If I could ask the committee a question it would be this: If the investigative process was so thorough, why devote so little in the report to substantiating Meyers’ innocence? Why isn’t there more material devoted to the specific concerns raised in the LOC, and not just whether or not Meyers believes the first and second covenants to be the same?

A friend of mine recently asked what I thought of recent conclusions reached by the MOP Sub-Committee with respect to Jeff Meyers and the Federal Vision. I wasn’t going to say anything since I think that a great deal has already been said about these recent events.

Nevertheless, I’ve decided to share just a few brief thoughts in the greater interests of edification among those who love the Reformed faith and are fighting against the errors of the Federal Vision.

For those who might judge this gesture hasty and impious, I can only appeal to the leading of my conscience and to my sincere belief that gross errors are being defended and propagated within the PCA, and that it’s the role of every churchman, minister and layman alike, to examine these issues in the light of God’s Word and our subordinate standards.

I hope to make this into a series of sorts, dealing with each subject as my time and energy allows. The document that I’m considering in this post can be accessed here. [Editor’s note: the original URL (link) referenced is no longer valid, so the link has been removed.]

My main thesis is that while the committee claimed to have gone through a rigorous, lengthy, and thorough process in investigating Meyers’ covenant theology, their conclusions suggest they barely even scratched the surface.

Here’s why I think this is so:

The only rationale given for Meyers’ innocence is that he believes that the first and second covenants aren’t the same. In what is the only rationale given for the vindication of Meyers, the report states:

“TE Meyers unequivocally states, ‘I do not believe that the prelapsarian covenant is the same as the postlapsarian covenants.’”

Well, even the most thoroughgoing Arminian or Socinian would argue this point given the absence and presence of sin before and after the fall. Also important is that this concern wasn’t ever raised in the LOC. No one accused Meyers of believing that the first and second covenants are the same. This appeal is a classic non-sequitir and seems to be an attempt to settle the case without really even investigating the issues at hand.

I think that the really important issues raised in the LOC on the covenants of works and grace weren’t even considered, namely the structure, direction, and most importantly, the basis of each covenant. This whole issue boils down to what Meyers believes to be the basis of each covenant, not whether Meyers believes the first and second covenants to be the same.

The issue of merit is brought up as something that Meyers has had trouble with in the past. What’s not clear is whether Meyers is equivocating between condign merit before the fall and the works principle before the fall.

While the former issue is more within the realm of legitimate debate, the latter is not, given the absolute insistence upon the works principle in the Westminster Standards:

The first covenant made with man was a covenant of works, wherein life was promised to Adam; and in him to his posterity, upon condition of perfect and personal obedience (WCF 7:2)

So a good question is whether or not Meyers believes works, as it is defined here as “perfect” and “personal”, to be operative before the fall as a means of securing blessing, and if so, how he defines the works principle.

I believe the committee’s handling of the second issue was just as flat as the first. The committee appeals to Meyers’ claim that both the Standards and church history don’t provide the kind of consensus needed to judge whether or not it’s appropriate to discuss the relationship of the Trinity in terms of covenant.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Federal Vision doctrine of the Trinity as it is articulated in the Joint Federal Vision profession, I’d suggest you find a way of reading the first chapter of Guy Waters’ excellent book Federal Vision and Covenant Theology, which deals with these issues at length.

Essentially, advocates of the Federal Vision like Ralph Smith, Peter Leithart, and other signatories of the FVJP, believe that scholasticism has warped the doctrine of the Trinity by using ontological and legal categories in which to frame discussions of this doctrine.

The pactum salutis, for instance, is a problem for these guys because at its core, the Reformed interpretation of the pactum is explicitly legal and makes use of such categories as merit, works, obedience, etc. etc.

Instead, a doctrine of the Trinity is offered which emphasizes the relational aspects of the Trinity rather than the legal and ontological. Instead of arguing that the holy Trinity logically (not temporally) entered into a legal covenant with the eternal relationship already existing, they would argue that the eternal relationship is itself covenantal, and therefore, the idea of a legal covenant, with stipulations and rewards, is both redundant (because the covenant is eternal) and misguided (because the Bible describes the covenant in non-legal terms). In light of all of these considerations, I’d offer the following thoughts.

First, the Westminster Standards deal with the doctrine of the Trinity in ontologically explicit terms and develop this doctrine at length. That’s why there is an entire chapter devoted to it!

Second, the silence of the WCF on the relationship of Trinity and covenant only serves to condemn Meyers’ speculations since the Westminster divines didn’t develop Trinitarian dogma in terms of an eternal covenantal relationship. Such a view would, in light of the WCF, be outside the “system of doctrine” contained in the Westminster Standards which Meyers has committed himself to as an officer in the PCA.

The same goes for the argument from history. The doctrine of the Trinity was, for the early church, the most systematically, thoroughly, and precisely defined doctrines within the corpus of Christian thought and literature. To argue from the church’s silence is only a nail in Meyers’ coffin.

We can prove from the development of Trinitarian dogma that an eternal covenantal relationship was foreign to the church’s thinking. If the early church with all of the councils, decrees, creeds, formulations, debates, condemnations, and so on, deemed it best to describe the Trinitarian relationship in non-covenantal categories, why should we, who stand on the shoulders of the early church, attempt to re-define this central doctrine in categories foreign to this early creedal orthodoxy?

Third, an argument from silence is never a good argument and is usually the kind of argument offered by those who wish to do away with orthodox dogma.

Fourth, the non-ontological view of the Trinity developed by Meyers and the authors of the JFVP is not only inherently dangerous (which it is, in light of the fact that it is fraught with speculation and specific deviations from an ontological view) but is dangerous also because it has been developed with a direct view to the structure of the historical covenants.

This is why the doctrine of the Trinity is so important in this entire debate over the orthodoxy of the Federal Vision. The relational view of the Trinity is the basis for the relational (read synergistic) view of the covenants before and after the fall. Describing the Trinity in non-ontological and non-legal categories enables advocates of the Federal Vision to describe the essence of the historical covenants in non-ontological and non-legal categories.

This leads to a denial of the works principle, which leads to a minimization of the differences between the two covenants, which then leads to a non-legal and non-meritorious view of Christ’s work, which of course then leads to a non-legal and “relational (synergistic) view of justification, faith, obedience, and other key Reformational categories.

On both of these central issues, the committee devoted no more than a few paragraphs. And these are the issues which serve as a foundation for the entire Federal Vision theology which Meyers advocates!

If I could ask the committee a question it would be this: If the investigative process was so thorough, why devote so little in the report to substantiating Meyers’ innocence? Why isn’t there more material devoted to the specific concerns raised in the LOC, and not just whether or not Meyers believes the first and second covenants to be the same?

This point was always a given in light of the fact that no one believes the first and second covenants to be exactly the same. What about Meyers’ view of the works principle and its relationship to grace, both before and after the fall? These are just a few suggestions.

I hope that my thoughts here are in no way injurious, petty, or misguided in their attempt to discuss both Jeff Meyers and the MOP Sub-Committee.
I appreciate the committees patience with those of us who are concerned about the Federal Vision theology and its influence in the PCA and the Missouri Presbytery and I hope further discussion will serve to clarify these issues.

Jordan Harris is a member of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Rochester MN. He blogs at Sacramental Piety. He considers himself to be an Old School Presbyterian in the Princetonian and Southern Presbyterian traditions and expects to begin seminary studies at RTS Jackson in the near future.