The Relationship Between Effectual Calling and Justification
One way to see the necessity of making a distinction between objective and subjective justification is by reflecting on the ordo salutis of a particular subset of elect persons, namely, those not intellectually capable of hearing and understanding the external call of the gospel and responding in faith and repentance. This would include elect infants dying in infancy. This category of persons is mentioned by the Confession in the chapter on effectual calling:
Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated, and saved by Christ, through the Spirit, who worketh when, and where, and how he pleaseth: so also are all other elect persons who are uncapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the Word (WCF X.3).
Taking our cue from the Confession, let’s divide the class of all elect persons into two categories: the intellectually capable and the intellectually incapable. Can we properly speak of intellectually incapable elect persons being effectually called? Surely not. You can see this by looking at the definition of effectual calling given in the Confession:
All those whom God hath predestinated unto life, and those only, he is pleased, in his appointed and accepted time, effectually to call, by his Word and Spirit, out of that state of sin and death, in which they are by nature, to grace and salvation, by Jesus Christ; enlightening their minds spiritually and savingly to understand the things of God, taking away their heart of stone, and giving unto them a heart of flesh; renewing their wills, and, by his almighty power, determining them to that which is good, and effectually drawing them to Jesus Christ (WCF X.1).
The external call becomes efficacious to the intellectually capable through the preaching of the gospel addressing their minds, their minds being enlightened by the Spirit and their wills being renewed by the Spirit making them willing and able to believe. But surely the intellectually incapable elect cannot be effectually called in this sense. They are regenerated and saved, but they are not effectually called and made to exercise saving faith in Christ. (At least not in this life—presumably God grants them the intellectual capacity to exercise conscious faith at some later point, either in the intermediate state or at their bodily resurrection.) Thus we can say that all who are effectually called are regenerated, but not all who are regenerated are effectually called.
Now the very next chapter of the Confession is the chapter on justification, and the opening paragraph defines justification in connection with effectual calling:
Those whom God effectually calleth, he also freely justifieth: not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous; not for anything wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ’s sake alone; nor by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them, as their righteousness; but by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them, they receiving and resting on him and his righteousness, by faith (WCF XI.1).
Clearly, this description of justification by faith only applies to the intellectually capable. “Those whom God effectually calleth, he also freely justifieth … by faith.” God justifies them by faith, as they receive and rest on Christ and his righteousness. But this faith is the result of effectual calling, which is only for those intellectually capable of hearing the gospel and believing in it. Therefore, not everything in the Confession’s description of justification in XI.1 applies to “elect persons who are uncapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the Word,” such as elect infants dying in infancy. And yet surely this class of elect persons must have the righteousness of Christ imputed to them, even if they are not capable of being effectually called so as to rest on Christ and his righteousness by conscious faith. There is no question that the intellectually incapable must receive the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, even if they do not (in this life) actively and consciously exercise faith.
Let’s isolate that imputation from the broader experience of it for the intellectually capable who are effectually called and justified by faith. Once we’ve isolated that imputation, we realize it is also a part of the ordo salutis of the intellectually capable elect. That is what is meant by objective justification. Just as the non-conscious core of effectual calling is regeneration, so the non-conscious core of justification is imputation. All the elect, both the intellectually capable and the intellectually incapable, receive imputation and regeneration. But only the intellectually capable experience the conscious outworking of that in the form of effectual calling and justification by faith. Just as effectual calling is the manifestation of regeneration in conscious experience, so justification by faith is the manifestation of imputation in conscious experience.
I believe this distinction between imputation and subjective justification is the same as the distinction that Gaffin and Tipton make between the imputation of righteousness and the declaration of righteousness. The declaration of righteousness is a subjective reality in the forum of the conscience as the sinner receives the conscious assurance of the forgiveness of sins and the declaration of God that he is deemed righteous in the sight of God. The term declaration implies a speaking; it is the Holy Spirit speaking through the gospel (Word and Spirit working together in our hearts). It is a subjective experience: “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom 5:5). But the declaration of God that he loves us and accepts us as righteous in his sight, is not a baseless assurance. It is grounded on something. And that ground, that basis, is the imputation of the righteousness Christ. When God declares us to be righteous, it is not a legal fiction; it is a verdict of divine justice, founded on the absolute truth of God because of Christ’s satisfaction and fulfillment of the law as our federal representative. Thus, the distinction between objective justification (or imputation) and subjective justification is one that even Gaffin and Tipton agree with in principle. And they would also agree that there is a legal priority to the imputation. It is on the legal ground of the imputed righteousness of Christ, that we receive all the benefits of salvation, including the declaration of righteousness. Imputation is the legal ground of the declaration of righteousness (aka subjective justification), which is received by faith.
