Category: The Hinge

When Easy Obeyism becomes Hard

Published on by D. G. Hart36 Comments

sisyphusAs long as the call for an obedient faith or the assertion that good works are necessary for salvation has justification to fall back on, the demand for a “real” and personal holiness among those who trust in Christ is not a threat but a comfort. The reason is that the perfect righteousness of Christ satisfied all the claims of the law and justice upon the elect. Christians no longer face condemnation, not only for original sin, sins committed prior to faith in Christ, sinful acts while a Christian, or even for the wickedness that clings to their good works that are the fruit and evidence of saving faith. All their sins in all aspects of their lives have been blotted out by Christ’s work on the cross.

As the Heidelberg Catechism so helpfully puts it:

Even though my conscience accuses me of having grievously sinned against all God’s commandments and of never having kept any of them, and even though I am still inclined toward all evil, nevertheless, without my deserving it at all, out of sheer grace, God grants and credits to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ, as if I had never sinned nor been a sinner, as if I had beeen as perfectly obedient as Christ was obedient for me. [60]

In other words, God looks upon me as really perfect and he looks at my good works which are filthy rags as a spotless raiment only because of Christ’s righteousness imputed to me by faith alone.

As long as this understanding of justification is the basis for considerations of obedience, good works, and sanctification (i.e. the logical priority of justification), we are fine. Obeying is easy because we know that despite our weakness and infirmity we are clinging to the cross of Christ, not to our own efforts, as the source of our real and personal holiness that makes us, as the Heidelberg Catechism also puts it, “right with God.”

But that’s generally not the way it goes when people consider their good works and faithfulness. After all, faith is awfully close to faithfulness, and so maybe my faithfulness is not simply evidence of my faith but also proof of my own goodness. Of course, going all the way back to the Garden, humans want to justify themselves before God. This is the way we are wired because the Covenant of Works is so deeply rooted in our who we are as divine image bearers. We want to believe that if we do good works, we will live eternally because of our goodness, or at least because we tried hard. But to bring faithfulness close to faith is like pointing an addict to dope.

Yet, some like Norman Shepherd didn’t recognize the attraction of self-righteousness for the works-addicted. He feared that an overly forensic conception of salvation would encourage moral laxity among Christians, as if an overemphasis on justification would yield a neglect of good works. Mind you, simply making sanctification a distinct but simultaneous benefit of union with Christ won’t fix the problem of potential moral laxity. Definitive sanctification, for instance, merely heightens the problem of antinomianism – if I am simultaneously justified and sanctified, then I’m all good all the time. There’s no need for improvement.

This problem may have been responsible for the efforts of Norman Shepherd to find biblical and confessional reasons to get Christians to live better. But unfortunately, like all moral nudging it ended up making Christians who, stood guiltless before God because of Christ, feel guilty.

In the twentieth and twenty-first of his thirty-four theses, Shepherd asserted:

The Pauline affirmation in Romans 2:13, “the doers of the Law will be justified,” is not to be understood hypothetically in the sense that there are no persons who fall into that class, but in the sense that faithful disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ will be justified (Compare Luke 8:21; James 1:22-25). The exclusive ground of the justification of the believer in the state of justification is the righteousness of Jesus Christ, but his obedience, which is simply the perseverance of the saints in the way of truth and righteousness, is necessary to his continuing in a state of justification (Heb. 3:6, 14).

The righteousness of Jesus Christ ever remains the exclusive ground of the believer’s justification, but the personal godliness of the believer is also necessary for his justification in the judgment of the last day

A natural response to these assertions is “have I been obedient enough”? Or “have I been sufficiently faithful”? After all, if I’m not obedient, then it sounds like I’m going to compromise my state of justification. And if I’m not personally obedient, then I need to worry about judgment day. At the same time, if the truth of my justification is linked to my own goodness and godliness, and if my good works are tainted with sin, I’m in a heap of trouble. Which is another way of saying that linking faith and obedience closely, even if the aim is to get people to be holier, is to destroy the comfort of a clear conscience that comes with justification by faith alone.

