The Upper Register

Justification and Union with Christ, Part 13

A. A. Hodge on the Ordo Salutis, Part 3

Why is Hodge concerned about this issue? He is concerned because he is noticing a rise in moralism among Protestants, specifically in connection with the beginnings of liberalism or modernism. American Protestantism had not entered the fundamentalist vs. modernist controversy – that would be a couple of decades after Hodge wrote this in the opening decades of the 20th century. But Hodge was already seeing the signs of the coming struggle. Some Protestants were devaluing the doctrine of free justification and emphasizing the importance of moral living. They were reducing Jesus to a moral example and making void the cross. They were making the classic moralist argument that preaching justification leads to moral laxity; therefore, we must make justification less free, we must condition it upon our faith and our obedience in some way. But Hodge sees this as a fundamental betrayal of the Reformation. Even making faith a condition for receiving justification is misguided. Hodge argues we must be assured of our justification in order to grow in our sanctification. We can only pursue holiness and evangelical obedience if we are already confident that we are forgiven, justified, and accepted by God.

There is an unhappily significant tendency observable among many modern preachers and writers to ignore, if not positively to deny, the absolute necessity of a gratuitous justification as an essential precondition of the very beginnings of all moral reformation …. It is evident that the modern rationalistic moral legalism … makes the cross of Christ of none effect by their traditions …. Without antecedent reconciliation men cannot be truly sanctified. (pp. 318-320)

The … characteristic mark of Protestant soteriology is the principle that the change of relation to the law signalized by the term justification, involving remission of penalty and restoration to favor, necessarily precedes and renders possible the real moral change of character signalized by the terms regeneration and sanctification. The continuance of judicial condemnation excludes the exercise of grace in the heart. Remission of punishment must be preceded by remission of guilt, and must itself precede the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart. Hence it must be entirely unconditioned upon any legal standing, or moral or gracious condition of the subject. We are pardoned in order that we may be good, never made good in order that we may be pardoned. We are freely made co-heirs with Christ in order that we may become willing co-workers with him, but we are never made co-workers in order that we may become co-heirs. These principles are of the very essence of Protestant soteriology. (p. 311 emphasis added)

We return to the title: “The Ordo Salutis: or, Relation in the Order of Nature of Holy Character and Divine Favor.” What in Hodge’s view is the relation between “holy character” (transformative) and “divine favor” (forensic)? The forensic is the cause of the transformative. Divine favor is the cause of holy character. To say that God first gives us a holy character and then on that basis we obtain the divine favor is legalism and moralism. The Protestant Reformers recaptured the distilled gospel truth that God first blesses us with his favor by freely imputing the righteousness of Christ to us, and then as a result we are regenerated and thereafter progressively transformed in holy character. We are not justified only to the degree that we are sanctified, as Rome would have it. Rather, we first have our legal standing with God established for the sake of Christ and his righteousness, and only on that basis are we regenerated and progressively sanctified.

Justification and Union with Christ, Part 12

A. A. Hodge on the Ordo Salutis, Part 2

We have seen that Hodge argues for the causal priority of the forensic to the transformative, and that the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the elect is the antecedent cause of regeneration. He offers three arguments in support:

First, justification “by faith” refers to subjective justification

The first argument is not so much a positive argument for his thesis, as it is a response to the exegetical argument appealing to the language that we are “justified by faith.” In this argument, Hodge essentially distinguishes between active/objective justification (aka imputation) and passive/subjective justification. Imputation is the cause of regeneration which is the cause of faith. Passive or subjective justification (not imputation) is what Paul has in view when he says we are justified by faith.

The biblical phrase, “justified by faith,” applies strictly, of course, to our relations to God as these are realized in the sphere of human consciousness. Faith is at once the act whereby we apprehend Christ, and the effect of our being antecedently apprehended of him. The act of faith is the one thing we do, but it is preceded in the order of causation by the impetration of salvation by Christ, and by the first stages of the work of the Holy Spirit in applying it. Faith is the organ whereby we recognize Christ as meriting our salvation, and the Father as reconciled for Christ’s sake; but, of course, the salvation was merited and the Father was reconciled, and both were long since engaged with the Holy Spirit in carrying on the work of the personal application of grace, or we could not recognize them as so doing. (p. 314)

Second, the analogy of the imputation of Adam’s sin

If the previous argument was more of a rebuttal, this is a positive argument for the thesis at hand. In my view, it is the decisive argument. The argument is, if we believe that Romans 5:12-21 teaches the immediate imputation of Adam’s sin, then by parity of reasoning we must also believe it teaches the immediate imputation of Christ’s righteousness. A transformative act (either of making us inherently corrupt and sinful, or of making us inherently righteous) does not intervene in either the imputation of Adam’s sin to all mankind or the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the elect. Indeed, in both cases, the change of nature is the effect or result of the change of legal status.

