Now that I’ve finished OHS Horton’s Christless Christianity, I’m making some headway in OHS Clark’s Recovering the Reformed Confession.   I assume that CO readers are all aware already of Clark’s categories of QIRC and QIRE, and how the book is structured around them, and that the three flagship examples of QIRC which Clark exposits are 6/24 creation, theonomy, and covenant moralism (i.e. FV).  These are in addition to numerous example issues Clark gives by way of definition of QIRC, including KJV-onlyism, women in combat, (in)sufficiency of scripture, full preterism, and the free offer of the gospel.

My first reaction, upon finishing the chapter, was to wonder how FV got lumped in with 6/24 and theonomy?  I can clearly see how these other two exemplify illegitimate certainty, and the proper resolution would seem to be for certain parties to renounce their certainty, and more charitably affirm the liberty of other parties to hold opposing doctrines, and yet remain within the bounds of biblical and confessional orthodoxy.  (Somehow I doubt that Clark would be willing to extend this sentiment towards theonomists, but — 2K-ophile though I am — I have no problem continuing to oppose theonomists from “within the fold”.)

But what about FV?  How can FV be an example of QIRC if the solution is not simply to “live and let live”?  (There can be no doubting that Clark does not tolerate covenant moralists within the fold!)  While 6/24 and theonomy are guilty of going beyond the Bible (being dogmatic about matters on which the Bible is not), FV is guilty of going against the Bible — they’re not wrong on matters in which scripture is indifferent, but in which scripture is quite insistent!

Upon closer examination however, I discern that Clark’s definition of QIRC is a bit wider than issues that can be solved if offenders would simply stop being illegitimately certain.  For instance, full (hyper-)preterism and denial of the free offer (hyper-calvinism) are both full-on errors that result from Quests for Illegitimate Certainty: dissatisfaction with biblical tensions that leads to the error flattening them.  By this definition, then, we can see that FV arises from a similar dissatisfaction between the simul (tension) between iustus et peccator:

The covenant moralists flatten out the tension between our justification and our sanctification by moving toward the old medieval and Roman doctrine of justification by sanctification so that God is said to justify the godly.

But as I will argue in a subsequent post (this one is long enough), FV can also be seen as an (illegitimate) quest against what it sees as QIRC.  That would make it, rather than a Q(for)IRC, an IQ(agin)RC.