You will be interested in this blog by a PhD student in Scotland.

Synod affirms that the Scriptures and confessions teach the doctrine of justification by grace alone, through faith alone and that nothing that is taught under the rubric of covenant theology in our churches may contradict this fundamental doctrine. Therefore Synod rejects the errors of those:

The last point to be made about the preface to the Nine Points is closely related to the first, and it is this: what one says about covenant theology (the history of redemption) necessarily colors what one says about the doctrine of justification. The Reformed doctrine of justification exists within the environment of covenant theology, the latter is the womb or matrix of covenant theology. Whatever a pregnant woman eats or swallows touches her unborn child. So it is with the doctrine of justification in Reformed theology.

Thus, the changes to covenant theology in the 19th and 20th centuries has not been without consequences for the doctrine of justification. As Karl Barth radically revised Reformed covenant theology by jettisoning the covenant of works (more on that later) he also radically reversed the Reformed hermeneutic (i.e., way of reading Scripture). Instead of law and gospel (see ch. 12 in on law and gospel in Reformed theology) Barth proposed "gospel and law." This move was followed by some "evangelical" theologians, most notably Daniel Fuller and Norman Shepherd. This reversal of law and gospel (and the accompanying claim that Reformed theology rejects the distinction between law and gospel) is mainstay of the Federal Vision program. They, and the so-called New Perspective(s) on Paul, have us "in by grace" (i.e., united to Christ, head for head, in baptism in an "all or nothing" covenant) and we "stay in" by "faith and works" or "covenantal faithfulness." Thus, this reversal, especially in the hands of the "covenant moralists" sets the Reformed faith upside down! Instead of the Christian life flowing out of grace and gratitude, lived in union with Christ in the covenant community, we would be, if it were possible, according to the Federal Visionists, back under the law and in constant jeopardy of apostasy if we do not keep "our part" of the covenant.

All of these revisions flow from the the revisions in Reformed covenant theology, parts of which were first proposed in the 17th century and which have been proposed and rejected repeatedly since, that took hold in the 19th and 20th centuries.

If, for example, the covenants of works and grace are not distinguished clearly, then the ground of righteousness before God and definitions of faith are bound to change. This is precisely what has happened in the so-called Federal Vision. Having put us under a legal/gracious covenant before the fall, they have us under a gracious/legal covenant after the fall. In this scheme, the terms of "the covenant" (as the FV writers like to say) are and always have been "faith and works" or "faithfulness." Though he is not clear about most things, Norman Shepherd is quite clear about his claim that we and Adam are on the same footing. Adam owed faith and obedience. Jesus owed faith and obedience and we too owe faith and obedience. Christians who know the greatness of their sin and misery realize that Shepherd has done them no favors, as it were, by placing us on the same footing as Adam and our Lord! Nor has he done them any favors by making the Christ into the first Christian, in the same way as the 19th-century German liberals. In such a revised covenant theology, Christianity always becomes just another scheme for religious experience and moral improvement.

Again, such radical revisions turn Reformed theology on it's head. The Reformed faith is a doctrine of divine revelation and salvation, not religious experience and self-improvement (even if that self-improvement is cast in terms of "grace and cooperation with grace").

Grace is God's favor to sinners. Adam wasn't a sinner until he sinned. We, as Adam's children, are sinners and therefore we sin. We are corrupt in all our faculties:

In our intellect -- we think corruptly;
In our affections -- we love corruptly;
In our wills -- we choose corruptly;

Therefore, "grace" which isn't really grace at all, "grace" which is thought to be merely divine assistance to those who must "do their part" isn't really grace but a recipe for damnation. God doesn't help those who help themselves. He saves those who can't and won't save themselves. Grace is Christ's salvation of those who would voluntarily choose hell over heaven, who come to trust Christ and love God and hate sin only because the Holy Spirit makes them alive, gives them faith, and unites them to Christ. The story of the covenant of grace is the story of God's free favor/grace to those who by nature hate him.

So it is with the instrument of the covenant of grace: faith. By definition, faith is and has nothing to do with our "doing." One critic of Synod Schereville said to me that the language adopted by Synod is imprecise because it uses the verb "to be." It says "faith is the sole instrument of our justification apart from all works." If this language is "imprecise" then tell it to the Belgic Confession and all the Reformed Churches since 1561 since this is the very language we have confessed since then! In Art. 22 we confess:

faith is only the instrument by which we embrace Christ, our righteousness.

