joelgarver.com - MVP Report on the new perspectives

Mississippi Valley Presbytery
A preliminary informational report
November 2, 2004

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[i] This was the date of the Auburn Ave. Presbyterian Church Pastors’ Conference (AAPCPC) that occasioned an ongoing and vigorous public discussion of such doctrines as election, covenant, the church, and the sacraments. The FV predates, of course, this 2002 conference. See, for example, Steve Schlissel, “More Than Before: The Necessity of Covenant Consciousness” (October 2001); Steve Wilkins, “The Covenant and Apostasy” (I and II), a lecture delivered at the 2001 AAPCPC.
[ii] We are not, of course, claiming that every view represented in this précis has been advanced by every individual sympathetic to the FV. This document is concerned to treat the FV as a theological system, and that system is not necessarily to be identified with the sum total of any single individual’s theological statements.
[iii] Examples of this approach include Rich Lusk, “Baptismal Efficacy and the Reformed Tradition: Past, Present, and Future;” Lusk, “Paedobaptism and Baptismal Efficacy: Historic Trends and Current Controversies,” in The Federal Vision (Monroe, La.: Athanasius, 2004), 71-125; Mark Horne, “Samuel Miller, Baptism, & Covenant Theology;” John Barach, “Covenant and Election,” in The Federal Vision, 15-44; Ralph Smith, “Interpreting the Covenant of Works ;” Smith, “The Covenant of Works: A Litmus Test for Reformed Theology?;” S. Joel Garver, “The Early Scots Reformed On Baptism.”
[iv] Examples of these approaches include Douglas Wilson, “Reformed” Is Not Enough (Moscow, Ida.: Canon, 2002), 9, 183-189; Steve Wilkins, “The Legacy of the Half-Way Covenant” 2002 AAPCPC Lecture; Rich Lusk, “Paedobaptism and Baptismal Efficacy: Historic Trends and Current Controversies;” Steve Schlissel, “An Open Letter To A Morbid Introspectionist” (4 August 2000); Peter J. Leithart, “Revivalism and American Protestantism,” in The Reconstruction of the Church (ed. James B. Jordan; Tyler, Tex.: Geneva, 1985), 46-84.
[v] “And a covenant is also objective, like your marriage. It’s there whether the members of the covenant feel it’s there, or they believe it’s there, whether they even believe in the covenant or not,” John Barach, “Covenant and History,” 2002 AAPCPC Sermon; Wilson has expounded what he means by covenantal objectivity throughout “Reformed” Is Not Enough, subtitled, “Recovering the Objectivity of the Covenant.” For example, concerning the sacrament of water baptism and covenantal membership, Wilson states, “We have noted repeatedly that baptism in water is objective, and it establishes an objective covenant relationship with the Lord of the covenant, Jesus Christ,” “Reformed” Is Not Enough, 99; Wilkins has claimed that “If [one] has been baptized, he is in covenant with God” (Wilkins, “Covenant, Baptism, and Salvation,” in The Auburn Avenue Theology [ed. E. Calvin Beisner; Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.: Knox Theological Seminary, 2004], 267). He further argues, “According to the Scriptures to be in covenant with God is to really and truly be swept up into the glorious communion and fellowship of the Triune God, and to be part of His family. Being in covenant involves then a concrete, substantial reality, and thus the Apostles could declare the blessings of salvation that are true of everyone who is a member of Christ, and declare them to be true without qualification, even though they didn’t know the decrees,” “Covenant and Baptism,” 2003 AAPCPC Lecture.
