The Priority
Although no fundamental issue of theology, or specifically of soteriology, would be at stake if regeneration were giving the priority in the application of redemption, yet the evidence shows that the call occupies this position. If we fail to accord to it the place which the exegetical considerations demand, we miss a great deal of the emphasis of Scripture and are also liable to overlook what belongs to its specific and distinguishing character. The key passage evincing its priority is Romans 8: 29, 30. There are so many indication of order in this passage that we are compelled to regard the apostle as enunciating the order: calling, justification, glorification, in verse 30, and also establishing calling as the act of grace directly joined to predestination, and as that which in the realm of application brings the latter to expression. Other passages, particularly those in the Pauline epistles, create the strongest presumption in favour of the conclusion which Romans 8:29, 30 would require (cf. 1 Cor. 1:9; Gal. 1:15; 2 Tim. 1:9; 1 Peter. 2:9; 5:10; 2 Pet. 1:10). (John Murray on “The Call†in Collected Writings, vol. 2, pp. 161-62.)
85 Comments
Darryl
Right, now we can get back to the real discussion without all this “reformed whodunnit” or … “didn’tdoit” – I don’t know.
My problem with what you have articulated is that it is true of all of salvation. Salvation is not possible without regeneration, calling, sanctification, perseverance, glorification. So the “Salvation is not possible without justification card” is applicable to ANY and indeed EVERY aspect of redemption. Salvation is not salvation with any one of these component parts. Fact. Now you say that salvation is possible without full sanctification – sure, but it’s not possible without partial sanctification. So we are back where we started.
If you take one block out, the wall falls, at least from where I am standing. Now don’t misread me, that is not to deny any such logical priority of justification. But you can’t use the ‘salvation is not possible…” play because it is true in every single aspect of redemption.
Does that make sense?
Blessings
Matt
PS Darryl, glad you could check back in … we picked up sides in your absence, apparently you and Kline are still awaiting to be picked. I’ll have a word with the skipper and see if you can join our team, Apparently the captain drinks beer AND reads novels. Cool.
Justification is the heart. You can be alive without a functioning brain. You can be alive without ability to move your limbs. You can’t be alive without a functioning heart.
Muller goes on in that reference I cited earlier to say Reformed orthodox distinguished between the initial uniting (think one and done legal) and the ongoing union (think sanctification which happens in the rest of the life of the believer.
In the same article in that dictionary Muller also uses ‘regeneration’ as synonymous with the point of justification and adoption.
In my experience I don’t tend to think there was much time, if any, between being regenerated by the Word and the Spirit and having faith. It may have been a very innocent faith (not based on much understanding of doctrine), yet faith is faith.
Union is a snare and a delusion (I once read a review of a recording of a work by Mozart where the reviewer called the recording “a snare and a delusion” ha ha) when the motive for focusing on it is ‘regeneration by ritual’ (baptismal regeneration), or when it is being used to deflect from justification by faith alone. Otherwise, my side really likes union and our guys even include whole chapters in their systematic theologies to mystical union (they even use the cool word ‘mystical’ without getting slammed by other Reformed theologians).
Saying you are being crucified because you point out that the Westminster Standards reference union is empty and silly. The false teachers are using ‘union’ against justification by faith alone the same way they use ‘grace’ to excise the Covenant of Works from the Garden.
I used excise wrong, and I frankly can’t think of the word I meant to use. I’ll just say ‘cut out.’
Ok, but Christian, no one on this list with whom you are talking is using union in the way you seem to be attacking. So, either you are completely unable to carry on a nuanced theological conversation or you are simply lumping together anyone who talks about union with the “false teachers” out of an overreaction. You say that talking about union – even having whole chapters on it – is acceptable. So, why can’t we talk about it without you going into rants about false teachers, regeneration by ritual, etc. I mean, if your complaint is that the “false teachers” use the language of union to spread their false teachings they probably use paedobaptism, catechism and preaching, too. Should we get rid of those also?
You still have not sufficiently answered my questions so I will simply assume you concede the point. Union comes before justification and the other benefits flow from that union. That is the Confessions stance via the catechisms.
I don’t understand why it is that you keep mentioning Muller without actually quoting him. I hope you get a commission whenever you do. I will be sure to tell him you said ‘hi’ the next time I see him. Maybe I can get you an autographed book…any preferences on which one?
Christian, my comments weren’t directed to you, so I’d appreciate you let someone who has something worth saying (that would be Darryl), say it. Any conversation with you is fruitless.
