Chapter 8: Dealing with Doctrinal Differences

I believe we had planned to skip forward a bit from here on out. Chapter 8, dealing as it does with the question of doctrinal differences, is pretty unavoidable.

I find most of the chapter very helpful, especially (and this is Frame's forte and one of my main reasons for liking him) the section on perspectivalism.

As is my wont, I'm going to grab a few chunks and analyze their tendencies:

Vern Poythress recommends, and I concur, that in situations like this we try to "pre-empt" the other person's fundamental concerns. Rather than going on and on about the sovereignty of God, the Calvinist should seek to show that his view does better justice to human responsibility and freedom. The Arminian should seek to show that his view results in a credible doctrine of divine sovereignty. I do believe that we will be more likely to see our own errors if we make an effort to consider the issues from the perspectives of others. Certainly this is required if we are to show biblical love for one another in the process of theological discussion. And certainly we will maximize our understanding of Scripture if we are able to see the same truth from a maximum number of perspectives.

I am sure Frame and Poythress both wish better than their rhetoric allows, but the "pre-empt" language still assumes a framework in which the desired goal is to convince/persuade/compel the other person to believe what I already affirm. I'm going to show that his concepts/concerns are "really" better expressed in my words. This is and remains a form of violence, though: the use of logic as coercive, rather than explanatory and corrective, force.

I suggest that we need to move a step further in this direction, one in keeping with a truly charitable hermeneutic: We need to affirm that, if we are both believers, then we are going to be in agreement, and seek a language in which that is possible. In order to accomplish that, we will (similar idea with less violent language) attempt to identify the desiderata of each view and affirm only and exactly the language of Scripture relevant to each view and then attempt to identify any teachings which invalidate any language of Scripture.

Thus, in Calvinist/non-Calvinist dialogue (real Arminians are as rare as people Jean would recognize as Calvinian), I urge the Calvinist to affirm a human monergism in sin; and the non-Calvinist to affirm a divine monergism in salvation. When we can pull that off (I think we can, if we get off our positional and confessional high horses and put together language that shows what we affirm in Christ, rather than what we are blessedly inconsistent with in the life of the church), we'll be getting somewhere.

[In the meantime, of course, I'll be over here waving "God does the work of salvation, but you just cain't make God the one who does the work of sin!" like a good not-a-Calvinist.]

In my view, only a very minimal subscription should be required of church members in general. The conditions for church membership should be no narrower than the Scriptures' conditions for belonging to the kingdom of God. Anyone who can make a credible profession of faith in Christ should be welcomed into the church (together, I must add as a paedobaptist, with his/her children). "Credible profession" is not a precise concept. It should normally16 involve the willingness to confess that Jesus is one's own Lord and Savior: that Jesus, who is both God and man, died for the sins of his people to bring them forgiveness, and that he now has full authority over our lives as the resurrected, living Lord (cf. the biblical summaries of the gospel mentioned in an earlier chapter).

It should also include baptism, though I suspect that Frame, being Presbyterian, is thinking of baptism as the act by which induction into the Body occurs, rather than in my more characteristic (Baptist) language of baptism as an immediate prerequisite for active participation in the Body. I'm open to modified language, here.

I just want to point out, though, that Frame's "I must add" represents a major problem for his program. There is pretty much no way you're ever going to convince all the churches to accept unregenerate persons as members of the Body, and that's before one considers whether (as I most assuredly do) God would prevent any such unity in serious error.

This is symptomatic of a larger problem. There can be no unity arrived at by these means that is not a unity of doctrinal compromise, a failure of Christian confession on one or both parts. The question becomes, for me, how can we promote cooperation which begins among those who can cooperate without such failures; and how can we educate our consciences so that our newer, truer positions have the benefit of enabling us to unite with ever more of Christ's People?

We ought to do some more thinking about what doctrines really are non-negotiable. The Evangelical Free Church requires professors at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School to hold a premillenial eschatology; but it permits latitude on the differences between Calvinists and Arminians. In my view that indicates a rather large overestimation of the importance of millennial views and a large underestimation of the importance of the doctrine of predestination. But perhaps I am wrong. The whole question of what is and what isn't tolerable within the church has never been systematically analyzed.

Frame's on to something, here, but he's still campaigning (through his asides, which take up rather sizeable portions of his book, added together) for unity on his own terms, albeit very tactfully.

Now, as it happens, I'm inclined to think that neither one's precise millennial view, nor one's Calvinist/Arminian predilections, are so significant as Frame/TEDS think. At the same time, I think one could successfully articulate some highly useful parameters for an orthodox view:

1. Christians must affirm that Christ has risen in a physical body, and that we will, too;
2. Christians must affirm that Christ will return, judge, and reign on a re-created Earth;
3. Christians must affirm that God is in no way the Author of sin;
4. Christians must affirm that a sinner is in no way able to save himself.

But that's all pretty much minimal pre-Nicene creedal doctrine. We don't need elaborate constuctions of inherited depravity to assert its universality and totality; we don't need elaborate foreknowledge schemes to assert that God never made anyone sin; we don't need charts of the empires from Daniel's dream to affirm with Job that our Redeemer will stand on Earth.

That does rule out some positions affirmed by some current church members, of course; they will either repent or prove themselves false professors. It does not, however, require that we affirm entire systems of multi-layered extrapolations from and interpellations with Scripture, in order to be Biblical.

I think Frame has helpfully grappled with some serious thoughts, here. The problem of establishing what is "essential" has plagued us for some time, and I think some measure of perspectivalism is vital, though it must be very carefully distinguished from any form of pluralism/relativism. However, the role our traditional language and denominational constraints have played in re-defining the language of Scripture away from that which God wrote through His faithful servants should not be underestimated, either.