The Reformers saw this problem and addressed it directly when explaining justification and good works. According to the Belgic Confession, Article 23, the obedience of Christ:

is enough to cover all our sins and to make us confident, freeing the conscience from the fear, dread, and terror of God’s approach, without doing what our first father, Adam, did, who trembled as he tried to cover himself with fig leaves.

In fact, if we had to appear before God relying– no matter how little– on ourselves or some other creature, then, alas, we would be swallowed up.

Therefore everyone must say with David: “Lord, do not enter into judgment with your servants, for before you no living person shall be justified.”

The problem of a plagued conscience was also pertinent to the consideration of the Christian’s obedience and faithfulness. In the next article (24) the Belgic Confession affirms:

[A]lthough we do good works we do not base our salvation on them; for we cannot do any work that is not defiled by our flesh and also worthy of punishment. And even if we could point to one, memory of a single sin is enough for God to reject that work.

So we would always be in doubt, tossed back and forth without any certainty, and our poor consciences would be tormented constantly if they did not rest on the merit of the suffering and death of our Savior.

The great advantage of justification by faith alone and its priority to sanctification and good works, then, is that it calms a sinner’s conscience. It could be my problem alone, since I may have more dirt to plague my conscience than others. But then again, if perfection is the standard, all are condemned and should be haunted by God’s holy standard. That is all the more a reason for highlighting justification by faith alone as the solution to a guilty conscience, and rejecting any formulation that prompts sinners to wonder if they have done enough to be saved.

Do Tim Keller and Norman Shepherd Live in the Same Neighborhood?

Published on by D. G. Hart38 Comments

galatia Well, the island of Manhattan is about one thousand miles from South Holland, and of course the cultures are universes apart. But harmonic convergence happens.

With apologies to Nick Batzig who pointed this out to me, Tim Keller has an essay on the gospel and the poor at Themelios that echoes Shepherd’s attempt to bring faith and obedience closer together.

Keller writes:

We all know the dictum: “we are saved by faith alone, but not by faith that is alone.” Faith is what saves us, and yet faith is inseparably connected with good works. We saw in Jas 2 that this is also the case with the gospel of justification by faith and mercy to the poor. The gospel of justification has the priority; it is what saves us. But just as good works are inseparable from faith in the life of the believer, so caring for the poor is inseparable from the work of evangelism and the ministry of the Word. . . . We cannot be faithful to the words of Jesus if our deeds do not reflect the compassion of His ministry. Kingdom evangelism is therefore holistic as it transmits by word and deed the promise of Christ for body and soul as well as the demand of Christ for body and soul.

Several times Acts makes a very close connection between economic sharing of possessions with those in need and the multiplication of converts through the preaching of the Word. The descent of the Holy Spirit and an explosive growth in numbers (Acts 2:41) is connected to radical sharing with the needy (2:44–45). Acts 4 is a recapitulation: after the filling of the Spirit, the economic sharing of the people inside the church accompanies the preaching of the resurrection with great power (4:32–35). After the ministry of diakonia is more firmly established, Luke adds, “so the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly” (6:7). Luke is again pointing out the extremely close connection between deed-ministry and word-ministry.

Arguments like this show that the spirituality of the church depends on maintaining the centrality of justification by faith alone, with the call for good works, obedience, or personal righteousness kept at a safe distance from the human propensity for works righteousness. David VanDrunen makes that case about the close ties between the priority of justification to sanctification and two-kingdoms theology particularly well in his recent inaugural lecture, “The Two Kingdoms and the Ordo Salutis: Life Beyond Judgment and the Question of a Dual Ethic,” (WTJ 70 [2008] 207-24). But Keller supplies unintended support because the effort to join faith and obedience in the individual seems inevitably to slide into linking word and deed in the church.

