Scott Clark has long been a critic of the Federal Vision. He spouses the “retreatist” position of Westminster, California; who in turn spouses the defeatist position of the Platonic dualists. In a recent post, he notes:
Theonomy, theocracy, Christendom revived are all important elements behind the FV movement. I’m not sure that all the FV proponents are theonomic, but most of them are and all of them support the revival of Christendom and the civil enforcement of the first table of the decalogue.
What Clark is attempting to do with these statements is to eagerly prove to the Reformed world that the old Rushdoonian theonomic and Kuyperian transformationalist position is in some sense attached to the current revival of sacramental theology in the Federal Vision. I must confess: I have never felt such pleasure in being guilty. In order to facilitate his undeniable analogies, I have five statements that I would like to affirm:
1) A theonomic view of God’s world affirms the goodness of creation. Hence, creation under God’s law is meant to be redeemed.
2) Creation provides the necessary ingredients for a heavenly feast on earth, namely, bread and wine. Hence, bread and wine are to be redeemed.
3) Sacramental theonomy affirms that all God’s covenant people including our children and our children’s children are to be beneficiaries of covenant benefits/blessings. Hence, they are recipients of the goodness of God’s creation, which includes bread and wine.
4) Bread and wine transforms and nourishes the body on the Sabbath and also transforms and nourishes the body outside Sabbath worship.
5) The earth is the Lord’s and redeeming the earth occurs through the Lord’s ordinary means. It is impossible to deny the outworking of sacramental theology beyond the church.
These statements affirm that a theonomic and sacramental theology lead to a revival of Christendom; the very manifestation of God’s heaven on earth as we pray corporately every Sabbath that “Thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven.”
