While it seems unimaginable to some to accuse the Federal Visionists of an Arminian or Pelagian doctrine of election, it is impossible to find their views in either the Scripture or the Christian confessions. They hold to covenant election that is conditional in contradiction to the Scripture and the great Reformed creeds. They make election dependent on the response of the individual. Conditional election is not a Reformed position.

“Covenantal election and individual election to salvation aren’t actually that far apart. We can distinguish them perhaps, but we cannot, and we may not divide them completely. What is the connection? The connection has to do with God’s promise, God’s speech to us. God has promised every covenant member that he or she is elect in Christ.”^[1] —John Barach, Federal Vision Proponent

“In other words, baptism’s efficacy unto salvation is conditioned ultimately on God’s decree, but proximately on our response.”^[2] —Rich Lusk, Federal Vision Proponent

In his work, Calvinism and Evangelical Arminianism, John L. Girardeau (1825-1898), a Southern Presbyterian minister, stated that both theological systems hold that election represents a definite number of individuals who are chosen to eternal life. In the Arminian system, that definite number is a result of God’s foreknowledge that certain people would believe and persevere in holiness to final salvation. Yet, God’s foreknowledge is still of a definite number who attain eternal life. The grand difference between Calvinism and Arminianism on election, therefore, lies in a different direction. As Girardeau says:

The main difference between the two doctrines, that in regard to which the stress of the controversy between them takes place, is concerning the question of the conditionality or the unconditionality of election.^[3]

Key Assessment: The Federal Vision teaches the conditional election of all those who are baptized which is a view that is in dynamic conflict with the scriptural doctrine of unconditional election by God’s grace alone.

The advocates of the Federal Vision espouse both a conditional election and an unconditional election. They generally refer to unconditional election as decretal election and to conditional election as covenant election (which results from baptism). This inconsistency in their beliefs is best summarized by J. Gresham Machen who wrote concerning liberalism in the early 1900s:

There is sometimes a salutary lack of logic which prevents the whole of a man’s faith being destroyed when he has given up a part. But the true way to examine a spiritual movement is in its logical relations; logic is the great dynamic, and the logical implications of any way of thinking are sooner or later to be worked out.^[4]

There are many people who apparently are unwilling to question the Reformed bona fides of the Federal Vision adherents as long as they affirm (whether consistently or inconsistently) that they believe in the doctrine of election. In Hedman vs. Pacific Northwest Presbytery, the representatives of presbytery argued before the Standing Judicial Commission of the Presbyterian Church in America that Peter Leithart is Reformed because he professes to hold to the doctrine of election. That assessment is too simplistic. In a section on the doctrinal views of the Pharisees, Alfred Edersheim revealed that Jewish sect vacillated between absolute predestination bordering on fatalism and making everything dependent on man’s will:

While the pharisees thus held the doctrine of absolute predestination, side by side with it they were anxious to insist on man’s freedom of choice, his personal responsibility, and moral obligation. Although every event depended upon God, whether a man served God or not was entirely his own choice. As a logical sequence of this, fate had no influence as regarded Israel, since all depended on prayer, repentance, and good works.^[5]

If the Federal Vision is a revival of the theological errors of the Judaizers and the Pharisees, it should not be surprising that the propagators of it vacillate between predestination and free will in the same manner as that ancient party. The vacillation of the Federal Vision advocates is manifested in their doctrine of covenant election which effectively negates God’s eternal decree. For them, whether a person ultimately serves God or not is a matter of his or her own choice or perseverance, even as the Pharisees were accustomed to believe. No modern Reformed author would ever tout the Pharisees as being within the Reformed tradition, notwithstanding their espousal of absolute predestination. There is more to being Reformed than mere lip service to the most well-known doctrine of the Reformed faith. So, why should the Federal Vision proponents be classified as Reformed when they inconsistently hold to predestination after the example of the ancient Pharisees?

The Federal Vision and Election

It is certainly illogical and inconsistent for the advocates of the Federal Vision to hold to both conditional and unconditional election. Yet Federal Vision advocate, John Barach, attempts to connect so-called covenantal election with decretal election in the quote at the beginning of this chapter. Barach affirms that covenantal election bestows the privilege of incorporation into Christ on all the baptized. His view is that all those who are in covenant with Christ through baptism are addressed by Paul and other apostles as the elect. Yet, Barach acknowledges that not all who are covenantally elect will prove to be eternally and unconditionally elect. In Barach’s system, a member of the covenant can move back and forth from election to reprobation, depending on that person’s covenant obedience or disobedience. Such a view connects election with covenantal obedience in an ongoing process and makes election conditional. As Guy Waters says:

In summary, Barach embraces two distinct but overlapping doctrines of election. He affirms both decretal election and what he calls covenantal election. Decretal election for Barach has little practical value. He prefers to speak of covenantal election. Covenantal election, as Barach expresses it, bears remarkable similarities to the Arminian doctrine of conditional election. It is in this sense, notwithstanding his profession of the Reformed doctrine of (decretal) election, that we may say that Barach’s overall doctrine of election is Arminian or at least semi-Arminian.^[6]

Barach’s view of covenantal election, like the view of others in the Federal Vision, is a corporate election to certain privileges (church membership, incorporation into Christ in a formal sense, etc.), but not the unconditional election of certain individuals to eternal life. Such a view of election has been the typical Arminian interpretation of the Scripture verses which refer to election. For instance, the Arminian commentator, James MacKnight, said concerning Romans 9:11:

