Over at Justin Taylor’s blog comes word that Dane Ortlund has published an article on the relationship between justification and sanctification in the writings of Bavinck and Berkouwer. The summary point is as follows:
. . . these two Dutch Reformed thinkers are united in their understanding of justification as the self-conscious means of sanctification. The point is not that justification must be viewed (logically) as preceding sanctification rather than the other way round. Nor is the point that justification provides the ground for sanctification. Nor are they simply agreeing that sanctification must not be thought of as moralistic self-effort. On all this orthodox Protestant theology of various stripes is agreed.
Whether or not Ortlund is correct, his point about the priority of justification is one that union proponents may want to consider when arguing that the focus on justification is a form of Luther envy.
Ortlund goes on:
Bavinck and Berkouwer are making a more penetrating point. They understand that it is quite possible to decry self-resourced progress in holiness while retaining an unhealthy disconnect between justification and sanctification that sees justification as something beyond which one
‘graduates’ in Christian living. They argue that justification is to be seen as ‘settled’ in that the verdict is irreversibly delivered, yet justification is not to be seen as ‘settled’ in the sense that one must now therefore move on to sanctification. Justification is settled materially but retains critical ongoing epistemic import in Christian living. . . . We are justified by self-renouncing faith; we are sanctified by that same faith.
But this is not where Ortlund ends. For some reason he feels compelled to evaluate B&B Theological Enterprises according to standards established by Jonathan Edwards, where Ortlund finds the doctrine of union as the larger rubric for a holistic soteriology. He writes:
Justification is not only relevant for entrance into the people of God and for final acquittal, but, in between these two events, is the critical factor in the mind of the believer for healthy progressive sanctification.
This insight should, however, be placed into the larger soteriological framework of union with Christ. As has been argued by many in the tradition to which Bavinck and Berkouwer belong, union with Christ should be seen as the broadest soteriological rubric, within which both justification and sanctification are subsumed. . . . Had Berkouwer listened more closely to an American strand of his own Reformed tradition (especially Jonathan Edwards), he could have had the more balanced view of Bavinck while retaining his basic point as to the critical role justification plays in ongoing sanctification.
After reading this I’m left scratching my head once again when the subject of union comes up. First, I thought the Dutch Reformed were the most important for the recent recovery of the doctrine of union. Why they’d have to read Edwards to find the genuine article is not exactly the way I have heard the doctrine explained. Are union proponents reading from the same history of doctrine?
Second, a monergistic understanding of sanctification or union is of no great help in the Christian life the way it is commonly explained, as if a rebuttal to Rome’s charges of antinomianism. If union is the work of the Spirit, as is sanctification, how can Protestants claim that these doctrines or realities become motivations for good works? Rome’s logic was that once God does it all in salvation, a believer has no reason to be virtuous. Of course, Protestants rightly respond that the work of the Spirit is a reality that is conforming believers more to the image of Christ. Good works are inevitable such that those that are justified are also sanctified. But conformity to the image of Christ is not the work of a believer. It is the work of the Spirit.
In which case, Rome’s accusation stands. The Spirit-wrought nature of salvation in the Protestant scheme has an antinomian impulse and appearance because good works are not the substance or catalyst for any of the blessings of Christ’s work.
So I’m still wondering how great a breakthrough union is. It is a thought almost as befuddling where to find union in the history of Reformed doctrine.
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I thought the earlier Richard Gaffin quote was interesting: “Paul characteristically refers the vocabulary of sanctification *not* to a process but to a definitive act occurring at the inception of the Christian life (Acts 20:32; 26:18; 1 Cor 1:2; 6:11; Eph 5:25; 2 Tim 2:21; 1 Thess 4:7; 2 Thess 2:13)…For believers, having been raised with Christ is their (definitive) sanctification because Christ’s resurrection is *his* sanctification.” Gaffin, Resurrection and Redemption, pp. 124, 125.
What do you think?
Richard,
I’m not sure how this clarifies either the history or the formulation.
