Not that reviews of books at Amazon.com are ever adequate or trustworthy, the one for Ian Hewitson’s book on the Shepherd Controversy is revealing and adds context to the current polemics among militant critiques of Lutheranism from biblical theologians. The initial hostility in Presbyterian circles to Lutheran notions of justification came from Norman Shepherd. The reviewer is correct to note:
In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, the doctrine of justification by “faith alone” came under scrutiny at Westminster Theological Seminary. One of the reasons that precipitated a long, drawn-out, and painful controversy there is because the Rev. Norman Shepherd sought to do faithful exegesis of the text of Scripture in comparing the so-called contradictory pronouncements on justification between Paul and James. He did so while staying faithful to his Reformed tradition as expressed in the Westminster Standards (Confession of Faith and Larger and Shorter Catechisms). While Shepherd came to question Luther’s statement of “justification by faith alone,” he wondered why exegetical theology could not express itself in terms of the simpler, and more biblical, “justification by faith.” It was, after all, Martin Luther who added the gloss “alone” (glauben allein) into the text of Romans 3:28, which is not in the Greek text.
Ian Hewitson, Ph.D. University of Aberdeen, reveals in his clear, erudite dissertation, that at the crux of the debate over Shepherd’s teachings was the Lutheran-Calvinist distinction in what constitutes justifying faith. For Luther, the faith that justifies is “alone.” That is, faith is an entity that exists all by itself, is “alone,” and is devoid of any and all good works. In this sense “justification by faith alone” uses “alone” as an adjective. What kind of faith is it that justifies? It is an “alone” faith. It is faith in abstraction from all else. That is the adjectival use of the word “alone” in “justification by faith alone.”
Before Shepherd, theologians like John Murray or Louis Berkhof would not have objected to the Lutheran doctrine of justification. But Shepherd did.
Before sympathetic readers here jump on the anti-Shepherd bandwagon, they need to remember that at the time Reformed rigor was on the decline and evangelical breadth was on the rise among conservative Presbyterians in the OPC, PCA, and Westminster Seminary. John Frame’s book, Evangelical Reunion (for starters) would be ironically one example of that New School turn among conservative Presbyterians away from Old School practices and convictions. Shepherd’s desire for a consistently Reformed doctrine of salvation was part of an Old School instinct to preserve a distinctly Reformed voice.
What needs to be noted is that Shepherd was correct to resist the decline of Reformed militancy and singularity at his seminary and within his communion. I wonder if John Frame’s endorsement of Shepherd actually includes some recognition of the distance between him and Shepherd on the Reformed identity and militant character of the OPC, with Shepherd embodying one strand of Machen’s warrior children and Frame exhibiting boredom with fighting period. (Fight liberalism, sure. But that was so yesterday.)
The question is whether Shepherd needed to find a really, really, really Reformed doctrine of justification in order to right the ship. My answer, for what it’s worth, is negative.
Old Life 
Lily, bingo on the complexities of the human condition. All I’m suggesting is that there is something to be said for pushing back without actually shoving or resisting without being disobedient. To wit, what you say in your last comment about being pressed to give the state ecclesial affirmation (the flip side of intermeddling against it, by the way). My guess is that telling Adolf his flag will never fly in our sanctuary would earn a quick crack on the proverbial cranium. But by the same principles neither should an American flag, which often earns rapped knuckles by some worldviewers. I wonder if GAS, who seems to think obedience is only due “good” magistrates, would have us fly “good” flags instead of “bad” ones.
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Zrim, I agree with your principled silence, passive resistance, and keeping our sanctuaries free from anyone’s flag. It doesn’t seem as difficult a situation for me if the subject is limited to the marks of the church (Word and Sacrament) – there it seems crystal clear that we would want to suffer incarceration or execution rather than deny Christ whether passively or actively. I’m just not convinced that it is good to be completely silent or passive in the face of my neighbor being incarcerated or executed at the whim of a manifestly evil autocrat. And I’d like to hedge that thought with a whole bunch of limits and boundaries so I’m not a peasant with a pitchfork – if that makes sense? I have no desire to rebel against civil authority even though I often have exceeded the speed limit by 20 mph on empty open highways in the middle of nowhere West Texas. 🙂
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Lily, if it helps my foot tends to be leaden as well. And don’t get me started on local leash laws. But also don’t mistake my passivity point for neglecting our neighbors. Like Mr. Han said, being still and doing nothing are two very different things. Selah.
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Re: being still and doing nothing are two very different things. Selah.
Good one, Zrim. You deserve an award for that one. More canned peaches or would you prefer sliced bread? 😉
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In case anyone’s interested:
http://www.whitehorseinn.org/blog/2012/01/07/historical-claims-concerning-union-with-christ/
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The question is one as to order, not of time, but of cause and effect. All agree (1) That the satisfaction and merit of Christ are the necessary precondition of regeneration and faith as directly
as of justification; (2) That regeneration and justification are both gracious acts of God; (3) That they take place at the same moment of time. The only question is, What is the true order of causation?
