All Christians Believe Better Than They Articulate Their Beliefs (Including Theologians)

Last week, on December 1, I learned that The Heidelblog targeted my published essay, “Covenantal Life with God from Eden to Holy City.” Harrison Perkins (whom I do not know) wrote the grotesque caricature of my argument. Hence, I posted a brief introductory response: “Doing Theology and the Need to Avoid Bearing False Witness.”

Because I am convinced that all Christians tend to believe better than they articulate their beliefs, this conviction calls for patience, kindness, generosity, and giving the benefit of the doubt when I read or hear other Christians. Thus, unless compelled by what I read or hear, I endeavor not to accuse others of advocating heretical beliefs when the fault may be either poor articulation or my misunderstanding. I also greatly appreciate the same kindness when it is granted to me. Lamentably, neither Harrison Perkins, the blog article writer, nor R. Scott Clark, the publisher of The Heidelblog, extend such patience, kindness, or generosity toward me. Instead, they unreservedly leap to the astonishing and evil conclusion: “In the end, Caneday does promote a salvation by works.”

Last week, in my initial response, I stated that I had to consider whether the written delivery of my argument was so confusing that Perkins justifiably failed to grasp my argument and affirmations. After a week of pondering his failure, my initial observations have proved correct. Upon consulting with others, they assured me that my article is clearly written and that the communication breakdown belongs to the reader, not the writer. Perkins fails to follow my carefully reasoned argument because he refuses to read my essay generously. He does not step outside his rigid theological and interpretive grid of assumptions and presuppositions to engage mine. So hardened is his “law-gospel hermeneutic” for reading Scriptures’ commands, admonitions, and warnings that he fails to recognize their grammatical structure or to hear what they proclaim. Instead, because he imposes his rigid theological and interpretive grid onto my argument, he shamefully misrepresents my beliefs and imputes heresy to my affirmations.

Because Perkins’ claims against me are severe, they require more than one blog entry. I cannot adequately respond to all the blunders he attributes to me in one or two blog entries. Though it is tempting to deflect his most serious accusation—“Caneday does promote salvation by works”—I resist doing so because that false allegation is grounded in other missteps that require exposure. Therefore, this blog entry is modest and brief. It exposes Perkins’ initial fault, his refusal to acknowledge the theological and interpretive groundwork I provide when I explain why I reject the Lutheran imposition of a “law-gospel hermeneutic” onto Scripture.

When Perkins cites the statement in which I disavow “the notion that all of Scripture consists of two isolatable messages: law, consisting of God’s demands, and gospel, composed of God’s gracious giving,” he pulls it out of context and claims that I offer only “the vague imprecision of calling law and gospel ‘two isolatable messages.” He never engages any of the prior paragraphs where I carefully explain my use of unconditional and conditional regarding all of God’s covenants. So, ponder carefully the thesis-defining sections that Perkins tramples underfoot in his eagerness to reject my essay.

I frame my essay’s argument by referring to Peter Gentry’s and Stephen Wellum’s careful reasoning in Kingdom Through Covenant. They contend that conditional stipulations of obedience are integral to the biblical storyline throughout all of God’s covenants. I point out that they rightly affirm that this juxtaposition of God’s promise-making and covenant-keeping poses “a deliberate tension within the covenants,” a tension that intensifies within Scripture’s storyline as the “covenants progress toward their fulfillment in Christ” (p. 102). Given this backdrop, then I observe,

To identify the law covenant’s distinguishing feature as conditional and to label other covenants unconditional introduces confusion as though God’s other covenants do not entail conditions. Is fulfillment of a covenant jeopardized if it entails conditionally expressed stipulations? Did the law covenant fail to accomplish God’s redemptive-historical purpose for it because Israel failed to observe all the Lord stipulated? Does not Scripture’s unfolding mystery show that the Lord designed Israel’s unfaithfulness to foreshadow typologically the faithfulness of Jesus Christ just as Adam’s disobedience typologically anticipated the obedience of Christ? (p. 102).

