DGH: I am not trying to separate union from justification, nor am I denying union. What I am trying to do is recover for some the import of justification so that folks like you will say “wow” rather than “ho hum, can we discuss union?” I get this impression not just from WTS folks.

Well, if your purpose is to have us say “wow” about justification, then I’ll join you.

And if your purpose is further to say that a man is justified prior to sanctification, I’ll join you also.

In return, can you consider the thesis that union and ordo are complementary and genuinely Reformed ways to express the totality of salvation?

Even if I’m not persuasive, take the word of Hodge and Reymond on it.

That thesis is not, and has never been, that “union was the material principle of the Reformation.”

—

Not to be outdone in pettiness:

Question 69: What is the communion in grace which the members of the invisible church have with Christ?

Answer: 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.

So the reason I said that justification manifests our union with him is that, well, justification manifests our union with him.

At the macro level, I am concerned that you seem to talk about union as if it were the material principle of the Reformation. In other words, justification is only, merely, simply wrapped up in a larger, more profound, more basic idea — union. It seems that justification pales in importance compared to union which solves every single riddle in soteriology.

And yet, a union man like Murray could write (what I’ve already quoted in another post): “The basic question is: How can man be just with God? If man had never sinned the all-important question would have been: How can man be right with God? He would continue to be right with God by fulfilling the will of God perfectly. But the question takes on a radically different complexion with the entrance of sin. Man is wrong with God. And the question is: How can man become right with God? This was Luther’s burning question. He found the answer in Paul’s Epistles to the Romans and the Galatians, that we are justified by faith alone, through grace alone . . . .

“It is to be acknowledged and appreciated that theologians of the Roman Catholic Church are giving a great deal of renewed attention to this subject, and there is a gratifying recognition that “to justify” is “to declare to be righteous”, that it is a declarative act on God’s part. But the central issue of the Reformation remains. Rome still maintains and declares that justification consists in renovation and sanctification, and the decrees of the Council of Trent have not been retracted or repudiated. . .”

Now as important as union was to Murray, he didn’t see union as answering this basic question.

I am not trying to separate union from justification, nor am I denying union. What I am trying to do is recover for some the import of justification so that folks like you will say “wow” rather than “ho hum, can we discuss union?” I get this impression not just from WTS folks.

DGH: Jeff, I thought sanctification had to do with moral renovation. I find it hard to conceive of moral awakening as experiential.

Sorry, I don’t understand. I’m using the term “experiential” to mean that “we experience it.” I would think that if I had a moral awakening I would definitely experience it. If the term communicates something else to you, we could substitute “subjective” as Berkhof does. The term is less important than the concept: sanctification has to do with infused grace, as the Standards teach, and not imputed grace.

DGH: I’d also caution you against some notion of doctrinal development since Calvin on union is usually touted as the zenith. What comes after him should not be an improvement. But Berkhof’s clarity would seem to be just that.

If any touters object, I’ll just have to take my lumps. Calvin is da man, but he’s not God. Berkhof may very well have improved on his language.

OR

He may have simply addressed questions that hadn’t arisen by Calvin’s time. Perhaps the memory is faulty, but isn’t Berkhof writing just about the time that Klaas Schilder and Abraham Kuyper are disagreeing over the meaning of the covenant? Berkhof’s distinction between “subjective” and “federal” union would certainly have had impact on this question (think Shepherd).

—

The doctrine of ordo itself falls in the same category as Berkhof’s distinction. Ordo is not found in Calvin, nor in the Confession, as an explicit teaching. It first appears, AFAIK, in Perkin’s Golden Chain (1580s IIRC), which was written to help clarify questions of Protestant soteriology vis-a-vis Catholic. As such, it was a welcome … wait for it … doctrinal development in soteriology.

So there it is: Ordo is a positive development not found explicitly in Calvin.

(In point of fact, I feel it necessary to point that you’ve been pounding away with the hammer called “union isn’t found frequently in the Standards and early Reformers.” But ordo isn’t found AT ALL in the Standards and early Reformers. Pot, I’m kettle. Nice to meetcha.)

—

The key point here is that the later development of ordo was amenable to prior Reformed doctrine. And as such, it was also amenable to the established doctrine of union. And that doctrine included, at minimum, what Calvin taught in Institutes 3. I encourage all of you to take a look at Fisher’s commentary on WSC 30.

