Hi Joe,

Thanks for posting the article. This piece is a good representation of Wilkins' contribution to the Auburn controversy. There is a lot of time spent on what is not being said without saying what is being said. Furthermore, there are promises to resolve pastoral problems upon which they never deliver in my estimation. For instance, he says things like:

In reply to:
[color:"blue"]We are always left asking, 'How do I know I am feeding on the heavenly gift, and not merely tasting of it? How do I know I've experienced real regeneration, and not its evil apostate twin?'



And then claims the solution to be free from these problems is:

In reply to:
[color:"blue"] The necessity of perseverance is a promise, not a threat, so long as we keep our eyes focused on Christ



It doesn't take very long to realize one can merely ask, "How do I know that I am focusing on Christ?" Whatever pastoral problems he creates for the views of which he is critical he never solves himself.

I also have problems with his talk about predestination unto grace and predestination unto perseverance. Again, as has been my frustration with Wilkins in this issue, after the traditional meaning and understanding of certain terms and concepts are criticized, there is no careful stipulation of these terms identifying what exactly they are talking about? Are they saying someone can be regenerated (born again) and NOT receive the grace of perseverance, which is some different grace given to a subset of regenerate people? If you were to say that he would probably say, "No, I never said that." and then fail to make his point any clearer. I think Wilkins and his church leaders have a half-baked paradigm here and need to do a better job explaining just what they do mean.

I also believe the fundamental failure here is to commit the same mistakes that he is criticizing. For instance, he writes:

In reply to:
[color:"blue"] This explodes ordinary Calvinistic logic. In modern Calvinistic parlance, if someone is elect, they cannot fall away.



So his solution to the introspective Calvinist who will never talk about someone as elect because he always thinks decretally, is to tell us to always think covnenatally! The fact is Scripture employs the term in both decretal and covenantal contexts, so to force an either/or distinction will solve a "problem" in one area and create another somewhere else. For instance, if I were to take Romans 8:30 as my starting point, I could say:

"The fact that God says every elect person will persevere explodes Auburnite logic. In modern Auburnite parlance, if someone is elect, they can still fall away. "

I believe that when either paradigm fails to acknowledge an objectively inward and outward reality to the covenant that there will be problems. I agree with the Auburnites that many Presbyterians have viewed it exclusively in its inward perspective and forgotten the objectivity of the covenant. However, I believe they have erred in swinging to the other direction of exclusively speaking in external terms, and in so doing they create other problems with texts such as Genesis 17:21 and Romans 9:6-8.

My $.02,

~Jason