[vi] “[C]ovenant isn’t a thing. Covenant isn’t a thing that you can analyze – covenant is a relationship. It is a personal, ordered and formally binding relationship. It’s personal; it’s not just a legal relationship. Some people present the covenant as if it were something somewhat cold and impersonal, like a business contract,” John Barach, “Covenant and History” (2002 AAPCPC Sermon); “The covenant is a relationship between persons. That relationship has conditions, stipulations, and promises. Put another way, there is no such thing as a personless or abstract covenant. Put yet another way, a covenant does not consist of a list of names, but is rather a relation between persons (whose names can certainly be formed into a list),” Douglas Wilson, “The Objectivity of the Covenant,” Credenda Agenda 15/1, p.4; Wilkins has categorically defined covenant as “a real relationship, consisting of real communion with the Triune God through union with Christ” (Wilkins, “Covenant, Baptism, and Salvation,” The Federal Vision, 58); “[T]he covenant is a personal-structural bond which joins the three persons of God in a community of life, and in which man was created to participate,” James Jordan, The Law of the Covenant (Tyler, Tex.: Institute for Christian Economics, 1984), 4, cited approvingly at Ralph Smith, The Eternal Covenant: How the Trinity Reshapes Covenant Theology (Moscow, Ida.: Canon, 2003), 51-52, and Ralph Smith, “Trinity and the Covenant,” Chapter Two.
[vii] Wilkins, speaking of John 15:1-8, rejects the “distinction of ‘external’ and ‘internal’ union” that is commonplace among traditional Reformed interpreters. Rather, “all the branches are truly and vitally joined to the vine,” “Covenant, Baptism, and Salvation,” The Federal Vision, 63. John Barach: “As in the old covenant, so in the new covenant. There is an objective covenant made of believers and their children. Every baptized person is in covenant with God and is in union, then, with Christ and with the triune God. The Bible doesn’t know about a distinction between being internally in the covenant, really in the covenant, and being only externally in the covenant, just being in the sphere of the covenant. The Bible speaks about the reality, the efficacy of baptism. Every baptized person is truly a member of God’s covenant,” “Covenant and History.” Peter Leithart’s defense of paedocommunion hinges on setting aside this distinction: “The real question before us is this: Does baptism initiate the baptized to the Lord’s table, so that all who are baptized have a right to the meal? Paedocommuion advocates, for all their differences, will answer in the affirmative. Nothing more than the rite of water baptism is required for access to the Lord’s table,” “A Response to ‘1 Corinthians 11:17-34: The Lord’s Supper’” in The Auburn Avenue Theology, 298.
[viii] Wilkins indicates a connection between his conception of the covenant and his conception of the Trinity when he argues, “the covenant into which we are brought is this very same covenant that has always existed within the Godhead from eternity,” “Covenant, Baptism, and Salvation,” 257. Peter Leithart and Ralph Smith have argued in similar veins. See Leithart, “Trinitarian Anthropology: Toward a Trinitarian Re-casting of Reformed Theology,” in The Auburn Avenue Theology, 58-71; Ralph Smith, Eternal Covenant: How The Trinity Reshapes Covenant Theology (Moscow, Ida.: Canon, 2003).
[ix] We are not claiming that FV proponents expressly deny that the divine unity is ontological. We are simply observing a both a tendency to question certain traditional formulations concerning the divine unity and predilection to express this unity in non-ontological and relational terms. See for example, Peter Leithart’s discomfort with the phrase “nature of God,” “Trinitarian Anthropology,” 65. Wilkins speaks of the “covenantal unity” of Father and Son, “Covenant, Baptism, and Salvation,” 49-50, and of God as “a Triune Being who exists in a unity of love,” Ibid., 51. Ralph Smith has argued that the traditional language of “essence” and “substance” – as it is employed in “traditional Reformed theology – is unwholesomely indebted to Aristotle, Paradox and Truth: Rethinking Van Til On The Trinity (2d ed.; Moscow, Ida.: Canon, 2002), 84.
