Introduction

The ministers of the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC) continue their outrageous and shameless apostasy from Christ. The formation of the Reformed Protestant denomination is barely several months old, and there have been shocking doctrinal developments in the Protestant Reformed Churches. The ministers have come out with their theology that in the matter of repentance and drawing near to God, in a vital sense man’s drawing nigh to God precedes God’s drawing nigh to man; that regenerated man is not totally depraved; that there is an available grace that is different from the irresistible grace of regeneration; that man must work for his assurance; that God himself uses man’s works to assure man of his salvation; that Jesus Christ did not personally accomplish every aspect of our salvation; that there are activities of man that precede the blessings of God; that the more one obeys, the greater are his blessings; and that faith and repentance are what man must do unto his justification.

This growing list of new errors must be added to the large list of their previous errors: that there are conditions for fellowship with God (which was never declared heresy); that our justification in the final judgment is by works; that there are two rails to heaven that consist of God’s grace and man’s responsibility; that in the end the choice of who to serve is up to us (by grace, of course); and that it is not enough for our salvation that Christ died and rose again, but we must also come to him.

A more thorough apostasy from the Reformed faith can hardly be imagined. And it will continue.

The Lord of heaven is giving the Protestant Reformed ministers and the denomination over to their errors and is pushing them down the road of apostasy. Let the man in the pew take notice. The ministers are not only uninterested in your protests, but they are also coming out with their true beliefs as fast as they can.

Faith, Not God’s Act

Reverend McGeown adds to this growing list of new Protestant Reformed distinctives. In scandalous language he declares that “faith is our activity…which is not God’s act.”¹

One of Reverend McGeown’s opponents, Philip Rainey, wrote, “I affirm that the faith that justifies is God’s act as much as justification itself is God’s act.”²

Over against that Reverend McGeown writes, “This is impossible because justification is God’s act of declaring believers righteous, while faith is our activity of trusting Jesus for salvation, which is not God’s act.”

McGeown quotes Philip Rainey again: “If election is the cause of faith and repentance, then faith and repentance are first of all acts of God for salvation.”³

Reverend McGeown responds, “They are not: faith is a God-given and God-worked activity of the believer…Repentance is a God-given and God-worked activity of the believer.”

So for McGeown faith and repentance are not God’s acts. But note well: McGeown does not say merely that faith and repentance are man’s activities. They are man’s activities, which are not God’s acts. So then also when McGeown says that faith and repentance are “God-given” and “God-worked” activities of the believer, he is simply speaking nonsense and deception. Whatever “God-given” and “God-worked” activities are for McGeown, they are not God’s acts.

The lion may dress himself up in lambs’ skins, but as they say, “Ex ungue leonem.” McGeown speaks in a lamb’s voice about Jesus, faith, righteousness, and justification. He makes many fine-sounding theological distinctions, such as “basis of our justification” and “instrument of justification.” With a self-satisfied purr, he instructs his audience about what the controversy is or is not about. He puts himself out as a great defender of the faith. He is panting to be the face of the Protestant Reformed rejection of Reformed Protestant doctrine; and with the acquiescence of the Protestant Reformed hierarchy, he apparently is.

Mostly, he fritters away his time on Facebook, baiting people with unattributed quotes and manipulatively answering questions with questions. Occasionally, he will put up a Witsius quote to let everyone know that he disagrees with public condemnation of Witsius, which posting is the equivalent of a vulgar gesture that tells someone you despise that he is number one.

One wonders, what is Reverend McGeown doing?

But then he snarls, “Faith is our activity of trusting Jesus for salvation, which is not God’s act.” He wrenches the work of faith from God and clutches it to his own chest. Like Sméagol’s ring, faith is McGeown’s precious! No one, not even God, will take McGeown’s precious. This is the defender of Protestant Reformed doctrine. This is the summary of Protestant Reformed doctrine: Faith is man’s activity, which is not God’s work. Repentance is man’s activity, which God does not perform.

