R. Scott Clark, a respected teacher in some places, writes about the Heidelberg Catechism:
According to the Protestant view, Jesus has propitiated God’s wrath and expiated our sins. He has satisfied for “all my sins.” He has reconciled God to me and all believers. Rome says, “It is begun.” Jesus says: “It is finished.” He has redeemed me from all the power of the devil. It isn’t just “underway.” It’s done. God is not propitiated, he is not reconciled, and I am not redeemed in any way by anything the Spirit does within me or anything I do in cooperation with grace. It’s done for me. The only “condition,” (instrument really) is this: “if only I accept such benefit with a believing heart” (HC 60). The whole Reformation can be said to have turned on the difference between two prepositions. When it comes to being right before God the Roman preposition is “in” and the Protestant preposition is “for.” Thank God for that little preposition “for!”
Clark is right (which is why this might sound persuasive) about a great divide between Rome and the Reformation. But he is simply wrong about the idea that the difference was Jesus work “in” believers and Jesus’ work “for” believers. According to Medieval pre-Reformation theology Jesus had done a great deal for believers: He had provided them with merits. Now they just had to use them appropriately.
But for the Reformers there was no partial apprehension of Christ, not continuum to travel down. If one possessed Christ by (and only by) trusting in him, then one had complete propitiation. His worthiness covered your unworthiness. There was nothing more to do.
Which brings us to the problem of faith. The paragraph I’ve quoted above, contains what looks like a contradiction. If God’s wrath is satisfied in regard to my sin, then I am right with God whether or not I believe. You can’t have it both ways. If we are going to claim that there is nothing more to say than that Christ has done it all for his elect 2000 years ago, then all the elect (at the very least since then) are conceived in the womb not under the wrath of God, but justified in his sight, even if they grow up outside the covenant as unbelievers.
But this simply isn’t the case. Elect and non-elect alike, who are born outside God’s covenant, are by nature, under his wrath and curse. The elect are not justified until they believe.
Furthermore, receiving a verdict by faith in order for it to be effective makes very little sense. If I’m given a drug that makes me hallucinate in the courtroom when a judge declares me not guilty for a crime, so that I think he has declared me guilty, how does my unbelief in the judge’s verdict nullify the legal standing that is bestowed? If I am justified, I am justified whether I receive the verdict by faith or not.
But that has never been the full story of Reformed soteriology. We are justified by faith and receive imputed righteousness by faith, precisely because we receive a person by faith: Jesus the righteous and vindicated one is our justification. This is the soteriology of Calvin and the Westminster Divines. We join with people by entrusting ourselves to them and Jesus is no different. All who trust in him will never be put to shame.
So, while it is emphatically true, “God is not propitiated, he is not reconciled … in any way by anything the Spirit does within me or anything I do in cooperation with grace,” it is emphatically false to say that “I am not redeemed in any way by anything the Spirit does within me.” If redeemed means personally released, freed, from the wrath of God, then the Spirit is not merely an after-effect–a gift to those already justified–but a true and real medium of salvation. As John Calvin wrote of the Holy Spirit in the Institutes:
In like manner, by means of Him we become partakers of the divine nature, so as in a manner to feel his quickening energy within us. Our justification is His work; from Him is power, sanctification, truth, grace, and every good thought, since it is from the Spirit alone that all good gifts proceed (Institutes, Beveridge, tr., 1.13. 14).
To deny this is either to go back to pelagianism, or else to embrace a hyper-calvinist doctrine that we are actually justified apart from and without faith. Eternal justification has some pedigree in the Continental Reformed tradition sadly (Kuyper), but it is declared erroneous by Presbyterians:
God did, from all eternity, decree to justify all the elect, and Christ did, in the fullness of time, die for their sins, and rise again for their justification: nevertheless, they are not justified, until the Holy Spirit doth, in due time, actually apply Christ unto them.
Christ is not divided. We do not have a piece or aspect of him while being outside of him. Only in Christ are justification and sanctification and eternal life. While making propitiation was a necessary condition for him to be our salvation, is is not his work in the past, but he himself having done that work who is our savior.
In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek (Hebrews 5.7-10).
Mark,
Below is an “advertisement” for a reformed youth conference I will be attending this summer. Though I am not certain, it looks like the conference theology may be more in line with Clark’s presentation of reformed theology than with yours.