Immediately following are two paragraphs that are crucial to my definition of terms and expressions of governing assumptions and presuppositions, none of which Perkins acknowledges.

If we use unconditional, should it not refer to God’s establishment of all his covenants with humans? Was not God’s choosing of Abraham and of Isaac, not Ishmael, and of Jacob, not Esau, unconditional (cf. Rom 9:6-24)? As for conditional, the term refers to the covenantal stipulations placed upon humans with whom God enters covenant and which do not jeopardize fulfillment of any of God’s covenants. God obligates humans to obey what he stipulates in his covenants, and all whom he desires to enable do obey. Adam was covenantally required to obey by caring for the garden and by eating fruit from every tree except one (Gen 2:15-16). God’s covenant obligated Abraham and his see to walk blamelessly with God while observing the covenant sign, circumcision (Gen 17:1-2, 14).

Imperatival or conditional stipulations do not imperil fulfillment of God’s covenants concerning either their jurisdiction over covenant members or their eschatological purposes. God’s unfolding purpose administered through covenants that entail conditional stipulation is not jeopardized, thwarted, rendered meritorious, or based on human obedience.”

Perkins provides no acknowledgment of any of the above decisive statements that ground my disavowing of the Lutheran “law-gospel hermeneutic.” Instead, based on his cherrypicked citations that exclude critical definitions and affirmations, he presents this extremely slanted summary claim: “Within these introductory remarks, Caneday clearly set out his rejection of the law-gospel distinction and his view that everlasting life is conditional upon believers’ obedience.”

By ignoring essential defining paragraphs, Perkins prejudices his reading of my entire essay. Again, because he passes over the next two defining sections, I quote them in full.

This chapter disavows the notion that all of Scripture consists of two isolatable messages: law, consisting of God’s demands, and gospel, composed of God’s gracious giving. Instead, it argues that the formulation of covenant stipulations remains the same across the covenants while the content of stipulations does change. The difference between old and new covenants is not that the former is conditional and the latter is not. Rather, because the old was purposefully temporary in anticipation of its fulfillment and completion in the new covenant, it stipulated obedience that featured earthly shadows of God’s heavenly kingdom. The new covenant features Christ Jesus as the law’s replacement, for he is the one who cast the shadows of the former covenant which, in all of its aspects, foreshadowed Messiah, the Coming One. True, God unconditionally established his various covenants with humans, but each covenant entails provisions with stipulations that both promise blessings to all who obey (remaining in saving covenant relationship with God) and announce curses upon the disobedient.

Revelation 22 illustrates this essay’s thesis. “The Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End” announces, “I am coming soon!” (22:13, 12).7 He forewarns, “My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done” (22:12). His forewarning entails covenant blessing and curses embedded with provision and stipulations: Blessing to “the one who keeps the words of the prophecy written in this scroll” (22:7) and to “those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city” (22:14). Curse of exclusion from both the tree and the city belongs to the evil, disobedient ones (22:15). Covenant stipulations indicate who receives the blessing of access to the tree and the holy city—only those who abide by the prophecy’s words and also wash their robes. The covenant provision, which grounds the blessing and authorizes the stipulation, is less explicit but foundational, for mention of the washed robes alludes to freedom from sin’s guilt by the sacrificial death of the Lamb (1:5; 7:14). Only those who wash their robes in the blood of the Lamb, which makes them white and free from guilt, have access to the tree of life and the city (22:14; 7:14; and 1:5).

Everything I wrote into these paragraphs is necessary to the whole essay’s argument. Failure to comprehend these critical paragraphs results in Harrison Perkins’ failure to understand the ideas I present in the essay. Hence, his grotesque caricature of all that I have argued.

The next blog entry will pick up from where this one suspends, where I explain that the Apostle John’s warning of Revelation 22:18-19 directly addresses believers in Christ Jesus. So here is the prophet’s warning:

I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book (ESV).