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)

Justification and Union with Christ, Part 9

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.

Justification and Union with Christ, Part 8

Exegetical Basis of the Objective/Subjective Justification Distinction

Now perhaps one might worry that the distinction is a neat scholastic distinction invented to “save” the federal system, but that it lacks an exegetical basis. But I would argue that is not so. In Paul’s theology, there is a close connection between justification and reconciliation. Paul uses the language of reconciliation in three important passages (Rom 5:1-11; 2 Cor 5:18-21; Col 1:20-22), and in the first two cases (Rom 5:1-11 and 2 Cor 5:18-21), it comes on the heels of or is immediately followed by language about justification and imputed righteousness. In the third passage (Col 1:20-22), it is arguable that the concept of justification is present in the nearby context (“qualified to share in the inheritance,” Col 1:12-14). Paul is using the language of reconciliation, not as a separate benefit in the ordo salutis, but to shift to a different metaphorical frame, from the forensic metaphor of the courtroom (justification) to the more relational metaphor of war and peace (reconciliation). He does this in order to bring out the subjective dimension of justification, saying that we were once under the wrath of God (Rom 1:18), but now, “having been justified by faith, we have peace with God” (Rom 5:1).

However, the reconciliation metaphor also has a pronounced objective side in Paul’s thought. Paul emphasizes the objective aspect as that which has logical priority over the subjective. He says, “We were reconciled to God through the death of his Son” (Rom 5:10). It wasn’t through regeneration or through our faith-bond with Christ or anything wrought in us, but “through the death of his Son” that we were reconciled to God. In the Colossians passage, he makes it even more explicit in focusing on the objective work of Christ outside of us: “He has now reconciled [you] in his body of flesh by his death” (Col 1:22).

Another locution used by Paul in connection with reconciliation highlights the priority of the objective.  Paul says God reconciled us to himself: “Through him to reconcile to himself all things” (Col 1:20). “Who through Christ reconciled us to himself … In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them” (2 Cor 5:18-19). Then, having emphasized God’s work in reconciling us to himself, he moves to the gospel call: “We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (2 Cor 5:20). Objective reconciliation occurs first, even before our conscious experience of it by faith, as a sovereign action of God reconciling us “to himself,” and then, when we hear the word of reconciliation and believe in Christ, we become subjectively reconciled.

The article on the Greek words for “reconcile, reconciliation” in the New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology and Exegesis is helpful in this regard:

The reconciliation created by God is thus an act attributed to divine initiative and not dependent on human peace-making. “For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!” (Rom 5:10). It is clear that the sinner was an enemy before the reconciliation took place. Human action, including even repentance and confession of sins, is not a work that initiates reconciliation and to which God reacts. Rather it [= reconciliation] is the work of God, to which we respond. (“ἀλλάσσω” in NIDNTTE, ed. M. Silva [Zondervan, 2014], 1.245)

This distinction between objective and subjective reconciliation, and the priority of objective reconciliation to subjective reconciliation, is explicit in Paul, and since reconciliation is merely another metaphor for justification, I would argue that this is a significant exegetical basis for the distinction between objective and subjective justification.

Justification and Union with Christ, Part 7

The Objective/Subjective Justification Distinction

In order to make sense of this, we have to understand the distinction between the objective and the subjective sides of justification. In his Systematic Theology (p. 517), Berkhof states that objective justification “consists in a declaration which God makes respecting the sinner, and this declaration is made in the tribunal of God ... This active justification logically precedes faith and passive justification.” Subjective justification, on the other hand, “takes place in the heart or conscience of the sinner” and “logically, passive justification follows faith.”

I prefer to speak of “objective justification” and “subjective justification,” or even “imputation” and “justification,” thus reserving the term “justification” for the subjective experience of being justified by faith. Nevertheless, I believe this distinction is crucial because it is the key to maintaining the distinction between justification and sanctification, between the forensic and the renovative, as well as being able to keep the forensic logically prior to and the ground of the renovative.

Dr. Lane Tipton’s 2012 Inaugural Address is a critique of Berkhof’s distinction between active and passive justification. Tipton says,

We must maintain without any form of equivocation that believers are not personally justified until they are united to Christ by faith in their effectual calling …. If active justification is a blessing of redemption applied (ordo salutis), and if active justification logically precedes faith, then active justification logically precedes faith-union with Christ. This is not possible from a biblical and confessional perspective …. No aspect of forensic justification comes to believers (logically or temporally) prior to union with Christ by faith (WTJ 75 [2013]: 7, 8, 10).

