[Vision2020] The FV is Really Just Misunderstood.....

[News of Christ Cult]

http://www.puritanboard.com/f77/fv-really-just-misunderstood-25236/

*The FV is Really Just Misunderstood.....*
------------------------------
I know some of you know about the latest blog recantation on the FV to Rome
trip of members of Doug Wilson's church.

For those who do not, the link is
here.<http://www.puritanboard.com/f77/another-fvist-goes-papist-24514/>

However, many people have continued to say "Oh, the FV position is just
misunderstood. They are all still Christians too." "Hey, Wilson is an OK
guy. He's teaching OK things."

Take five minutes, read this, and you decide how "unharmful" the FV position
is to those blown and tossed by every wind of doctrine...and the shepherds
who are leading God's people astray...


____________________________________

Homesick No More <http://wishfullthoughts.blogspot.com/>
Ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall
find rest for your souls. - Jeremiah 6:16
*Monday, August 27, 2007*
*On How The Federal Vision Made Me Catholic*
So there's much hubbub lately about the Federal Vision controversy. The
conservative reformed world is fast becoming a house divided against itself
over the issues of the reality of the sacraments and what they confer upon
the recipient and the real possibility of apostasy.

Having been myself a member of both a Federal Vision community (lo, I am a
pharisee of pharisees coming from Christ Church itself, the very Mecca of
the FV movement) and a non-FV reformed community (OPC to be precise) and now
a communing Catholic (in that order) I have thought about the question a
fair bit. I still keep up on the matter, though through a glass dimly,
mostly because the ideas of the preachers of the FV movement were largely
the ideas that lead me to be accepted into the Catholic Church.

Let me say at the outset that I still hold a great fondness for that
particular set of Presbyterians in general and many of their members in
specific. I am greatly encouraged to see some of their number moving the
direction I have moved. Mostly, I am grieved to think, as might be the case,
that I have spoken ill in broad sweeping generalizations against my brothers
in those communities. If in the fervor of my conversion I spoke as to
offend, I ask that you would forgive the zeal of a young man in the throws
of something unimaginably larger than himself.

That said, on to the FV movement. I don't wish to deal with the particular
theological contentions of the FV movement because, obviously, they are
largely inherently protestant and I disagree with them because they conflict
explicitly with my Catholic presuppositions. I wish to deal rather with the
*ethos* of the movement and specifically that way of leaning into religion
that I learned at Christ Church.

Over and against my non-denominational upbringing (and with much fighting
against it on my part) I was taught at Christ Church and at New St. Andrews
College to think, increasingly over the five years I was there, of the
sacraments confected there as decidedly more effective than I had ever
considered them before. I was taught to believe that baptism entailed a real
sort of in-grafting into Christ. I was taught to believe that the Lord's
Supper made Christ somehow truly present among us in a way distinct from His
omnipresence. I was taught, perhaps not in Catholic terms but in a real way,
to believe that grace of a sort was given to Christians in the supper. I was
most definitely taught to believe that sin would be brought to light and
repentance effected by my and my neighbors' reception of the supper.

To be sure I was taught not to believe the Roman doctrine that Christ was
physically present in what I received. I was taught that baptism surely did
not forgive the sins of the recipient, but I was lead to believe that
something spiritual and gracious was taking place in these sacraments.

I was quickly required by my father, a non-denominational pastor, to account
for these things. What was this grace, this connection to Christ, this
spiritual reality that I believed was present in the sacraments? As co-heirs
of the reformation we could both, along with the FV pastors, be sure that
whatever it was it was not justifying grace. It was not the grace that made
us stand holy in Christ. This was the one thing it categorically could not
be. Yet both the teaching of my pastors and the words of Scripture made me
sure that it was something real, not just a memorial that made me more holy
by virtue of reflection.

To further confuse the issue, there was the weekly statement of absolution
that Pastor Wilson gave from the pulpit in the liturgy. We would pray a
corporate prayer of confession and Pastor would tell us, in his position of
authority as a minister of God, that the confessed sins of God's people were
forgiven. [/font]

I clung to this statement through some of the darkest nights of my soul in
my quite disreputable college days. Sometimes it was the only thing that
really reassured me that God loved me and forgave me my sins, despite my
continuation in them.