Put yourself in the final judgment, and let us see Reverend McGeown come forward and speak with the Lord. The Lord asks, “Martyn, what do you say about faith and repentance? Whose acts are they?”

And Reverend McGeown responds, “Lord, Lord, faith is my activity of trusting you for salvation; it is not your act! Repentance likewise is my activity, and you, Lord, did not perform it!” If he teaches this to the world, he must tell it to the Lord in the final judgment.

These two sentences—Faith is man’s activity, which is not God’s work. Repentance is man’s activity, which God does not perform—tell you everything that you need to know about Reverend McGeown’s view of faith, his corruption of justification, and more basically his idea of grace and spiritual activity in man. These two sentences more than any other summarize the appalling apostasy of the Protestant Reformed Churches and the peril in which all stand who subject themselves and their children to this robbery of God.

McGeown insists that there is no difference between the Protestant Reformed Churches and the Reformed Protestant Churches in the doctrine of justification, as far as the “ground/basis” of justification is concerned. He writes,

The issue is not, on what basis are we justified before God, but how does the righteousness of Christ become ours?…It is alleged that there are some who deny the passivity of faith and insist on an “active faith,” because they erroneously teach that faith’s activities are part of the ground/basis of our justification. However, no theologian in the PRC believes this. To suggest that we disagree about the ground/basis of our justification before God is false.

So for Reverend McGeown there is no disagreement that Christ alone is the “ground/basis” of our righteousness.

But what is the issue then?

He writes,

There is a difference between the PRC and the RPC on the instrument of justification…The difference is not that PRC theologians teach that justification is by means of works, which would be false doctrine and heresy. The difference is concerning the activity or passivity of faith in justification. Is faith an active or a passive instrument?

I will grant him the positive statement regarding the difference between the denominations.

We then allege that with his idea of active faith, that it “is not God’s act,” and with his rejection of passive faith, he establishes the Protestant Reformed position that makes faith man’s work and what man must do for justification. In making faith what man must do for justification, the PRC add to the ground of justification and deny Christ’s work alone as the only ground of justification.

We charge that thus the PRC corrupt the doctrine of justification by faith alone in the same way the Arminians do. The PRC make faith the new obedience; the PRC make faith man’s activity and not God’s work; the PRC make faith what man must do to be justified and saved.

Repentance, Man’s Work

In order to understand Reverend McGeown’s concept of faith, we must begin with an examination of his idea of spiritual activity in man. Here we can start with repentance. He writes,

Repentance is a God-given and God-worked activity of the believer, the activity of sorrowing over sin and turning from it, which God does not perform for us, and without which God does not forgive sin (Luke 13:3, 5; Acts 3:19; 2 Cor. 7:10).

I note for the record that Reverend McGeown should give his exegesis of these passages and not merely cite them as though they support his position that repentance is the activity of the believer, “which God does not perform for us.” The cited verses do not support this teaching.

I have my exegesis of those passages and will give it, if he will show from those passages that repentance is the activity of the believer, “which God does not perform for us.”

In fact, I have a challenge for Reverend McGeown. Let him establish from scripture and from the Reformed creeds that repentance is the “activity of the believer…which God does not perform for us.”

For Reverend McGeown, whatever “God-given and God-worked activity” means, it does not mean that God performs that activity for us, but that activity is very much man’s own activity, and without that activity God does not forgive us.

But here Reverend McGeown contradicts scripture. I think that everyone would agree that Jeremiah 31:18–19 is a classic text on repentance. There we read,

18. I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself thus; Thou hast chastised me, and I was chastised, as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke: turn thou me, and I shall be turned; for thou art the Lord my God.

19. Surely after that I was turned, I repented; and after that I was instructed, I smote upon my thigh: I was ashamed, yea, even confounded, because I did bear the reproach of my youth.