We say, "faith is." We do not say, "the exercise of faith is" (as was suggested by the critic). Why not? Because even the turn to the verb "exercise" moves the subject of the verb. As it is, faith does what it it does, i.e., receives, rests, leans, trusts, knows, because of the power of its object. Faith has no power in an of itself. That's why the Reformed have often described faith, in the act of justification (which is what we're about here) as an "empty vessel" or, in Calvin's case, an empty hand.

Faith does not justify because it does anything. That is why Synod was quite right to adopt the three points reaffirming and strengthening our stand on justification by faith alone "apart from all works." The very point of the Belgic Confession is to exclude our "doing" from the definition of faith in the act (declaration) of justification. To turn faith into any more than this receptive instrument is to make something or someone other than Christ into a a Savior. That, the Belgic says,

is a most enormous blasphemy against God--for it then would follow that Jesus Christ is only half a Savior. And therefore we justly say with Paul that we are justified "by faith alone" or by faith "apart from works."

Covenant theology is not some innocent enterprise. What a minister or teacher or writer says about covenant theology will, even if he himself doesn't intend or realize it, necessarily have consequences for the definitions of grace and faith and justification, and it is upon these articles that the church stands or falls.

Synod affirms that the Scriptures and confessions teach the doctrine of justification by grace alone, through faith alone and that nothing that is taught under the rubric of covenant theology in our churches may contradict this fundamental doctrine. Therefore Synod rejects the errors of those:

As I argued last time, Reformed theology is covenantal. Not all "covenant" theologies are Reformed, however. There are lots of "covenant" theologies. The early and medieval churches had an account of the history of revelation and redemption that contained truths but also contained significant errors. Many of the fathers and virtually all the medieval theologians thought of Bible as containing two kinds of law, the old and the new. When these writers said "gospel," they meant "new law." According to the medieval church, the difference between old law and new law is the greater degree of grace available (via the Roman sacerdotal system) under the new law enabling Christians to obey the law toward final justification.

The Reformation formulated a significantly different account of the history of revelation and redemption. The magisterial Protestants all agreed the Bible reveals that God entered into a legal relationship with Adam as the first head of humanity and, after the fall, he entered into a gracious relationship with sinners, in Christ. The Protestants confessed that, after the fall, God revealed progressively one story of salvation, by grace alone, in Christ alone, through faith alone. Luther, Melanchthon, Bucer, and Calvin (to name but a few) taught explicitly that the Bible has two ways of speaking to sinners throughout the Scripture: "do" (imperative, law) and "done" (indicative, gospel). Thus, the relationship (covenant) that God made with Adam was fundamentally legal: "the day you eat thereof you shall surely die." The relationship (covenant) into which God entered and the promises that he made to all those who would believe was fundamentally gracious.

This distinction between law and gospel was a fundamental structure to the Protestant account of redemptive history, i.e., the story of the covenants in Scripture. Another fundamental structure was the idea of the covenant of grace whereby God made promises in types and shadows (by illustration and foreshadowing) to save his people by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

The 16th- and 17th-century Protestants who developed this covenant theology, this way of reading the history of redemption, also wrote our catechisms and confessions. Those 16th- and 17th-century Protestants did not see any tension between their their reading of redemptive history and revelation and their systematic reading of Scripture and their catechisms and confessions. They saw the types of teaching as closely inter-related and as reciprocal. In other words, they said what they did about systematics and they confessed what they did because of the way they read the history of redemption (covenant theology).

What distinguished the Reformed from the earlier Protestants is that they developed a covenant theology more intentionally and thoroughly, but it's important to understand that, in the history of Reformed theology, covenant theology wasn't some highly specialized, technical, or mystical discipline that only a few illuminati could understand. Covenant theology was simply our way of talking about the history of redemption and revelation and our covenant theology wasn't terribly complicated.

This is important because, in the modern period, there has been a concerted attempt to drive a large wedge between "systematic" theology, our confessions, and what has come to be known as "biblical" or "redemptive-historical" (i.e., covenant) theology. Prior to the 19th century, however, there was no great dichotomy between these ways of doing theology. In the 16th century, one of the authors of our catechism, Caspar Olevianus wrote both kinds of books as well. About the time of the Synod of Dort, one of the more important handbooks of systematic theology was written by an Old Testament professor, Johannes Wollebius. In the 17th century, the great theologian Johannes Cocceius (Koch) wrote books on both the history of redemption and on systematic theology.