The analogy of the imputation of Adam’s sin to us and of our sins to Christ must be borne in mind when reflecting on the conditions of the imputation of the righteousness of Christ to us. However much various schools of theologians may differ as to the grounds and nature of our union with Adam … the whole Church has always maintained that the depravity of moral nature innate in his posterity is the penal consequence of his first sin …. The imputation of the guilt (just liability to punishment) of Adam’s apostatizing act to his whole race in common leads judicially to the spiritual desertion of each newborn soul in particular, and spiritual desertion involves inherent depravity as a necessary and universal consequence …. The imputation of Christ’s righteous to us is the necessary precondition of the restoration to us of the influences of the Holy Ghost, and that restoration leads by necessary consequence to our regeneration and sanctification …. 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. (pp. 314-315 emphasis added)

Third, the case of those regenerated in infancy

As I argued in Part 9, another argument that enables us to see that imputation is the ultimate cause of faith rather than faith being a condition of imputation, is the case of those who are regenerated in infancy—whether elect infants dying in infancy, or elect covenant children who grow up to adult Christian faith without remembering a day when they did not believe.

This is obviously true in the case of a person regenerated in infancy, as must be true of all who dies in infancy, and of many others whose early regeneration is attested by their subsequent life. In their case the unquestionable order was as follows: The guilt of Adam was imputed at birth, and they at once lost original righteousness and became spiritually dead. Then the righteousness of Christ was imputed, and they were regenerated and in due course sanctified by the Holy Ghost. In the justification, therefore, of that majority of the elect which dies in infancy personal faith does not mediate. It cannot, therefore, ever mediate in the justification of any of the elect as an element absolutely necessary to the thing itself. In the case of the adult, faith is the first and invariable exercise of the regenerate and justified soul, whereby the righteousness of Christ imputed and the justification it effects are consciously received and appropriated, and the organ through which the Holy Spirit subsequently acts upon the soul, now spiritually alive, in, promoting its progressive sanctification. (pp. 315-316 emphasis added)

Here Hodge uses an analogy to make the point clear. He uses the analogy of the minor heir, whose possession of the inheritance goes through two phases:  phase one, from birth, he has a legal right to the inheritance; phase two, upon reaching maturity, he comes into actual possession of the inheritance with all the powers of ownership.

As long as [the new-born elect child] is under age the will secures the inchoate rights of the heir de jure. It provides for his education and maintenance at the expense of the estate in preparation for his inheritance. It determines the previous installments of his patrimony to be given him by his trustee. It predetermines the precise time and conditions of his being inducted into absolute possession. His title rests from first to last upon his father’s will. He possesses certain rights and enjoys certain benefits from the first. But he has absolute rights and powers of ownership only when he reaches the period and meets the conditions prescribed for that purpose by the will. The force of this analogy is not weakened, but rather augmented by the fact that the peculiarity in the case of the elect heir of Christ’s redemption is that all the conditions of full possession are themselves free gifts, equally with the possession secure by the will, and parts of the inheritance itself. Hence the satisfaction and merit of Christ are imputed to the elect man from his birth, so far as they form the basis of the gracious dealing provided for him in preparation for his full possession. When that time has come, they are imputed to him unconditionally to that end, the consequence being that the Spirit, who had previously striven with him, and finally convinced him of sin, now renews his will, and works in him to act faith, whereby he appropriates the offered righteousness of Christ, and actually and consciously is received into the number, and is openly recognized and treated as one entitled to all the privileges, of the children of God. To this consummating and self-prevailing act of God theologians have assigned the title ‘Justification’ in its specific sense. It is a pronounced judgment of God, raising the subject into the realization of a new relation, yet one long purposed and prepared for. From the first, God had regarded and treated him as an heir of Christ’s righteousness. Now he regards and treats him as in the actual possession, and if an adult, he by the gift of faith brings him into conscious possession. The imputation to him as an heir and the imputation to him as in actual possession do not differ so much on God’s side as it differs in its effects and consequences in the actual relations and experiences of the subject. (pp. 317-318 emphasis added)

To summarize: Hodge argues that imputation is the cause of regeneration, regeneration is the cause of faith, and by that faith we come to the subjective appropriation of Christ’s righteousness already given in imputation. The main basis for this is Federal Theology, with all that involves: the pactum salutis, Paul’s two-Adams construct in which God deals with mankind through two federal heads, and the doctrine of immediate imputation. The case of those regenerated in infancy further solidifies the point that imputation cannot be conditioned upon conscious faith and that therefore imputation is the cause of regeneration and faith.