Now, then, we come to the nub of the debate. Where does faith come from? All sides agree that it comes from regeneration/effectual calling and is the Spirit-wrought bond of existential union with Christ. Recall Gaffin’s formula: “union with Christ by Spirit-wrought faith.” Faith is the bond of the existential union with Christ, and that bond is created or wrought by the Spirit when he effectually calls us. But where does regeneration/effectual calling come from? Just as the declaration of righteousness comes to us as one of the blessings of salvation on the legal ground of the imputed righteousness of Christ, so with all the other benefits. The benefits of regeneration, effectual calling, and existential union with Christ by Spirit-wrought faith also come to us on the legal ground of the imputed righteousness of Christ.
We agree that effectual calling and Spirit-wrought existential union with Christ are prior to subjective justification (aka justification by faith or the declaration of righteousness). It is only through effectual calling that we get faith and this Spirit-wrought faith is the bond of existential union with Christ. And since subjective justification is “by faith,” existential union with Christ is the context in which subjective justification is experienced by the intellectually capable elect person. Thus far there is no debate with the WTS school of Gaffin, Tipton et al.
But if we’re talking about the relationship between the imputation of righteousness and effectual calling (and the resulting Spirit-wrought existential union), then imputation is both logically prior to it and the legal ground of it. This is precisely what A. A. Hodge argued:
Regeneration and consequently faith are wrought in us for Christ’s sake and as the result conditioned on a previous imputation of his righteousness to that end (Outlines of Theology, 518).
In the case of intellectually incapable elect persons, such as elect infants dying in infancy, they have a much more restricted ordo salutis: imputation and regeneration occurring simultaneously but with imputation as the logically prior basis of regeneration.
In the case of intellectually capable elect persons, they have the fuller ordo salutis that we are more familiar with: imputation, regeneration, effectual calling, subjective justification by faith, adoption, sanctification, and glorification.
A subset of the preceding category of persons should be mentioned as well: elect covenant children who do not die in infancy but come to faith over time through covenant nurture. Many elect covenant children (not all) receive imputation and regeneration at birth or even in the womb and later come to conscious faith and repentance as they come to understand the gospel so as to rest upon Christ and be subjectively justified or receive the declaration of righteousness in their conscience. Their ordo salutis is the same as the preceding, except that there is a time gap between imputation/regeneration and effectual calling/subjective justification.
The notion that imputation is the legal ground of regeneration, effectual calling, and existential union with Christ is not strange. It follows from the reality that Christ’s work is the fulfillment of the works principle. By his active and passive obedience (his obedience to the point of death), Christ completed all the requirements of the intratrinitarian covenant of works (aka the pactum salutis). As a result of fulfilling the law, he was vindicated and declared to be the law-keeping Second Adam, moving from the probation phase to the beyond-probation phase. This occurred when God raised him from the dead. His resurrection was his vindication or justification. When he was justified and raised and exalted to the right hand of God, he became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor 15:45). All the elect have Christ’s righteousness imputed to them and on account of that imputation, all the elect, who were spiritually dead in trespasses and sins, are spiritually raised up with Christ (e.g., regenerated). That’s why Paul taught that “the Spirit is life because of righteousness” (Rom 8:10). In other words, the regeneration of the Spirit is on account of imputed righteousness, the righteousness of Christ.
But, again, just to be clear, this is a logical not a temporal order. There is not even the slightest temporal gap between imputation and regeneration. It is what the Reformed scholastics called “the order of nature.” However, there can be a temporal gap between imputation/regeneration and effectual calling/subjective justification, as in the case of the elect covenant child who receives imputation and regeneration at birth (or even in the womb) but who later learns about Jesus and comes to believe and rest upon him and to manifest the fruits of repentance. There are many adult Christians who would say they cannot remember a time when they didn’t believe and have a hard time pinpointing the time when they first began to believe. It is likely that they were regenerated long before, and they manifested the fruits of that regeneration in the form of conscious faith and repentance as they matured intellectually and spiritually.