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.
Old Life 
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?
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Richard,
I’m not sure how this clarifies either the history or the formulation.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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Gospel Reformation Network Affirmations and Denials
Article IV – Union with Christ and Sanctification
• We affirm that both justification and sanctification are distinct, necessary, inseparable and simultaneous graces of union with Christ though faith.
• We deny that sanctification flows DIRECTLY from justification, or that the transformative elements of salvation are MERE consequences of the forensic elements.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYJI-RnZnQg&list=PLzoy1HKod767Cth027iSLCFhpngB6xpfQ
my questions
1. Who is the Gospel Reformation Network? Is it a conference of friends who think alike, or does it agree to certain confessions, and does it have ecclesiastical and sacramental authority?
2. Why is it a problem to deny that “sanctification” flows from justification, as long as “sanctification” results (flows)?
3. Is the problem that “justification” is defined, but that “sanctification” and “union” are not?
4. What does “sanctification” mean in Hebrews 10:10-14?
5. What does “union” mean? Is “union” non-forensic? Is “union” both forensic and non-forensic?
6. Once you have defined “union”, will you consistently use the word “union” in the way you defined it? Will you be thinking of “union” only as a result “flowing from” faith?
7. If “faith-union” is a result of faith, and if faith is a result of regeneration, where do faith and regeneration come from?
8. Is the problem with saying that “sanctification” results from “justification” the fact that we are either justified or we are not? Are we not also either “united to Christ” or not? (Please define “union”. Do you mean “in Christ”? Or do you mean “Christ in us”? Is there a difference in those two phrases? Why do you say “union” when you could be saying “in Christ” and “Christ in us”?)
9.When you deny that “sanctification” is a “mere consequence” of the forensic, did you mean to deny that “sanctification” is a consequence of the “merely forensic”? What do you have against “merely” or any “sola” which points to Christ’s earned outside righteousness imputed to the elect?
10. Is the point of the Gospel Reformation Network denial that “union” is not forensic or is the point that it is not “merely forensic”? Is this a question-begging point?
11. If “sanctification” is “more than” than a “mere consequence”, does that mean that “sanctification” is also more than a result of “union”, so that “sanctification” is in someway identical to “union”, or at least a necessary “condition” for “union”?
12. Does “union” flow from merely the transformative elements? If union is transformation, and union must come before justification, how is it that God is still justifying the ungodly?
13. If becoming children of God only means being born again so that we are freed from the power of corruption, what is the need for those who are no longer ungodly to be justified or adopted?
14. Is “union” a cause or a result of sacramental efficacy? It’s too late now to tell us that the order of application does not matter so much, since you insisted on denying that “justification” was a result of “sanctification”.
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Mark, not to take anything away from the rest of your equally superb questions, but the first question is most pertinent. What’s causing divisions in the Reformed world right now is not primarily peculiar formulations of (or differences on) the relationship between sanctification and justification, but a clear (antinomian?) disregard for ecclesiastical documents.
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TRB, ding ding. And whom do we have to blame for that? The holy rollers — the experimental Calvinists especially inclined to awakenings. Their logic, when the Spirit is at work, who are we to let church rules (law and order) get in the way?
Does that mean that sometimes the Spirit does not circumvent the rules? Of course. Protestants think the Reformation was just that. But Protestants went back to implementing rules. The awakened think more like Quakers than Protestants and the only order they have comes from us Protestants who believe in decency and order.
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Douglas Franks, Less than Conquerers, Eerdmans, 1986—“The Higher Life Conferences wanted victory, and they wanted it now, in visible ways, in ways known by the mind and felt by the feelings…Everybody may be unhappy, but Christians should be different. Hannah Whitall Smith—“The religion of Christ ought to be something to make us happy”..Charles Trumball suggested there was some inadequacy in the person’s degree of surrender—-“Has every last corner of your life been surrendered?” “Victory is always a moment by moment thing.”