Could you comment specifically on these statements:
“in Christianity, you have an extraodinary way of receiving God’s approval – not by sacrifice, not by obedience. It is by faith in a promise! The Bible’s invitation to salvation is “Faith in a promise.” Jesus was obedient to God for us, and we relate to God by faith or not at all. “Have faith in what I have done for you!” Jesus says.”
thanks for your interesting blog,
Andrew
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CONFERENCE
FAITH: STANDING ON THE PROMISES
How do you get at God? That is the question all religions ask. The various answers come down to two ways. You get God’s approval and favor through sacrifice – you make sacrificial offerings and then God is appeased; or, you get God’s approval by obedience to a code of ethics and by being and doing good. But in Christianity, you have an extraodinary way of receiving God’s approval – not by sacrifice, not by obedience. It is by faith in a promise! The Bible’s invitation to salvation is “Faith in a promise.” Jesus was obedient to God for us, and we relate to God by faith or not at all. “Have faith in what I have done for you!” Jesus says. The world says, “Seeing is believing.” The Bible says, “Believing is seeing.” Salvation’s story is one of people of faith, people who believed the promises of God and built their lives on them. This week at …, we will be looking at what it means to build your life on the promises of God.
Piper mentioned the debate between Scott and Wilson at his pastors conference (feb 5-7). He just mentioned it in passing and made reference to the FV debate being similar to the Sandemaniansim of Andrew Fuller’s day. Here is the link to the article (mp3 is available too): http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/EventMessages/ByDate/1977_Holy_Faith_Worthy_Gospel_World_Vision/
it is under the section:Fuller Against Sandemanianism.
You can listen to the mp3 to get the context of who seemed to inidcate was closer to Sandemanianism- but be does not accuse either of being one.
Just thought you might be interested.
This just further reinforces what i have come to believe: that the FVers are upholding the “free offer” of the Covenant, and that those who have opposed the FV so stridently are those who hold to a very High form (if not Hyperism proper) of Calvinism.
Make no mistaken, they are objectivists as well, but where they put the objectivity is in the accomplishment of Christ at the cross and in the decrees of God. This is what High Calvinism and Hyper-Calvinism always does: to so emphasize the “done” aspect of our salvation (which is the ground and basis upon which we are saved) that the “do” commandments that our Lord Christ and his Holy Apostles so emphasized (i.e., “repent,” “believe,” “hear,” “be baptized,” &c.), which are the personal responsibility of each person are de-emphasized.
I find it interesting that one of the arguments against FVers is that they are “Arminian.” This was a similar argument from the Hypers against the Marrowmen and other, more modern, advocates of the free offer of the Gospel to all men. It just seems that it is that same issue applied to the Covenant itself rather than the indiscriminate preaching to all.
It also could be a major step forward in reconciliation, because, as was the case with the Marrowmen and the free- and well-meant offer, the FV takes seriously the statements in Scripture of human responsibility and tries to keep them in tension with the affirmations of God’s sovereignty. If that’s true, our Arminian brothers may come to understand that we’re speaking at different levels: we can speak at the level of God’s sovereignty (as Calvinists tend to do), but we can also (as most Arminians do) speak at the level of human responsibility and duty. Both are true in their place; where they become wrong is their absolutizing either one to the exclusion of the other. That’s what Pelagianism and Arminianism do, and that’s also what the Hyper-Calvinists do (and the High Calvinists like Owen tend to this extreme as well).
There is alot of good coming out of this debate, even though it doesn’t seem pleasant at the moment.
Maybe it’s because I’m not a party to this debate, but I’m reading Clark differently: he means to stress that the Spirit-wrought change of heart in regeneration occurs because God’s wrath has been propitiated in the work of the Cross, which is appropriated by faith. Maybe that actually doesn’t clarify things. In any case, I think that he’s talking about a logical priority rather than a temporal one. Of course, justification and regeneration occur at the same time; however, it is important that the subjective side of salvation (regeneration) not govern the objective (justification), or else God is justifying us on the ground of a righteousness He infuses into us, rather than on the ground of Christ’s righteousness.
I do agree with you that Clark should have avoided saying “I am not redeemed by anything the Spirit does within me.” The word “redeemed,” like many used in theology, is ambiguous. We could not be redeemed by the Spirit’s work if Christ had not purchased our redemption, yes, but the Spirit’s work is the means by which Christ effects redemption for all who have an interest in Him.