Justification And Union With Christ, Part 11

A. A. Hodge on the Ordo Salutis, Part 1

The following is a detailed summary of the incredibly important essay by A. A. Hodge, “The Ordo Salutis: or, Relation in the Order of Nature of Holy Character and Divine Favor,” published in The Princeton Review 54 (1878): 304-21. A condensed version of the same material may be found in his Outlines of Theology [1879 enlarged edition], pp. 517-518.

Archibald Alexander Hodge (1823–1886) was the son of the great Charles Hodge. From 1864 to 1877, he held the chair of systematic theology at Western Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh. In 1877, he was called from Western to serve at Princeton Theological Seminary as an associate professor of systematic theology. The following year, the elder Hodge died, and the younger Hodge took up his father’s distinguished chair of systematic theology at Princeton. Note that the date of this essay (1878) coincides with these significant events in his personal life and career as a professor.

The Question

The question that A. A. Hodge proposes to deal with in this essay pertains to the ordo salutis, the logical ordering of the principal acts of God in the application of redemption. More specifically, he poses this question:

In the application of redemption to the individual sinner, which, in the order of nature, precedes and conditions the other—justification or regeneration? (p. 304)

These two terms—justification and regeneration—cover the two main benefits of salvation, the forensic and the transformative. And, as Hodge points, it is a distinctive mark of Protestant soteriology to make a clear distinction between these two benefits, in contrast with Roman Catholic soteriology which conflates them.

With the Protestants, justification is a forensic act of God, declaring that the law as a covenant of life is satisfied, and that the subject is no longer subject to its penalty, but entitled henceforth to the rewards conditioned upon obedience. Regeneration, on the other hand, is a subjective change in the moral character of the subject, the gracious commencement of his complete restoration to the moral image of God, effected by the Holy Spirit in progressive sanctification. (p. 311)

The question that Hodge wants to answer in this essay is: What is the relationship between the forensic and the transformative, between justification and regeneration? Is there a causal ordering of them in the ordo salutis? Of course, Hodge clarifies that the “question is obviously one as to order, not of time, but of cause and effect” (p. 313). The technical term used by Protestant scholastics to refer to this kind of order (logical or causal order) was “the order of nature.” In other words, to refer back to the title of the essay, Hodge is seeking to investigate the “relation in the order of nature of holy character [transformative] and divine favor [forensic].”

Hodge’s Answer

Hodge’s answer is that the forensic has logical or causal priority to the transformative. He quotes from Dr. Dorner’s History of Protestant Theology in support:

It is evident that God must himself already have been secretly favorable and gracious to a man, and must already have pardoned him in foro divino [in the divine court], for the sake of Christ and his relation to human nature, in order to be able to bestow upon him the grace of regeneration. The vocation of the individual to salvation could not result unless God had already, in preventing love, previously pardoned the sinner for Christ’s sake. In fact, viewed as an actus Dei forensis, there is a necessity that it should be regarded as existing prior to man’s consciousness thereof—nay, prior to faith. (p. 316)

Hodge does not say this, but I would like to point out the eminently biblical character of Dorner’s beautiful statement here. Paul always places the love of God back of the effectual calling by which we are brought into the conscious enjoyment of the blessings of salvation (adoption as sons, the indwelling of the Spirit, the forgiveness of sins, etc.):

“In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ … in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses” (Eph 1:4-7). “God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us … made us alive together with Christ” (Eph 2:4-5). “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom 5:5). “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood,” etc. (Rom 5:8-10).

God loved us before we even knew it. The forensic has causal priority over the transformative. God’s forensic imputation of Christ’s righteousness to us, his setting his love on us for Christ’s sake, is the cause of faith, not vice versa.