The Apostle, according to his manner, cites only a few words of the passage on which his argument is founded, but I have inserted the whole in the commentary, to show that Jacob and Esau are not spoken of as individuals, but as representing the two nations springing from them—“Two nations are in thy womb,” etc.—and that the election of which the Apostle speaks is not an election of Jacob to eternal life, but of his posterity to be the visible Church and people of God on earth, and heirs of the promises in their first and literal meaning.^[7]

Election for MacKnight is national, ecclesiastical, and visible, but not necessarily eternal. The covenantal election of Barach has all the essential aspects of the definition of election given by MacKnight. Such covenantal election is corporate election of all those baptized, not individual election; it is election to privileges, not election to eternal life; it is election to the visible church, not the invisible church. That definition of election is and always has been the definition of both Arminians and Pelagians. For instance, Herman Bavinck astutely summarizes the weakness of the Pelagian system on predestination:

Pelagianism seeks to vindicate itself at the point of “predestination to an efficacious grace.” Reality teaches us that not everyone who hears the gospel receives it with a true faith. Why this difference? Pelagianism tells us that the grace that is granted to all is sufficient by itself; and that now the human will decides whether that grace will be and remain efficacious or not. In the Pelagian scheme of things, therefore, there is really no decree anymore after that of the universal offer of grace. From this point on, everything is left to humans to decide. God has done his part. He gave the opportunity (posse) and humans possess the power of decision (velle). But not a single Christian confession has ventured to adopt this Pelagian position. To some extent they have all taught an efficacious decree, a gift of faith, and hence have distinguished a second decree in the counsel of predestination. The question still remained, however: To whom is the “efficacious,” “habitual,” “infused” grace, that is true faith, actually given?^[8]

Yet, Barach is not alone in this definition of election. Consider the words of Steve Wilkins concerning election:

The elect are those who are faithful in Christ Jesus. If they later reject the Savior, they are no longer elect—they are cut off from the Elect One and lose their elect standing. But their falling away doesn’t negate the reality of their standing prior to their apostasy. They were really and truly the elect of God because of their relationship with Christ.^[9]

The relationship with Christ to which Wilkins refers is an ecclesiastical relationship which can be lost. He insists that this relationship is real, involving real communion and union with Christ, despite the fact that such an elect person can apostatize. By making covenant election a relationship which can be lost, Wilkins has necessarily made such election conditional. His view of election depends on covenant faithfulness and perseverance to the end. That is essentially the definition of election held by Arminians. Thornwell rightly states:

The question between us and the Arminians respects simply the cause of election in the Divine mind—whether the decree is wholly unconditional, depending upon the mere good pleasure of God’s will, or whether it is suspended upon a foresight of faith and perseverance in the creature.^[10]

Francis Turretin summarizes the differences between unconditional and conditional election as follows:

We must either ascend with the Scriptures to God discriminating among men by his own gift or descend with Pelagius to man discriminating himself by his own free will (for there can be no middle way).^[11]

While it seems unimaginable to some to accuse the Federal Visionists of an Arminian or Pelagian doctrine of election, it is impossible to find their views in either the Scripture or the Christian confessions. They hold to covenant election that is conditional in contradiction to the Scripture and the great Reformed creeds. They make election dependent on the response of the individual. Conditional election is not a Reformed position. Conditional election is the position of Pelagianism and Arminianism. There is no middle position and the Federal Vision is wrong when it tries to meld unconditional election and conditional election into one seamless position.

Dewey Roberts is a Minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and is pastor of Cornerstone Presbyterian Church in Destin, Fla., and Executive Director of Church Planting International. He is the author of Historic Christianity and the Federal Vision, from which this article is excerpted.

[1] Guy Prentiss Waters, The Federal Vision and Covenant Theology: A Comparative Analysis (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P&R Publishing, 2006), 118.

[2] Rich Lusk, Paedofaith: A Primer on the Mystery of Infant Salvation and a Handbook for Covenant Parents (Monroe, Louisiana: Athanasius Press, 2005), 58. By making efficacy unto salvation depend on “our response,” Lusk negates the unconditional nature of God’s election.

[3] John L. Girardeau, Calvinism and Evangelical Arminianism: Compared as to Election, Reprobation, Justification, and Related Doctrines (Harrisonburg, Virginia: Sprinkle Publications, 1984), 46.

[4] J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009), 146.

[5] Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995), 221.

[6] Waters, Federal Vision and Covenant Theology, 120.

[7] James Henley Thornwell, The Collected Writings of James Henley Thornwell, Volume 2: Theological and Ethical (Edinburgh, Scotland and Carlisle, Pennsylvania: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1974), 128.

[8] John Bolt, ed., John Vriend, trans., Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 2: God and Creation (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2004), 381.

[9] Steve Wilkins, “Covenant, Baptism, and Salvation” in Steve Wilkins and Duane Garner, eds., The Federal Vision (Monroe, Louisiana: Athanasius Press, 2004), 58.

[10] Thornwell, Collected Writings, Volume 2, 125.

[11] James T. Dennison, Jr., ed., George Musgrave Giger, trans., Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Volume 1, First through Tenth Topics (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P&R Publishing, 1992), 361.