Mark Galli–I look at churches that are committed to transformation , and I fail to see that they are much more transformed than other churches. I see some piety, some religious devotion, a measure of good works in the community. But in such churches I see a fair amount of spiritual anxiety (hardly a fruit of the Spirit, who promises peace), self-righteousness, judgmentalism, and hypocrisy.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/may-web-only/real-transformation-happens-when.html?paging=off
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Mega dings on the Galli article
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Rick Phillips—” Kistemaker sees this as an instance of human responsibility accompanying divine grace in salvation. But do we realize what such a judgment – if true – would involve? Do we forget how reprehensible we are before the Lord on the basis of the filthy rags of even our best works (Isa. 64:6)? With what disgust, contempt, and hatred Christ must look upon every second of our lives, the reviewing of which must be a long torture for us, were such a judgment in our future! I, for one, must consider the return of Christ and such a judgment a dread and horror to be feared and loathed, rather than “our blessed hope,” as Paul puts it in Titus 2:13. How inconsistent this is with the imputed righteousness of Christ that was granted to us at the moment we believed.”
http://www.reformation21.org/articles/five-arguments-against-future-justification-according-to-works-part-ii.php
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http://reclaimingthemind.org/papers/ets/2001/Karlberg/Karlberg-8.html
Mark Karlberg— “The priority for Gaffin is union with Christ, what is the “absolutely necessary, indispensable context for justification. Gaffin contends that union with Christ must be kept central and controlling.,,, Contrary to Gaffin’s teaching, justification is not contingent upon sanctification, perseverence in holiness, or any of the other benefits accruing from union with Christ. The reformers were right in speaking of good works as the fruit of saving faith. Justification rests exclusively on the
finished work of Christ. Gaffin prefers to speak of the ongoing work of Christ.”
MK–“For someone to rely wholly on Christ’s finished work at the cross, Gaffin warns, he has then cut himself off from the ‘whole Christ’ from the Christ who now is working out the benefits of atonement. What is obscured in Gaffin’s formulation is the fact that the application of salvation has already and completely been secured by Christ in his work of reconciliation. There is nothing future to be attained by Christ.”
MK–“Gaffin speaks repeatedly of the irreducible benefits of union with Christ. What does this mean? I take it that the point Gaffin is wanting to make is this: We are not to isolate (i.e., discriminate) one benefit among others, nor are we to give one benefit special weight in the application of redemption. (Of course, Gaffin does give special weight to the benefit of union with Christ. And he is free to do so because matters of ordo are “indifferent theologically” to him….”
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http://theecclesialcalvinist.wordpress.com/2014/05/31/are-good-works-efficacious-unto-salvation/
Bill Evans—-“If good works play a role in whether one makes it to the pearly gates then there is some sort of connection to justification….Conspicuous by its absence in Phillips’ post is any mention of the believer’s union with Christ…. “in Christ” we receive what Calvin called the duplex gratia or “double grace” of justification and transformation of life. For this reason, we must not say, as Phillips seems to, that the necessity of good works pertains only to sanctification and not to justification….
Bill Evans—“This rootedness of justification in union with Christ has implications for our understanding of justification itself. To be justified in Christ is to be so joined with Christ that his own resurrection justification applies also to us. He was, as Paul declares in 1 Timothy 3:16 in reference to the resurrection, “justified in the Spirit”, and for this reason he was “raised for our justification” (Romans 4:25). All this, of course, implies that justification is both forensic and relational—it is a legal judgment that is received through union with Christ.”
mcmark: of course, which is why Evans thinks Horton and Godfrey and Hodge just do not “get it”.
Bill Evans—“Many Reformed theologians have sought to protect the gratuity of justification by temporally sequestering it from transformation of life so as to underscore that justification cannot depend upon sanctification … But the result here is the same as the first, in that justification is abstracted from the ongoing life of faith. Thus it is that a good deal of conservative Reformed theology has been more or less unable to give a coherent account of the Christian life…..Much more satisfactory is the EARLY REFORMED CONCEPTION of the believer’s participation in Christ’s resurrection justification that has been more recently RETRIEVED by Geerhardus Vos, Richard Gaffin, and others….”
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Bill Evans, Imputation AND IMPARTATION, p 265
“It now becomes possible to move beyond the aporias of ordo salutis thinking. No longer is justification viewed as ….when a person believes. Rather, justification inheres once for all in the person of Christ, the resurrected and justified one. The believer’s justification, then, is viewed as a continual and ongoing participation in the one divine forensic decree of justification—the resurrection justification of Christ…. the Christian’s justification is objectively declared at the resurrection of Christ; it is subjectively realized in the ONGOING UNION with Christ by faith and the Holy Spirit; and it is conclusively ratified at the eschaton.”