In this passage Ephraim speaks, and he says that God turned him, and Ephraim was turned. He also says that after he was turned, he repented. In the same vein he says that after he was instructed, he smote upon his thigh, and he was ashamed and even confounded. Now, all of these—repenting, smiting his thigh, being ashamed, and being confounded—are part of the turning and are synonymous with turning. Ephraim explains what God did when God turned Ephraim. About that turning he does not say that “God does not perform” it for him. Rather, Ephraim gives God all the credit for the turning. God turned Ephraim. God did the turning, and Ephraim was turned. This includes all of his spiritual activity in the turning. Ephraim repented, smote on his thigh, and was ashamed. This is all included in God’s turning of Ephraim. It is not at all inappropriate in light of these verses to say that God performed the turning for Ephraim. The passage surely does not create a contrast between the work of God in turning Ephraim and Ephraim’s repenting or a contrast between God’s work and Ephraim’s activity. The text makes all of Ephraim’s activity the work of God. Repentance is God’s work and act from beginning to end. Turning is the work of God, and thus so is the repenting, smiting on one’s thigh, and shame. That is all God’s work. He performs it.

But Reverend McGeown creates a contrast between God’s gift and man’s activity. For McGeown, man’s activity “is not God’s act,” and God “does not perform” it. There are two tracks in McGeown’s idea of spiritual gifts. There is God’s gift, and there is man’s performance. Man’s performance is not the inevitable fruit of God’s gift. Man’s performance is not what God gives. God gives, and man must perform, and together this is repentance.

Then Reverend McGeown adds to this: Without repentance—God-given but not God’s work, but man’s activity—“God does not forgive sin.” Forgiveness is the blessing that comes to man as he performs—man performs, not God—repentance.

All of McGeown’s qualifications, adjectives, and descriptions are nothing more than camouflage for the naked doctrine that repentance is man’s activity and not God’s and that God blesses man’s activity of repentance with forgiveness. This is no longer forgiveness in the way of repentance. This is forgiveness because of repentance or forgiveness conditioned on repentance.

Reverend McGeown and other Protestant Reformed ministers and professors say that they are teaching about in the way of. But they truck in a freight train load of false doctrine with that phrase. And now we know what they mean: they mean man’s activity that “is not God’s act” and that “God does not perform for us.”

This conception of spiritual gifts goes back to Reverend McGeown’s understanding of grace. His understanding of grace is Arminian and Pelagian. His understanding of grace is that God enables man to do what man must do to be saved. Grace does not accomplish salvation. In the case of repentance, grace enables man to do what man must do to be forgiven.

Corruption of Justification

What McGeown does with repentance, he also does with faith. It is this same double-tracked thinking that permits him to say about faith,

This [“that the faith that justifies is God’s act as much as justification itself is God’s act”] is impossible because justification is God’s act of declaring believers righteous, while faith is our activity of trusting Jesus for salvation, which is not God’s act.

Faith is an activity of man that “is not God’s act.” That is bold. That is a total corruption of the Reformed idea of faith as a gift. Whatever Reverend McGeown means by faith as a gift, it very definitely does not include faith as an activity. That “is not God’s act.” There is for McGeown some aspect of faith—its activity—that “is not God’s act.” This is also what Reverend McGeown means then by “active faith.” He means that the activity of faith is not God’s work.

Now, that is altogether shocking because about faith and man’s believing the Reformed creeds are crystal clear. Canons 3–4.14 explains that faith is the gift of God:

Faith is therefore to be considered as the gift of God…because it is in reality conferred, breathed, and infused into him [man]…He [God] who works in man both to will and to do, and indeed all things in all, produces both the will to believe and the act of believing also. (Confessions and Church Order, 169)

God produces faith. He produces the will to believe, and he produces believing. Believing is God’s work. In the creed there is no disjunction between God’s work and man’s activity. God produces believing in man. That is Reformed.

You cannot fit Reverend McGeown’s definition of faith into this article of the Canons. He says that faith is man’s activity, which is not God’s work. The Canons say that God works (produces) “the will to believe and the act of believing also.”