It’s not all about you, Matthew. (Or maybe it is. I don’t know. Maybe it is all about you, and I just didn’t get the memo.)
cnh, I’m going to be serious with you. In my initial comments I got to the heart of these matters. Look at the John Owen quote in the early part of this thread. Regeneration is the main thing. This makes people angry. False teachers despise any notion of regeneration by the Word and the Spirit. The Roman Catholic Church in it most corrupt era kept the Word of God away from people on pain of torture and death *so that* regeneration could not happen. Notice though they called people to be *baptized* all day long. The devil knows what regenerates, and it’s not ritual.
As for the sophistry with union, you just have to entertain the possibility there is more going on there than you currently can discern. The false teachers – I repeat – use union to lessen justification by faith alone the exact same way they use grace to erase the Covenant of Works from the Garden.
The entire enterprise of the false teachers is to keep people in the system of the Beast, working for their own salvation, exalting man and ritual above the Word and the Spirit.
You want union with God before you are made right with God by God Himself. This is not entering in by the front door. You’ll get kicked out of the Wedding. (Practically speaking you’ve yet to be broken in your vanity, worldly pride, and rebellious self-will, and you are making demands on God and His plan. A Christian needs an internal reorientation from being man-centered to being God-centered.) I and everybody else who annoys you like I’ve been doing am doing you a favor.
cnh, I’m not persuaded about definitive sanctification. It is the peculiar view of Murray.
Matt, you make a point with which I must agree. But who talks about regeneration or sanctification as the doctrine upon which the church stands or falls? It seems to me that some are saying that of union. In either case, justification is the crown jewel of benefits because it has to do with the righteousness that makes us right with God, which is what salvation is about — as in saved from sin and death.
Jeff, if faith produces union, then union is a benefit applied in the application of redemption. But in previous discussions you have talked about union as a mechanism, akin to an instrument, which is akin to faith. And this is where I see a lot of confusion — is union a benefit that comes with the application of redemption or is it an instrument. in the application of redemption?
cnh, union only hurts (me, at least) when it denies the priority (and importance) of justification to sanctification. Frankly, I don’t care if union is before or after justification. I am awfully concerned though about making justification and sanctification so simultaneous that you can then say good works or personal righteousness are necessary for salvation (as opposed to good works being the necessary consequence-outcome of saving faith). So far, a lot of union talk has been designed to avoid antinomianism and to fashion an incentive for personal holiness. It may be a genetic fallacy or impolite, but that was what was motiving Shepherd too. Which is why union has been used as a covered for Shepherd like views (as in Kinnaird).
There’s an assertion out of thin air! What do you mean? How does this follow?
Jeff, you appear to be saying that we are united to Christ by faith. I (along with lots of others) am saying that we are justified by faith. Union and justification, then, appear to be in a similar relationship to faith. Since justification is a benefit of the redemption purchased by Christ, is union such a benefit? Other times you have seemed to speak of union more on the order of faith, as an instrument that produces justification.
Daryl you wrote,
“Frankly, I don’t care if union is before or after justification. I am awfully concerned though about making justification and sanctification so simultaneous that you can then say good works or personal righteousness are necessary for salvation (as opposed to good works being the necessary consequence-outcome of saving faith). ”
So I should gather that you would have problems with this sort of language, “Are good works necessary to justification? We deny. Are good works necessary to salvation? We affirm.”
Jesse, I need more context to answer your question. What surrounds these quotes?
I am comfortable and affirm WCF16 2: good works “are the fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith, etc.”
The context is Turretin on Sanctification and Good Works.
In this same chapter he opens by making plain that sanctification stands for the “real change of man” which for him takes place in three ways, efficacious calling, regeneration and infusion and practice of righteousness (which I learned from Christian just yesterday!). All three of these come under the broad category of sanctification, a term that can by used to stand for the whole Christian life.
Now he agrees that there is a stricter usage of the term (one that you seem to want to make the exclusive use and seem to posit that only Murray spoke otherwise) which does “follow” justification though begun in the act of regeneration.
In this section he goes on to talk about justification and sanctification being distinct but never “torn asunder”. Several pages later he enters into his discussion on the necessity of good works. And the quote you see is his topic heading.
Of course he will make all the proper distinctions, at least from where I am sitting, but it does not seem, by what you say above and elsewhere, that you find this way of speaking proper. Can we affirm with him that as a ground of our salvation and standing works have no place, “Rather the question concerns the necessity of means, of presence and of connection or order – Are they required as the means and way for possessing salvation? This we hold.”