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Now that Dr Bill E. has succeeded in taking away my assurance, can he please now display the transformed life of which he speaks? I hope everyone close to him thinks well of him…
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I feel your pain, but the answer to moralistic experience is not sacramental experience.
II Corinthians 5:14 For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all HAVE died; 15 and he died for all, that those who live would no longer live for themselves but for him who FOR THEIR SAKE died and was raised.
II Corinthians 5:15 teaches us the gospel about Christ’s death being the death of all those who will be justified. Those who attempt to find assurance in Christ but without thinking about election have a false Christ whose death does not save. The message only telsl us that Christ died “so that our guilt COULD now be taken away, and we COULD be counted righteous.” This “might or might not be” message gospel always conditions the imputation of sins to Christ on the faith of the sinner. Then the debate comes down to—is my justification conditioned on that one moment of faith I experienced? Or are my future justifications conditioned on my future experiences of believing, and does believing actually mean keeping the commands? In either case, on both sides of the debate, the focus is on us, and not on Christ’s death as an effectual satisfaction of the law for all for whom Christ died.
II Corinthians 5:15 does not teach that Christ died for our sins so that we don’t have to. II Corinthians 5:15 says that those for whom Christ died also died with him. That is substitution, and you cannot teach teach biblical substitution without teaching about election. But many Reformed scholars (like Bill Evans) think of election as too rational and abstract, as they also think a finished merited righteousness is too abstract so that we should only “look to the risen person” instead.
But which person? Which Christ?
If Christ died for every sinner but some of these sinners will perish, then that may be some sort of “substitution” but it not a saving substitution. II Corinthians 5:15 does not use the word “elect”, but the only alternative (besides that of the Reformed Confessions)to understand the identity of the “for” and the “with” is to teach an universalism in which every sinner has died to sin and will be justified.
Too many Calvinists would rather live as de facto universalists then ever talk about election in connection with II Corinthians 5. They want a future judgment for the elect, even while they quibble with NT Wright about the “instrumentality” of future justification. They fear as “antinomian” any good news which teaches that the elect have already died to judgment when Christ died for them.
Puritan preachers ( John Cotton excepted) take the phrase “live for Him who died for them” and use it to lay “gospel duties” on those who profess to be Christians,. But there is no point in talking about any such duties until a sinner has obeyed the true gospel and repented from the dead works of the false message which conditions final salvation on what God does in the sinner.
The gospel does NOT tell any particular sinner that Christ died for their sins. The gospel does NOT tell sinners who the elect are. But he gospel does tell sinners about election and substitution.
Faith in a false Christ is not a mirror to give us assurance that we belong to the true Christ. Only faith in the Bible revealed Christ gives us assurance that we are elect.
Galatians 3 does NOT start with believing to begin to be justified, and end with “the instrumentality of works” to get more “sanctified”.
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Matt Perman: “God’s law defines what is righteous and what is sinful. That which conforms to the law is righteous, that which violates the law is sinful. Since faith in Christ is not a “work of the law,” it must follow that faith in Christ as Savior is not commanded in that moral standard. Faith is not a requirement of the law but of the gospel. This means that faith in Christ is not a morally virtuous thing (as loving our neighbor, telling the truth, etc) are, for virtue is that which accords with God’s moral law. But gospel faith is not commanded by the law, and so is not a virtuous entity.”
MP–”What do we make of Romans 14:23 that “whatever is not of faith is sin”? …It seems best to understand Paul as using faith in a broader sense than he does in Romans 3 and 4. By faith in 14:23 Paul means the belief that a certain behavior is right. Paul is not using faith in the sense of believing in Christ for salvation. But even if Paul were speaking of saving faith in Romans 14, it would not follow that faith and obedience are the same thing. Paul is simply saying that what is not from faith is sin; Paul is not saying that anything which is not faith is sin.”