I’ve looked at this issue for over a decade and honestly all I can finally land on is certain professors saw union as an organizing principle upon which BT would reformulate or better yet recast, ala murray on covenant, reformed soteriological formulation. Yet, after the Shepherd dust up the tolerance for such reinvention was greatly reduced and we’ve been forced to endure; ‘suggestions’, ‘draw your own conclusions, but let me point you in the direction I want you to go’ types of leading on the issue. It was actually refreshing to see Garcia actually go after WSC in Ordained Servant on the issue. Not that I agree with Garcia, but at least what’s been under the surface for over 30 years gets put on display.
Since I am the one who quoted Gaffin I’ll weigh in. In that same book, Gaffin completely recognizes that what he proposes is somewhat of a departure with some figures in the tradition, in a qualified sense that he makes clear. So those who follow Vos, Ridderbos, Gaffin, etc. on union recognize the difference from those other individuals within the tradition.
What some, including myself, continually look for in these discussions is more of a hermeneutic issue – the exegesis laid out in R&R is very detailed and very thorough, and that is where the discussion, if Scripture is to inform the issue foundationally, needs to begin and in the same breath let me say the discussion should also not ignore the tradition, although at points being free to disagree when the biblically consistent exegesis concludes something different. Gaffin constantly gives a nod to the tradition in dealing with Calvin, Hodge, Kuyper, Warfield, and many others. What I continually look for and would be happy to be pointed toward is a careful, exegetical response to the lengthy and thorough exegetical arguments made by Vos, Gaffin, etc.
Jared, but isn’t the real obligation on the side of those engaged in exegesis to make proposals of a systematic theological nature. Every pastor in many a church exegetes Scripture every Sunday. But how many are working within a system of doctrine? So the question is really how to integrate the exegesis into the system, not to get the systematicians to propose an alternative exegesis of passages preselected by the unionists.
Right, that last part is a false dichotomy, isn’t it?
The point is that the system of doctrine within the tradition that believes in the centrality of justification over union is what you believe is correct not because it is simply within your tradition, but (I hope) because you believe that system is tethered to the truths in Scripture derived from *biblically consistent* exegesis. A system is necessary and can’t be avoided; what I’m arguing for are the controls on the system which is Scripture interpreting Scripture, and those conclusions and statements as part of that biblically consistent system. Of course pastors and theologians have and will continue to claim the very same method I’m stating here and come up with different and varying conclusions that are false, but misuse of a method doesn’t negate its value. Systematic conclusions should be non-speculative, tethered to Scripture, and how that works out will be different depending on the individual systematic conclusions/statements.
I don’t mind the attempt to have a “formulation” or “grammar”. I just don’t think it’s fair for the “redemptive-historical” folks to pose as if they were less dogmatic about an order of salvation than the rest of us. When Gal 3 teaches that Christ was cursed by the law in order to give the blessing of Abraham (the Holy Spirit) to Gentiles, it is also teaching that adoption logically precedes the gift of the Spirit to individuals.
Why is NOT ok to say that we have Christ in us because of our justification, but IS ok to say that we have justification (and definite sanctification) because we have Christ in us? Why must we say “in Christ because of Christ in us”, instead of “Christ in us because we are in Christ”?
The elect don’t become united to Christ by believing. God puts the elect “in Christ” by judicial declaration and this effects their wills so they believe the gospel. The new birth does not unite the elect to Christ. The Holy Spirit does not unite the elect to Christ. God unites the elect to Christ on the basis of a federal righteousness. Romans 4:17, “God gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things which do not exist.”
I Corinthians 1:28-30, “God chose even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no flesh can boast in the presence of God. God is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” It is not faith that made God the source of life. It is not the Holy Spirit who made God a source of life. God not only chose the elect in Christ; God also in time judicially declares the elect to have life in Christ.