Clearly, Dr. Tipton rejects active justification as understood within federal theology, but I am personally convinced of its importance and validity. I would not claim that it is the only legitimate Reformed view. There is clearly diversity within the Reformed tradition at this point. But it is a widely held position associated with the more systematic refinement of Reformed theology in terms of federal theology from the 17th century to the present. Berkhof is not alone in making this distinction. I believe the distinction can also be found in Ursinus, Maccovius, Owen, Turretin, Witsius, á Brakel, A. A. Hodge, Bavinck, and Vos.

Here are some quotes from Bavinck in his Reformed Dogmatics (ed. John Bolt; trans. John Vriend) where he articulates the distinction between active and passive justification:

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. (3.583)

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. (4.218)

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 …. 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. (4.219)

Bavinck is clear in distancing his position from justification from eternity (3.591; 4.216). And while he does sometimes speak of objective justification as occurring in the historia salutis, i.e., in the resurrection of Christ, he makes clear that such is not “full” or “actual” justification. He views actual justification as purchased by Christ in history according to the terms of the pactum salutis, but as coming to fruition in the moment of the internal calling or regeneration.

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)

This seems eminently Scriptural to me, especially the way Bavinck so strongly sees the pactum salutis as fulfilled in the historia salutis (the accomplishment of redemption) as the foundation for the ordo salutis (the application of redemption).

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)

How glorious and wonderful! All too often when we speak of being “justified by faith,” we fall into the misguided view that faith is a condition that God looks for and in response to which he grants justification. Bavinck writes: “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” (4.221). But faith is merely a passive and receptive instrument. Indeed, the gift of faith itself is a result of regeneration by the Spirit, and our regeneration has been purchased by the merit of Christ. Therefore, even before we are regenerated, we are already justified (actively) in order that we may be regenerated and believe, and thus receive and rest upon Christ alone for righteousness. We do not receive and rest in Christ in order that we may be justified. Rather, we believe that we are justified.

As the Heidelberg Catechism puts it, “True faith is … a firm confidence that not only to others, but also to me, God has granted forgiveness of sins, everlasting righteousness, and salvation, out of mere grace, only for the sake of Christ’s merits” (Q. 21). Faith is not a condition I must meet in order for God to grant forgiveness and righteousness. It is a firm confidence that God “has granted” me forgiveness and righteousness.

Justification and Union with Christ, Part 6

The Ordo Salutis within Federal Theology

In my posts so far, I’ve been attempting to provide an objective summary of the debate between WTS and WSC on the issue of justification and union with Christ. I have more posts in store in which I hope to summarize some of the other contributors to the debate, particularly John Fesko and Michael Horton. But before I do that, I want to get my own perspective on the table. I assume it is already clear that my sympathies lie with the WSC school of thought, but I want to state it more explicitly. 

I hope I am not interpreted as rejecting the concept of mystical or vital union with Christ. Rather, following Reformed thought as clarified in the 17th century, I hold to a broader understanding of union with Christ that includes both a legal and a mystical dimension. Union with Christ is not reduced to the mystical or experiential side, but is grounded in a broader conceptual scheme, namely, federal theology.

Federal theology holds that there are two overarching covenants in Scripture, the covenant of works under the federal headship of the first Adam and the covenant of redemption under the federal headship of the Second Adam (aka the pactum salutis). Both covenants are covenants of the works variety, involving an eschatological reward contingent upon the passing of a probation. But where the first Adam disobeyed, the second Adam obeyed, passed the probation, and earned eternal life for his people. Just as we were condemned “in Adam,” so we are justified “in Christ” (1 Cor 15:22; Rom 5:18-19). Just as the sin of the first federal head was imputed to us via an immediate imputation that did not involve mystical union with him, so Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us by an immediate imputation that precedes and grounds mystical union. Our mystical union with Christ is a later phase of our broader legal, federal, and representative union. Our mystical union with Christ is grounded in our federal union with Christ.