MP—Some “continue to be justified” theologians would not want to say that faith and obedience are the same thing. they argue that faith and obedience are so closely tied together that you cannot have one without the other….But many of them do not mean simply that obedience always results from faith. What they mean, rather, is that while obedience involves things other than faith, faith is still part of the very nature of obedience. Faith is an ingredient in obedience on their view–and, in fact, for them faith is the ingredient that makes obedience virtuous.
http://www.oocities.org/mattperman/romans45.html
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http://www.reformation21.org/blog/2014/06/an-apologie.php
mark jones—-I’ll be wearing skinny jeans in the pulpit before I preach from the Westminster Confession or Catechisms.
mark jones— I tend to dislike the idea that the Puritans were somehow radical or different on soteriological issues compared to the broader Reformed tradition.
mark jones— Neither Owen, Mastricht, or any other reformed writer has ever suggested that the consummation of our salvation and eternal life is granted on the basis of good works. If one did put good works into the instrumentality of our salvation, then that would make works the basis of eternal life. The language of “basis” suggests ground; but a ground is different from an instrument. So Rick’s concern, if he still has one, might need some fine-tuning.
mark mcculley—if one did put faith into the instrumentality of our salvation, would that then make faith the basis of of eternal life? Perhaps Mark Jones needs to do a bit of fine-tuning. Keep those union balls all up in the air at the same time….
mark jones—the Reformed often speak of “possessing” eternal life, and good works are the necessary path that believers must walk if they are to enter eternal life. In this context, “efficacy” simply has to do with the way in which we attain the end. Again, I understand how that word could confuse some – and I apologize for not explaining that initially – but there is a perfectly legitimate way of reading Mastricht
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p 277, Bavinck, A Reasonable Faith–”The gospel, which really makes no demands and lays down no conditions, nevertheless comes to us in the form of a commandment, admonishing us to faith and repentance… The Gospel is sheer good tidings, not demand but promise, not duty but gift As the internal call directly and immediately, without a time lapse, results in “habitual faith,” so also does this faith include from the very beginning of its existence the assurance that not only to others but to me also forgiveness of sins has been granted….When the Scriptures say of this justification that it takes place by and through faith, it does not intend to say that it is produced and wrought through that faith, since Jesus Christ is all our righteousness and all benefits of grace are the fruits of Christ’s labor alone. Saving faith directs our heart from the very beginning away from ourselves and unto God’s mercy in Christ.
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Benjamin Keach, The Marrow of True Justification: The Biblical Doctrine of Justification Without Works, Solid Ground Books, Birmingham, Alabama USA, 2007, p 80—”None have an evangelical righteousness, but those who are justified before they have it. Christ is our legal righteousness by a proper imputation of His righteousness to us, and only then is our evangelical righteousness also.
“Once we are justified, we need not inquire how a man is justified after he is justified. God has not appointed this personal evangelical righteousness, in order to our Justification before Him. By that righteousness of Christ which is out of us, though imputed to us, the Justice of God is satisfied; therefore all Works done by us, or inherent in us, are excluded in our Justification before God.”
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Petrus van Mastricht quoted by Mark Jones:
“From this come three periods of justification that should be diligently observed here, namely 1: The period of establishment, by which man is first justified: in this occasion not only is efficacy of works excluded for acquiring justification, but so is the very presence of these works, in so far as God justifies the sinner (Rom. 3:23) and the wicked (Rom. 5:5). 2: The period of continuation: in this occasion, although no efficacy of good works is granted for justification, the presence of these same works, nevertheless, is required (Gal. 5:6). And it is probably in this sense that James denies that we are justified by faith alone, but he requires works in addition (James 2:14–26). And lastly, 3: The period of consummation in which the right unto eternal life, granted under the first period and continued under the second, is advanced even to the possession of eternal life: in this occasion not only is the presence of good works required, but also, in a certain sense, their efficacy, in so far as God, whose law we attain just now through the merit alone of Christ, does not want to grant possession of eternal life, unless [it is] beyond faith with good works previously performed. We received once before the right unto eternal life through the merit of Christ alone. But God does not want to grant the possession of eternal life, unless there are, next to faith, also good works which precede this possession, Heb. 12:14; Matt. 7:21; 25:34–36; Rom. 2:7, 10.
