Steve Fernandez on The Race Set Before Us: Third Installment

This is the third installment of three parts. Find the first installment here and the second here. This concerns a re-posting of a single document that I had originally published on another of my blogs a few years ago but shortly thereafter removed it for reasons that I explain here and here.

Now that Steve Fernandez has published his book, Free Justification: The Glorification of Christ in the Justification of a Sinner, and has reproduced in it his misrepresentations and abusive citations of The Race Set Before Us as found in his internet published PDF copy of Free Justification: A Hill to Die On, which constitutes the first chapter of his book.

In this entry I will address the PDF version endnote 12 Page 15 where, once again, Steve Fernandez sloppily quotes and exploits ellipses that mask what Tom Schreiner and I actually wrote in The Race Set Before Us. (Find the following footnote 12 on page 19 of Free Justification: The Glorification of Christ in the Justification of a Sinner.)

Schreiner and Caneday insist that perseverance is an actual means of attaining justification. They say, "Perseverance is a means that God has appointed by which one will be saved . . . we will use the words condition and means interchangeably. When we use the words [sic] means, we use it in the sense that perseverance is a necessary means that God has appointed for attaining final salvation." Schreiner and Caneday, p. 151. My problem is the word "attaining." Persevering is not a necessary evidence of justification, but it actually attains justification. It would follow that our justification is held in suspense until the final judgment. Schreiner and Caneday acknowledge this for they also say, "Conditional warnings and admonitions suspend God’s judgment in the last day on perseverance in this age . . . since the Reformation, many Protestant Christians have tended to overstate Paul’s doctrine of justification . . . with the effect that Paul’s orientation on salvation as not yet fully realized has virtually collapsed . . . for Paul, justification remains fundamentally the eschatological verdict. . ." (Ibid., p. 154, 160-161). The ‘overstatement’ of justification, it would seem, is clearly their disagreement with the Reformed teaching that justification is a completed and final declaration made at the point of first believing.

Several errors need to be corrected.

1. The context from which Steve Fernandez rips the statements on page 151 of The Race Set Before Us is not a discussion of justification. Instead, it is a discussion concerning Matthew 10:22 and Mark 13:13--The one who perseveres to the end will be saved--a discussion that begins on page 147 and concludes on page 160. On the page from which Fernandez rips our statements Tom and I show how exegetes transpose Jesus' conditional promise, expressed in these two passages, by inverting the two clauses as follows.
   
   Click on the diagram to enlarge it for easier readability. Click here to see the chart on its page at Amazon.com.
   
   Immediately prior to the words that Fernandez lifted out of context, we explain that the result of exegetes' inverting the two clauses "is that they convert the consequence of perseverance (salvation not yet attained) into the cause of perseverance (salvation already possessed). With this conceptual reorientation, one comments: "Jesus, speaking to His disciples, said, 'It is the one who has endured to the end who will be saved' (Matt. 10:22; cf. 24:13). Now at first glance that appears to contradict the truth that God is going to keep us saved, but it doesn't. We are energized to endure by the indwelling Spirit. The mark of justification is perseverance in righteousness to the very end." [quoted from John MacArthur, Jr. Saved Without a Doubt {Wheaton: Victor, 1992}, p. 149] This a remarkable comment, characteristic of many Calvinists, for without realization or intention, anyone who explains the text this way inverts the two elements of the conditional promise. This explanation essentially reads the text as saying, "The one who is saved will persevere unto the end." This both biblically and theologically accurate, but the text we are examining does not say that. It is a case of good theology but from the wrong verse. Rather, the text says, "The one who perseveres to the end will be saved."
   
   Jesus' words indicate that perseverance to the end is the necessary condition.
   
   Charitable, though I want to be generous toward Steve Fernandez, his abuse of the ellipsis in his quotation is strains charity. Consider what Fernandez does with this quotation: "Perseverance is a means that God has appointed by which one will be saved . . . we will use the words condition and means interchangeably. When we use the words means, we use it in the sense that perseverance is a necessary means that God has appointed for attaining final salvation."
   
   Two things need to be said about the first portion of the quotation [Perseverance is a means that God has appointed by which one will be saved].
   
   First, it is a complete sentence. It is not a portion of a sentence as Steve Fernandez represents it by his misuse of the ellipsis marks. He should have placed closing quotation marks at the end of the sentence following the word "saved".
   
   Second, the first portion of the quotation is from the text on page 151, but the portion that follows the ellipsis marks (. . .) is part of footnote 11 on page 151.
   