All the more reason why the words of Peter Berger, a secular Lutheran, are worth hearing again:

Any cultural or political agenda embellished with such authority is a manifestation of “works righteousness” and ipso facto an act of apostasy. This theological proposition, over and beyond all prudential moral judgments, “hits” in all directions of the ideological spectrum; it “hits” the center as much as the left or the right. “Different gospels” lurk all across the spectrum. No value or institutional system, past or present or future, is to be identified with the gospel. The mission of the church is not to legitimate any status quo or any putative alteration of the status quo. The “okay world” of bourgeois America stands under judgment, in the light of the gospel, as does every other human society. Democracy or capitalism or the particular family arrangements of middle-class culture are not to be identified with the Christian life, and neither is any alternative political, economic, or cultural system. The vocation of the church is to proclaim the gospel, not to defend the American way of life, not to “build socialism,” not even to “build a just society” – because, quite apart from the fact that we don’t really know what this is, all our notions of justice are fallible and finally marred by sin. The “works righteousness” in all these “different gospels” lies precisely in the insinuation that, if only we do this or refrain from doing that, we will be saved, “justified.” But, as Paul tells us, “by works of the law shall no one be justified.” [Berger, “Different Gospels: The Social Sources of Apostasy,” Erasmus Lecture, January 22, 1987]

Easy Obeyism

Published on by D. G. Hart112 Comments

Over the last several decades discussions of justification among Presbyterians have too often included a remark or two about how salvation is more than justification. When asked to explain the partial nature of justification, interlocutors will talk about the need for sanctification and good works, and sometimes mention the impossibility of entering into glory with any trace or residue of sin. The idea seems to be that some kind of moral renovation is necessary so that believers can be transformed, and once changed, enter into God’s presence in glory.

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.

The Whole Christ

Published on by D. G. Hart1 Comment

I keep hearing that justification is only a part of salvation and so falls short of yielding the “whole Christ.” I understand the desire to do justice to all the benefits that believers receive in this life from Christ – including adoption and sanctification.. But I wonder if this concern for all of Christ recognizes just how total his work is in the benefit known as justification and received by faith alone. Here is what the Belgic Confession says in Article 22, “The Righteousness of Faith”:

We believe that for us to acquire the true knowledge of this great mystery the Holy Spirit kindles in our hearts a true faith that embraces Jesus Christ, with all his merits, and makes him its own, and no longer looks for anything apart from him.

For it must necessarily follow that either all that is required for our salvation is not in Christ or, if all is in him, then he who has Christ by faith has his salvation entirely.

Therefore, to say that Christ is not enough but that something else is needed as well is a most enormous blasphemy against God– for it then would follow that Jesus Christ is only half a Savior. And therefore we justly say with Paul that we are justified “by faith alone” or by faith “apart from works.”

However, we do not mean, properly speaking, that it is faith itself that justifies us– for faith is only the instrument by which we embrace Christ, our righteousness.

But Jesus Christ is our righteousness in making available to us all his merits and all the holy works he has done for us and in our place. And faith is the instrument that keeps us in communion with him and with all his benefits.

When those benefits are made ours they are more than enough to absolve us of our sins.

I don’t know about others, but that sounds like a whole lot of Christ being affirmed in justification and our righteous standing before God. It also sounds like the Reformation’s insistence on justification as the material principle of our protest with Rome was precisely to do justice to the “whole Christ.”

Warfield on the Centrality of Justification

Published on by D. G. Hart35 Comments

In an ongoing attempt to explain why some Reformed Protestants – okay, this one – are concerned about any formulation of doctrine that would de-center justification by faith, the following quotation from Benjamin Warfield is especially apt. It expresses the problem of human sin and the need for perfect righteousness with the sort of clarity that not only made Warfield legendary but also more importantly clarifies the significance of the righteousness that believers receive through faith alone.

Sometimes we are told that Justification by Faith is “out of date.” That would be a pity, if it were true. What it would mean would be that the way of salvation was closed and “no thoroughfare” nailed up over the barriers. There is no justification for sinful men except by faith. The works of a sinful man will, of course, be as sinful as he is, and nothing but condemnation can be built upon them. Where can he get works upon which he can found his hope of justification, except from Another? His hope of Justification, remember – that is, of being pronounced righteous by God. Can God pronounce him righteous except on the ground of works that are righteous? Where can a sinful man get works that are righteous? Surely, not from himself; for, he is a sinner, and all his works as sinful as he is. He must go out of himself, then, to find works which he can offer to God as righteous. And where will he find such works except in Christ? Or how will he make them his own except by faith in Christ?