“Consider your calling,” begins I Corinthians 1: 26. It does not begin with the Holy Spirit changing the elect or causing them to believe. It begins with the Father declaring and calling. It begins with justification. Having Christ indwelling and having life are results of justification. If the elect could have life before justification, it would be too late for justification, and there would be no need for justification. If the elect could have Christ in them before justification, what would be the need for justification? Romans 8:10, “the Spirit is life because of righteousness.”
I know that I disagree with Calvin when I deny that the Holy Spirit unites the elect to Christ. Calvin taught that “union” causes justification, and that the Holy Spirit unites the elect to Christ before they are justified, and that faith in Christ is before justification. Since this is what almost everybody teaches, I won’t multiply quotations. Institutes 3:11;7, “Before his righteousness is received Christ is received in faith.”
Of course we need to remember that, in theory, we all say it happens at one time and that we are only talking about logical order. I agree that the new birth and faith in the gospel happens immediately once God imputes Christ’s righteousness to an elect person. Calvin agrees that, once an elect person has received Christ by faith by means of word or sacrament, that this person is also at the same time justified (although in Calvin’s language, the justified are also progressively justified).
Calvin seems to make everything logically depend on regeneration by the Holy Spirit. Some of us think that everything logically depends on justification by the righteousness of the cross. We are suspicious of any gospel which makes its most basic “reality” to be ultimately about what God does in us, metaphysically or dispositionally or habitually.
While I don’t want to say that regeneration is an “infusion” or even an “impartation” of righteousness, and I certainly don’t think that regeneration comes by means of sacraments, I do not want to discount the wonderful news that God gives the elect a new heart to understand and to keep believing the gospel. Regeneration assures us that the justified, despite their continuing sins, will never stop believing the gospel .
Here’s one more quotation from Calvin (3:11:10): “I confess that we are deprived of justification until Christ is made ours. Therefore, that joining together of Head and members, that indwelling of Christ in our hearts—in short, that mystical union—are accorded by us the highest degree of importance, so that Christ, having been made ours, makes us sharers with him in the gifts with which he has been endowed.. We do not, therefore, contemplate him outside ourselves from afar in order that His righteousness may be imputed to us but because we put on Christ and are engrafted into His body—in short because he deigns to make us one with Him.”
I am questioning the consensus, which says: “As long as Christ is outside us, His righteousness is not yet imputed to us, therefore union with Christ comes before justification.” Of course some of us say there is an unconditional eternal election, but seemingly there’s hardly any need to ever talk about that, because the important thing we all have in common with people who don’t believe in election (the way we do) is that we agree that faith is the condition of union with Christ and that this union with Christ is the condition of justification. Lutherans may not see it that way, but most Arminians and Calvinists do.
Gaffin: “Typically in the Reformation tradition the hope of salvation is expressed in terms of Christ’s righteousness, especially as imputed to the believer…however, I have to wonder if ‘Christ in you’ is not more prominent as an expression of evangelical hope…” p110 Gaffin defines sanctification as power over against sin despite our “incomplete progress, flawed by our continued sinning”.
Gaffin (By Faith Not By Sight) says many good things about imputation. For example, on p51, he lists 3 options for the ground of justification. A. Christ’s own righteousness, complete and finished in his obedience…B. the union itself, the fact of the relationship with Christ…c. the obedience being produced by the transforming Spirit in those in union. Gaffin rightly concludes that “the current readiness to dispense with imputation” results from taking the last two options as the ground of justification.
But Gaffin always has a not yet. Though we are justified now, Gaffin still teaches a justification by sight, ie by works. Instead of saying that works motivated by fear of missing justification are unacceptable to God, Gaffin teaches a justification which is contingent on faith and works.
Gaffin follows his mentors John Murray and Norman Shepherd in taking Romans 2:13 to be describing Christians. Challenging any law-gospel antithesis, Gaffin teaches an “unbreakable bond between justification and sanctification” in the matter of assurance and hope for future justification. (p100)
I suggest that one evidence of effectual calling is that the justified elect do not put their assurance in their “bearing fruit for God”. To work for assurance of future justification is to “bear fruit for death”. Romans 7:5
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