[x] This rejection of the traditional doctrine takes various forms. At least one proponent outrightly rejects the covenant of works. Ralph Smith has extensively written against the covenant of works as a biblical doctrine, Eternal Covenant. James Jordan, after problematizing the traditional doctrine [terming a conventional expression of it “Pelagian,” “Merit Versus Maturity: What Did Jesus Do For Us?,” in The Federal Vision, 153], proposes an alternative way of construing the “Adamic covenant,” viz. “what Adam was supposed to provide, and what Jesus provided for us, is maturity,” Ibid., 155. Others have followed Jordan in reconceiving the covenant of works along such lines. See Ralph Smith, Eternal Covenant, 80-81; Rich Lusk, “A Response to ‘The Biblical Plan of Salvation,’” in The Auburn Avenue Theology, 124; John Barach, “Covenant and History.” Such other writers as Joel Garver and Douglas Wilson have expressed patent discomfort with the terminology of “works” in connection with the first covenant, see Garver, “The Covenant of Works In the Reformed Tradition;” Wilson, “A Collection of Short Credos: On Justification” Credenda Agenda 15/5, p.22.
[xi] While Peter Leithart has made recent statements that appear favorable towards Adamic imputation (see “Imputation of Sin, Rom 5:13,” 23 May 2004), Leithart has also recently set forth arguments that appear to deny Adamic imputation. (1) Leithart denies that Rom 5:12-14 teaches the traditional doctrine of the imputation of Adam’s sin to his posterity (“Imputation of Sin,” 04 July 2004); (2) Leithart claims that Paul’s use of “imputation” in these verses “doesn’t appear to mean precisely what it means in traditional Reformed theology” (ibid.); (3) These verses teach that “Adam’s sin is ‘imputed’ in the sense that it renders him liable to the curse of death; and because of Adam’s position as the head of the human race, others suffer the consequences of his sin as well” (ibid.); Leithart asks “how is it just for people between Adam and Moses to suffer the curse of death if they are not held guilty of Adam’s sin?” (ibid., emphasis not original); (4) Leithart claims that the traditional doctrine of imputation is a “good and necessary consequence of Paul’s argument rather than explicit teaching” (ibid.). But Leithart’s preferred method of explaining not only Rom 5:12-14 but also the relationship of Adam to his posterity in general undercuts this claim: “But it may also be that this [i.e. Leithart’s question (above)] can be explained simply in terms of Adam’s position as the first man and as a covenant representative. For instance, Abel was not allowed to return to the garden, but this was not because he was directly held guilty of Adam’s sin. Perhaps it was simply because his father had made a terrible error and God cast him out of the garden, and that God determined that no one would return until a perfect sacrifice had been offered, until “dying you shall die” had been carried out on an innocent substitute. (Abel was still born in sin, since was born under the curse and born to parents who were alienated from God),” ibid.
[xii] Rich Lusk, “A Response,” 140. Ralph Smith claims that it is “not ‘merit’ that is imputed to us, but a righteous status before God,” Eternal Covenant, 83. While Mark Horne believes that he is not denying the traditional doctrine of imputation, it is clear that his positive definitions of the righteousness imputed to the believer are moving in a different track – the track of reception of status (See Mark Horne, “God’s Righteousness and Our Justification;” “Some Thoughts on Wright, Righteousness, and Covenant Status;” and “Righteousness from God”).
[xiii] “‘Justification,’ too, is intimately connected with the covenant. In Greek, the word 'justify' is related to the word normally translated into English as ‘righteous,’ and throughout Scripture, ‘righteousness’ and related words refer to correct behavior within some kind of covenant relationship. Righteousness is conformity to the demands of a covenant...The gospel of Christ is a revelation of God's righteousness because, in Christ, God has fulfilled all the promises made and sworn to Abraham, and thereby has shown that He does what He is obligated to do by His covenant with Israel. In this context [i.e. Galatians 2], to ‘justify’ someone is to count him as righteous, that is, as a covenant-keeper,” Peter Leithart, Blessed Are The Hungry: Meditations On The Lord’s Supper (Moscow, Ida.: Canon, 2003), 143-144.
[xiv] Peter Leithart has argued that “justification and definitive sanctification are not merely simultaneous, nor merely twin effects of the single event of union with Christ (thought I believe that is the case). Rather they are the same act. God’s declaration that we are justified takes the form of deliverance from sin, death, and Satan. God declares us righteous by delivering us from all our enemies,” “Judge Me, O God: Biblical Perspectives on Justification.” To define justification in this way is, despite Leithart’s protests to the contrary, to define justification in decidedly non-forensic, transformational categories.

