Steven Wedgeworth characterizes the first period of Federal Vision’s development this way:
The first stage worth discussing actually goes back to Westminster Theological Seminary in the 1970s. While the seminary had been founded as something of a continuing “old school” Presbyterian institution, the influence of Cornelius Van Til took it in a unique direction. John Murray and Meredith Kline also made interesting but often idiosyncratic theological contributions, and by the 1960s, Norman Shepherd, Richard Gaffin, Jay Adams, and John Frame added their own distinctives to the mix. The 1970s were a time of considerable controversy for WTS, mostly due to the Norman Shepherd controversy, but there was also a desire on the part of some of the leadership to make WTS more open to a broader and more evangelical landscape. This caused its own, rather different controversy, and certain critics claimed that the school’s legacy had been “sold out.”
Reading the literature coming out of WTS during the 1970s and 1980s, there arises the impression that various subgroups within the WTS were, at least unofficially, competing for the identity and vision of the school. Biblical Theology was certainly the dominant interest, but even here, there were opposing emphases. One writer has summarized the most prominent division between a “union with Christ” emphasis and a “Law and Gospel” emphasis.
It was during this time that many of the older FV thinkers attended seminary. Some attended WTS and were directly shaped by this era. Others attended elsewhere but paid attention to the controversies and read the literature. Most conservative Presbyterian and Reformed thinkers had looked to WTS as a guide during this time in the 20th century.
Another significant theological issue that came from this same background was the Christian Reconstruction movement, especially the Tyler branch. Christian Reconstructionism (very similar to “Theonomy”) refers to the idea that Christians ought to implement the Old Testament Scriptures and the Mosaic law code today, as much as possible. This movement began with the work of R J Rushdoony in 1960s, but the Tyler branch of Reconstructionism came to prominence in the early 1980s. They made key modifications to this project and put a new emphasis on ecclesiology, including the sacraments and the liturgy. The Tyler branch also broadened its vision from merely the Westminster Seminary legacy to include a certain sort of Continental Calvinism (pulling from the 16th cent. contributions of Martin Bucer, the 19th cent. German American Mercersburg Theology, and 20th cent. Dutch theologians like Klaas Schilder) and a contemporary liturgical renewal project inspired by Dom Gregory Dix and Alexander Schmemann (Mercersburg would also apply here). The most significant FV personality associated with Tyler Reconstruction stage is James B. Jordan, but Peter Leithart also shared some of this history. A few other names appear in this stage of the FV conversation but not in later ones, notably Peter Lillback and George Grant.
It is interesting to point out that Douglas Wilson did not share this same heritage. While he was certainly aware of these men and their writings, his own history comes from a broader Evangelical world. In fact, Douglas Wilson did not consider himself to be theologically Reformed until the late 1980s. He once wrote a booklet critique of the Tyler Branch of Christian Reconstructionism.
This pre-FV period history did not emphasize justification issues (other than in summaries of the older Shepherd controversy), nor did it argue that covenant theology needed to be significantly modified or reinterpreted. Instead, the men of this period claimed that their covenant theology was that of the Calvinistic or Reformed tradition, and they opposed it to the Baptistic or Evangelical theology of 20th cent. North America. The chief interests at this time were seeing families as covenantal units, showing the significance of paedobaptism for covenant theology and ecclesiology, and asserting an aggressive Christian social and political presence. Peadocommunion was already present among some of these men, though it was seen as a point of intramural disagreement. They also did reserve the right to part ways with the Reformation tradition, but this was always framed as a matter of incidental disagreement within their larger commitment to that legacy. James Jordan was also beginning to articulate his particular typological hermeneutics, a continuation and advancement of the redemptive-historical biblical theology taught by WTS. This period of FV development can be understood as starting during the late 1970s, and it reaches a definite transition point around 1990, when the Tyler church joined the Reformed Episcopal Church, James Jordan moved from Tyler, TX to Niceville, FL, and the Reconstruction movement began to fade in prominence.
This is the way I’ve seen other Federal Visionists or former Federal Visionists do historical theology. Because a diversity of voices were in the debates about the Westminster Confession of Faith, so today we should expect to see the same kind of breadth of views about different doctrines. In the same way, Federal Vision sprang from a diversity of voices at Westminster Seminary.
It raises a few questions. Is this why Federal Vision advocates were never very impressed with Machen? Wedgeworth’s history suggests that Federal Vision came from new directions at Westminster that took the school away from Machen’s vision.
Second, why did more people who aligned with Federal Vision go to Covenant or RTS Jackson than Westminster?
Third, does Meredith Kline belong to this history since the biggest critics of Federal Vision owed a great debt to Kline’s understanding of the Old Testament, covenant theology, and the relationship of cult to culture?
Old Life 
Meredith Kline—“Those who are temporarily members of the New Covenant fail to believe in Christ and thus fail to receive the blessings purchased by Christ under the pactum salutis. But just because they fail to receive the blessings of the New Covenant, that does not mean they are cursed by the New Covenant. When they are finally removed from the New Covenant by excommunication, they are taken out to be judged by God. But then the curse comes from God himself according to the terms of the broken Adamic covenant of works, not from the New Covenant per se. So excommunication from the church of the New Covenant is not a covenant curse.
Lee Irons—In By Oath Consigned, Kline folds the covenant of grace into the pactum salutis, creating a single covenant that he calls “the covenant of redemption” (BOC, p. 37). This is a logical step that flows from his thesis that all promise covenants are fundamentally law covenants . If all promise covenants are law covenants at root, then
the covenant of grace must ultimately be identical with the pactum salutis, the supreme law covenant which brings about redemptive blessings through Christ’s fulfillment of the law on behalf of the elect. In accordance with his sweeping application of the “priority of law” principle to all covenants, in BOC Kline rejects the “separation”
between the pactum salutis and the covenant of grace (BOC, p. 35).