Click to access 14-1_mcdermott.pdf
Gerald R. McDermott, “Jonathan Edwards on Justification: Closer to Luther or Aquinas?,” Reformation & Revival 14, no. 1 (2005): 11, writing in support of the “new perspective”
from Armstrong’s parachurch (about Armstrong) journal—-
“Jonathan Edwards’s supreme devotion to Petrus van Mastricht, the late-seventeenth-century Dutch Reformed theologian who was steeped in Suarez, was not without effect. Edwards agreed with Thomas Aquinas -more than with many of his evangelical followers and that faith is inherently related to Christian living,hat justification changes the regenerate soul.”, p 132
“Edwards would have agreed with the New Perspective that, for Paul, faith and works are not mutually exclusive, and justification has an eschatological (not yet) dimension. We have seen
that Edwards understood justification as dependent, in one sense, on sanctification (or “perseverance,” as he put it). He also spoke of a two-fold justification, distinguishing between
the judge’s approbation and the public manifestation of that approbation at the last judgment.”,
p 134
“Faith is not the instrument that gets members attached to the body, but is the act of
union itself, and so is the badge identifying the members. Since these are members of the person of Christ, they will gradually begin to resemble that person. Any discussion of justification must therefore include both juridical and participationist language…, faith cannot be abstracted from works of love. Edwards suggests that we must eschew false dichotomies between faith and works, imputation and infusion, justification and sanctification, soteriology and ecclesiology.” p 135
Edwards—Virtues are inner dispositions toward certain goods. The grace of “infusion” is for at least three reasons: 1) it is not an exterior or physical reality of the person but rather an invisible internal reality, 2) it is the effect of God’s indwelling and thus originates outside of the person ), and 3) it is beyond the natural capacities of that person to acquire
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more from McDermott on Edwards:
“Edwards folds regeneration into sanctification, and suggests that justification depends upon both.”
p 122
“For Edwards, then, we are justified not because of our faith but by virtue of our union with Christ. God does not confer union with Christ as a reward for faith; faith is the very act of unition.”, p 123
mark: The “unionists” always say that union has priority but then they also make the exercise (or exercises of faith) the cause of union. What is the point of denying that God’s imputation is conditioned on the act (or acts) of faith, and then turning around and saying that God’s imputation is conditioned on “union”, and then saying that faith is the union?
To repeat some of my 12 questions from above:
5. What does “union” mean? Is “union” non-forensic? Is “union” both forensic and non-forensic?
6. Once you have defined “union”, will you consistently use the word “union” in the way you defined it? Will you be thinking of “union” only as a result “flowing from” faith?
7. If “faith-union” is a result of faith, and if faith is a result of regeneration, where do faith and regeneration come from?
8. Is the problem with saying that “sanctification” results from “justification” the fact that we are either justified or we are not? Are we not also either “united to Christ” or not?
(Please define “union”. Do you mean “in Christ”? Or do you mean “Christ in us”? Is there a difference in those two phrases? Why do you say “union” when you could be saying “in Christ” and “Christ in us”? Does “union” mean “process justification”? Does “union” mean “justified but not yet justified justification”? Does “union” mean that there is a not yet aspect to regeneration?
9.When you deny that “sanctification” is a “mere consequence” of the forensic, did you mean to deny that “sanctification” is a consequence of the “merely forensic”? What do you have against “merely” or any “sola” which points to Christ’s earned outside righteousness imputed to the elect?
10. Is the point of the Gospel Reformation Network denial that “union” is not forensic or is the point that it is not “merely forensic”? Is this a question-begging point?
11. If “sanctification” is “more than” than a “mere consequence”, does that mean that “sanctification” is also more than a result of “union”? Is “sanctification begun in regeneration” in some way identical to “union”, or at least a necessary “instrumental condition” for “union”?
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mcmark, tell the truth about Edwards.
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Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing needs to learn to tell the truth about Herman Hoeksema and the Protestant Reformed, beginning with the slanders found in Grace: The case for Effectual Calling and Regeneration, by Matthew Barrett, Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 2013.
It will always be said that the problem is merely semantics, and that we need to remember that God has “two wills” and that we must use the word “will” in two senses. But the truth of it is that people are intentionally use the word “will” in a deceptive sense.
Of course God’s law does not depend on the ability of humans to keep the law for that law to be legitimate. Of course God can and does command all sinners to believe the gospel. Barrett writes as if Hoeksema somehow denies this..