Steve Schlissel has argued concerning Rom 3:28 that the “deeds of the law” are “something uniquely Jewish” and “not … something uniquely convicting,” for “Paul never sets faith against obedience.” The contrast in view in these verses, Schlissel reiterates, is not “faith versus obedience,” “Justification,” 258, 260. Further, “the presuppositions undergirding Paul’s statement [at Rom 2:13] include the facts that the law is ‘obeyable,’ that truly responding to the Law (the Word) in faith does justify, and that such justification is not an exclusively Jewish possession,” “Justification,” 260.

Rich Lusk says of James 2 that this passage “cannot be referring to a demonstration of justification … Rather, James has in view the same kind of justification as Paul – forensic, soteric justification. Good works justify persons in James 2, not faith or one’s status as a justified sinner … [James] says their persons will not be justified by faith alone, but also by good works of obedience they have done. The use of the preposition “by” is important since it indicates a sort of dual instrumentality in justification. In other words, in some sense, James is speaking of a justification in which faith and works combine together to justify. Future justification is according to one’s life pattern. No one dare [sic] claim these works to be meritorious, but they are necessary…,” “Future Justification To The Doers of the Law.”
[xv] See Rich Lusk in the preceding note arguing for “a sort of dual instrumentality in justification,” viz. of faith and “good works of obedience.” Rich Lusk has also argued that we may speak of “baptism’s instrumentality in justification;” and that “baptism is the instrument through which Christ is applied to us unto justification,” that is, “faith is the instrument of justification on our end, while baptism is the instrument on God’s side. God offers Christ and applies Christ to us through the instrument of baptism,” “Faith, Baptism, and Justification.”
[xvi] See John Barach, “Covenant and Election,” in The Federal Vision, 15-47; Rich Lusk, “Covenant and Election FAQs (Version 6.4);” Steve Wilkins, “Covenant, Baptism, and Salvation.”
[xvii] Many FV proponents argue that biblical statements concerning Old Testament corporate or national election are determinative of our understanding of individual election. See here John Barach, “Covenant and Election” (2002); Rich Lusk, “Covenant and Election FAQs;” Mark Horne, “Election: Corporate & Individual.” Lusk, following Norman Shepherd (cf. Shepherd, “Reprobation in Covenant Perspective”), observes that “corporate election may not issue forth in final salvation, as the nation of Israel shows (cf. Dt. 7; Rom 9-11).” Consequently, “apostasy is a real possibility for all covenant members, and is to be warned against,” “Covenant and Election FAQs.” The Summary Statement of AAPC claims “all covenant members are invited to attain to a full and robust confidence that they are God's eternally elect ones. Starting with their baptisms, they have every reason to believe God loves them and desires their eternal salvation. Baptism marks them out as God's elect people, a status they maintain so long as they persevere in faithfulness.
[xviii] See here Douglas Wilson, “Visible and Invisible Church Revisited,” AAPCPC 2002 Lecture; “Reformed” Is Not Enough , 69-78; “The Visible/Invisible Church Distinction,” AAPCPC 2003 Lecture; “The Church: Visible or Invisible,” in The Auburn Avenue Theology, 263-269. Wilson believes that his categories (historical and eschatological) preserve the best of the visible / invisible distinction with out the latter’s liabilities. But Wilson’s distinction functionally neglects that which the doctrine of the invisible church is concerned to guard – the existence of a body of sincere believers who are discernible to God and to themselves by certain infallible marks (marks that hypocrites do not and cannot possess), cf. WLC 61-68. Wilson says rather that “the Bible teaches clearly that in the historical Church there are fruitless branches (but real branches nonetheless) which will not be there in the eschatological Church,” “The Church: Visible or Invisible,” 268. The practical distinction, then, between the sincere believer and the hypocrite is not ontological but historical in nature.