Within this broader view of federal union with Christ, the imputation of Christ’s righteousness is the engine that leads in front and pulls all the benefits of the ordo salutis in its wake. In particular, the renovative benefits (regeneration, sanctification and glorification) follow as necessary effects or consequences of the imputed righteousness of Christ. Note that I did not say the renovative benefits follow as necessary effects or consequences of justification, but as necessary effects of the imputed righteousness of Christ. The reason I avoided the term “justification” is because that usually refers to “justification by faith,” that is, the sinner’s experience of being accepted by God by faith, and that is under the aegis of vital union. If justification is by faith, and if regeneration is the cause of faith, then regeneration is prior to justification in the subjective sense. But the imputation of Christ’s righteousness is under the aegis of the legal or federal union, and that federal union is prior to and grounds the vital union and all the renovative benefits that flow from vital union.

Here is a rough sketch of the ordo salutis as I see it. I’m not claiming it is scientifically precise and perfect.

• Imputation (or active/objective justification)
• Regeneration, which creates faith and establishes vital union with Christ by the Spirit
• Passive/subjective justification by faith
• Progressive sanctification
• Glorification

The details can be massaged, but the main thing I want to affirm is that imputation (or active/objective justification) is the legal foundation of vital union and all subsequent events in the application of salvation. We must first be legally regarded in the court of divine justice as those who, in federal union with our Head, have fulfilled the probationary works principle. Righteousness is the basis of life. “The Spirit is life because of righteousness” (Rom 8:10). “Those whom he justified he also glorified” (Rom 8:30). When the probation of the covenant of works is fulfilled, in principle the reward has been earned and one now has a right to the eternal inheritance. We receive that right when we are reckoned as righteous, as law-fulfillers in federal union with the one who fulfilled the law in our place. That is imputation. As a result, we now have a right to the reward. The reward is life in all its fulness, ultimately the glorification of the body. But that reward is applied to sinners in a progressive manner, beginning first with their regeneration. Regeneration is the cause of faith, and by that faith we come to conscious reception and enjoyment of the righteousness of Christ and are subjectively justified. From that point onward, progressive sanctification ensues until we depart this life. Finally, at the resurrection, we are glorified. Indeed, we could say that regeneration and progressive sanctification are the inaugurated form of glorification. But that whole package of regeneration-sanctification-glorification is the renovative blessing of life that is earned by meritorious law-keeping and probation-passing. We must first be righteous before we can live. We must first receive the imputation of righteousness before we can enjoy the reward of righteousness. Christ has achieved for us the “justification that brings life” (Rom 5:18 NIV 1984).

I recognize that this sketch is controversial. I freely admit that Calvin didn’t put things precisely this way. It’s not explicitly stated this way in the Reformed confessions (although one could argue that it is implicit at points). I wouldn’t claim that this sketch of the ordo salutis is the only Reformed view. Nevertheless, I do think it is the logically consistent ordo salutis that flows from the clarity provided by the 17th century federal theology. Here a few quotes showing that the above ordo is not novel:

“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” (A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 518).

“It is evident that a sinner cannot be regenerated and perform holy acts [such as faith], until in some sense his guilt is removed and his obligation to punishment remitted. In a word, he must be pardoned before he can be renewed and exert holy energies [like faith]—not consciously pardoned, but pardoned representatively in Christ …. The ordo salutis is clearly settled by a strict construction of the federal scheme” (John L. Girardeau, “The Federal Theology: Its Import and Its Regulative Influence”).

“Before the elect receive faith, they have already been justified. Indeed, they receive this faith precisely because they have already been justified beforehand …. [Maccovius] treats the benefits in the following order: active justification, regeneration, faith, passive justification, good works” (Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3.583).

“The mystical union in the sense in which we are now speaking of it is not the judicial ground, on the basis of which we become partakers of the riches that are in Christ …. The judicial ground for all the special grace which we receive lies in the fact that the righteousness of Christ is freely imputed to us …. Active or objective justification … is justification in the most fundamental sense of the word … a divine declaration that, in the case of the sinner under consideration, the demands of the law are met … in view of the fact that the righteousness of Christ is imputed to him …. This active justification logically precedes faith and passive justification” (Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 452, 517).

“God imputes Christ to the elect sinner in a forensic union, on the basis of which, God grants the sinner faith. Through this faith, the believer is mystically united to Christ” (Matthew W. Mason, “John Owen’s Doctrine of Union with Christ in Relation to His Contributions to 17th Century Debates Concerning Eternal Justification,” Ecclesia Reformanda 1 [2009]: 68).