He does go on to say such a formula was rejected by certain “Lutheran theologians as less suitable and dangerous; nay, even by some of our theologians; still we think with others that it can be retained without danger if properly explained.”
Maybe you are one of the “some” of which he speaks. I would not begrudge you this right, but when we begin (like Christian) to talk beyond what the tradition binds others to as if it were “just this way”, I begin to lose a bit of my catholic spirit.
Jesse, here’s one part of a response, without having read more of Turretin or the context for his formulations. No one who asserts the priority of justification denies sanctification, though the charge of antinomianism has been used against priority. BTW, I’ve heard that Turretin affirmed the priority or the forensic. So as long as the priority is affirmed, I’m comfortable generally with some of the language about necessity of good works.
Also, the opponents of priority have often wanted to insist that Reformed and Lutherans have different understandings of justification. So the concern for catholicity is as much a concern for me as it might be for you against Christian.
Finally, why is union essential to what Turretin says? Is his a point about union or about sanctification? In other words, aren’t some insisting on a certain language about union in order to affirm T’s views on sanctification? I’m not sure how that follows, as in my first point, the priority of justification is not antinomian (at least as Paul understood the charge of antinomianism and also was able to say that the works of the law kill and condemn.)
Darryl, may I call you Darryl?
I understand your desire for priority. That said, do the “unionists” not also affirm the priority of justification? But then of course once we say priority we have to get into all those pesky issues of what sort of “priority” we are talking about. And before we can do that we have to define what “manner” of speech we are using with reference to sanctification (broader or narrower as Turretin says).
Why is union essential to what Turretin is saying? I guess I would refer back to the LC 66 issues and the placement of union which would then give context for the whole conversation itself. And again, I am not insisting you speak this way, but I am not willing to give in and say therefore no one should speak this way because it’s “not reformed” and compromises “justification by faith”.
Rev. Pirschel, you may call me Darryl. I’ve been called worse.
Why all the qualifications about priority? Our communion has affirmed it, at least the GA study committee. What are the errors that attend a “wrong” statement of priority? And doesn’t the idea of the material principle of the Reformation suggest a certain kind of priority of justification for all Protestants?
If you want to defend Turretin by referring to LC 66, I guess that’s okay but I’m still not sure that is his point or theirs, or that union is as central to the Standards as some read them. I mean, in that section of the LC, communion, not union, is the heading for talking about the benefits like justification, etc. So it is this effort to see union everywhere that I find puzzling. LC 66 does talk about union and then goes to effectual calling. LC 69 discusses communion and then goes to justification, adoption, and sanctification. (Communion is missing explicitly from the SC.) This means that I could read the standards as saying communion is more basic than union. So why in that part of the LC focus on union and not communion?
No offense, but it seems arbitrary and I fear something else is going on with this stress on union. Seeing the way union has been used by FVers and Kinnaird, I’d think the unionists would be quick to clarify they are not saying that. And yet more opposition to Lutheran or Lutheran-like statements of forensic priority than these other problem spots have come from unionists.
Why all the qualifications? No personal reason, just laying out what Turretin was careful to make distinctions about. I guess I could retort, “Why the fear of qualifications?” But I know what you are trying to protect, I get it and I know the dangers of not doing so, pastorally/theologically etc. Moralism is a drag, dont want no part of it.
As an aside, I find it amusing how our “communion” spoke in a received report but apparently did not speak in its official exercise of the keys with regard to Kinnaird. We all have our ways of reading animus now don’t we?
This is where the real issue is for me; the our team versus your team mentality. I thought we were on the same team. I mean I cant go to 99% of churches out there because of what I believe, do we really need a new reformation over whether sanctification and justification are temporally simultaneous? Isnt it more important to make certain that we believe justification has its ground in Christ’s work alone received by me by faith alone? A faith that, while in no way meritorious, will pursue pleasing God? And when it fails, and it will daily, hourly and moment by moment, finds it’s rest in Christ’s work for me?
It would seem from our discussion that the confession isn’t as clear as we would like on the precise matter at hand, so do we need to be wholly agreed here to walk together? Some act, on both sides of the debate, as if we cannot. I disagree (even Turretin knew their would be guys like you who were closet liberal, limp wristed, quasi Lutherans in the Reformed church). And for those who take themselves a bit too seriously that was a joke.
Hi Dr. Hart,
The issue is one of comparing unlike things…
DGH: Jeff, you appear to be saying that we are united to Christ by faith.
