The PCA Study Committee Report on the Federal Vision devoted a portion of their paper on the issue of election. This can be found on starting on pp. 2204. For the sake of discussion (which I really would encourage here) I make the following declarations:

1. FV proponents, by and large, are absolutely in agreement with WCF Chapter 3 on election as long as we are talking about decretal election which is what the Confession is speaking of in chapter 3. I have spoken with many of the louder proponents about this and they assure me that they have no issue with WCF 3 as it pertains to God’s eternal decree (that the number of the elect are firmly and completely set in stone; that man cannot change the number of the elect because God has established that number in eternity past).

2. The Bible does not qualify every aspect of election in the terms the Confession does. That is, there is an election to the covenant community that is clearly taught in the pages of the Scriptures. Certainly not all of Israel is of Israel (Romans 9:6) however those who were circumcised in the OT economy were, in fact, joined to the community of God’s people and enjoyed the benefits of this communion as well as the responsibilities of it. In that sense they are joined to God as HIS people. In the NT economy this same issue is raised by baptism. The Directory for Public Worship:Of the Sacrament of Baptism makes this very clear though I am aware that baptism does not make one regenerate and would resist that position mightily. We baptize our children — why? Because they are Christian. They are Christians in a federal sense; holy and seperated by God and his sovereign decree to place that child in that family. They belong to HIM (that is, they do not belong to anyone else). The child is expected to be taught the precious doctrines of the faith in order to raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (and not the world). They are to be taught to trust and obey God from their earliest age. Many reformed scholars throughout the ages have made this observation.

3. It is not anti-confessional to argue for aspects of covenant theology that the Confession does not address in totality. In otherwords, the Confession certainly does not exhaust every nuance of the subject as the Bible argues it.

4. Much of what the FV proponents teach on election is confessional but where it differs is not in direct contradiction but in the limit and scope of what the Confession teaches. Again, the Confession is simply not exhaustive on every point.

Now I am sure many will try to argue that what I have set forth here is inaccurate. Keep in mind that I am talking about is “election” here and I am not discussing other aspects and nuances of the FV issue. It should be noted that even the PCA Study Committee Report on the FV made this distinction on “election” on page 2205, line #5. It seems quite clear to me that if the study report makes this distinction then they are aware that there is, in fact, a distinction to be made.