2. How else can one describe what Steve Fernandez has done except sloppy, at best, when he shifts his quotation from the text to footnote 11 on the same page but represents the quotation from the footnote as if it followed in the text portion just as the first portion of the quote?
   


3. Because Steve Fernandez rips our words out of the context of our careful exegetical discussion of Matthew 10:22 and Mark 13:13, he commits the common reductionistic error of presuming that any discussion of salvation is necessarily a discussion of justification. Without any warrant, Fernandez substitutes justification for salvation when he states, "My problem is the word 'attaining.' Persevering is not a necessary evidence of justification, but it actually attains justification." In chapter 2 of The Race Set Before Us we discuss carefully and at length the many and varied imageries that Scripture uses to portray salvation. We make every effort throughout our book to honor the imagery for salvation in each biblical text and not to confound the imagery. Throughout our exegetical discussion of Matthew 10:22 and Mark 13:13 we are careful to speak of the passage in the terms that the passage presents and not to introduce other biblical imagery for salvation into the passage. Fernandez, not Schreiner and I, confounds salvation with justification and then imputes error to us.
   


4. Because Steve Fernandez wrongfully presumes that our exegetical discussion of Matthew 10:22 and Mark 13:13 is an abstract discussion of justification, next he draws an entirely unwarranted conclusion that actually contradicts what Tom and I readily acknowledge on the very page from which Fernandez rips our words. He states, "My problem is the word 'attaining.' Persevering is not a necessary evidence of justification, but it actually attains justification."
   
   For the sake of Fernandez's argument, let's give him the benefit of the doubt by accepting his substitution of justification for salvation. We affirm that the statement The one who is saved will persevere unto the end "is both biblically and theologically accurate, but the text we are examining does not say that. It is a case of good theology but from the wrong verse. Rather, the text says, 'The one who perseveres to the end will be saved.'" What does this mean, assuming Fernandez's substitution of justification for salvation? It means that Tom and I affirm that persevering is a necessary evidence of justification. We agree that everyone who is justified by God's grace will persevere in faith unto the end, just as we affirm on page 151 that "The one who is saved will persevere unto the end."
   


5. Again, because Steve Fernandez wrongfully presumes that our exegetical discussion of Matthew 10:22 and Mark 13:13 is an abstract discussion of justification, next he draws another wholly unwarranted conclusion that actually contradicts what Tom and I readily acknowledge on the very page from which Fernandez rips our words. Fernandez states, "It would follow that our justification is held in suspense until the final judgment." If Steve Fernandez would read The Race Set Before Us as a whole and not cherry pick our words to suit his purposes, he would have to acknowledge the wrongfulness of his abusive quotations and of his conclusions and repent of his error. Tom and I would be eager to forgive his wrongs against us, if he would acknowledge them.
   
   Throughout the book Tom and I affirm exactly the opposite of what Fernandez claims. For example, on page 78 where we discuss the biblical imagery of justification or righteousness, we state, "'Everyone who believes is justified' (Acts 13:39), showing that righteousness becomes theirs when they believe. Righteousness is given to all now when they believe through God's grace (Rom 1:17; 3:21-22, 24, 28, 30; 4:3, 5-6, 9, 11, 13, 22; 5:1; 8:30, 33,; 9:30; Gal 3:6; Phil 3:9; Tit 3:7). Paul specifically says, "We have been justified now by his blood" (Rom 5:9 NIV; cf. 5:1). The word now indicates with certainty that righteousness is a present gift. In the vast majority of instances, righteousness is said to belong to believers now. As with forgiveness, New Testament writers wanted to emphasize that believers are right with God in this life" [all underlined emphases added].
   
   Tom and I included an entire chapter in The Race Set Before Us, titled "Running with Confidence: Being Assured That We Shall Win the Prize" (pp. 268-311), in which we argue that assurance of salvation is of the essence of belief. By this we mean that assurance that God's Last Day justifying verdict is already ours is integral to faith in Jesus Christ. If you doubt me, read our book. Read chapter 7, "Running with Confidence," and discover for yourself that I speak the truth and that Steve Fernandez is wrong in his understanding and judgment of The Race Set Before Us.
   
   From our exegetical discussion of Matthew 10:22 and Mark 13:13 Fernandez has drawn the wrongful conclusion: "It would follow that our justification is held in suspense until the final judgment." Now bad as this error is, Steve Fernandez's next error is a case of gross malpractice or malfeasance. To this wrongful conclusion, he adds, "Schreiner and Caneday acknowledge this for they also say, 'Conditional warnings and admonitions suspend God’s judgment in the last day on perseverance in this age . . . since the Reformation, many Protestant Christians have tended to overstate Paul’s doctrine of justification . . . with the effect that Paul’s orientation on salvation as not yet fully realized has virtually collapsed . . . for Paul, justification remains fundamentally the eschatological verdict. . .' (Ibid., p. 154, 160-161)."
   