Yes. (WSC 30).
DGH: I (along with lots of others) am saying that we are justified by faith.
Yes. (Citations not necessary!)
DGH: Union and justification, then, appear to be in a similar relationship to faith.
No.
DGH: Since justification is a benefit of the redemption purchased by Christ, is union such a benefit?
No.
DGH: Other times you have seemed to speak of union more on the order of faith, as an instrument that produces justification.
No.
Let me carefully explain the No’s.
By faith, God unites us, brings us into union with Christ. This means that what is mine (sin) is his; and what is his (righteousness) is mine.
There are two aspects of this union. Legally, He is my federal head. So in Him, I am declared righteous (Phil 3). Experientially, Christ dwells in our hearts through faith. So Christ in us (via the Holy Spirit) produces the fruit of righteousness.
Hence: justification is a benefit, a manifestation of my union with Christ (WLC 69).
By contrast, union is the mechanism, the process by which that justification takes place. In re justification, union is a synonym for imputation: Christ’s righteousness is legally reckoned to me.
By further contrast, faith is the instrument, the “thing” that receives God’s grace.
So comparing justification to union to faith is like comparing apples to food transportation to trucks. There just isn’t any way to compare them.
This is why “union” doesn’t appear in an ordo salutis. Union is not a part of salvation that happens; it comprehends the whole of salvation. Our justification, adoption, and sanctification (and other benefits) manifest our union (WLC 69).
JRC
DGH: So why in that part of the LC focus on union and not communion?
Why talk about redemption and not salvation? Surely synonyms can be used!
DGH: No offense, but it seems arbitrary and I fear something else is going on with this stress on union. Seeing the way union has been used by FVers and Kinnaird…
Frankly, the FV is late in the game. They were able to make headway because the notion of union, and the notion of the visible church, and the notion of the efficacy of sacraments, were already established categories that were then advanced beyond their proper station. Had they come out with this radical new idea (“Hey everyone, ‘union’ is a great description of our salvation!”) then your fear would make more sense.
Go back to earlier sources on union to understand it properly. Or even modern sources, like A. Hoekema, who treat it in a classic manner.
Jeff, you’ve lost me but a blog is no place to do ST. You say union and communion are synonyms. They may be for you but I suspect they weren’t for the Divines. This is why I really would ask for more attention to the word “communion” in WLC 69. They could have uses union if they are synonyms. They could have simply put the answer to 69 in 66. But they made a distinction and you just seem to brush it away.
The same goes for your traffic between instrument and mechanism. When you write your ST you’ll have more space to spell this out. But for now I am not convinced that it is a synonym. And for that reason, I’m still trying to wrap my head around union, which like Waldo keeps popping up everywhere.
Jesse, some of the team spirit has persisted because of the Shepherd controversy which was never seriously addressed in the OPC. Both sides in that struggle have been wary since. And I’d say that one side has been pushier of late in the charges of Lutheran and in saying that the doctrine of justification needs to be improved by adding more on union, definitive sanctification, the list could go on. Wouldn’t it make sense that in the context of an unresolved controversy over justification you perhaps state clearly what you are and are not saying about improving justification. At least Shepherd spelled it out in 34 theses and several papers.
BTW, our communion’s ruling on Kinnaird included provisions that he shouldn’t be teaching his views, and the lack of clarity in that verdict prompted the report on justification. Do you really think you are barred from 99 % of the churches because of your views? Are your views that widely known? (I don’t really know them.) I do know that some people advise against calling certain graduates of a certain seminary because of the forensic priority.
DGH: And for that reason, I’m still trying to wrap my head around union
Well, like I said, go back to the earlier sources on union rather than more modern ones, especially ones that reflect something of the OPC struggle, which I really don’t understand.
I think AA Hodge’s treatment is pretty clear.
As for brushing aside differences, I beg of you to overlook my presumption in thinking that “communion” would mean “union with.”
The communion in grace which the members of the invisible church have with Christ, is their partaking of the virtue of his mediation, in their justification, adoption, sanctification, and: Whatever else, in this life, manifests their union with him. — WLC 69.
JRC
But Jeff, you’re living now and you’re writing in this context. Perhaps you can connect the dots and show how in the current context Hodge or WLC 69 needs to be understood. I have never said this idea is foreign to the tradition. I have said that the idea is not resting quietly on today’s troubled waters.
Darryl,
The 99% comment was not of the OPC but of the church universal. We are reformed and bound by the same confession, that means much of the american church wants nothing to do with us. It was simply my way of saying if the two sides have this much in common, are we going to let the East/West union issue be the way to get the percentage to 99.5%.