The Problem

But there is a problem. The problem is that Paul clearly teaches that we are justified by faith. “So we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ” (Gal 2:15; cp. 3:24; Rom 3:28; 5:1). If we Protestants know anything, we know that we are justified by faith. But the problem is that faith is itself a gift of God. Reformed soteriology makes clear that faith is the result of sovereign monergistic regeneration. Regeneration is the cause of faith. Through effectual calling, we hear the word of the gospel and by the working of the Spirit in regeneration our hearts are changed so that we can now exercise faith. Putting that doctrine together with the previous one, since regeneration is the cause of the faith by which we are justified, it is evident that regeneration or effectual calling must go before justification. That seems to contradict Hodge’s thesis that justification in the order of nature has causal priority over regeneration.

The Solution

To deal with this problem, Hodge appeals to Federal Theology. Federal Theology refers to the overarching two-Adams structure of God’s dealings with mankind per Paul’s teaching in Romans 5:12-21. Just as the Creator made a covenant of works with the first Adam, conditioning his attainment of eschatological advancement on his obedience, so the Father made a covenant of works with Christ as the second Adam (aka the pactum salutis). Christ’s work as the second Adam merits not only the benefits of redemption but even the details of the way in which those benefits are applied in time to each of the elect.  

The solution of this problem is to be found in the fact … that Christ by his obedience and suffering impetrated* for his own people, not only the possibility of salvation, but salvation itself and all it includes, and the certainty and means of its application also. This he did in the execution of the provisions of a covenant engagement with his Father, which provides for the application of the purchased redemption to specific persons at certain times, and under certain conditions, all which conditions are impetrated* by Christ, as well as definitely determined by the covenant. (pp. 316-317) [*Impetrate: “to obtain by request or exertion,” Oxford English Dictionary]

Relying on the distinction between redemption accomplished and redemption applied, Hodge argues that both redemption accomplished and redemption applied are definite and have the elect in view. The application of redemption is founded on, purchased by, or “impetrated” by Christ in the accomplishment of redemption. The gift of faith in regeneration was purchased or merited by Christ for the elect according to the terms of the pactum salutis. Therefore, even though justification is by faith and faith is a gift of God effected by regeneration, regeneration itself was merited by Christ and therefore the forensic is ultimately the causal ground of the transformative. “The satisfaction and merit of Christ are the antecedent cause of regeneration” (p. 313).

Justification and Union with Christ, Part 10

Herman Bavinck on Active and Passive Justification

The following quotes are from the English translation of Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics (ed. John Bolt; trans. John Vriend), vols. 3-4 (Baker, 2006, 2008).

“If it is true that the very first benefit of grace already presupposes communion with the person of Christ, then the imputation and granting of Christ to the church precedes everything else ….  A bond was already forged between the mediator and those who were given him by the Father in eternity, in election, and more precisely in the pact of salvation (pactum salutis). Then, in the divine decree, a mystical union was concluded between them, and substitution occurred …. The whole church, comprehended in him as its head, has objectively been crucified, has died, been resurrected, and glorified with him. All the benefits of grace therefore lie prepared and ready for the church in the person of Christ. All is finished: God has been reconciled; nothing remains to be added from the side of humans. Atonement, forgiveness, justification, the mystical union, sanctification, glorification, and so on—they do not come into being after and as a result of faith but are objectively, actively present in Christ. They are the fruits solely of his suffering and dying, and they are appropriated on our part by faith. God grants them and imputes them to the church in the decree of election, in the resurrection of Christ, in his calling by the gospel. In God’s own time they will also become the subjective possession of believers.” (3.523, emphasis added)

“Regeneration, faith, and conversion are not preparations that occur apart from Christ and the covenant of grace nor conditions that a person has to meet in toto or in part in his or her own strength to be incorporated into that covenant. Rather, they are benefits that already flow from the covenant of grace, the mystical union, the granting of Christ’s person. The Holy Spirit, who is the author of these benefits, was acquired by Christ for his own. Hence the imputation of Christ precedes the gift of the Spirit, and regeneration, faith, and conversion do not first lead us to Christ but are taken from Christ by the Holy Spirit and imparted to his own.” (3.525, emphasis added)