   Again, Fernandez commits several errors with his quotation, seven that I detail in items 6 through 12.
   
   
6. First, Fernandez wrongfully cites the words "Conditional warnings and admonitions suspend God's judgment in the last day on perseverance in this age. . . ." Apart from taking considerable time to locate these words on page 154 of The Race Set Before Us, who would realize that Fernandez capitalizes the word "conditional" without telling his readers that he has done so? Who would realize that the words that he has cited are the final words of a sentence which explains why exegetes so easily transpose Jesus' warning in Matthew 10:22 and Mark 13:13, as shown in the diagram above? Consider, then, the context of the words that Fernandez quotes: "Without realizing it, this author transposes Jesus' warning from a prospective incentive for perseverance to the end into a retrospective test that exposes pseudodisciples by their past behavior. How does this transposition occur? It begins with conceptual discomfort because conditional warnings and admonitions suspect God's judgment in the last day on perseverance in this age." This citation is sloppily cherry picked. Is it not?
   
   
7. Second, Fernandez follows this cherry picked quotation with an ellipsis that not only leaps over pages 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160 to page 161, but also leaps into a completely new section of chapter 5 (Admonition and Warning in Paul's Letters) and furthermore, leaps into the middle of a sentence. Thus, his quotation is nonsensical because the subject of the sentence on page 161 is not "conditional warnings and admonitions". Consider Fernandez's malpractice in citing the words in italicized and underlined bold from page 160: "Although we have already shown in chapter two how New Testament writers have a dual orientation in their concept of salvation, including both already and not yet, it may be helpful to summarize briefly Paul's perspective. We do so primarily because, since the Reformation, many Protestant Christians have tended to overstate Paul's doctrine of justification." The portion Fernandez fails to quote is in red.
   
   
8. Third, Fernandez's abuse of quotation gets even worse because he refuses to quote the above bolded/italicized/underlined sentence in its entirety but breaks the sentence at its most crucial point where Tom and I explain the result of overstating Paul's doctrine of justification. So, despite repetition, here is the whole portion again, this time with the crucial resultant clause retained. "Although we have already shown in chapter two how New Testament writers have a dual orientation in their concept of salvation, including both already and not yet, it may be helpful to summarize briefly Paul's perspective. We do so primarily because, since the Reformation, many Protestant Christians have tended to overstate Paul's doctrine of justification, so that it swallows up all other metaphors for salvation." Observe, then, how Steve Fernandez ripped the bolded/italicized/underlined portion from its context to say what he wanted to say.
   
   
9. Fourth, observe also that Steve Fernandez is guilty of committing the error that Tom and I identify in the resultant portion that he passed over in the statement from which he cherry picked "since the Reformation, many Protestant Christians have tended to overstate Paul's doctrine of justification." As I demonstrate above, in #3, Fernandez "commits the common reductionistic error of presuming that any discussion of salvation is necessarily a discussion of justification." In other words, Steve Fernandez is guilty of letting his understanding of justification swallow up other imageries for salvation.
   
   
10. Fifth, Fernandez follows the words "since the Reformation, many Protestant Christians have tended to overstate Paul’s doctrine of justification" with an ellipsis that leaps into the middle of the next sentence to quote the following words ". . . with the effect that Paul’s orientation on salvation as not yet fully realized has virtually collapsed" followed by another ellipsis. These words are in a sentence that actually explains Fernandez's theological error, for Tom and I explain what we mean when we say that "many Protestant Christians have tended to overstate Paul's doctrine of justification, so that it swallows up all other metaphors for salvation." We explain, "The consequence has been to exaggerate salvation's already aspects with the effect that Paul's orientation on salvation as not yet fully realized has virtually collapsed into an overrealized view that the whole of salvation is already fully ours." Once again, I have highlighted the segment that Fernandez cherry picks for his purposes and I have placed the ignored portions in red. Given the fuller context, is not Fernandez's malpractice obvious? He has mutilated the meaning that Tom and I gave to our own words.
    
    
11. Sixth, again, Fernandez abuses our words and our meaning by elliptical quotation. He cuts the quotation short by ignoring the all important prepositional phrases following the verb collapsed and instead inserts ellipsis marks and then leaps to the midst of the final paragraph on page 161 to quote the words "for Paul, justification remains fundamentally the eschatological verdict. . . ." Fernandez misleads readers again by failing to indicate that he cites the beginning of a new sentence and does not drop into the midst of a sentence. He fails to show his readers that he has changed the capitalized "For" to the lower case "for."
    