As far as which side is pushier, I didnt know the issues were so stark until certain blogs informed me how unreformed definitive sanctification was and how everyone knows the whole reformed tradition really held to republication in the way certain men define it. Its a two-way street, let’s be honest.
Jesse, I’d say that if some people had been pushier with Shepherd than with those who were pushy with Shepherd the church would be spared much of this suspicion. Again, the context is what partly accounts for this tension. One coast has been candid about the justification controversy. The other has not. And the stuff about definitive sanctification and republication make a lot more sense when seen in the context of that controversy over justification that started in the 1970s and keeps rumbling along.
DGH: Perhaps you can connect the dots and show how in the current context Hodge or WLC 69 needs to be understood.
I thought I had been connecting dots for some time now?
The understanding in the current context should be, IMO, the same understanding as in Hodge’s day, or as in Westminster’s.
We are justified by faith by the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. One way of expressing that is that we are united with Him and His righteousness thereby becomes ours.
I encourage you to go back and re-read, say, Inst. 3 with an eye toward the prominence of union in Calvin’s thought.
Here is how he begins Chapter 3, titled, “The way in which we receive the grace of Christ”:
We must now see in what way we become possessed of the blessings which God has bestowed on his only-begotten Son, not for private use, but to enrich the poor and needy. And the first thing to be attended to is, that so long as we are without Christ and separated from him, nothing which he suffered and did for the salvation of the human race is of the least benefit to us. To communicate to us the blessings which he received from the Father, he must become ours and dwell in us. Accordingly, he is called our Head, and the first-born among many brethren, while, on the other hand, we are said to be ingrafted into him and clothed with him, all which he possesses being, as I have said, nothing to us until we become one with him.
And the answer to the question, “in what way?” is, Faith.
Or look at what Calvin thinks of baptism:
The last advantage [of three -- JRC] which our faith receives from baptism is its assuring us not only that we are ingrafted into the death and life of Christ, but so united to Christ himself as to be partakers of all his blessings. For he consecrated and sanctified baptism in his own body (Matt. 3:13), that he might have it in common with us as the firmest bond of union and fellowship which he deigned to form with us; and hence Paul proves us to be the sons of God, from the fact that we put on Christ in baptism, (Gal. 3: 26-27.) Thus we see the fulfilment of our baptism in Christ, whom for this reason we call the proper object of baptism. — Inst 4.15.
While I agree with you that union should not displace JBFA in our thinking; nor is it to be a despised doctrine and given a place secondary to ordo salutis.
And in historical fact, the doctrine of union precedes the doctrine of ordo by a good 50 years or so (taking Perkins’ Golden Chain to be the first articulation of the ordo)
>As far as which side is pushier, I didnt know the issues were so stark until certain blogs informed me how unreformed definitive sanctification was
Definitive sanctification is not unReformed. Tweaking it into service with union to trump justification is unReformed. Clearly a more direct way of stating it would have been: “I didnt know the issues were so stark until certain blogs informed me how unreformed Murray’s idea of definitive sanctification was…”
>and how everyone knows the whole reformed tradition really held to republication in the way certain men define it. Its a two-way street, let’s be honest.
It’s called Federal Theology, the spine of which is the two Adams. The confusion is between republication vs. ‘reestablishment’ which if not explained understandably gets the sola fide warriors (of which I’m one) who don’t yet know the issues up in arms and allows the false teachers an open field of confusion to ply their trade.
Jesus was born *under the law* and fulfilled what the first Adam failed to fulfill. That law was republished on Sinai to demonstrate this. National Israel was a proto-type of the Messiah. National Israel’s very history mirrors the history of the man Jesus Christ. The law was republished in elaborated form to give evidence that Jesus fulfilled what Adam failed to fulfill. Only Jesus could, after the fall.
There is only way to be saved: works. Either our own (good luck with that), or Jesus Christ’s, appropriated by faith.
A point that gets missed on this subject is this: though national Israel was saved by faith in the coming Messiah just as we are saved by faith in the already come Messiah, national Israel still was as unique a player in God’s plan of redemption as the first Adam was unique and as Jesus Christ Himself is unique. The history of national Israel was the actual *substance* of biblical history, for one thing (the failure to save themselves or keep their land by their works following the law is the example for us all driving us all to Christ, for instance). National Israel, also, was a type of Christ. Fallen man is none of those things. The apostle Paul, in Romans, struggles to explain how national Israel is different from fallen man in general yet at the same time the same as fallen man. National Israel’s status as a *unique player* in God’s plan of redemption is the subject of that struggle to explain. Though he makes it clear once one knows the ‘whole’ and can see the parts in relation to the whole.