Because Reverend McGeown’s gospel is that faith is man’s activity, “which is not God’s act,” McGeown corrupts the “ground/basis” of justification. In his view of justification, there are two works. There is faith as man’s activity, “which is not God’s act,” and there is Christ’s work. Both of these works are necessary unto justification. Reverend McGeown can say all he wants that Christ is the only “ground/basis” of justification. But his teaching about faith, “which is not God’s act,” undermines that entirely. There is some work, some activity, in justification that is not God’s. It is man’s.

Now, the Reformed doctrine of justification by faith alone stands or falls on this insistence: faith is in its entirety the work of God. When you make some part of faith—for McGeown the activity of believing—to be man’s activity and “not God’s act,” then you have added to the ground of justification.

The Arminians do nothing different. They also say that Christ is the only ground of justification. They speak about being justified for Christ’s sake and being justified by faith alone, but faith for the Arminian is man’s obedience to the call of the gospel. Faith is what man does to be justified.

Reverend McGeown does no differently. Faith is man’s activity, “which is not God’s act.” Faith is what man does to be justified. McGeown has also then added to the work of Christ. The only way that justification can be by faith alone and without works is that faith itself is in its entirety the work of God, not the work of man, and that faith brings nothing in justification but rests and relies on the work of Christ alone—or that faith is passive in justification. Reverend McGeown rejects both of these.

Beware Active Faith

This understanding of faith as man’s activity, “which is not God’s act,” is also how Reverend McGeown must be understood when he speaks about “active faith.” He writes, “We do not, of course, bring our works into our justification, but the faith by which we are justified is not passive. It is not a dead faith, but a living, active faith.” He does not merely mean by that term “active faith” that faith is an activity of the whole soul. He pretends that this is what he means. He plays word games with the terms activity and passivity. He speaks about faith’s resting in Christ and appropriating Christ and seeking Christ. He seeks to impress his readers with his learning by telling them that when article 24 of the Belgic Confession says that faith cannot be “unfruitful” in man, the French word for “unfruitful” is oisive. Then he says rhetorically, “I cannot even imagine what a passive activity would be!”

To all of which I say, “Roi des cons.”

He does not know and “cannot even imagine what a passive activity would be” because he does not know what faith is. He has never tasted the goodness of knowing what it means to do nothing for salvation and actually to rest in Christ alone and his work. Reverend McGeown claims faith for himself, and he teaches others to do the same: “Faith is our activity…which is not God’s act.” That is his definition of faith. That is his corruption of the doctrine of justification.

It is in this light also that we are to understand his definition of justification. He writes, “Justification is God’s act of declaring believers righteous.”

I might have read over that were it not for McGeown’s redefinition of faith as man’s activity, “which is not God’s act.”

Now, if you plug that understanding of faith into his definition of justification, you arrive at this: justification is God’s act of declaring righteous the man who believes and whose believing is his activity and “not God’s act.”

But that is not justification. God justifies the ungodly. That is scripture. Romans 4:5 says, “To him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.”

In light of what Reverend McGeown is teaching, you must say that “worketh not” in the text includes his understanding of faith as man’s activity, “which is not God’s act.” McGeown has man working, and what man works—so much so that McGeown can boldly declare that it “is not God’s act”—is man’s activity of faith.

God does not justify the man whose faith is his own activity and “is not God’s act.”

Further, in the Romans 4 passage, the Holy Spirit says that God justifies “the ungodly.” The passage does not say that God justifies “believers,” as Reverend McGeown does. God justifies the ungodly man who believes that God justifies the ungodly. The ungodly man has nothing of himself, except sin. He does not even claim faith. His very faith is that he is ungodly, that he has nothing, and that even his faith is God’s work. That man God justifies. 

But Reverend McGeown has God justifying the man whose faith is his activity, “which is not God’s act.” It is a total corruption, and a deceptive one at that, of the doctrine of justification.

He additionally corrupts the doctrine of justification because he adds to faith—as man’s activity to be justified—repentance as man’s activity to be justified. For McGeown says, “Repentance is a God-given and God-worked activity of the believer…which God does not perform for us, and without which God does not for-
give sin.”

