<a href="http://www.puritanboard.com/f77/fv-really-just-misunderstood-25236/">http://www.puritanboard.com/f77/fv-really-just-misunderstood-25236/<br clear="all"></a><br> <strong>The FV is Really Just Misunderstood.....</strong>
<hr style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="1"> I know some of you know about the latest blog recantation on the FV to Rome trip of members of Doug Wilson's church.<br> <br>
For those who do not, the link is <a href="http://www.puritanboard.com/f77/another-fvist-goes-papist-24514/" target="_blank"><font color="royalblue">here</font>.</a><br> <br>
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."<br> <br>
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...<br> <br> <br>
____________________________________<br> <br> <font color="#667788"><a onclick="urchinTracker ('/outgoing/http_wishfullthoughts_blogspot_com_');" rel="nofollow" href="http://wishfullthoughts.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">
<font color="#667788">Homesick No More </font></a></font><br> <font color="lightslategray">Ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. - Jeremiah 6:16</font><br>
<b><font color="#993333">Monday, August 27, 2007</font></b><br> <b><font color="#333333">On How The Federal Vision Made Me Catholic</font></b><br> <font color="#333333">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.</font><br> <br> <font color="#333333">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.</font><br> <br> <font color="#333333">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.</font><br> <br> <font color="#333333">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 <i>ethos</i> of the movement and specifically that way of leaning into religion that I learned at Christ Church. </font><br> <br> <font color="#333333">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. </font><br> <br> <font color="#333333">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.</font><br> <br> <font color="#333333">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.</font><br> <br> <font color="#333333">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>[/font]<br> <br> <font color="#333333">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.</font><br> <br> <font color="#333333">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
<i>my</i> sins were forgiven. I was substantially less assured by this practice. The same was true of my reception of the supper there. </font><br> <br> <font color="#333333">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. </font><br> <br> <font color="#333333">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.</font><br> <br> <font color="#333333">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 <i>was</i> His Body, broken for me! There and then! REALLY! </font><br> <br> <font color="#333333">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. </font><br> <br> <font color="#333333">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.</font><br> <br> <font color="#333333">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. </font><br> <br> <font color="#333333">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. </font><br> <br> <font color="#333333">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. </font><br><br><br>-- <br>Forwarded by:<br><br>Juanita Flores<br>Advocate for the Truth from Jesus