Or as Berkhof says,

Lutherans generally treat the doctrine of the mystical union anthropologically, and therefore conceive of it as established by faith. Hence they naturally take it up at a later point in their soteriology. But this method fails to do full justice to the idea of our union with Christ, since it loses’ sight of the eternal basis of the union and of its objective realization in Christ, and deals exclusively with the subjective realization of it in our lives, and even so only with our personal conscious entrance into this union. Reformed theology, on the other hand, deals with the union of believers with Christ theologically, and as such does far greater justice to this important subject. In doing so it employs the term “mystical union” in a broad sense as a designation not only of the subjective union of Christ and believers, but also of the union that lies back of it, that is basic to it, and of which it is only the culminating expression, namely, the federal union of Christ and those who are His in the counsel of redemption, the mystical union ideally established in that eternal counsel, and the union as it is objectively effected in the incarnation and the redemptive work of Christ. Berkhof, 447.

(I know you don’t think much of my reading of WLC 69, but think about it: how is it that justification “manifests” our union with Christ?

How you can avoid the conclusion that justification is an aspect of union?)

If you want to later refine union (per Berkhof, Hodge) into forensic and subjective, or federal and experiential, I’m very supportive of that.

But please, could we stop talking as if union is some new-fangled theological innovation, a threat to justification by grace through faith?

If what you really mean is that the WTS version of union is the wrong version, then say that, and defend it. But taking broad aim at union and sundering it from justification, as you have here, is cutting off the limb you’re sitting on.

Or to play the “confusion” card — if what you’re trying to accomplish is to move the WTS ball a little further West, then what you’ve actually accomplished is confusing the heck out of a host of people — see the various commentators here — who have no dog in that fight.

I’d also caution you against some notion of doctrinal development since Calvin on union is usually touted as the zenith. What comes after him should not be an improvement. But Berkhof’s clarity would seem to be just that.

It is always dangerous when someone who isn’t properly a theologian theologizes, with that said here is my two cents:

I think that the fundamental flaw here still remains, you are reading “in Christ” and “in him” flatly as “united to Christ”, which means you are overlooking the diverse function of the preposition “in”.

In 2 Cor. 5:17, union doesn’t seem to be what is at stake here at all. The nexus is referential, that is being “in Christ” is the antecedent that refers to the subsequent “new creation”. In the whole if-then continuum “in Christ” is the locus of creative action that makes one a new creature. “In Christ” here has a verbal quality in that phrase that denotes action rather than a static relational union. Any sense of union, mystical, forensic or otherwise is tangential to Paul’s argument here. In v. 19 “in Christ God…” follows a similar referential nexus as it did in v. 17.

In Ephesians 1, you have a point inasmuch as union is the sequential culmination (v.10) of all the prior benefits being derived from being “in Christ”. However in v. 3 the blessings we receive “in Christ” are referential, not as a product of union any more than these blessings are somehow united to the “heavenly places.” Being chosen in him (v.4) is the same active nexus as above, God’s choosing is carried out instrumentally “in him”. In the same way our adoption is carried out instrumentally “in love”, not “united to love”. The cumulative effect of these blessings are part of the execution of God’s mysterious will “to unite all things in him”. However, the cumulative union is not antecedent here, rather subsequent, and the union itself is still being instrumentally carried out “in Christ”

Even in Ephesians where union looms large there are all kinds of actions in Christ (predestination, adoption, forgiveness, redemption, etc.) that are prior to God’s cumulative, ultimate uniting of all things heavenly and earthly in Christ. These prior acts are not union-ish in and of themselves even if they result in union.

I think this bears on the priority of justification to union. It seems to me that you are mixing the sequence and priority. I am still delving into Reformed theology, but this seems manifestly clear even to a newbie.

DGH: You say you agree with Calvin. You say you agree with Berkhof. I don’t get it.

I see it as a case of doctrinal development. Calvin distinguished in concept, but not language, between forensic aspects of salvation and experiential aspects. That was, as you have pointed out, the sine qua non of the Reformation. That he attributed them all to “union” was unproblematic at that time.

Berkhof is operating at a later date and sees the need to distinguish. I’m happy with his distinction. I don’t agree that it’s an “error” to fail to use distinguishing language. Reymond and Hoekema, for example, do not make this distinction in language, even though each does in concept.

DGH: And just to keep it going, what aspect of union does sanctification represent? Or adoption?

I would say experiential and forensic, respectively. The former is a work of the Spirit of grace infused in us. The latter is a work of the Spirit of a change in relationship between us and God.

Seriously, do you have to be so consistent all the time? Sheesh!