    
12. Seventh, then Steve Fernandez reaches back to page 160 where Tom and I explain that "since the Reformation many Protestant Christians have tended to overstate Paul's doctrine of justification, so that it swallows up all other metaphors for salvation." Fernandez concludes that "The ‘overstatement’ of justification, it would seem, is clearly their disagreement with the Reformed teaching that justification is a completed and final declaration made at the point of first believing." Clearly, Steve Fernandez fails badly to understand what Tom and I wrote and meant. No, the overstating of Paul's doctrine of justification to which we refer is emphatically not as Steve Fernandez presumes to claim. The overstatement is exactly as we explained in those portions of the text that Fernandez chose to ignore and passed over in his cherry picked quotations, just as I have explained in the fourth and fifth points immediately above. Steve Fernandez is guilty of the overstating of Paul's doctrine of justification of which we wrote. He is guilty of this by allowing his understanding of Paul's doctrine of justification to swallow up other imageries for salvation, including salvation itself. Fernandez has so exaggerated "salvation's already aspects with the effect that Paul's orientation on salvation as not yet fully realized has virtually collapsed into an overrealized view that the whole of salvation is already fully ours" (The Race Set Before Us, p. 160).
    
    As a matter of fact, if Steve Fernandez had read The Race Set Before Us with understanding, he would have recognized his erroneous conclusion. In the very portions that Steve Fernandez chooses to ignore with his cherry picked quotations, Tom and I unequivocally affirm the present assuredness of God's justifying verdict. In one of the portions on page 161 that Fernandez leaps over with his ellipsis we state,
    
    

    Paul announces in his gospel that God has revealed his righteous judgment in the present time (Rom 3:21-26). God has already begun his good work in us (Phil 1:6) by calling us to believe "in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead" (Rom 4:24). God has brought the verdict of the day of judgment forward, into the midst of redemptive history, for God has graciously revealed his righteousness through the gospel (Rom 1:17), which announces that God's obedient son, Jesus Christ (Rom 5:19), has already appeared in the flesh (Rom 1:3-4) and has already borne God's wrath for us by becoming a sin offering on our behalf (Rom 8:3). Because God condemned his own Son in our place, he has already rendered his judgment, vindicating his own righteousness, so that he now justifies all who embrace Jesus Christ (Rom 3:26). Thus, God already gives the eschatological gift of righteousness in advance of the day of judgment (Rom 5:17). Therefore, as far as the believer is concerned, the verdict of God's judgment is already in, though the day of judgment has not yet arrived. The verdict is acquittal (Rom 5:1; 8:1). This verdict is irrevocable for all whom God has called to believe (Rom 8:30), for because Christ Jesus died and was raised and now intercedes for us, God's verdict is final; God will not hear any further charges against his chosen ones, for his verdict stands (Rom 8:34).

Now, I ask you readers. Which part of this extended quotation, that Steve Fernandez chose to ignore by passing over in his selective quoting, confirms his conclusion that for Schreiner and Caneday "The 'overstatement' of justification, it would seem, is clearly their disagreement with the Reformed teaching that justification is a completed and final declaration made at the point of first believing"?

How lamentable are Steve Fernandez's numerous errors! How lamentable that he refused to respond to the several overtures that both Tom and I extended to him! How lamentable that a minister of the gospel would engage in the malpractice of misunderstanding, misrepresentation, and misquotation. As a teacher I have read thousands of student papers of varied lengths. Yet, I cannot recall reading any paper that reflects abusive cherry picked quotations that lead the writer to such blatantly wrong conclusions about what others have written as I have read in Steve Fernandez's first chapter of his book. Given the uncorrected sloppiness of his first chapter that he published a few years ago on the internet, I am fearful lest his published book be full of the same kind of sloppiness.

Christian scholars, of all scholars, ought to be the most careful, given the ethic of the gospel we confess. If we ought to measure every spoken word that dissipates and becomes irretrievable, how much more should we measure every written word, especially when we are critiquing the beliefs of others. I am reminded of what Paul has to say concerning those who misrepresented his preaching and teaching. "Why not say—as we are being slanderously reported as saying and as some claim that we say—'Let us do evil that good may result'? Their condemnation is deserved" (Romans 3:8).

Once again, I quote one of my favorites, Thomas Sowell. "Although I am ready to defend what I have said, many people expect me to defend what others have attributed to me."