Beginning in the 19th century, however, both liberals (i.e., those who don't really believe the historic Christian faith but who wish to be considered "Christians" nonetheless) and pietists (i.e., those who think that religious experience is more important than the confession of faith) began to set covenant theology against systematic theology. They argued that covenant theology arose as a way of alieviating the problems created by systematics. These moves and claims have been widely influential, even among orthodox Reformed people who should know better.

Thus, there developed in Germany a specialized field of study known as "Biblical Theology." Since the development of this field, there has been a tendency among pietists (who may or may not be orthodox), liberals, and conservatives to treat "Biblical Theology" as a "scientific," or "neutral" enterprise under which rubric one may say whatever one will without any regard to what Reformed systematic theology teaches or what the Reformed Churches confess.

This approach to Biblical or covenant theology has created serious tensions, in some cases, in the "covenant theology" held by Reformed folk and the confession of the churches and the historic Reformed theology. Some folk have seemed quite happy to let this tension continue to lay unresolved. As a consequence of this tension, one may hear a "redemptive-historical" (i.e., covenant theology) sermon in the one morning service saying one thing, e.g., that the covenant of grace is a matter of getting in by grace (i.e., baptism) and staying in by faith and works and in the evening sermon one might hear a perfectly orthodox sounding sermon from Heidelberg Catechism Q. 21 on true faith.

Even more unhappily, however, for the last 30 years, some folk (now known as the Federal Vision) have been resolving this tension between their "covenant theology" and their systematic theology in favor of their covenant theology. This move has led them to re-define key words and ideas of the Reformed faith according to the new covenant theology of the 19th and 20th centuries. In this new covenant theology, there is said to be no difference between faith and works. Faith implies works and works imply faith, even in the doctrine of justification. Faith in the act of justification is said to be "trusting and obeying" or "faithfulness" or even sometimes, "faith and works." Why? Because this is how the FV folk have come to read the history of redemption, it is the story "covenant faithfulness" from beginning to end.

Of course not every practitioner of Biblical Theology has made this mistake. Geerhardus Vos, who taught in the early days of what became Calvin Theological Seminary, and more famously at Princeton Theological Seminary, set out to show that it was possible to do Biblical Theology AND systematic theology without setting one against the other. As he worked on this project he found himself in conflict not only with the liberals, who wanted to reconstruct Christianity in their own image, but also some conservatives from various branches of the Dutch Reformed churches who were developing an idiosyncratic covenant theology that could not be reconciled with the Reformed confessions and which was quite out of accord with the mainstream of Reformed covenant theology from the 16th and 17th centuries.

Vos published his work in several volumes. His lectures on Biblical Theology were later published in a volume by that title. Since Vos, however, practitioners of Biblical Theology in the Netherlands, Britain, Australia, and in the USA have continued to set Biblical Theology against systematics and the confessions as if they were in tension. In other words, folk have not always written and taught their account of the history of redemption and revelation with an eye to the confessions, catechisms, and systematic theologies.

In the recent controversies over covenant and justification, when queried about this method, these "covenant theologians" have replied, "We're just following the Bible." What they mean, however, is that they are trying to read the Bible as if no one has ever done it before. When folk try to read the Bible as if no one has ever done it before, we call that "biblicism." This approach to Scripture is very influential among American evangelicals and surprisingly, among liberals. Indeed, the earliest "liberals," in the 16th and 17th centuries, were known as Socinians. They rejected the Protestant faith because, they said, it wasn't biblical enough. They said "We're just following the Bible" as they denied the deity of Christ, the substitutionary atonement, justification sola gratia, sola fide, and eventually, the Trinity. This biblicism has affected the Reformed churches. Some of the Remonstrants (Arminians) in the 17th century, rejected at the Synod of Dort, also argued that they were "just following the Bible." Eventually, the Socinians and some of the Remonstrants coalesced and formed the basis for the modern Unitarian movement.

So, we should be alert and wary when folk say, "I'm just following the Bible." Indeed, frequently in our contemporary discussions, when criticized, the FV folk will reply, "I'm just following the Bible." Well, that's fine, but the Reformed Churches have also read the Bible and we've reached different conclusions.