There is only [one] way to be saved: works. Either our own (good luck with that), or Jesus Christ’s, appropriated by faith.
I said definitive sanctification is not unReformed. Here is a passage from John Owen posted in a thread over at the Heidelblog that states the Reformed understanding:
“One thing we must premise to clear our ensuing discourse from
ambiguity ; and this is, that there is mention in the Scripture of a
twofold sanctification, and consequently of a twofold holiness. The first is common unto persons and things, consisting in the peculiar
dedication, consecration, or separation of them unto the service of
God by his own appointment, whereby they become holy. Thus the
priests and Levites of old, the ark, the altar, the tabernacle, and the
temple, were sanctified and made holy; and indeed in all holiness
whatever, there is a peculiar dedication and separation unto God.
But in the sense mentioned, this was solitary and alone. No more
belonged unto it but this sacred separation, nor was there any other
effect of this sanctification. But, secondly, there is another kind
of sanctification and holiness, wherein this separation to God is not
the first thing done or intended, but a consequent and effect thereof.
This is real and internal, by the communicating of a principle of
holiness unto our natures, attended with its exercise in acts and
duties of holy obedience unto God.â€
Jeff, the quotes from Calvin sound like union is election — becoming ingrafted into Christ, our federal head. That’s a different point of ST than the application of redemption or the work of Christ. They are related. But again, the union-talk needs to be systematized — that is, we need to see how it fits into ST if it is a breakthrough. (But again, then the point seems to shift when you say it’s as old as the hills.)
But you don’t say anything here about the context. Why the stress on union? Why now?
DGH: Jeff, the quotes from Calvin sound like union is election — becoming ingrafted into Christ, our federal head. That’s a different point of ST than the application of redemption or the work of Christ.
Interesting interpretation. If so, then why is he speaking of “becoming possessed of the blessings we have in Christ…”? Sure sounds like the application of redemption to me.
DGH: …we need to see how it fits into ST if it is a breakthrough.
It isn’t a breakthrough; else it wouldn’t be in the Confession and the Institutes. It may be that the notion that “union is central to Calvin’s thought” is a more recent idea — and one that I would disagree with.
DGH: But you don’t say anything here about the context. Why the stress on union? Why now?
Don’t know. My spring break plan, Lord willing, is to read up and find out what I can.
—
Let me ask you a couple of questions, if I may.
* When you say that justification has logical priority before sanctification, what do you mean precisely?
* In your view, why does the Confession not directly teach an ordo? Does this imply that ordo is a doctrine in which there is liberty of belief?
* Calvin’s approach to salvation is that faith takes hold of two separate benefits, justification and repentance (which he also calls “regeneration”). He does not make one logically dependent on the other, but both as mutually present in the redeemed man (Inst 3.3.1) — one cannot partake of repentance without imputation; one cannot partake of imputation without repentance. Is this a deficiency?
JRC
Jeff, on you first question, I’ll quote from the OPC’s report on justification: “In addition to the doctrine of union with Christ, the idea of the ordo salutis makes clear that justification is prior to sanctification. This is not priority in the sense that one is somehow more important than the other. Neither is it a temporal priority, strictly speaking, for there is no such thing as a justified person who is not also being sanctified. But while justification is the necessary prerequisite of the process of sanctification, that process is not the necessary prerequisite of justification. It is true to say that one must be justified in order to be sanctified; but it is untrue to say that one must be sanctified in order to be justified. Justification and sanctification bear
a relationship to each other that cannot be reversed.”
I am puzzled by your third question. In context, it seems to use regenration, repentance, and sanctification interchangeably. Remember, where you see synonyms (union and communion), I do not.
Regarding an ordo in the Confession, I guess you can find one there, but it is not entirely clear. I mean, why teach on faith (ch. 14) after justification (chap. 11)?
On the third question, I was issuing the standard disclaimer one encounters reading Calvin: his use of the term “regeneration” is different from the later usage.
He explicitly equates it with “repentance”: In one word, then, by repentance I understand regeneration, the only aim of which is to form in us anew the image of God, which was sullied, and all but effaced by the transgression of Adam. — Inst. 3.3.9.
The only reason I pointed it out was to make sure that you didn’t think I was saying that effectual calling is the result of faith!