Westminster Seminary Names New President


April 2005

Dear Friends,
The Board of Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia has just announced (via several puffs of smoke from Van Til Hall) that Dr. Peter Lillback has been chosen as the Seminary's new president.

In January 2002 The Trinity Review published a review of Dr. Lillback's book, The Binding of God. Here are the concluding paragraphs of that review:

"Calvin never taught justification by faith and works. But Lillback desires to find this doctrine in Calvin. The reason is that Lillback, though he is a Presbyterian and a professor at Westminster and Reformed Episcopal Seminaries, himself holds this heretical doctrine. And he holds it as part-and-parcel of his doctrine of a conditional, breakable covenant.

"Lillback’s theology of a covenant of grace-and-works accompanied by a doctrine of justification by faith-and-faith’s-works is not an isolated phen-omenon in Reformed churches. It is part of a widespread movement now surfacing in reputedly conservative Reformed and Presbyterian churches. The movement is advanced by prominent Reformed and Presbyterian theologians. The movement intends to introduce justification by faith and works on the wings of a doctrine of a conditional, breakable covenant of grace and works, or it intends to establish the doctrine of a conditional, breakable covenant of grace and works even though this means the introduction of the doctrine of justification by faith and works. Whatever the primary intention, whether a conditional covenant or justification by faith and works, the movement promotes these doctrines as related teachings.

"The scholarship of The Binding of God is flawed. The doctrine is heretical. Nevertheless, it is an important work because it makes two things plain: (1) a conditional covenant of grace and works implies justification by faith and works; and (2) the apostasy at the highest levels of reputedly conservative Presbyterianism."

To read the entire review of Dr. Liillback's book, please go to http://www.trinityfoundation.org/journal.php?id=116

Cordially,

John Robbins
The Trinity Foundation
www.trinityfoundation.org
April 20, 2005