The forgiveness of sin is justification. So for Reverend McGeown, God does not justify a man until that man performs repentance, which repentance “God does not perform” for him. McGeown not only has faith as man’s activity, which is not God’s work, but also repentance as man’s performance and not God’s. Without these two works of man, man cannot be justified.

Salvation Consists in Justification

This teaching ties in with McGeown’s statement that salvation is not “equivalent to justification.” He wrote that in defense of Reverend Koole’s theology that if a man would be saved, there is that which he must do:

In the minds of many, salvation is assumed to be equivalent to justification. Salvation, however, is broader than justification. Salvation is the entire work of God by which He delivers us from sin and brings us into the enjoyment of blessedness in body and soul forever. Salvation includes our future bodily resurrection and our everlasting enjoyment of heaven in the new creation. Finally, salvation includes our conscious enjoyment of the benefits purchased by Christ.⁴

This is where many false teachers have begun in their assault on the truth that salvation is by grace alone.

I maintain that a Reformed man cannot say that justification and salvation are not “equivalent,” not if he understands the truth of justification. It is contrary to the creeds, which teach in words that almost exactly contradict Reverend McGeown that salvation does consist in (or is equivalent to) “the remission of sins.” 

For instance, Belgic Confession 23: “We believe that our salvation consists in the remission of our sins for Jesus Christ’s sake, and that therein our righteousness before God is implied” (Confessions and Church Order, 51). This article of the Belgic Confession says that our salvation does consist in the forgiveness of sins.

Reverend McGeown denigrates this.

Article 23 says this because, as the creed points out, the scriptures say this: “As David and Paul teach us, declaring this to be the happiness of man, that God imputes righteousness to him without works” (Confessions and Church Order, 51).

McGeown does not agree with David and Paul and the Holy Ghost that salvation consists in the remission of sins (justification).

How many other creedal articles are Protestant Reformed ministers going to deny before the membership wakes up and says, “We have a serious problem here. Things that the Reformed faith has taught for nearly five hundred years, our ministers are routinely denying”?

That salvation consists in the remission of sins is also what Abraham Kuyper meant when he said, “Justification begins to exist only as a result of our faith.” Previous to that statement, Kuyper said what he meant: “It is by this act of the Holy Spirit that the elect obtain the blessed knowledge of their justification, which only then begins to be a living reality to them.”⁵

Reverend McGeown, who apparently does not know the bliss of justification by faith alone, makes Kuyper’s statement about man and man’s activity. McGeown makes it about faith that is man’s activity but “not God’s act.”

By contrast Abraham Kuyper speaks about the act of the Holy Spirit. Kuyper says with the Reformed faith in Lord’s Day 7: “True faith” is that “which the Holy Ghost works by the gospel in my heart” (Confessions and Church Order, 90). Abraham Kuyper, and with him every Reformed man, says that because salvation consists in the remission of sins and that remission of sins is by faith alone, faith is not what man does to be justified. Salvation is synonymous with the remission of sins.

If you do not believe that, you do not have any business instructing people about salvation. If you want to say that there are other benefits of salvation, that is fine, and I will agree with you. But if you say that salvation does not consist in the remission of sins, then I do not want to hear anything else that you have to say about salvation. By denying that salvation consists in the remission of sins, you show that you do not know the remission of sins and that you are up to no good. For in the same way that our justification is without works, so all our salvation is without works. When we are justified, we are as saved as we will ever be! Our justification is perfect. It is as perfect as the righteousness of Christ, and his righteousness contains the whole of our salvation. Christ’s righteousness is perfect, and he is perfect, and I am righteous by faith alone, and so I am as perfect as Christ is perfect.

Reverend McGeown understands nothing of this and has evidently never tasted that reality, so he begins his instruction on salvation by the absolutely idiotic statement that salvation is not “equivalent to justification.” It makes perfect sense that he would say that! There are spiritual activities that man must perform—by grace, of course—and that are necessary unto salvation, without which man is not saved, and that begins with justification. Without man’s performing faith—“which is not God’s act”—and without man’s performing repentance—“which God does not perform for us”—man does not enjoy his salvation, and he will not eternally enjoy his salvation. So Reverend McGeown also robs people of their comfort and happiness.

