What is the so-called “Federal Vision” controversy about? I’ve argued in the past that it is an effort to refine various areas of Reformed theology (anthropology, soteriology, etc) in the light of Trinitarian theology. I have also suggested regularly that the FV is an assault on the remnants of medieval nature/grace schemes that persist in Reformed theology.
In an 1983 article in Evangelical Quarterly , James B. Torrance helps to confirm my take on the FV by investigating some of the foundational premises of historic federal theology. Torrance’s article is purportedly about limited atonement, but actually the reach is much wider. Important as the atonement question is, I’ll leave it aside for the moment. Torrance is also convinced that there is a cleavage between Calvin and federal theology at several points; leave that highly controverted question to the side as well. He makes several other provocative claims (e.g., that Thomas is working with an Avicennan understanding of God’s will!) that are worth pursuing, but which I’ll again leave aside.
His major charge against scholastic federal theology is that it assumed that election is “prior to” grace. This comes in various guises. For instance, for John Owen there is “no natural affection and propensity in God to the good of his creatures.” God’s love is directed only to the elect, so election is prior to grace because it directs grace toward specific recipients. He also notes that Owen and Edwards pushed federal theology toward the “logical conclusion” that “justice is the essential attribute of God, but the love of God is arbitrary.” To this assumption, Torrance insists that we cannot speak of any election “apart from” or “prior to” or “behind” Christ, and that “We know of no nature of God nor will of God other than that of the Father, made known to us in Christ by the Spirit.”
The “apart from” and “prior to” language is shifty, but put that aside too. I’m interest in what Torrance says are the consequences of making the doctrine of double decree the “logical starting point or major premiss” of theology. He enumerates several:
First, “Calvinism commits itself thereby to the nature-grace model, with a radical dichotomy between the sphere of nature and the sphere of grace, of natural law and the gospel.” God starts with Adam, who begins in a state of nature. It cannot be the case that humanity as a whole is beloved in Adam. Adam stands instead first of all in the position of natural creature and servant. Adam possesses the natural law, but God graciously adds to that the covenant or “contract” by which Adam will inherit life by his obedience. When the covenant of nature fails, “God provides a covenant of grace for those whom he elects out of the mass of fallen mankind.” Torrance suggests that Hodge’s Systematic Theology is “the massive elaboration of the nature-grace model in the North American scene,” with huge implications for understanding the character of the church and the relation of church and world, church and state.
Second, this inevitably means a prior of law over grace. Torrance argues that Calvin initially adopted this position, but eventually decided that the law belonged instead in the context of promise and fulfillment. To put Calvin’s later position in Pauline terms: Grace (Abraham) came first, and the law that came through Moses did not nullify the promise but was a means toward the fulfillment of the promise. Grace is prior to law not only in Israel’s history, but in “the grammar of creation . God’s grace, in covenant love, creates Adam for covenant love and then lays him under unconditional obligations, warning him of the consequences which would follow ‘if’ he transgresses these commandments.” Federal theologians generally said instead that the covenant was added to a natural Adam, an Adam possessed of the natural law but not yet a recipient of God’s covenant love. Before that happens, he must pass the test of obedience.
Third, given these foundational assumptions, the covenant of works also becomes a “major premiss” of Reformed theology. Salvation, in whatever covenant scheme is adopted, is seen as “God’s way of fulfilling in grace the conditions of the covenant of works - the covenant of nature.” As Torrance observes, “Deep in this whole way of thinking lies . . . a doctrine of the priority of law over grace, of nature over grace.”
Finally, this cannot but have an effect on the doctrine of God. It is here that Torrance cites Owen and Edwards to the effect that justice is more fundamental to God’s nature than love. He rightly responds: “God is love in his innermost being, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father after whom every family in heaven and earth is named. Love and justice are one in God, and they are one in all his dealings with his creations, in creation, providence, and redemption. God’s sovereignty is his grace, his freedom in love.”
Let me briefly draw two conclusions: First, if Torrance is right, then the opponents of the FV do have a strong claim to be the true heirs of federal Calvinism. The Reformed tradition is more varied than federal Calvinism; the Reformed tradition includes, after all, Calvin, who escapes most of Torrance’s strictures. But because it challenges the nature/grace scheme that Torrance finds at the foundation of much federal theology, FV implies a wide-ranging re-visioning and re-nuancing and re-formulating of covenant theology. Second, if Torrance is right, if federal theology does rest on a nature/grace dualism and a less-than-robustly-Trinitarian theology proper, if it logically implies that God is more fundamentally just than He is love, then the Trinitarian and creationist concerns of the FV must be pressed, and with all vigor.