The dangers of reaction

The post below is a comment that I wrote for the thread "None of This Is New Under the Sun" on Green Bagginses. Even if you're not familiar with the "Federal Vision" controversy currently playing itself out in the Reformed and Presbyterian churches of North America, I hope you will find these thoughts to be edifying.

Any movement rooted and grounded in a reaction to something else is subject to great dangers. While modernism was busy rejecting supernaturalism, tradition, and the Sacraments, the nineteenth-century Tractarian movement attempted to save the Church from these ills by emphasizing traditions and rituals. In turn, Bishop Ryle reacted against the excesses of the Tractarians by arguing that "religion is eminently a personal business between yourself and Christ" -- a claim that would have sounded almost bizarre to any of the writers of the New Testament.

My own sympathies lie with the Federal Vision, but I do not see this approach as immune to the dangers that threaten all reactions. The best expressions of "Federal Vision" theology are those that hold tightly to the glorious truths of evangelical and Presbyterian/Reformed theology even while they point out ways in which the Church must continue to be reformed (ecclesia reformata et semper reformanda). To the extent that Federal Vision advocates are doing this, they are following in the footsteps of the original Protestant Reformers. Great men like Luther, Calvin, and Bucer did not reject doctrines or practices merely because they were "Romanist"; rather, they sought to glorify God and build up the Church along the lines of whatever was good, true, and Scriptural. For this, Luther himself and his Wittenberg allies were described as the "new papists" by the likes of Radical Reformer Andreas Karlstadt. (Once again, nothing is new under the sun.)

On the other side, there is great danger in a reaction against the Federal Vision that opposes everything in it except what is already comfortable and familiar. In their fierce opposition to the Federal Vision, some have drifted into what is almost an ecclesiological Docetism. The Docetist heretics taught that the presence of Christ on earth was only an appearance, a phantom, and the real substance of Him was all ethereal and invisible; some are now saying that there is no substance in the visible church, no special benefit in belonging to it -- that this is only a kind of phantom appearance of a church, while the reality is all spiritual, "invisible," and other-worldly.

May all the parties to this discussion seek out the "old paths, the good way," that we may walk in it. And may we all recognize that some of the old paths may be on our opponents' side of the boundary, and be humble enough not to rail at once against their entire position just because we think we see errors at certain points.

On both sides of the Federal Vision debate are disciples of one and the same Lord, members together of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church. Let us not denigrate one aspect of the Truth in our zeal to uphold another. Let us not force our brethren and our children to choose between James and Paul, between the Old Testament and the New, between faith and good works, between membership in the visible church and participation in eternal life, between Christ's righteousness imputed to us and His righteousness performed in us, between the Word and the Sacraments. All of these are ours in Christ (1 Cor. 3:21-23) -- all equally and gloriously ours! -- and only a great fool would claim that participation in some of these makes the others unimportant. Is Christ divided?