Garrett's "Doublespeak"

Brother Stephen Garrett has often accused me of "doublespeak" in my defense of Primitive Baptist doctrine. In this posting, I will argue that it is brother Garrett that is truly guilty of "doublespeak" - of affirming mutually exclusive ideas.

First, in a recent posting on Perseverance, Garrett stated, quoting Steve Hays approvingly in white:

"In Calvinism, “eternal security” is conditional, not unconditional. It’s contingent on the “perseverance” of the saints. In fact, that’s why it’s traditionally dubbed the “perseverance of the saints.” Subtle, I know.

In Calvinism, “eternal security” is contingent on sanctification, contingent on faith. Good works are a condition of salvation.

Of course, there’s a condition behind the condition. If “eternal security” is conditional on perseverance, then perseverance is conditional on God’s preservation of the elect. And that’s a sure thing."

This is in accordance with what I taught in my series on"Salvation - Conditional or Unconditional?"  It is both."

In opposition to the cosmological argument for the existence of God, atheists and agnostics argue that the universe is an infinite chain of finite causes.  The manifest contradiction of such an argument is the same with what Stephen Garrett affirms here.

If the supposed conditional perseverance is founded on the unconditional decree of God, as Hays and Garrett concede, perseverance is manifestly unconditional, and is clearly not "conditional" in the same way and in the same relationship as it is unconditional (this is an irrational contradiction).  Hays and Garrett both confuse the conditional nature of obedience in good works and perseverance as conditions of salvation when they are plainly the evidences and process of what God has decreed and effected by the effectual call.

The sense in which they appear "conditional" is only relative to the unknown decree of God.  The fact that God's decrees are not fully known to man establishes that salvation is only conditional in it's apprehension relative to the evidences of it in good works and perseverance, not that some degree of good works and preservation are not decreed by God.

Whatever God has established in His purpose shall be.  This does not establish Fatalism because men do not know the mind of God, and it is clear from James 1 that no man should say when he is tempted that he is tempted of God; "For who hath known the mind of the Lord? Or who hath been His counsellor? (Rom. 11:34)"

There is an epistemic barrier that rationally precludes adopting a view of future events of time as if one knows the mind of God.  Surely, whatever was, is, or shall be cannot have been otherwise in the purposes of God, or God is not omniscient and, manifestly, not omnipotent.  But it is impossible to know God's future purposes with as much certainty as God has, even down to the absolute certainty of one's final salvation, which is the obvious basis of working out salvation with fear and trembling; because the perseverance in so working out salvation is upon what God works within, if so be that we have tasted that the Lord is gracious.

Salvation is only conditional in the minds of men who do not know with mathematical certainty what God has purposed for them and in them.  This is not an actual condition of salvation, but an epistemic condition of salvation relative to the knowing mind.

Above all, the contradiction of Garrett and Hays is evident.  The confusion here is in departing from the obvious logical consequence of the whole counsel of God and the London Confession in rooting eternal security in the electing purpose of God, not on man's will which is itself rooted in the electing purpose of God.  Eternal security (in some degree of faith and holiness in time) is as unconditional as the predestination of God of the elect in Christ.

Next, I would like to note the same violation of the law of non-contradiction in Stephen Garrett's view of regeneration in that it is both immediate and mediate.

Brother Garrett argued (here) that regeneration is both mediate and immediate by appeal to Owen's writings.  But the mediation of the Spirit through the gospel for Owen was still an effect wrought in man by an antecedent, immediate operation of the Spirit.  The immediate work of the Spirit was not through the gospel, only the faith effected by the Spirit was through the gospel.  Owen did not affirm that regeneration was both immediate and mediate in the same sense and in the same relationship.  Clearly, regeneration is mediated through the gospel only after faith is immediately wrought by the Spirit.  Owen affirmed the logical, antecedent, and immediate cause of the Spirit to regeneration and faith.

Owen's view of the preparatory work of the Spirit in the conviction of sin in unregenerate men seems to me to contradict 1 Cor. 2:14 and Romans 8:7.  I would grant that natural men can be cognizant of sin by the law, but to carnal men, sold under sin, the law incites the enmity of concupiscence (Romans 7:8), not spiritual conviction meet for repentance.  So it is not clear to me why it is necessary from the Scripture to attribute the condemnation of sin of which natural men are cognizant as a work of the Spirit.

However, even if it were granted that the Spirit convicts unregenerate men of the condemnation of the law before or in anticipation of the effectual and immediate work of the Spirit in regeneration, it would be a point quite beside the fact of whether true, biblical faith is immediate by the Spirit or mediated through the gospel, as Owen plainly states that faith is immediately wrought by the Spirit, which then establishes the instrumentality of the word by faith having it as it's object.

So, the impression Garrett gives as if regeneration is both mediate and immediate obscures the primacy of the Spirit in immediately effecting gospel mediation.  Regeneration is not both mediate and immediate in the same sense and in the same relationship; rather, the mediate is established by the immediate work of the Spirit just as perseverance is established by God's preservation.