This statement was also quite distinct from the variation on the same theme
that I received at the OPC community of which I was later a member. The
statement there was more along the lines of "God, broadly speaking, forgives
the sins of the elect." There was no personal reassurance that *my* sins
were forgiven. I was substantially less assured by this practice. The same
was true of my reception of the supper there.

But in all of this there was a gnawing at the back of my brain that was that
indefinable nature of the grace I was receiving. If election was really the
main thing, these sacraments could neither assure nor assist my journey to
heaven. I knew that if I asked I would be told that my sins were not, so to
speak, absolved in that statement, that it was a sign of sorts, of the
forgiveness I already had. That the supper was a 'sign and seal' of the
redemption that was or was not already mine.

But there I was. I had already, as a protestant, learned to lean on grace
that I was simultaneously being taught could have no real effect on my
eternal destiny. In my day to day life of faith, these things were the life
rafts that held me afloat. These were the only places where I sensed the
reality of God's grace, and yet I was being told that it was faith, not
these signs that were conferring it. Yet I knew my faith to be so weak! If
it was the greatness or sincerity of my faith that upheld the process, I
knew myself to be damned.

I was, by various circumstances after leaving Moscow, exposed to the
Catholic faith. The Catholic faith provided exactly what I was looking for,
dare I say had been primed to look for. Real Grace conferred in real
Sacraments. No longer did i have to flail, Luther-like, with internal
existential struggles! When the priest said my sins were forgiven, they were
forgiven! Just like Jesus said to the Apostles "I give you the power to
forgive sins." When the priest said "This is my Body" it *was* His Body,
broken for me! There and then! REALLY!

I had been taught for so long to lean on the reality of the sacraments in
the FV community with a huge hanging caveat of "Not Really". Your sins are
forgiven, though be sure to remember they've already been forgiven, this is
just a sign. This is my Body, this is my Blood, but not really, just in a
sort of spiritual, metaphorical sense (of course being sure to remember how
real metaphor is!). In the Catholic Church I found the flesh and blood, no
pun intended, to the ghost of the truth I had been shown in the FV
community.

To be sure, I maintain to this day that the FV communities are much closer
to the truth than many other protestant communities. At the same time I
maintain that this is sometimes much more insidious about the partial truth
the FV communities posses and teach. The apparent sacramentality of the FV
communities can easily lull its parishoners into a false sense of security.
Some FV communities even go so far as to employ sacramentals like the sign
of the Cross and observe the Church calendar to a certain degree. Such
imitation of the true Church can convince parishoners at FV communities that
they are really partaking in the fullness of the Church, just without the
Romish 'heresies'. After all, they are employing the practices of the early
Church. They are connected to the historic doctrines moreso than most
protestants. Like the mystical field in The Wizard of Oz, it is easy to fall
asleep when you are so close to the Emerald City.

But what is really missing is what is really and most critically important.
The REAL presence of Jesus, body and blood, soul and divinity. The REAL and
unequivocal forgiveness of sins. This is what I longed for, and even
supposed I had in the FV communities. But it was a continual exercise in
cognitive dissonance. I was forever balancing what I knew should be
happening in the sacraments with what I was being told was not happening
there.

It is with great comfort that I now rest in the bosom of the true Jerusalem
Above, the Mother of us all, the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church,
and it with a great sense of gratitude to the FV communities, Christ Church
and Rev. Wilson in particular for showing me the road of the sacramental
life that eventually lead me there.

And make no mistake in thinking I am a rouge convert, twisting the teachings
of the FV to get where I've arrived. The ranks of Catholics from FV origins
is growing by the day. Someone recently supposed on Rev. Wilson's blog that
the natural destination of the FV was either to complete fragmentation or to
Eastern Orthodoxy, but I maintain that, not by a natural progression in
their presbyteries but by a grassroots movement among those of my and
following generations, will be to the Catholic Church. FV protestants are
too hard-line to accept the national, transitory character of the Orthodox
church. The true home of all Christians and the natural home of FV
Christians, both because of their Western nature and their commitment to
real truth is the Catholic Church. I pray for their reunion.


-- 
Forwarded by:

Juanita Flores
Advocate for the Truth from Jesus
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