Whether they know it or not, the ones who make such remarks are sounding a lot like Norman Shepherd, the godfather of purging any whiff of antinomianism from Reformed circles’ (and letting Lutherans bear the odor alone). Those too young to have experienced the controversy of justification at Westminster may not be familiar with many of Shepherd’s writings. But in his infamous Thirty Four Theses he wrote about the necessity of obedient faith, good works, and repentance in relation to faith in ways that tried to guard Reformed doctrines of grace from an easy-believism. To counter implications that follow from the idea that our works do not contribute to our salvation Shepherd wrote statements like the following (Thesis 23):

Because faith which is not obedient faith is dead faith, and because repentance is necessary for the pardon of sin included in justification, and because abiding in Christ by keeping his commandments (John 15:5; 10; 1John 3:13; 24) are all necessary for continuing in the state of justification, good works, works done from true faith, according to the law of God, and for his glory, being the new obedience wrought by the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer united to Christ, though not the ground of his justification, are nevertheless necessary for salvation from eternal condemnation and therefore for justification (Rom. 6:16, 22; Gal. 6:7-9).

The wonder of such an effort to commend good works in such proximity to justification is that it way overestimates the goodness of the believer’s good works. Missing from this conception of good works is any recognition of their filthy rags caliber. The Confession of Faith says that the disproportion between our good works and the glory to come is so great that we “can neither profit, nor satisfy for the debt of our former sins.” In fact, it adds that when we have performed good works we “have but done our duty, and are unprofitable servants.” As much as our good works proceed from the Spirit’s transforming power, they are truly good. But because we do them, our good works “are defiled, and mixed with so much weakness and imperfection that they cannot endure the severity of God’s judgment” [16.5]. Good works that should be condemned – what does that conception of good works do to efforts to tack them or repentance on to justification in order to give us the personal righteousness some say we need to enter into glory?

Clearly Shepherd didn’t have this conception of good works in view when he wrote the next thesis (24) and denied that good works done according to the law or by righteousness derived from the law or from the flesh were truly good. Only works wrought by the Holy Spirit, or that sprang from true faith according to the law and for God’s glory qualified as good works in the biblical sense.

But how do filthy rags qualify as clean? Maybe the answer to that question explains why Calvin taught in his catechism that rather than tacking sanctification on to justification, justification needed to precede and follow sanctification.

Master. – But after we have once been embraced by God, are not the works which we do under the direction of his Holy Spirit accepted by him?

Scholar. – They please him, not however in virtue of their own worthiness, but as he liberally honours them with his favour.

Master. – But seeing they proceed from the Holy Spirit, do they not merit favour?

Scholar. – They are always mixed up with some defilement from the weakness of the flesh, and thereby vitiated.

Master. – Whence then or how can it be that they please God?

Scholar. – It is faith alone which procures favour for them, as we rest with assured confidence on this-that God wills not to try them by his strict rule, but covering their defects and impurities as buried in the purity of Christ, he regards them in the same light as if they were absolutely perfect.

So instead of being on the lookout for antinomianism, maybe the real error is semi-antinomianism – that is, evaluating good works and Christian living apart from the demands of the law. For semi-antinomianism is clearly the perspective needed if someone is going to posit obedience or good works can escape condemnation without the overlay of Christ’s imputed righteousness.

In part six of this series, Kirk contends that Westminster Confession theology so emphasizes the law, and the non-biblical covenants of works and grace, that Israel is really a historical fiction that has no place in Reformed theology other than a “place holder” until Christ comes. It’s all about Adam and Christ; Israel is supposedly an afterthought.

Kirk contrasts this position with the New Perspective and N.T. Wright in which:

the particulars of God’s covenant relationship with Israel are the particulars through which God is going to exercise a universal saving action to restore the entire world to Godself. In other words, this reading of Jesus depends on a fundamentally different understanding of the cosmos than the law-based picture of Reformed Theology, but folks in the Reformed world were able to appropriate it unawares because conservative, traditional Reformed Theology did not have any stake in the Gospels. Its adherents didn’t see the crack in the door because they were only dealing with Jesus.

The advantages of the New Perspective over Westminster Calvinism are many but here are a couple that Kirk highlights. The first, from part four, is that salvation is now so much bigger than merely salvation from sin and death. Kirk writes:

Wright sees in the OT’s assessment of the “problem” not only sin but also injustice, persecution, groaning creation, etc. In other words, the restoration of the cosmos is going to have to deal with the powers that war against God’s good purposes–powers that are greater than the sum of the rebellion lodged in persons’ hearts.

The other advantage, and one deeply relevant to the debates over Enns’ book, is that the New Perspective takes history and the humanity of Christ and the Bible seriously. According to Kirk:

Why does the New Perspective, with its insistence on seeing the story of Israel at the middle of everything, garner such harsh opposition? Because to say that Israel is at the middle of everything means that God’s relationship with the cosmos and humans in particular is tied to deeply contingent and historical factors: actual covenants in space and time, eras of history within which God acts differently toward different people, an identity for God that is tied to events and people within history rather than abstract, absolute categories.

Kirk offers this conclusion, which doesn’t really seem to trouble him or several other former WTS folks who respond to applaud the original post and the series:

Once you have said that Israel matters–that the actual covenants with Abraham and Moses and David matter–then you have cut away the exegetical moorings by which Reformed theology has created its Works versus Grace antithesis, cut away the scriptural “proof” for the Reformed version of the covenantal structure of the cosmos, and thereby undermined the way in which the early Reformed Tradition opposed Roman Catholicism and articulated its doctrine of justification.

Wow!

Now, of course, Kirk could be right and Reformed folk may need to give up Westminster Calvinism.  Then again, he could be wrong about covenant theology, as many biblical theologians are about historical theology.

But even more to the point, I sure hope he’s wrong about the salvation of my sin.  It may be reassuring to N.T. Wright to have Christ’s Lordship on his side in his case for banks forgiving third-world nations’ debts.  And it surely does seem to be the case that “progressive” views on Scripture, soteriology, and global tranformationalism ran together at certain parts of the WTS campus.  But for my only hope and comfort, I’d sure like the vicarious atonement to matter more than social injustice and the messiness of history.