Justification by Faith, we see, is not to be set in contradiction to justification by Works. It is set in contradiction only to justification by our Own Works. It is justification by Christ’s Works. The whole question, accordingly, is whether we can hope to be received into God’s favor on the ground of what we do ourselves, or only on the ground of what Christ does for us. . . . Justification by Faith means, that is to say, that we look to Christ and him alone for salvation, and come to God pleading Christ’s death and righteousness as the ground of our hope to be received into his favor. If Justification by Faith is out of date, that means, then, that salvation by Christ is out of date. . . .

Justification by Faith does not mean, then, salvation by believing instead of by doing right. It means pleading the merits of Christ before the throne of grace instead of our own merits. . . . Justification by Faith is nothing other than obtaining everlasting life by believing in Christ. . . .

(Warfield, Selected Shorter Writings, vol. 1, 283-84)

. . . Then Justification "Causes" Good Works

Published on by D. G. Hart19 Comments

That would seem to be the way J. Gresham Machen thought about the relationship between forensic righteousness and the fruit of faith.

Of course [Jesus] died to produce a moral effect upon man. If He did not die, man would have continued to lead a life of sin; but as it is, those for whom He died cease to lead a life of sin and begin to lead a life of holiness. They do not lead that life of holiness perfectly in this world, but they will most certainly lead it in the world to come, and it was in order that they might lead that life of holiness that Christ died for them. No man for whom Christ died continues to live in sin as he lived before. All who receive the benefits of the Cross of Christ turn from sin unto righteousness. In holding that that is the case, the substitutionary view of the atonement is quite in accord with the moral influence theory and with the governmental theory. . . .

The true moral influence of the Cross of Christ really comes, in other words, only when we see that the moral influence theory regarding it is false; it comes only when we see that on the Cross Christ truly bore the penalty of our sins and buried it forever in the depths of the sea. He loves little to whom little is forgiven. If the sin for which we are forgiven is merely the light, easily forgiven thing that the advocates of the moral influence theory of the atonement think it is, then no great spring of gratitude with well up in our souls toward Him who has caused us to be forgiven; but if it is the profound and deadly thing that the advocates of the substitutionary view of the atonement think it is, then all our lives will be one song of gratitude to Him who loved us and gave Himself for us upon the accursed tree. (“The Bible and the Cross,” in God Transcendent, 183, 185)

Justification by Works, What the . . . !

Published on by D. G. Hart7 Comments

Or, beware the ellipses.

Steven R. Coxhead, an Old Testament scholar in Australia, has a piece in the current issue of the Westminster Theological Journal that is mind numbingly perplexing. The title gives away the author’s argument: “John Calvin’s Subordinate Doctrine of Justification by Works.” He concludes that although Calvin rejected a view of justification that included faith and works, still Calvin “did teach a doctrine of justification by works that operates on two levels.” For Coxhead, justification by faith alone operates in Calvin on a level of absolute righteousness, while justification by works operates on the level of “God’s gracious covenant.” He adds that those who “deny Calvin taught a subordinate and legitimate doctrine of justification by works have arguably not understood the genius of Calvin’s teaching on this issue.”

Say what?

Could it be that Coxhead has failed to understand Calvin on justification? For instance, he uses this quotation from the Institutes to substantiate his argument:

“Works righteousness . . . depends upon faith and free justification, and is effected by this” and “ought to . . . be subordinated to [faith] . . . as effect to cause.” [17]

Here is the full quotation from Calvin [3.17.10]:

Therefore, as we ourselves, when we have been engrafted in Christ, are righteous in God’s sight because our iniquities are covered by Christian’s sinlessness, so our works are righteous and are thus regarded because whatever fault is otherwise in them is buried in Christ’s purity, and is not charged to our account. Accordingly, we can deservedly say that by faith alone not only we ourselves but our works as well are justified. Now if this works righteousness – whatever its character – depends upon faith and free justification, and is effected by this, it ought to be included under faith and be subordinated to it, so to speak, as effect to cause, so far is it from having any right be raised up to destroy or becloud justification of faith.

