We have considered his method, but what about Frame’s theological conclusions? Where the classic Reformed theologians typically defined theology as something that exists in God and which is accommodated to us creatures and revealed in analogues to us, for Frame, theology is something we do. He defines it as application (102).

His account of the doctrine of God seems reasonably sound, but there is this: “God is a person” (7).¹ We would expect a Reformed theologian to write, “God is personal”—or better, “God is tripersonal.”

Reformed theology classically treats the attributes under two headings, incommunicable (i.e., those for which there is no analogy in us) and communicable (i.e., those for which there is an analogy in us). Frame groups them according to one of his several triads—control, authority, and presence.

In Belgic Confession (BC; 1561) article 1, the Reformed churches confess:

We all believe in our hearts and confess with our mouths that there is a single and simple spiritual being, whom we call God eternal, incomprehensible, invisible, unchangeable, infinite, almighty; completely wise, just, and good, and the overflowing source of all good.

We confess divine simplicity. Westminster Confession of Faith 2.1 says that God is “without parts or passions” (i.e., change by suffering). The reader of the volume under review, however, should be aware that Frame has raised questions about the traditional Christian doctrine of divine simplicity and has even suggested that God is not immutable.² For example, in the present volume he writes, “Since God is eternal, he is unchangeable in some ways (Num 23:19; 1 Sam 15:29; Ps 102:25–27; Mal 3:6; James 1:17)” (30). We should have expected him to write: “God is unchangeable.” The qualifier, “in some ways,” is arresting to say the least. He does not explain, so we must go to an earlier work where he wrote, “So God does change in his immanent, temporal relations with creation. But that fact does not detract in the least from his overall sovereignty. All these changes are the result of his eternal decree, which brings all things to pass, according to his will.”³ He begins this section with an appeal to Genesis 6:5 and Exodus 32:9–10, from which he seems to infer that God literally changes. In this, his argument is not much different in substance from that of Open Theists such as Clark Pinnock. It is true, as Frame and Pinnock both observe, that God does appear to change his mind. The reader is meant to be struck by that appearance, but the reader is not meant to infer that God actually changes. These are, after all, figures of speech, just as when God is said to have a nose, eyes, arms, legs, and feet. A similar approach to this question appears in the present volume as well.⁴

The doctrine of salvation (soteriology) was at the heart of the Reformation. There is a lot to like in Frame’s account of the doctrine of salvation generally. He is clear on justification and on salvation (a more comprehensive category including sanctification) generally, but his argument for two kinds of election (224), historical and eternal, is unhelpful, contrary to the Canons of Dort (CD), and bound to be confusing to beginners. The Reformed Churches of Europe and the British Isles all agreed:

This election is not of many kinds; it is one and the same election for all who were to be saved in the Old and the New Testament. For Scripture declares that there is a single good pleasure, purpose, and plan of God’s will, by which he chose us from eternity both to grace and to glory, both to salvation and to the way of salvation, which he prepared in advance for us to walk in. (CD I, 8)

It is true, as he writes, that there is a sense in which Israel as a nation was historically elect (Deut 7) and that God chose Saul to fulfill a particular function in redemptive history (though whether it is wise to call him “historically elect” is another matter), but to write, “the visible church today is historically elect” (224), is problematic. Frame has been mildly supportive of the Federal Vision theology in the past, and here he seems to support perhaps the key tenet of the movement, that there are two kinds of election.⁵ In defense of this formulation he appeals to Hebrews 6:4–6 as if it were self-evident that “tasting of the powers of the age to come” etc. necessarily entails a doctrine of “historical election.” If we are to be biblical in our theology, as we are, then we should note that Hebrews does not call those who have participated in the external administration of the covenant of grace “elect.” That is an inference that Frame has imported into this passage. This is a case where more serious engagement with historic Reformed theology would help him. There is a better explanation and Herman Witsius offered it in the late seventeenth century. He argued that there is a “double mode of communion” in the visible church, that there are those who have a purely external relation to the outward administration of the covenant of grace and those who also have an inward relation to the covenant of grace.⁶ Frame himself uses the categories of “visible” and “invisible” relative to the church, so he had the resources at hand to address this issue (293–96).

Notes

1. In his Doctrine of God, 619–735, on Trinity, he did not write quite this way.
2. On the former, see Frame, The Doctrine of God, 227. On the latter see John M. Frame, No Other God: A Response to Open Theism (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2001), 161–78.
3. Frame, No Other God, 178.
4. For a superior account of divine simplicity, see Michael S. Horton, The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 228–30. See also Michael S. Horton, “Hellenistic or Hebrew? Open Theism and Reformed Theological Method,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 45, no. 2 (June 2002): 317–41.
   On immutability vs. Pinnock et al., see Richard A. Muller, “Incarnation, Immutability, and the Case for Classical Theism,” Westminster Theological Journal 45 (1983): 22–40.
5. I am thinking of his foreword to P. Andrew Sandlin, Backbone of the Bible: Covenant in Contemporary Perspective (Nacogdoches, TX: Covenant Media Press, 2004), vii–xiv, where he commends and recommends what is a collection of essays advocating for the Federal Vision theology while denying (p. viii) that he is endorsing everything published in the volume. Yet, he also writes, “Shepherd in this volume, however, shows that much of that” early Reformed “tradition, especially in its early confessions,” is on his side. And he provides extensive scriptural support for his theses. He remonstrates forcefully not only with Shepherd’s individual critics but also with two unnamed “small denominations” who have accused Shepherd of denying the gospel or of preaching another gospel (xii). In turn, Shepherd and other Federal Visionists gave ringing endorsements to his Systematic Theology. For more on the Federal Vision, see “Resources On The Federal Vision Theology.”
6. See R. Scott Clark, “Baptism and the Benefits of Christ: The Double Mode of Communion in the Covenant of Grace,” The Confessional Presbyterian Journal 2 (2006): 3–19.

©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.

John M. Frame, Concise Systematic Theology: An Introduction To Christian Belief. A Revised and Enhanced Edition of Salvation Belongs To The Lord, ed. John J. Hughes (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2023).

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Post authored by:

• R. Scott Clark

  

  R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

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