Barrett claims that Hoeksema makes responsibility depend on ability, and that this is somehow in parallel to the Arminian argument that inability to keep the law would mean that we have no duty to keep the law. But Hoeksema nowhere makes this argument, and Barrett is projecting it onto Hoeksema to avoid basic questions about his assumption about God’s supposed desire to save all sinners.
Barrett assumes that God loves all sinners. When Hoeksema denies that, Barrett accuses Hoeksema of making duty depending on ability. Barrett is doing what Andrew Fuller did, which is confusing the gospel with the law. It was not Hoeksema but Andrew Fuller who ultimately made duty depend on ability, because it was Andrew Fuller who said that if God commanded all sinners to believe the gospel, then we must make some kind of distinction between “moral inability” and “natural inability” so that we can say that all sinners can be told that God loves them.
Andrew Fuller got this assumption from the New England Theology which resulted from the speculative theology of Jonathan Edwards. Instead of merely saying that God commands all sinners to believe the gospel, the Edwards/ Fuller approach confuses this “will of God” with the non-biblical idea that God “wants and wishes and desires” to save all sinners.
It comes down to the idea that, since God commands you to believe the gospel (which the Protestant Reformed do not deny), then that must mean that God wishes (unsuccessfully in many cases) that you would believe the gospel. The slander accuses those who disagree about the wishing of being “insincere” when they call people to believe the gospel.
In what way do we make a distinction between the command to believe the gospel and the gospel itself? is the command itself part of the gospel? Is the gospel in the end no different from law”? In what way do we make a distinction between the promise of the gospel and the gospel itself? And what is “the promise” of “the covenant”?
Is the promise of the covenant that God loves everybody, or is it a promise that God only loves those in the covenant? If we are to address everyone “in the covenant” as if they were elect, our definition of election will have to change (the federal vision) or we are going to have two different definitions for “the covenant”.
God’s “will” can have two different meanings. It can mean God’s predestined decree, but it can simply mean God’s law, God’s command. But God’s will does NOT mean that God desires what God has not predestined. To claim that God has desires which will never be fulfilled is NOT saying something positive about human responsibility and divine law. To claim that God has desires which will never be fulfilled is saying something false theologically about God and God’s gospel.
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Sam Logan and most of the folks who side with Gaffin at Westminster Philadelphia love Edwards. It’s not clear to me that the folks at Westminster California have been as courageous as they claim to have been (see p 112, WSC, Godfrey and Hart) in opposing not-yet justification by works of faith”. Machen had more to lose but was much more grave, or at least it seems that way to me.
Scott Clark—“As anyone who has studied Edwards’ doctrine of justification knows, it is fraught with difficulties to say the least. A recent volume sought to exonerate his doctrine of justification but, so far as I was able to tell, it never made reference to the article that highlighted the great difficulty in the first place: Thomas A. Schafer, “Jonathan Edwards and Justification By Faith,” Church History 20 (1951): 55–67. It may not be possible to say exactly what Edwards’ doctrine of justification was or that he had a single, coherent doctrine of justification. For more on this see the relevant section in Recovering the Reformed Confession. http://heidelblog.net/…/romans-213justified-through…/
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the “grave” must be on my mind
I meant “more brave”, more courageous
but of course I have nothing to lose as a sectarian who will not subscribe to Reformed Confessions I even presume to think i am already completely justified by God for Christ’s sake. The binary fundy. Either saint, or not. Either united to Christ, or not.
Scott Clark—“It is not clear that this section of the Scots Confession is teaching the same thing proposed in the 1978 document defending Shepherd since the confession does not distinguish between two stages of justification nor does it equate the judgment according to works to justification.”
http://heidelblog.net/2014/06/romans213-justified-through-our-faithfulness-4
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Hoekema, oui
Hoeksema, non
one’s mileage may vary….
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do you have reasons for the judgment about Herman Hoeksema? Or do you simply agree with the three points of the Christian Reformed about the good works of dead trees?
Like Barth and Gaffin. Anthony Hoekema was opposed to a logical order of application to the individual. Except of course for the dogmatic detail that “union” comes first. And for Gaffin and Hoekema, faith comes before “union”. No order, except their order. The distinction between demand and promise tends to disappear along with the denial of a priority of God’s imputation before regeneration and life in Christ.
http://standardbearer.rfpa.org/articles/proposed-reformulation-third-point-common-grace
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