Modernism

McGeown says about the Reformed Protestant Churches,

The RPC teach that sinners are justified by the instrument of faith, but they reject all the activities of faith (believing, knowing, trusting, embracing, appropriating, etc.) as belonging to the instrument of justification. That is where they are developing in error.

Now, that is a patently false description of Reformed Protestant doctrine. What we in the Reformed Protestant Churches reject is those activities as man’s doing—which McGeown tells us emphatically “is not God’s act”—for justification. Thus we reject the Protestant Reformed doctrine that surreptitiously adds man’s activity to the ground of justification and thus of salvation.

I said previously that Reverend McGeown’s concept of grace is Pelagian and Arminian. Grace enables man to believe in this case. Believing is what man must do as his activity for salvation. Emphatically, faith “is not God’s act.” It is man’s activity. Grace enables man to perform repentance, which emphatically “God does not perform…and without which God does not forgive sin.” That is Pelagian and Arminian grace. That is Pelagian and Arminian faith. That is Pelagian and Arminian justification. That is Pelagian and Arminian repentance.

The whole blog piece “Passive Faith?” is about man and what man must do. The whole thing proceeds from the wrong starting point, which is man and his activity and not God and his grace. McGeown’s writing reads like the writings of the men in 1953 who departed from the pure Reformed truth. There is not a shred of difference between their condition of faith as a prerequisite to enter the kingdom and Reverend McGeown’s faith as man’s activity, “which is not God’s act.” They both make the faith of man to be what man does, what man’s responsibility is, what man must do to be saved.

This is what Rev. Herman Hoeksema said regarding that theology in 1953 at a congregational meeting in First Protestant Reformed Church:

Question: Do you consider the Reverend De Wolf and those who sincerely follow him and his preaching now as Reformed and as brothers in Christ?

Hoeksema: For the first I answer, No! I do not consider them Reformed. I cannot consider them Reformed, and I will not consider them Reformed until they retract and until they apologize…I do judge whether a man is Reformed or not Reformed, and I claim that the sermons of the Reverend De Wolf were not Reformed…Unless he retracts and the consistory retracts, I cannot regard them as Reformed, and I cannot regard the consistory that supports him as Reformed. I cannot…

Not only that, but now I am talking about that anyway, I want to issue a word of warning at the same time…I warn you that all the rumors that I hear and all the talk that is going on about responsibility and the activity of faith and the like runs not only in an unreformed way but will ultimately run you into modernism! That is not the gospel!

All that ever have opposed the Reformed truth have always accused the Reformed people and the Reformed leaders and the Reformed ministers of denying responsibility. That’s very easy.

All the talk about the activity of faith, about our [unintelligible word], about the Bible in distinction from the Confessions—all that talk is principally modernism! That’s my conviction. That’s much worse.

And therefore, although I’m not here to preach, I nevertheless feel it my calling to issue to all of you a word of warning with my whole heart. I have preached to you the Reformed truth for thirty-three years, and now many of you don’t want it anymore! That’s up to you, but I’m going to warn you, nevertheless. It’s up to you to choose.⁶

Herman Hoeksema would have joined us in the Reformed Protestant Churches. He calls McGeown’s theology “modernism.”

McGeown does not a whit differently than Reverend De Wolf and others whom Hoeksema points out: all McGeown can talk about is man’s activity, man’s responsibility, man’s repentance, man’s faith, man, man, man. It is modernism.

If Reverend McGeown is not to be branded as a false teacher, let him repudiate his doctrine that faith “is not God’s act,” and with that let him repudiate his evil doctrine that there is that which man must do to be saved and his defense of Reverend Koole’s theology that there is that which man must do to be saved. Until Reverend McGeown repudiates his deceptive theology, he is to be branded as a theological huckster with no Reformed credibility at all, as a deceiver, and as a dead branch. 

