Here are a couple of interesting quotes regarding the Orthodox Presbyterian Church’s federal vision that I feel could be either ironic or at least thought provoking for the times in which we live. The quotations are interesting reads, especially now that people are leaving the Protestant Reformed Churches for the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) left and right.

It is amazing to me that those who would join the OPC will follow the likes of Cornelius VanTil (a CRC man) and John Frame and Richard Gaffin, all the while stomping on the graves of men like J. Gresham Machen and Gordon Clark, who for all intents and purposes had a theology that much more ran in the line of Hoeksema’s, although not completely.

What a trap those who join the OPC are walking into!

John Robbins asked, “Can the Orthodox Presbyterian Church be saved?”

The OPC’s record for the past 30 years on this central doctrine of the Christian faith [justification by faith alone] is not good. It failed to condemn Norman Shepherd’s teaching of justification by faith and works in the 1970s when it had opportunities to do so. In 2003, the General Assembly overturned John Kinnaird’s conviction for teaching justification by faith and works, stating positively that his teaching was in accord with Scripture and the Westminster Confession. Some of the OPC’s prominent Teaching Elders, including Cornelius VanTil, John Frame (now in the PCA), and Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., have vocally defended Shepherd and his doctrine of justification.

This was not always so. When J. Gresham Machen and others started the OPC, then called the Presbyterian Church of America, in 1936, the stand of the Church for the Gospel was clear and consistent. But Machen was killed by overwork and pneumonia a few months later, and another institution he began, Westminster Seminary, a parachurch organization independent of and unsupervised by the OPC, first influenced and later controlled the denomination. The Seminary placed enough graduates in the OPC congregations to shield their errant professors from criticism and discipline.¹

Stephen Cunah wrote regarding Richard Gaffin’s view of justification by faith and works,

According to Dr. Gaffin’s view, faith and works are constituent parts of a faith/works complex that is necessary to obtain justification. Just as access to the flight is partially dependent upon the presence of a passport, so justification is made to be partially dependent upon the presence of good works. This goes beyond the traditional Protestant view that works are only evidential or declarative with respect to justification. When Dr. Gaffin refers to works as “the integral fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith” in justification, he acknowledges works to be “the fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith,” but denies that works are solely evidential with respect to justification.

It is clear that Dr. Gaffin denies that works are the ground or basis of a believer’s justification. What is not so clear is how works produced through faith can be pulled within the sphere of justification and, at the same time, not share any degree of instrumentality with faith, nor be a part of what faith itself is. Unless there is a new category or description that this writer is not aware of to characterize the relationship between works and justification, we are limited to the categories of ground, instrument, and evidence. If works produced through faith are in the smallest degree beyond purely evidential of justification, it follows that they must be, to some degree, either the ground or instrument of justification. There is absolutely no question that Dr. Gaffin denies works to be the ground or basis of a believer’s justification. Therefore, although he explicitly says that works are not (co-) instrumental with faith in the appropriation of justification, it is implicit in his teaching that works have some degree of instrumentality in securing justification. If a passport is required to get on the plane to Germany, the passport can properly be said to be partially instrumental in obtaining access to the plane.

Even if it could be demonstrated that it is possible to hold that true faith only justifies when it is part of a faith/works complex and, at the same time, that these works do not share any degree of instrumentality with faith, the practical effect in the heart and mind of the person who grasps this teaching would be to treat works produced through faith as partially instrumental in securing justification. When works produced through faith are connected to justification in a way that is beyond purely evidential, the practical effect will be to direct a sinner to produce good works through faith in order to obtain the acceptance of the Supreme Governor and Judge of the Universe. In other words, despite any fine distinctions that might be made, this teaching would practically result in the seeking of justification through faith and works. Of course, it is inherently contradictory to say that true faith only justifies when it is part of a faith/works complex and, at the same time, that these works do not share any degree of instrumentality with faith in justification.²