“The imputation of the person of Christ along with all his benefits, therefore, preceded the gift of the benefits. Justification, in other words, did not occur as a result of or by faith, but with a view to faith. Before the elect receive faith, they have already been justified. Indeed, they receive this faith precisely because they have already been justified beforehand. This objective and active justification was made known in the gospel from Genesis 3:15 on and in the resurrection of Christ (Rom 4:25), but had actually already occurred in the decree of election when they were given to Christ and Christ was given to them, when their sin was imputed to Christ and his righteousness was imputed to them …. [Maccovius] treats the benefits in the following order: active justification, regeneration, faith, passive justification, good works; but he nevertheless continues to distinguish justification from its decree in eternity.” (3.583, emphasis added)

“A covenant of grace, a mystical union between Christ and his church, existed long before believers were personally incorporated into it—or else Christ could not have made satisfaction for them either. The imputation and donation of Christ and all his benefits by God takes place before the particular persons come to believe. Specifically, that imputation and donation takes place in the internal calling, and regeneration is the passive acceptance of this gift of grace. God also had to give that gift in order for us to be able to receive it. The very first gift of grace given us already presupposes the imputation of Christ, for Christ is the only source of grace, the acquisitor and distributor of the Spirit, who is his Spirit, the Spirit of Christ.” (4.214, emphasis added)

“Now to maintain this perfect righteousness of Christ and the full riches of the gospel, Reformed theologians, in speaking of actual justification, made a distinction between active and passive justification …. The acquisition and the application [of redemption] are so tightly connected that the former cannot be conceived or exist apart from the latter and vice versa. The acquisition necessarily entails the application. Christ, by his suffering and death, also acquired the astonishing blessing that all his benefits, hence also the forgiveness of sins, would be applied personally and individually to all his own. As Savior, Christ not only aims at objective satisfaction but also at the subjective redemption of his own from sin. Now this redemption is fully achieved, not by an objective justification in the divine decree or in the resurrection of Christ, but only when, both in terms of reality and of the consciousness of that reality, human beings are freed from sin and hence regenerated and justified. It is of this justification that Scripture continually speaks, and it is this justification, as Comrie acknowledges, that is ‘the communication and actual impartation.’
“However, under the influence of Remonstrantism and Saumurian theology, of Pietism and rationalism, there gradually arose a conception of this ‘actual justification’ such that people first had to believe and repent, that in the court of heaven God subsequently sat in judgment and—on the basis of the believer’s faith in Christ, one’s unity with Christ, and one’s ‘faithful’ activities or good works—acquitted the believer; and that on earth, in the court of the individual self, God by his Spirit announced this verdict in the hearts of believers.
“Now the distinction between active and passive justification served to escape this nomistic pattern. Active justification already in a sense occurred in the proclamation of the gospel, in the external calling, but it occurs especially in the internal calling when God by his word and Spirit effectually calls sinners, convicts them of sin, drives them out toward Christ, and prompts them to find forgiveness and life in him. Logically this active justification precedes faith. It is, as it were, the effectual proclamation of God’s Spirit that one’s sins are forgiven, so that persons are persuaded in their hearts, believingly accept … that word of God and receive Christ along with all his benefits. And when these persons, after first, as it were, going out to Christ (the direct act of faith), then (by a reflex act of faith) return to themselves and acknowledge with childlike gratitude that their sins too have been personally forgiven, then, in that moment, the passive justification occurs by which God acquits believers in their conscience …. While there is here a priority of order, it is coupled with simultaneity of time …. Active and passive justification, accordingly, cannot be separated even for a second.” (4.218-19, emphasis added)

“The logical distinction between active and passive justification therefore offers an assortment of advantages ….
“In the first place, it enables us, against all forms of nomism, to maintain the rich and joyful content of the gospel that God is gracious and abounding in steadfast love and that in Christ he has brought about a complete righteousness in which we can rest both in this life and in death and that in no way needs to be augmented or increased by us ….
“In the second place, this distinction explains that from which the believer derives the freedom and boldness to appropriate this benefit …. In later times, when the religious vitality of the Reformation declined, many people in fact chose the path of self-examination in order thus to be assured of the genuineness of their faith and salvation. In this way the focus of the believer shifted from the promise of God to the believer’s own inner experience. But if we rightly understand the meaning of active justification, the whole subject appears to us in a different light …. The basis of faith exists outside of us in the promise of God.
“In the third place, the above distinction makes it possible for us to regard faith as simultaneously a receptive organ and an active power. If in every respect justification comes after faith, faith becomes a condition, an activity that has to be performed in advance and cannot be purely receptive.” (4.220-21, emphasis added)