In the joint Federal Vision Profession (2007), the authors and signatories state:
“We affirm that Jesus Christ is the King of kings, and the Lord of lords. We believe that the Church cannot be a faithful witness to His authority without calling all nations to submit themselves to Him through baptism, accepting their responsibility to obediently learn all that He has commanded us. We affirm therefore that the Christian faith is a public faith, encompassing every realm of human endeavor. The fulfillment of the Great Commission therefore requires the establishment of a global Christendom. We deny that neutrality is possible in any realm, and this includes the realm of “secular” politics. We believe that the lordship of Jesus Christ has authoritative ramifications for every aspect of human existence, and that growth up into a godly maturity requires us to discover what those ramifications are in order to implement them. Jesus Christ has established a new way of being human, and it is our responsibility to grow up into it.”[1]
This is under the heading of “The Next Christendom”. When we talk about Christendom, we tend to be referring to the period of history when Christianity had political influence following the conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine and the geographical are under the cultural and political influence of Christianity. In that respect it is more than Christianity where we might think of individual believers coming together.
There is a direct link between this statement and the prior statement which says:
As the Waters Cover the Sea
We affirm that God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but rather so that the world through Him would be saved. Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world—He is the Savior of the world. All the nations shall stream to Him, and His resting place shall be glorious. We affirm that prior to the second coming of our Lord Jesus, the earth will be as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the
waters cover the sea.
We deny that eschatological views are to be a test of fellowship between orthodox believers, but at the same time we hold that an orientation of faith with regard to the gospel’s triumph in history is extremely important. We deny that it is wise to imitate Abraham in his exercise of faith while declining to believe the content of what he believed—that through him all the nations of the world would be blessed, and that his descendants would be like the stars in number. [2]
This is an expression of postmillennialism, the belief that Christ’s eschatology reign will happen prior to his physical return and is usually accompanied by the presumption that we will therefore see significant increase in the numbers of believers but more than that, in the social, economic and political, or the cultural influence of Christianity.
Federal Visionists believe that this means individual nations will become Christian nations or return to being Christian nations. They therefore take Matthew 28:19 “Go and make disciples of the nations, baptising them …” to mean first that we are to disciple the nations themselves rather than make disciples out of the nations, calling people to follow Christ and second that “baptising them” refers back, not to the disciples but to the nations themselves. Whilst this might be grammatically plausible, I would argue that there are significant problems in terms of logic, prior Biblical theology and the practices of the early church. First, in regards to logic, what exactly does it mean to say that we “baptise nations”? This moves in the opposite direction of a plain and reasonable reading of the text, that it is the disciples that are baptised.
Secondly, when you look at Biblical theology, you discover that the expectation in prophecy was that people would come from the different nations, from the Gentiles to worship and to learn God’s Law. If the expectation was for God’s people to expand his kingdom by in effect absorbing other kingdoms, then that would be reflected in prophetic texts. It isn’t. Then in Revelation 7:9, John says:
“After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands.”
Again, the imagery is of people from the nations rather than the nations themselves gathering. This is reflected then in the pattern of the early Christians, starting with the apostles who go from place to place, announcing the good news and encouraging people to repent and be baptised. This leads to churches beginning. At no point, do we see any evidence that the early church in the New Testament saw itself as a cultural political movement seeking to influence nations.
The idea that you baptise nations of course fits with a more corporate understanding of what it means to be incorporated into God’s kingdom and therefore with paedobaptism. If we are discipling and baptising nations then we would expect a greater emphasis on transforming culture, gaining political influence and the numerical growth of those considered Christians through birth and baptism. This is of course what we see,
Postmillennialism is itself a recognised eschatological approach within the range of Christian and Reformed views, although personally I find it unpersuasive and possibly the least best fit interpretation of Scripture. However, what we see is a coming together of ideas. We might envision a Venn Diagram with paedobaptism/baptismal regeneration post millennialism and theonomism overlapping to give us a particular theology and application.
If we take Matthew 28:19 to be referring to baptising and discipling the nations, then we might also expect the statement that we are to teach “them to obey everything” Christ as commanded to be a reference to the nations as well, hence the concept of bringing nations under God’s law (theonomism). Again, this does not fit with wider Scripture or the practices of the early church. More importantly, Theonomism puts the weight on the implementation of Torah, or the moral law in the Old Testament. This takes quite the leap both missing out on what exactly Christ himself teaches and commands, and the idea of the Law being fulfilled in and applied through him.
A further consideration to take into account is once again the mixed signals we receive from the statement. On the one hand, they recognise that you cannot make “eschatological views … to be a test of fellowship between orthodox believers.” This suggests that postmillennial theonomism is recognised as a secondary issue. On the other they insist both “that an orientation of faith with regard to the gospel’s triumph in history is extremely important” and even more crucially:
“We believe that the Church cannot be a faithful witness to His authority without calling all nations to submit themselves to Him through baptism, accepting their responsibility to obediently learn all that He has commanded us.”
It seems that the Federal Vision lords give with one hand only to take away with the other. A form of fellowship may be possible with those of us who do not fully subscribe to the position but we are at the same time regarded as unfaithful if we do not engage with those things.
Whilst postmillennial views on their own may be within the spectrum of reformed thinking and even theonomism might be considered within the pale if excentric, the coming together of these views with other aspects of Federal Vision and their expression as an exclusivist form of Christian Nationalism places us in risky territory.
[1] A Joint Federal Vision Profession (2007) | The Heidelblog
[2] A Joint Federal Vision Profession (2007) | The Heidelblog
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