He pretends to be Reformed. He uses Reformed language. But he is Arminian and Pelagian in his doctrines of grace. Consequently, he is Arminian and Pelagian in his doctrine of faith. Being Arminian and Pelagian in his doctrines of grace and faith, he corrupts the Reformed doctrine of justification and brings up again the wicked doctrine of justification by works.

The trick that he uses to dupe his audience is the term “active faith.” He plays games with that term and attempts to confuse his audience that his “active faith” is the same as faith as an activity of the whole soul. This is a ploy. Reverend McGeown’s “active faith” has nothing to do with faith as an activity. Reverend McGeown’s “active faith” disguises his wicked doctrine of justification, by which he makes himself responsible for the perishing of his audience, who believes his false gospel that to be saved man must do something and that what man must do is his faith as his obedience to the call of the gospel and his repentance that he must perform to be forgiven.

Reverend McGeown admits that the Protestant Reformed Churches are striving with the Reformed Protestant Churches about justification.

This has always been the issue in the recent controversy and for years prior to it. It was a complete lie when the Protestant Reformed hierarchy said about its orchestrated assault on three ministers that it was not about doctrine. This controversy has always been about doctrine. The doctrine is justification.

That was the issue with the John 14:6 sermon, which brought this whole controversy to the Protestant Reformed broader assemblies. It was a justification issue. Because it was a justification issue, it was an unconditional covenant issue. The false doctrine that was brought in was the same false doctrine in De Wolf’s sermons, which was condemned in 1953.

The theological atmosphere today is also the same as in 1953: it is all about man’s activity, man’s repentance, man’s doing, and man’s responsibility.

You must understand that these two things—justification by faith alone and the unconditional covenant—go hand in hand. This is perhaps the advance that must be made: to link inextricably the doctrine of justification by faith alone and the doctrine of the unconditional covenant. If you tinker with the doctrine of justification by faith alone, then you also tinker with the doctrine of the unconditional covenant. If you are not teaching justification by faith alone, then you are not teaching an unconditional covenant. If you do not teach an unconditional covenant—unconditional in its establishment, maintenance, experience, and perfection—then you do not teach justification by faith alone. Justification by faith alone is the condition of the unconditional covenant! Without justification by faith alone, there is no unconditional covenant.

Reverend McGeown and the rest of the Protestant Reformed Churches have corrupted the doctrine of justification with their faith as man’s activity that is not God’s act and with their teaching of man’s performing repentance that God does not perform for him. They have conditions as real as Klaas Schilder’s conditions and De Wolf’s prerequisites, although the Protestant Reformed ministers studiously avoid using the words too much. 

Rev. R. Van Overloop used the word condition, but he was just testing the boundaries and the ministers and elders of Classis East of the Protestant Reformed Churches whether they could find it within themselves to condemn the statement as heresy—rank, calculated heresy.

The PRC have totally sold out the reformation of 1953; the churches have forsaken the truth of salvation by sovereign grace alone; and they have a covenant as conditional as that of Schilder and the Liberated churches. 

One wonders how long it is going to take the Protestant Reformed Churches to join the North American Presbyterian and Reformed Council (NAPARC). The PRC is one doctrinally with the churches of NAPARC on the crucial issues of the covenant and the doctrines of soteriology. The PRC teach available grace and thus the offer of grace. The PRC teach that if a man would be saved, there is that which he must do. The PRC teach faith as man’s activity, “which is not God’s act.” The PRC teach repentance as that which man performs unto his justification and which “God does not perform” for him. The PRC teach justification by man’s faith and man’s repentance. 

In fact, after writing these things, one actually wonders whether, with the PRC’s doctrine of justification, the churches of NAPARC will have the PRC as a member. NAPARC has prided itself on having rejected federal vision theology. If NAPARC takes the PRC as a member, then the organization will have taken the most sophisticated expression and advancement of federal vision theology into its fellowship.