Other proponents’ discussions of the way in which covenant members are to be addressed by ministers effectively nullify the distinction between the invisible church and visible church. While the existence of a body of decretally elect within the covenant community is granted, FV understandings of “covenantal election” apply universally language reserved for the invisible church to each member of the visible church, and that while rejecting such traditionally theological explanations as the judgment of charity. See John Barach, “Covenant and Election,” in The Auburn Avenue Theology, 149-156; Steve Wilkins, “Covenant, Baptism, and Salvation.”
[xix] See AAPC Summary Statement §10 and Endnote 1. See also Rich Lusk, “Covenant and Election FAQs,” and “New Life and Apostasy: Hebrews 6:4-8 as Test Case” in The Federal Vision, 271-299. Douglas Wilson acknowledges the legitimacy of theoretically distinguishing the apostate from the believer who perseveres in terms of the former’s unregeneracy and the latter’s regeneration. But Wilson effectively nullifies this distinction when he speaks of the apostate as having been in a more than outward – a vital – relationship with Christ. “The cut-away branch has no fruit (which is why it was cut away) – but it has had sap (which is why it had to be cut away,” “Reformed” Is Not Enough, 132 (cf. “The Objectivity of the Covenant” Credenda Agenda 15/1, p.5; “Visible and Invisible Church Revisited,” 2003 AAPCPC Lecture). He further states that “someone can be on the tree right next to you and he is as much on the tree as you are, he’s as much a partaker of Christ as you are, he is as much a member of Christ as you are and he is cut away and you are not and you stand by faith, so don’t be haughty but fear,” “Visible and Invisible church Revisited.”
[xx]“The Bible does not teach that some people receive incorruptible new hearts, i.e., that some people are as individuals ‘regenerated.’” “My thesis is that there is no such thing as ‘regeneration’ in the sense in which Reformed theology since Dort has spoken of it. The Bible says nothing about a permanent change in the hearts of those elected to heaven.” “My position: everyone who is baptized has been given the same thing. No one has been given a permanently changed “regenerated heart,” James Jordan, Thoughts on Sovereign Grace and Regeneration: Some Tentative Explorations,” Occasional Paper No. 32 (Niceville, Fla.: Biblical Horizons, 2003), 1, 7, 7, as quoted by Carl D. Robbins, “The Reformed Doctrine of Regeneration,” in The Auburn Avenue Theology, 164.
[xxi] Frequently polemicized is a doctrine of assurance wherein the inwardly wrought saving graces of the Holy Spirit constitute a ground of the believer’s assurance of grace and salvation. See Steve Schlissel, “Covenant Hearing” 2002 AAPCPC Lecture; Mark Horne, citing John Barach, at Mark Horne, “Whose Legalism? Which Works-Righteousness? The 2002 Auburn Avenue Pastor’s Conference and the Assurance of Grace;” Steve Wilkins, “Apostasy and the Covenant” (II) 2001 AAPCPC Lecture.

FV proponents generally direct believers towards their water baptisms for assurance. Steve Wilkins, for instance, has argued that “all the things that you and I are rightly concerned about, externalism, presumption, things we see all around us, the covenant prevents that when it’s preached in it’s [sic] fullness. We belong to Christ. Baptism is the infallible sign and seal of this, and now we must learn to live faithfully and never depart from him … [I]n regard to our assurance, we are pointed away from ourselves, and what we think we perceive to be true of us inwardly, which no one can know. And pointed to Christ, the only ground of your assurance…” “Covenant and Baptism.”

Steve Schlissel claims that we must “accept God’s testimony in baptism.” Citing Eph 4:1, Schlissel argues that “such a calling is objective and rests upon every baptized person. When we bring our children to the font for baptism to receive the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, it is because the children are under a calling from God that is as real as death, as real as a heart, as real as blood, and we teach them to grow up and live in terms of that calling and to seek honor [sic] God in it.” The alternative to this, Schlissel states, is what he terms the “assurance problem,” viz. “we begin our enterprise in Christ with doubt. We never get a footing from which to grow and develop in the consciousness of who we are in Christ. How many times does God have to tell us how much we mean to Him and how much He loves us? We spurn His love and despise his overtures. We don’t believe. We teach our children to doubt. We teach our congregations to doubt,” “Covenant Hearing.”