Another example of Coxhead’s selectivity comes when he quotes Calvin to say: “it follows from justification of faith that works otherwise impure, unclean, half done, unworthy in God’s sight, not to mention his love, are accounted [i.e., imputed as] righteousness.” [17]

Compare this snippet with the full section in Calvin [3.17.9]:

Now if anyone raises this objection against me to impugn faith righteousness, I shall first ask whether a man is reckoned righteous because of one or two holy works, while he is a transgressor in the remaining works of his life. This is indeed more than absurd. Then I shall inquire whether he is reckoned righteous even on account of many good works if he is in some part indeed found guilty of transgression. He will not dare put forward this contention when the sanction of the law cries out and proclaims accursed all who have not completely fulfilled all the commandments of the law [Deut. 27:26]. I shall inquire still further – whether there be any work that does not deserve to be censured for some impurity or imperfection. And how could there be such work before those eyes, to which not even the stars are clean enough [Job 25:5], nor the angels righteous enough [Job 4:18]? Thus he shall be compelled to admit that no good work exists which is not so defiled both with attendant transgressions and with its own corruption that it cannot bear the honorable name of righteousness. But if, of a certainty, it follows from justification of faith that works otherwise impure, unclean, half done, unworthy of God’s sight, not to mention his love, are accounted righteousness, why do they by boasting of works righteousness try to destroy justification of faith, without whose existence they would boast of such righteousness in vain?

Calvin goes on to say, “Do they wish to spawn a viper’s brood? The statements of the impious tend in this direction. They cannot deny that justification of faith is the beginning, foundation, cause, proof, and substance of works righteousness. Nevertheless, they conclude that man is not justified by faith, because good works are also accounted righteousness.”

It looks like Steven Coxhead, had he read Calvin a bit more carefully, might have seen the viper’s brood that he was spawning in his article by beclouding justification by faith alone. Why those responsible for the WTJ would give a hearing to an Old Testament scholar trying to do historical theology is a mystery. Hasn’t the school had enough trouble of late?

If Guilt "Causes" Corruption . . .

Published on by D. G. Hart58 Comments

. . . why can’t innocence “cause” moral renovation?

Article 9 of the French Confession of Faith (in which Calvin played a large role) affirms: “We believe that man was created pure and perfect in the image of God, and that by his own guilt he fell from the grace which he received, and is thus alienated from God, the fountain of justice and of all good, so that his nature it totally corrupt.”

This assertion, which implies the priority of the forensic to moral degeneracy, only makes sense of the idea that man was created with a good and upright nature. If Adam’s guilt proceeded from corruption then his original nature could not be perfect and pure.

So why is it a problem to talk about a similar relationship between the forensic and the renovative in the remedy for sin, namely, salvation? Why is it wrong to assert that the removal of guilt, the declaration of innocence, causes or results in the removal of corruption?

Of course, the language of causality is a bit rough and simplistic — but no more rough or simplistic as saying that union with Christ “causes” justification and sanctification. Actually, in a monergistic scheme, God is the cause of every part of salvation. But in trying to discern the relationship among the aspects of salvation, asserting the priority of the forensic to the renovative does not appear to be an obvious problem or error. It would seem actually to follow symmetrically from the doctrine of the fall.

This would seem to be the point of the Belgic Confession, Article 24, which says that without justifying faith, men “would never do anything out of love to God.” It also asserts: “For it is by faith in Christ that we are justified, even before we do good works, otherwise they could not be good works any more than the fruit of a tree can be good before the tree itself is good.”

(Disclaimer: this post is not necessarily the view of the NTJ or its editors. What are blogs for?)