Justification and Union with Christ, Part 5

WSC’s Response to Garcia’s Review of CJPM

In the December 2007 issue of Ordained Servant, W. Robert Godfrey and David VanDrunen wrote a response to Mark Garcia’s critical review of CJPM. Godfrey and VanDrunen point out that what lies behind Garcia’s critique is his position on union with Christ: “Garcia is part of a rather new Reformed theological approach that wants to focus all of Reformed theology on union with Christ.” Garcia evidently thinks “Calvin’s doctrine of union with Christ is the sledgehammer with which to crush CJPM.”

They divide their response into sections:  first, Garcia’s historical argument; second, Garcia’s theological argument.

Garcia’s historical argument is that there is no such thing as “pan-confessionalism,” that is, a doctrine of justification held in common by both the Lutheran and the Reformed theological systems. In reply, Godfrey and VanDrunen point out that the Lutheran and Reformed theologies do have significant differences in various areas, such as Christology and the sacraments, but they are in agreement on the doctrine of justification, and on the priority of justification to sanctification. They quote the Formula of Concord, which makes the same point as the Reformed confessions that “good works always follow justifying faith, and are most certainly found together with it … for true faith is never alone, but hath always charity and hope in its train.” (Cp. Westminster Confession’s affirmation that faith “is the alone instrument of justification; yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love” [WCF XI.2].)

Godfrey and VanDrunen argue that Calvin himself was a pan-confessionalist with regard to justification. He signed the Augsburg Confession. He had friendly letter exchanges with Melanchthon. He wrote a letter to the Lutheran ministers of Saxony and Lower Germany in 1556 in which he affirmed his agreement with the Lutherans on the doctrine of justification by faith. True, in the 1559 edition of the Institutes (3.11.5-12), Calvin did forcefully engage in polemics with the Lutheran theologian Osiander, who had argued that in justification we receive God’s essential righteousness. But this doesn’t make Calvin a critic of the authentic Lutheran doctrine of justification. The only way to read Calvin as critical of the Lutheran doctrine of justification is if one takes Osiander as the only consistent Lutheran—which is what Garcia argues. But this is an “astounding” claim in view of the fact that Osiander’s views were explicitly and officially rejected by the Lutheran churches themselves in the Formula of Concord.

In sum, “Garcia represents Calvin’s attitudes to Lutheranism as consistently negative, which is simply not true.” Calvin formulated his doctrine of justification in harmony with, not in opposition to, the Lutheran doctrine. If, by grounding justification in union with Christ, Calvin was establishing the doctrine of justification on a fundamentally different theological footing than in Lutheran theology, he didn’t seem to be aware of it.

What about Garcia’s theological argument that, in union with Christ, the two benefits of justification and sanctification are simultaneous and non-prioritized? Godfrey and VanDrunen affirm the doctrine of union with Christ, but the difference is that they understand and formulate the doctrine of union with Christ in such a way as to maintain the priority of justification over sanctification, whereas Garcia exalts union with Christ as an “abstract doctrine.” They write:

We would appeal to Garcia to uphold this sense of the priority of justification to sanctification in the ordo salutis. This is not a doctrine to be embraced in place of union with Christ, but our theology of union must be compatible with this doctrine. We ought not begin with an abstract doctrine of union, conceived independently of the concrete blessings of justification, adoption, and sanctification, and then deduce from this abstract doctrine the idea that justification, adoption, and sanctification must be received simultaneously through union without a defined relationship to each other.

This issue, for Godfrey and VanDrunen, is of vital importance. “The very character and identity of the Christian life are at stake.” Why is that? Because “there is no such thing as the moral life for the non-justified.” A person who is not justified is not at peace with God, and is constantly confronted with his guilt before God due to his failure to keep the law. Therefore, a non-justified person who seeks to live a moral life can only do so in the vain attempt to secure God’s approval on the basis of his own works of righteousness. But for the justified person, the moral life looks completely different. For the justified person, he “pursues holiness not in order to be right with God, but as a response to God’s gracious declaration that he already is right with him.”