Barach claims “you don’t need a special, dramatic, revivalistic conversion to let you know that you are elect. You had the special experience that God gives you. It was called baptism,” John Barach, “Covenant and Election” (2002), as quoted by E. Calvin Beisner, “Concluding Comments on the Federal Vision,” in The Auburn Avenue Theology, 311. See particularly John Barach, “Baptism and Election” (21 August 2002).

Douglas Wilson recognizes that there are subjective grounds for assurance, but calls for the need for what he terms “objective assurance,” which, he argues, is “found in real faith responding to an objective gospel,” not by “peer[ing] into the secret counsels of God, or into the murky recesses of one’s own heart.” The question that Wilson poses is “the gospel is preached, the water was applied, the Table is now set. Do you believe? The question is a simple one,” “Reformed” Is Not Enough, 130. Elsewhere, Wilson has framed the relationship between these objective and subjective grounds for assurance antithetically. Speaking of what he terms “morbid introspectionism,” he turns his attention to more generally to inward marks of assurance: “”When you, if you want to search inward, if you want to look inward on any given day, you can always find more than enough to hang you. There is no assurance looking inward, assurance always comes from looking out, look out to God, look out to his promises, look to Christ on the cross, look at what God has said, you look away, you don’t look in,” “The Curses of the New Covenant” 2002 AAPCPC Lecture.
[xxii] See our précis treating the Summary Statement of the AAPC for the way in which the recipient of baptism is said to come into possession of “all the blessings and benefits of [Christ’s] work.” The Summary Statement also claims that baptism does not guarantee “final salvation,” and that apostasy is a genuine possibility for such a person. Wilkins has stated that “all in covenant are given all that is true of Christ,” citing “the forgiveness of sins, adoption, possession of the kingdom, [and] sanctification” as that which the apostate forfeits, “Covenant, Baptism, and Salvation,” 60, 62. It is furthermore, Wilkins, continues “not accurate to say that they only ‘appeared’ to have these things but did not actually have them … The apostate doesn’t forfeit ‘apparent blessings’ that were never his in realty, but real blessings that were his in covenant with God,” “Covenant, Baptism, and Salvation,” 62. Wilson, as we have observed above, speaks of the apostate as having partaken (in company with non-apostates) of the “sap” of Christ. This language can only mean that what is lost in apostasy is far more than outward privilege and opportunity.
[xxiii] While Peter Leithart has problematized the doctrine of the sacramental union (“Starting Before The Beginning” Credenda Agenda 14/6), he nevertheless affirms “it is evident that the NT teaches that baptism is a saving ordinance, that it brings the baptized into union with Christ in His death and resurrection. Nearly every passages [sic] on baptism in the NT treats it as an ordinance that gives grace…” (“Infant Baptism” 06 August 2004). He is equally insistent that, in most instances, “‘baptism’ in the NT texts refers to the rite of water baptism,” ibid. Leithart also says “if the Spirit has promised that He will be present and active at the water of baptism, then we can be certain that He, the Spirit of truth, will be there. And there is indeed a promise of the Spirit’s presence with the water: Peter promised on Pentecost that those who were baptized would receive the Spirit (Acts 2:38); Paul says that we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body (1 Cor. 12:13); by God’s grace He saved us by the “washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit” (Tit. 3:5). As G. R. Beasley-Murray puts it, for the New Testament ‘baptism is the supreme moment of the impartation of the Spirit and of the work of the Spirit in the believer,’” “Baptism and the Spirit” Biblical Horizons 85 (May 1996).