In fact, no one "just" reads the Bible. Everyone reads the Bible in a place, i.e., in a cultural, historical, and theological context. Further, after Adam, as it were, no one who reads the Bible is the first to read it. The church has been reading and meditating on Scripture for a very long time, but it is common among evangelical and liberal biblical scholars to write and speak as if they can read the Bible in splendid isolation. This way of doing business is bound to create tension between the confessions of the churches and this sort of "biblical theology."

The Reformed Churches have never taken such a "biblicist" approach to Scripture. We have always related our confessions very closely to our reading of redemptive history (covenant theology) and vice-versa. We've always related our systematic theology very closely to our covenant theology and vice-versa.

In the preface to the Nine Points, the United Reformed Churches are saying, in effect, we reject the premise that one can develop a "biblical" or "covenant" theology which in substance contradicts what we confess. In this preface, the URCs are also saying, in effect, we reject not only the creation of the tension between covenant and confessional theology but also the resolution of that tension by the FV whereby our confessions are substantially revised to mean something other than what they have historically meant.

For the next several posts I intend to follow Jason Stellman's example at De Regnis Duobus (Concerning Two Kingdoms), where he's been commenting on the PCA's 9 Points, by expositing the Nine Points of the URCNA's Synod Schereville (henceforth, the Nine Points).

Synod affirms that the Scriptures and confessions teach the doctrine of justification by grace alone, through faith alone and that nothing that is taught under the rubric of covenant theology in our churches may contradict this fundamental doctrine. Therefore Synod rejects the errors of those:

This preface is particularly important as it establishes a fundamental point, a foundation, and conviction that guides the points that follow. Indeed, the Nine Points are really nothing more than an elaboration of this foundational truth.

Reformed theology is covenantal. Yes, Reformed theology may be expressed in dogmatic or systematic terms, indeed it must be. It may and must be expressed in catechetical terms also, but covenant theology is the Reformed account of the history of redemption and it is substantially identical to what we confess in our Belgic Confession and Heidelberg Catechism and to what we teach in our systematics/dogmatics texts.

Because "covenant theology" is the shorthand way of saying, "the Reformed account of redemptive history" and it is that stuff that informs and controls what we teach in dogmatics/systematics and what we confess as churches, to change our account of the history of salvation is to change our faith. "Covenant theology" is inextricably bound up with our confession considered narrowly as ecclesiastical documents and considered broadly as the Reformed understanding of Christianity.

All this is to say that, though there is room for difference of opinion and variety, the Reformed understanding of Redemptive history is not endlessly elastic. It is not possible, e.g., to postulate that Adam was not the head of humanity or if he was he was only an example and that nothing he did does anything more than set a bad example, and call one's self "Reformed." Pelagian yes, Reformed, no. There's a boundary on which I trust we're all agreed.

It's not possible to say that God established for national Israel one way of being accepted by God as righteous and being delivered from sin and judgment, and that God established another way of acceptance with God and deliverance from sin and judgment for the New Testament church. So there's another boundary on which we can agree.

Now I've been told for the last seven years that there was enormous variety among the classic Reformed theologians on "covenant theology." I've been told that there were great differences of opinion of the Reformed of the 16th and 17th centuries regarding their understanding of the history of redemption. As a result, I've been told, we really can't set up any firm boundary markers today as to what one can say about "covenant theology."

Well, I've done a little bit of reading (and writing) on the history of Reformed covenant theology and I'm still waiting for the documentary evidence for this claim of enormous elasticity in classic Reformed covenant theology. What I've found are some variations in the language about how the covenant of works/nature/life are described and some variations in how the covenant of redemption is described and, of course, differences of opinion about the exact role of works in the Mosaic covenant, but on the whole I've found a remarkable consensus about the mainlines of covenant theology.

You can see some evidence of this consensus (and some of the diversity) here.

It has been asserted repeatedly over the last seven years that the "covenant of works" is a "Presbyterian" doctrine or "Westminster Confession" doctrine but that it's not a "Dutch Reformed" doctrine. This claim is (warning: strong and unequivocal language forthcoming, if you're easily offended close your eyes and move to the right) in 5...4...3...2...1..) rubbish and baseless. The doctrine of the covenant of works was just as widely held among the Dutch as it was among the British Reformed theologians and churches and it was denied or modified by both groups just about as often. There were British Reformed theologians who rejected a strictly legal covenant of works, but they were a minority. There may have been Dutch Reformed theologians who rejected a strictly legal covenant of works in the 17th century, though I'm not aware of them.