There is an order in the economy of salvation: justification precedes sanctification, not only in the obvious sense that justification is an instantaneous act of God at the outset of the Christian life, whereas progressive sanctification is a life-long process. Rather, justification precedes and grounds sanctification in the spiritual sense that, as Godfrey and VanDrunen write, “people progress in their Christian lives as those who are justified.” We are justified by faith alone. God justifies the ungodly (Rom 4:5). And then having been justified by faith alone, saving faith produces good works as the fruit and effect of justification by faith. This was the issue at the time of the Reformation, the point of difference with the Roman Catholic Church. If we put the order the other way, and say that we are justified only as we are sanctified, then we have fallen into the Roman Catholic view and we have lost the gospel.

Godfrey and VanDrunen engage in some helpful exegesis at this point as well, showing that this order (justification prior to sanctification) is taught in the Scriptures. They appeal to Luke 4:47, where Jesus says that the sinful woman’s love was the expression and evidence of that fact that she was forgiven and justified. They also point out that in Gal 5:13 Paul says we have freedom in Christ, that is, as those who are justified and adopted we have been set free from the law as a covenant of works, and so as those who are free, we are free to love. “We love as those who have been freed through our justification.” Paul says much the same thing in Rom 6:14 and 7:6. “The reality of justification is the foundation for the sanctified Christian life.”

I mentioned in the previous post that Garcia made the charge that WSC’s position on justification as having priority over sanctification “attribute[s] to justification a generative, transformational quality (in that sanctification is generated or produced by justification),” thereby compromising the purely forensic character of justification. Godfrey and VanDrunen respond to this charge by stating that the contributors to CJPM never said that justification “causes” sanctification. It is not the position of WSC that justification has a “generative, transformational” power, as if justification itself (rather than the Spirit) accomplishes the work of sanctification in us. Rather, WSC is keen to defend the idea that “the good works produced by believers in their sanctification are the fruits of justifying faith and that in the ordo salutis justification has a certain priority to sanctification.” Garcia misunderstands the WSC position.

They quote from the OPC Report of the Committee to Study the Doctrine of Justification (2006) to flesh this out more. The priority of justification over sanctification is not that justification is more important than sanctification, nor is it a temporal priority, for all who are justified are also being sanctified. Rather the point is this:

While justification is the necessary prerequisite of the process of sanctification, that process is not the necessary prerequisite of justification. It is true to say that one must be justified in order to be sanctified; but it is untrue to say that one must be sanctified in order to be justified. Justification and sanctification bear a relationship to each other than cannot be reversed (pp. 60-61).

Finally, Garcia may be correct that Calvin taught a “union-double benefit” construction of the ordo salutis. But Calvin did not follow this through to Garcia’s conclusion that the two benefits are equally basic and non-prioritized. Godfrey and VanDrunen make this point, quoting the famous statement by Calvin that justification is “the main hinge on which religion turns … For unless you understand first of all what your position is before God … you have no foundation on which your salvation can be laid, or on which piety toward God can be reared” (Institutes 3.11.1).

Justification and Union with Christ, Part 4

Mark Garcia’s Critique of the WSC Position on Justification

In 2007, the faculty of Westminster Seminary California (WSC) published a collection of essays titled Covenant, Justification, and Pastoral Ministry (hereafter referred to as CJPM), edited by R. Scott Clark. The essays grew out of a conference that the seminary held in 2003 in response to recent controversies over justification, most notably the Federal Vision, which had just then broken onto the American conservative Presbyterian and Reformed scene.

In response to the publication of CJPM, Mark Garcia wrote a review article titled “No Reformed Theology of Justification?” published in Ordained Servant in October 2007. Garcia’s review article included some comments about another book on justification, The Way of Salvation by Paul Rainbow, but the inclusion of the Rainbow book did little to conceal the fact that the review was intended primarily as a polemical piece against CJPM. At the same time, Garcia was not identifying with the Federal Vision in every respect, and in fact distanced himself from it in upholding the imputation of the active obedience of Christ. Yet, strangely, he felt more of a burden to engage in polemics against WSC’s defense of sola fide, than to join hands with WSC in refuting the Federal Vision’s denial of sola fide!

Mark Garcia earned a Master’s degree at WTS in 2000 and did further postgraduate study at WTS in 2001. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Edinburgh in 2004, and his dissertation, titled Life in Christ: Union with Christ and Twofold Grace in Calvin’s Theology, was published by Paternoster in 2008. Garcia dedicated his book to Dr. Gaffin, and in the preface, he explains that Gaffin’s “influence on my thinking [on the topic of Calvin and union with Christ] is reason enough to dedicate this project to him.” The influence of Gaffin on Garcia is evident throughout Garcia’s published writings.