Recall the Summary Statement of the AAPC, referenced above. In addressing the question of the relationship between sign and thing signified, Rich Lusk argues that there is “a basic, fundamental unity” between the two, and claims that the signs are “signs conjoined with the gracious work of Christ and the Spirit,” a state of affairs he terms “sacramental causality,” which is, in fact, “instrumental efficacy.” “Paedobaptism and Baptismal Efficacy,” 97, 98. Consequently, “insofar as baptism is a sacramental act/event, every baptism includes the outward sign and the thing signified,” “Do I Believe In Baptismal Regeneration?” Steve Wilkins claims that “at baptism you are clothed with Christ … Union with Christ is a real, vital blessed union,” and “with our union with Christ, we have all spiritual blessings,” “The Legacy of the Half-Way Covenant,” 2002 AAPCPC Lecture.
[xxiv] Rich Lusk claims that “there is no such thing as a baptism that does not confer grace, just as there is no such thing as a salvific ‘spiritual baptism’ that takes place apart from the physical sign of water,” “Paedobaptism and Baptismal Efficacy,” 98 (Lusk, we may note, with some other FV proponents frequently equivocates the term “grace”). Wilson has stated “baptism is covenantally efficacious. It brings every person baptized into an objective and living covenant relationship with Christ, whether the baptized person is elect or reprobate,” “Credos: On Baptism §6.” Wilkins has argued that, with the proper qualifications, it is appropriate to use the phrase “baptismal regeneration:” “[R]eading the Bible this way and in this sense we can speak of baptismal regeneration in this sense, not in the sense that there is some mystical power in the water of baptism that automatically transforms men if the water has been sufficiently sanctified. But, nor is it saying that God is bound to the water of baptism, that God, somehow, his blessing is always bound to that and can’t come apart form that. What we, what I mean by this is we can speak of it in the sense that by the blessing of the spirit, baptism unites us to Christ and his church and thus in him gives us new life. [He cites Rom 6:11, 2 Cor 5:17] By our baptism we have been reborn, in this sense, having died with Christ, we have been raised with him,” “The Legacy of the Half-Way Covenant.” Joel Garver states “we do not baptize because the one to be baptized is already regenerate. Rather we baptize in order that the one who is baptized be made regenerate. By baptism the Spirit regenerates since baptism turns us away from the old Adam and inserts us into the covenant, identifying us with Christ – the One born from above, raised from death, renewed in the Spirit, in whom is new creation – and identifying us with his covenant people – the new-creation people, born from above on Pentecost,” “A Brief Catechesis on Covenant and Baptism.”
[xxv] Summary Statement of the AAPC §7. Wilkins claims “when you’ve been baptized and put on Christ, at baptism all the promises and blessings of the covenant are delivered over to you, and God calls you then to embrace them by faith and persevere in the grace of God that has been given to you,” “Covenant and Baptism” 2003 AAPCPC Lecture.
[xxvi] FV proponents tend to place a much higher premium on the sacrament of baptism and its office in the application of redemption than have traditional Presbyterians. Wilson claims that “in the ordinary course of life, [baptism and salvation] are linked, and we are to speak of them as though they are,” “Reformed” Is Not Enough, 87. For Lusk, “preaching makes us desire what God offers in the sacraments,” “Some Thoughts On the Means of Grace: A Few Proposals.” Speaking of the hearers of Peter’s sermon in Acts 2: “clearly, Peter believes God will give them something in baptism that they have not received through preaching alone. Baptism will consummate the process of regeneration begun by the Word preached,” ibid. Speaking of the conversion of Saul in Acts 9: “confrontation with the Word of Christ began his conversion process, but it was not complete until he received the sacrament of initiation,” ibid. Further, “preaching communicates truth, the sacraments communicate life,” ibid. Wilkins, we have seen, points to baptism as the transition from death to life. Mark Horne has called for a “model for conversion” that is rooted in baptism and discipleship rather than in evangelistically minded preaching, “Baptism, Evangelism, & The Quest For A Converting Ordinance.”

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