he justifies: he declares them righteous for Jesus’ sake. And those whom he justifies, he glorifies. No one who is foreknown, predestined, called, and justified can escape glorification. Final salvation is certain.”
I appreciate the Third Mill link in the comments above to Frame’s short response seeking clarification. That helps me understand his position better. It seems that Frame gets very close to defining “new covenant” in the Doctrine of God as equivalent to “eternal election.” But then he backs off that a bit in the Third Mill article by suggesting that from the human perspective, people can be in the “new covenant” who are not eternally elect.