It is evident that Garcia is committed to the whole set of concepts that make up the Gaffin thesis. For example, in his dissertation, Garcia writes:

In Calvin’s framework … the life of obedience or sanctification by the Spirit does not flow from the imputation of Christ’s righteousness but from Christ himself with whom the Spirit has united believers. In other words, for Calvin, sanctification does not flow from justification. They are not related as cause and effect. Rather, together they are ‘effects’ or, better, aspects of union with Christ (Life in Christ, 146).

He says the same thing in his review of CJPM: “Sanctification does not result from justification, but is an aspect, like justification, of our union with Christ.” It is from this point of view that he critiques the WSC position:

Despite the clear witness in the texts of the tradition, especially but far from exclusively in Calvin (see especially his commentary on 1 Cor. 1:30), that justification, sanctification, and any other graces of salvation are distinct, inseparable, and simultaneously bestowed aspects of union with Christ, the contributors to CJPM argue otherwise, and do so with evident passion. They prefer instead the classical Lutheran construct in which sanctification flows from justification.

Notice the language of “distinct, inseparable, and simultaneous” benefits. That is Gaffin’s language. The point of it is to say that union with Christ is primary. From union with Christ flow two benefits (the forensic and the renovative, justification and sanctification) that are distinct, inseparable, and simultaneous. Therefore, justification does not have priority over sanctification. It is not the cause of sanctification.

There are a number of inter-related claims here. Garcia is arguing the following:

• Calvin taught the “primacy of union, twofold non-prioritized benefit” view. Garcia directs readers to his dissertation for that case.
• Saying that sanctification flows from justification (i.e., prioritizing justification as the cause or legal ground of sanctification) is a Lutheran, not an authentically Reformed, construct.
• There may be some parts of the Reformed tradition that have Lutheranizing tendencies (such as the Heidelberg Catechism and the WSC faculty), but these are not authentically Reformed. Calvin’s view is the authentic Reformed view.

And with that we come to what may be the heart of Garcia’s concern. Garcia writes: “There is in fact no such thing as a ‘Reformational’ or pan-confessional theology of justification” shared by both the Lutheran and the Reformed systems of theology. Garcia thinks the Reformed system is, at a basic level, distinct from the Lutheran system. He thinks the differences between the two traditions are fundamentally incommensurate. The differences are in fact “systemic,” due to their different understandings of the place of union with Christ. In the Lutheran system, justification has controlling priority, and union with Christ and sanctification are effects of justification. In the Reformed system, according to Garcia, union with Christ has controlling priority, and justification and sanctification are distinct, inseparable, simultaneous, and non-prioritized effects of union with Christ.

The reason this is important for Garcia is that it impacts how one grounds sanctification, good works, and obedience in the Christian life. If one follows the Lutheran construct, then good works and obedience are merely the fruit of faith, or, to quote R. Scott Clark, “merely evidence of sanctity and nothing more” (CJPM, 253). But Garcia wants to argue that this “merely evidence” construction is “unable to do full justice to the multitude of imperatives in the New Testament that are clearly ‘Gospel,’ i.e., that commend (imperatively) obedience in some form as a condition for eternal life.”

Both Garcia and WSC believe in the necessity of good works, but they have a different view of the reason for the necessity of good works. For WSC, sanctification and good works are the result of a justification freely given and freely received. For Garcia, sanctification and good works are necessary, not as the result of justification, but as a result of union with Christ. This follows from his starting point regarding the distinct, inseparable, simultaneous, non-prioritized twofold benefit. “Calvin makes clear,” Garcia writes, that “this necessity [of good works] is not grounded in justification but in the reality of union with Christ.”

Near the end of his review, Garcia adds an important point that needs to be addressed. He thinks that the Gaffin formulation (primacy of union, twofold non-prioritized benefit) is the only formulation that truly safeguards the doctrine of justification against the Roman Catholic error:

If we argue, with CJPM, that justification is the cause of sanctification, then we attribute to justification a generative, transformational quality (in that sanctification is generated or produced by justification) and thus, ironically in view of the driving concern in CJPM, compromise the purely forensic character of justification. This is the liability of the Lutheran model, but it is a liability that is entirely avoided in the Reformed model according to which justification and sanctification come to us as distinct, inseparable, simultaneous benefits of union with Christ, rather than one coming from the other.