I am aware, however, of a number of Dutch Reformed theologians from the 17th century, who taught the covenant of works with every bit as much fervor as any British theologian. Witness 1, Herman Witsius (1636-1708):

In the covenant of works there was no mediator: in that of grace, there is the mediator, Christ Jesus....In the covenant of works, the condition of perfect obedience was required, to be performed by man himself, who had consented to it. In that of grace, the same condition is proposed, as to be, or as already performed by a mediator. And this substitution of the person, consists the principal and essential difference of the covenants (The Economy of the Covenants Between God and Man, 1677, 2 vol;1.49).

Witness 2, Wilhelmus à Brakel (1635-1711):

Acquaintance with this covenant is of the greatest importance, for whoever errs here or denies the existence of the covenant of works will not understand the covenant of grace, and will readily err concerning the mediatorship of the Lord Jesus. Such a person will very readily deny that Christ by His active obedience has merited a right to eternal life for the elect. This is to be observed with several parties who, because they err concerning the covenant of grace, also deny the covenant of works. Conversely, whoever denies the covenant of works, must rightly be suspected to be in error concerning the covenant of grace as well (The Christian's Reasonable Service, 1700; 1.355).

Witsius and Brakel were not exceptional. These two were mainstream Reformed theologians and entirely representative of Reformed orthodoxy across Europe and Britain. Further, we should not accept the premise that there was a distinctively "Dutch" Reformed theology. I find no evidence for such a claim. Scholars of Reformed orthodoxy have known for many years that Reformed theology was an international phenomenon. The British Reformed theologians were reading the Europeans and the latter were reading the former.

From where do these ideas, that there was a distinctively "Dutch" Reformed theology, and that there was endless variety to Reformed covenant theology, come? They are forms of special pleading generated by particular ecclesiastical arguments from the 1940s. The Schiderites/Schilderians, in reaction to what they perceived to be persecution by the Kuyperians, in the midst of a nasty theological and political fight, made the argument that they were the true heirs of the Afscheiding theology (the 1834 "Separating" by conservative and confessional Reformed folk from the national Dutch Reformed Church). In so doing, they cast their Kuyperian opponents as "scholastics." This rhetorical move signalled to folks in their movement that the "scholastics" (i.e., the mainstream of 16th and 17th century Reformed theology!) were somehow tainted and not to be trusted. As a consequence of such moves (e.g., "Calvin v the Calvinists"), much of the Reformed world in the 20th century lost contact with the sources of classical Reformed (covenant) theology.

In other words, the ground for these two claims is not historical, not grounded in the actual documentary history of Reformed theology, but in polemics that were fueled by an important but heated argument about covenant theology and the nature of the church and related questions.

Folk also seem to get the idea that there is such diversity from reading the variety of idiosyncratic accounts of covenant theology that developed in the 20th century, during which time the orthodox/confessional view became the minority report, back into the tradition. I see this all the time. I've done it myself on occasion. The reasoning goes this way: "I'm Reformed. I think/have been taught x. Ergo, x must be what we've always believed."

Of course this reasoning is completely fallacious but that doesn't mean that it's not widespread. It is widespread. A great lot of folk seem to think that whatever they've been taught by their pastor or prof must be whatever has always been believed and often in the 20th century, that connection just hasn't existed.

Some of our revisionist writers such as John Murray, who revised the covenant of works, were quite plain about the revisions they were proposing. Others, however, have either not been aware of the fact that they were proposing a major revision or haven't let on that they were.

In any case, with a couple of notable exceptions, covenant theology in the 20th century has been a mess and is not a reliable guide to the Reformed tradition.

More on the preface next time.

There is a vigorous discussion on the (unofficial) URC email list about the 9 Points adopted by Synod Schereville regarding the Federal Vision movement. Since it's a closed list (though, in my opinion, not closed enough since it includes proponents of the Federal Vision) so I won't publish the post to which I'm replying, but I am publishing my post since I think the questions to which I'm replying are clear enough from my responses. I post this because I guess others may be asking the same questions. Caveat: there are series of nauseating references to things I've written or edited. Given the context and the nature of the questions I felt compelled to point them out. I apologize in advance.
---

These are interesting, if provocative, questions.