Is the righteousness of Christ imputed to us that we may believe, or is it imputed to us because we believe? Is justification an analytic judgment, to the effect that this man, though a sinner, yet being a
believer, is justified? Or is it a synthetic judgment, to the effect that this sinner is justified for Christ’s sake. Our catechism suggests the latter by the order of its phrases.
God justifies us, ‘only for the righteousness of Christ, imputed to us, and received by faith alone.’ The same seems to be included in the very act of justifying faith itself, which is the trustful recognition and embrace of Christ, who had previously ‘loved me, and given himself for me’ (Gal. 2:20).”
“By consequence, the imputation of Christ’s righteous to us is the necessary precondition of the restoration to us of the influences of the Holy Spirit, and that restoration leads by necessary consequence to our regeneration and sanctification.
“The notion that the necessary precondition of the imputation to us of Christ’s righteousness is our own faith, of which the necessary precondition is regeneration, is analogous to the rejected theory that the inherent personal moral corruption of each of Adam’s descendants is the necessary precondition of the imputation of his guilt to them.
“On the contrary, if the imputation of guilt is the causal antecedent of inherent depravity, in like manner the imputation of righteousness must be the causal antecedent of regeneration and faith.”
From The Princeton Review —A. A. Hodge, “The Ordo Salutis”
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McMark, forensic priority indeed. Thanks.
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What’s wrong with Reformed and Lutheran theologians agreeing on something? I will grant that perhaps Luther placed more of a stress on _Sola Fide_ which Zwingli stressed more the _Solo Christo_ aspects of salvation, but the major reformers in both camps stressed justification as a forensic act of God grasped by faith.
Further, while I have identified with the Reformed camp for decades, I’m not so sure that a little more irenicism between those who are biblically-oriented and stress that salvation comes via the Gospel rather than the ministration of the institutional church isn’t in order. I’ve been in a group that loudly proclaimed itself “more Reformed than thou”, and before I knew it, I was being told by my pastor that refusal to sign a petition against an elder he was having a tiff was constituted “rebellion against divinely-appointed authority”, that a sermon stating that the call of the Gospel was not efficacious unless given by a duly ordained minister was “biblical”, and that my refusal to lose my head over the turn of the millennium constituted irresponsibility. Yes, I love the Westminster Standards and Three Forms of Unity, but I think I’m also allowed to be reasonably accommodating to brethren who accept many of their important points.
Which brings me back to an earlier matter: salvation is through Christ; not through the group with which I associate.
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Engelsma’s new book on Federal Theology has an excellent appendix criticizing Hewitson’s book.
I want to think more about why “unionists” tend to be anti-2k. I know there’s a spectrum of positions. Some 2 k folks seem way more into triumphalism than others. If there are “pietist” versions of 2 k, are there also “unionist” versions of 2K. I only know what I read, because I don’t know these people.
http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2012/06/05/machens-warrior-children/
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http://calvinistinternational.com/2012/06/04/clericalism-or-concord/#more-1031
Of course there are always folks who don’t like the question, who don’t take sides, who take “the third side”. But does calling yourself “irenic” mean that you are less sectarian than the next fellow?
I quote from those who think of themselves as not only irenic but also as heroic: “We need to return to Reformed irenicism in the sense of Calvin’s evangelical ecumenism, seeing the whole Christian people as the visible church and seat of the faith, not primarily the ministerium, let alone ministerial collegia. We must be Reformed in the sense of a Bible-driven emphasis on God’s sovereignty and grace, as well as the actual doctrine and tradition of the Protestant Reformation.
“We must begin, as Old Princeton did, with the proper role of reason. Far from being a latent threat to vibrant faith, reason is the common light of all mankind, given to us in our creation as imago dei. Though not autonomous, reason is still authoritative, leading us away from confusion and incoherence. As such, it is itself a necessary precondition to all dialectic, even the logical and consistent reading of the Holy Scriptures. It is reason illumined by faith, ultimately, that convinces our consciences to accept a belief as certain. No external mechanism, no Pope, no presbytery… can ever take its God-ordained place. Abandoning one’s personal reason in a move to allow someone else’s reason to work vicariously on your behalf is a moral failure and a grave sin. The answer to such a vice is the virtue of courage. Evangelical reason only speaks to brave men.”
“The evangelical doctrine of the universal priesthood has become merely nominal in many Reformed churches, which is why a number of Reformed people are predisposed to admiration of Rome. We need to reaffirm this fundamental doctrine, and its corollary of the representative character of the ministry. We must become more truly Calvinian on this score, by becoming more “Lutheran” and less clericalist…”
“Where all of this practically takes us is what many political scientists and historians have described as the culture of persuasion. We do not look to a political institution or other coercive power to artificially provide unity and certainty. ”
mcmark: Sounds reasonable to me, but still I gotta ask–who are these people? Are they brave enough to be unifying celebrities? Do they have enough “charisma” to search together (even with the less reasonable) until they get to Yes, No, and Antithesis? When does the gift of patience become unreasonable?
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mcmark, the Wedgeworth-Escalante couple do not seem reasonable to me. Their reading of the tradition is strained at best. Just look at how they butcher Calvin by turning him into Hooker.
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mcmark, thanks for your defense.
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