In KP, by contrast, Kline no longer sees law covenant as the generic
form for promise covenants.
Lee Irons –There are several advantages to Kline’s mature view: First, it enables Kline to highlight more clearly the contrasting principles of works and grace. The operative principle of the pactum salutis is works, whereas the operative principle of the covenant of grace is grace. The pactum salutis is a covenant of works. It is not
the Adamic covenant of works, since that covenant still stands in some sense though broken by Adam’s fall, its curse sanction is still operative and will be executed upon all who are not in the salvation-ark through faith in Christ.
Second, the covenant of grace is not a covenant of works, with blessings promised for obedience. Rather it is a free OFFER of the gospel in which all who respond to the OFFER by extending the empty hand of faith receive the blessings in Christ. This is related to the long-debated question among covenant theologians as to whether the
covenant of grace is conditional or unconditional, which in turn is related to the doctrine of justification. Kline would say the covenant of grace is conditional – in the sense that faith is the sole condition of the covenant. Not all who are members of the covenant of grace are elect, and therefore not all have faith. …. Additionally, faith as the condition of the covenant of grace is itself a gift, one of the chief blessings that Christ has earned for his people in the pactum salutis.
Third, the distinction between the covenant of grace and the pactum salutis is relevant to the argument for infant baptism. If the covenant of grace is folded into or equated with the pactum salutis, it is hard to avoid the implication that the covenant of grace is made only with the elect…
Click to access BOC-compared-with-KP.pdf
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Wedgeworth–The FV men wanted to correct the legacy of covenant theology by making it more “biblical” than “scholastic.” In this they were following John Murray and Palmer Robertson and were engaged in a
sort of anti-Klineanism. James Jordan often drew from the work of Meredith Kline, but over and against Kline’s desire to synthesize modern biblical theology with scholastic federal theology, Jordan argued that modern biblical theology should correct and redefine classic federal theology. Several FV writers consistently chose radical Klinean
writers as their foils when making revisionist arguments. They would hold forth a Klinean representative, but instead of identifying them as an outlier of the Reformed tradition, they would typically claim that the Klinean view was a logical extension of some root concept or motivation of earlier federal theology. Since the Klinean conclusion
was thought to be obviously unacceptable, the earlier motivating theology was also said to be in need of correction
James Jordan–It is God who applies the benefits of the atonement as God sees fit. God is free to apply the full and special benefit of the atonement to some people temporarily and to others permanently. The special benefits of the atonement are “limited” in this world to those elected in THE CHURCH, and they are limited in the world to come to those elected to heaven.
James Jordan–The special (“limited”) benefits of the atonement are for those who are “in Christ.” Those who leave the Vine, who forsake the Olive Tree, cease to be “in Christ” and cease to receive the special benefits of the atonement. In the same way, many of those who received the benefit of the first Passover and were delivered from Egypt, eventually lost that benefit and died in the wilderness.
James Jordan–Only such an ECCLESIAL conception of “limited atonement” can account for passages like 2 Peter 2:1, which speaks of those who “deny the Master who bought them.” These men were “bought” the same as all other Christians, and received exactly the same thing, being put “in Christ.” The atonement was “for them” in exactly the same way it was for Peter and John. But when they denied the Lord, they lost the special benefits of the atonement. All of this, of course, was in the plan of God.
https://calvinistinternational.com/2020/01/13/the-federal-vision-a-systematic-critique/
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Steven Wedgeworth—The area where the Joint FV Statement departs from the typical Reformed tradition is in its allowance of paedocommuion, “Unless there has been lawful disciplinary action by the Church, we affirm that any
baptized person, children included, should be welcome at the Table.” This statement does not, however, enter into any of the specifics of the theology behind paedocommunion, and so little can be extrapolated from this statement alone. Do the FV men consider paedocommunion strictly necessary? Are churches in sin that do not practice it? What
role does faith have in the proper partaking of the Lord’s Supper? How are “entrance requirements” to be determined? These questions are all left open, and there was no common FV answer to them. Paedocommuion “fit” within the larger FV outlook, as it reinforced the objectivity of the covenant community and the role of covenant nurture …
Kline writes about ‘the proper purpose of the covenant, the salvation of the elect.” p 34. But Kline cautions that “we are not to reduce the redemptive covenant to that proper purpose.” Those who don’t continue to believe the gospel are condemned. While people are already condemned, they are condemned even more when they reject the gospel…. But Kline resisted the “bent toward such a reduction of covenant to election. To do so is to substitute a logical abstraction for the historical reality…”
mcmark–I certainly agree that the non-elect have the duty to believe the gospel, despite inability. And you could even say it this way: all have a duty to come into the new covenant in which “all know the Lord “. But this is something different from saying that the non-elect are ever in the new covenant, and will be cursed and broken off if they don’t continue to believe. The gospel commands us to declare our bankruptcy and this rules out past and future covenant keeping BY US as conditions for blessing.
Lee Irons—In BOC, Kline folds the covenant of grace into the pactum salutis, creating a single covenant that he calls “the covenant of redemption” (BOC, p. 37). This is a logical step that flows from his thesis that all promise covenants are fundamentally law covenants (see Discontinuity 4). If all promise covenants are law covenants at root, then the covenant of grace must ultimately be identical with the pactum salutis, the supreme law covenant which brings about redemptive blessings through Christ’s fulfillment of the law on behalf of the elect. In accordance with his sweeping application of the “priority of law” principle to all covenants, in BOC Kline rejects the “separation” between the pactum salutis and the covenant of grace (BOC, p. 35). In KP, by contrast, Kline no longer sees law covenant as the generic form for promise covenants.
Click to access BOC-compared-with-KP.pdf
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