To: Louisiana Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church in America, in care of TE Stanley Pace,
Moderator (StanleyPace@hotmail.com) and RE Dale Peacock, Stated Clerk
(mdpeacock@netzero.net) and the Presbyterys Ad Hoc Committee on Federal Vision
Theology, in care of TE Howard Davis, Chairman (HQDavis@yahoo.com)
From: Dr. E. Calvin Beisner, RE; Rev. Christopher A. Hutchinson, TE; Rev. Richard D. Phillips,
TE; Dr. Joseph A. Pipa, TE; Rev. Carl D. Robbins, TE; Dr. Morton H. Smith, TE; Dr. R.
Fowler White, TE
Subject: Your Final Report and Recommendations on Federal Vision Theology and Rev. Steve Wilkins
Date: July 27, 2005
In his 2003 Auburn Avenue Pastors Conference lecture, Covenant and Baptism, Mr. Wilkins said: when we say . . . Look to your baptism, were talking about looking to Christ in the covenant, and realizing what you can know for certain. You cannot know if you were ever sincere. You cannot know if you really meant it when you asked Jesus into your heart and threw the pine cone into the fire. You cant know those. Those questions are unanswerable. Were you really given a new heart? Well, you cant answer that question. God knows. You dont know. What you can know is that you have been baptized and you have the Lords Supper. Shortly he added that this view helps pastorally in that It makes our standing before God and that of our infallible sign and seal of this . . . . And in 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 our assurance.
We assert that Mr. Wilkinss statements cited here entail by good and necessary consequence that all who are baptized in water will be eternally saved. We know and are grateful that Mr. Wilkins denies that consequence. But the fact remains that he wrote as he did, and we believe the Committee and Presbytery should call on Mr. Wilkins to retract some of what he wrote in light of its necessary consequence.
We believe that the reason Mr. Wilkins can have written as he did and yet can in all honesty and sincerity deny the necessary consequence of it is that in doing so he inadvertently equivocated on the terms covenant and in Christ. Because his statements occur in a context in which he is discussing salvation and assurance of salvation, the primary sense of covenant and in Christ that appears to have been in his mind was of being in the covenant of grace made with Christ as the second Adam, and in Him with all the elect as His seed (LC 31) and of being in Christ in the sense in which Paul used the term in Ephesians to denote a saving relationship. But when he then denies the consequence of his statementsthat consequence being that therefore all who are baptized are eternally savedthe primary sense of covenant and in Christ in his mind has changed to the earthly, temporal covenant and that union with Christ that entails nothing more than membership in the visible church. We suggest that this insight might help Mr. Wilkins to clarify his intentions and compose new public statements to correct the mistaken impressions fostered by his earlier statements.
[The Louisiana Presbytery Report] does not notice that what Mr. Wilkins affirms belongs to every baptized personall spiritual blessings in the heavenly places, with Mr. Wilkinss own enumeration of such based on Ephesians 1 and 1 Corinthiansis nothing if it is not precisely that: a vital, internalized relationship with the Lord.