I don't see anything inherently supralapsarian about these points in the least. I am a hearty infralapsarian and I have defended the internal/external distinction as an infralapsarian. On this, if I may, see, "Baptism and the Benefits of Christ: The Double Mode of Communion in the Covenant of Grace," The Confessional Presbyterian Journal 2 (2006): 3-19.

See also the pamphlet, R. Scott Clark, Baptism, Election, and the Covenant of Grace for a re-statement and defense of the internal/external distinction. You can order it here. (link brings up an email address).

This distinction has nothing to do with suprlapsarianism. It was virtually the universal doctrine of the classic Reformed theologians of the 16th and 17th centuries, only a handful of whom were supra.

I do think the 9 Points is in tension with that stream of the Afscheiding theologians perhaps since 1905 and certainly since the 1940s who have rejected the internal/external distinction. In my view, in the light of modern developments, i.e., the result of the loss of the distinction, and in the light of the confession, the tradition, and Scripture the rejection of what Witsius (a Dutch Reformed theologian) called "the double mode of communion" in the one covenant of grace should be regarded as a failed experiment. As to the covenant of works, as I have argued (to my own satisfaction if to no one else's) that the covenant of works/life/nature was the doctrine of the classic Reformed theologians. On this see >this survey of sources. See also Vos' "History of Covenant Theology." (an inaugural address given at what became Calvin Seminary, in response to some of the same issues we are facing today). See also this updated Brief History of Covenant
Theology.

For an exegetical defense of the covenant of works see Bryan Estelle's chapter in Covenant, Justification, and Pastoral Ministry. See also the recent volume edited by Guy Waters and Gary Johnson and the outstanding report published by the faculty of Mid-America Reformed seminary. I apologize to the repeated references to my own work, but these are areas of interest to me and things on which I've done some work. If you want to see how this worked out in the 16th and 17th century you might see Caspar Olevian and Substance of the Covenant as well as an essay on the
relations between Ursinus' covenant theology and that of the WCF in Westminster Confession into the 21st Century vol 2.

I hasten to add that the 9 Points do not use the expressions covenant of works/nature/life, but the intent of the language certainly seems to be make a clear contrast between the "commandment of life" (BC 14) and the postlapsarian gospel which Reformed theology has historically equated with the covenant of grace. The modern move to conflate and confuse the two has had disastrous consequences for Reformed theology. One has only to trace the effect of Barth's radical reformulation of covenant
theology to see the proof of that.

As to my intentions and interests, I affirm heartily the preface to the 9 Points which says:Synod affirms that the Scriptures and confessions teach the doctrine of justification by grace alone, through faith alone and that nothing that is taught under the rubric of covenant theology in our churches may contradict this fundamental doctrine. Therefore Synod rejects the errors of those:
I understand the contemporary queasiness about the "covenant of works" and I'm quite aware that not everyone is comfortable with this language, but Synod did well to draw a bright theological line without requiring of anyone to adhere to this or that phrase.

This bright line is most necessary and has been since Pelagius. We should not think that we're immune to Pelagianism. The Synod of Dort did not think that the early 17th century Reformed were immune, hence they warned about bringing the errors of Pelagius out of hell again. The contemporary move to make fuzzy the the boundary between pre- and post-lapsarian life carries with it the Pelagian virus. It carries with it the tendency to weaken our idea of the abilities of the first Adam and to strengthen the idea of what we can do after the fall by way of cooperation with grace or preparation for grace toward justification.

Heresy hunt? Well Dr Bergsma always said, (quoting R B Kuiper?), "Gentleman, when you go heresy hunting, be sure to use a rifle and not a shotgun." Good advice that. Synod did just that. The language is clear that those who want to introduce works into the definition of faith in the act of justification either as part of the ground or instrument ought to be disciplined. There is a difference between discipline and heresy hunting, don't you
think?

Finally, I do think it's interesting how the proponents of the FV told us all to "wait for ecclesiastical action" before coming to any judgments about the FV. Now that the churches have spoken (the OPC, the RCUS, the PCA, the BPs, the OCRCs) we're told that these decisions were poorly made or aiming at targets that never existed.

It gives one pause.

Best,

rsc

ps. As to heresy hunting, it would be fine with me if the URC list would exclude the Federal Visionists so we can go about the business of discussing the future of the URC -- which does not include the Federal Visionists.