Monthly Archives: October 2010

The Political Reason it is Easier to Go into Debt than to Save

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People are constantly talking about historically low interest rates that should make it easier to buy a home. We constantly hear about how the government needs to make it easier to get loans or get credit. We still hear ads, even in our current economy, about zero-down and same as cash (mostly cars now; used to be everything).

To hear politicians and businesses alike, low prices are a disaster for anything but money. Money should be cheap to rent.

But what if you want to save?

There is nothing out there other than gambling in the stock market that will match inflation.

So what is the motive to save? Your money is losing value every day.

I hear Dave Ramsey talk about 12 percent returns over the long haul. I can’t find any productive saver I know who believes him.

Yes, people should resist the enticements of “free money” that will lead to debt slavery. But the fact is that the incentive to be a producer rather than a consumer has been greatly mangled by economic policy. The government intentionally forces the price of money at below market value and then it backstops (whether any politician will admit it or not until the bubble bursts) people who deal in unsecured debt. I just got checks offered from one credit card company with a letter that told me they wanted to be there to help me in case I had any emergency expenses. And they would charge me almost thirty percent interest. The highest Savings Account I can find will only give me 2.06 percent interest.

I’m not adding yet another category to this blog, but I think this post is part of a trend in my thinking. Possibly related:

What kind of society will be able to help those in need?

The Bubble and government policy in one lesson

My next entry in this line will talk about why a corporation in political control of a country (i.e. a state) would find it desirable to promote debt rather than saving.

Charles Hodge writes a letter to the Pope for the Presbyterian Church

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(source)

To Pius the Ninth Bishop of Rome, —

By Your encyclical letter dated ____, __ 1869 you invite Protestants to send delegates to the Council called to meet at Rome during the month of December of the current year. That letter has been brought to the attention of the two General Assemblies of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. Those Assemblies represent about five thousand ministers and a still larger number of Christian congregations.

Believing, as we do, that it is the will of Christ that his Church on earth should be united, and recognizing the duty of doing all we consistently can to promote Christian charity and fellowship, we deem it right briefly to present the reasons which forbid our participation in the deliberations of the approaching Council.

It is not because we have renounced an article of the catholic faith. We are not heretics. We cordially receive all the doctrines contained in that Symbol which is known as the Apostles Creed. We regard all the doctrinal decisions of the first six oecumenical councils to be consistent with the word of God, and because of that consistency, we receive them as expressing our faith. We therefore believe the doctrines of the Trinity and of the person of Christ as those doctrines are exhibited in the symbols adopted by the council of Nice A.D. 321 [sic]; that of Chalcedon A.D. ___ and more fully of the Council of Constantinople A.D. ___. We believe that there are three persons in the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are the same in substance and equal in power and glory. We believe that the Eternal Son of God became man by taking to himself a true body and a reasonable soul, and so was, and continues to be, both God and man in two distinct natures and one person forever. We believe that our adorable Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is the prophet who should come into world, whose teachings we are bound to believe and in whose promises we rely. He is the High Priest of pro—-(?) whose infinitely meritorious satisfaction to the divine presence, and whose ever prevalent (?) intercession, is the sole ground of the sinners justification and acceptance before God. We acknowledge him to be our Lord not only because we are his creatures but also because we are the purchase of his blood. To his authority we are bound to submit, in his care we confine (?), and to his service all creatures in heaven and earth should be devoted.

We receive also all those doctrines concerning sin, grace, and predestination, known —- as Augustinianism; which doctrines receive the sanction not only of the Council of Carthage A.D. ___ and of other provincial Synods, but of the Ecumenical Council of Ephesis A.D., and of Zosimus, bishop of Rome A.D. ___. We therefore cannot be pronounced heretics without involving in the same condemnation the whole ancient church.

Neither are we Schismatics. We cordially recognise as members of Christ’s visible Church on earth, all those who profess the true religion together with their children. We are not only willing but earnestly desire to hold Christian communion with them; provided they do not require, as conditions of such communion, that we profess doctrines which the word of God condemns, or that we should do what that word forbids. If in any case any Church prescribes such unscriptural terms of fellowship, the error and the fault are with that Church and not with us.

But although we do not decline your invitation, because we are either heretics or schismatics, we are nevertheless debarred from accepting it, because we still hold with ever increasing confidence these principles for which our fathers were excommunicated and pronounced accursed by the Council of Trent which represented, and still represents the Church over which you preside.

The most important of those principles are First, that the Word of God, contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, are the only infallible rule of faith and practice. The Council of Trent, however, pronounces Anathema all who do not receive the teachings of tradition (Latin phrase–see Trent) as the Scriptures themselves. This we cannot do without receiving (?) the condemnation which our Lord pronounced on the Pharisees, who made void the word of God by their traditions –Matt. 15, 6. Secondly, the right of private judgment: When we open the Scriptures, we find that they are addressed to the people. They speak to us. We are commanded to search them. John 5, 39. To believe what they teach. We are held personally responsible for our faith. The apostle commands us to pronounced (sic) accursed an apostle or an angel from heaven, who should anything contrary to the divinely authenticated word of God. Gal. 1, 8. He makes us the judges, and has placed the rule of judgment into our hands, and holds us responsible for our judgments.

Moreover, we find that the teaching of the Holy Spirit was promised by Christ not to the clergy only; much less to any one order of the clergy, exclusively, but to all believers. It is written, “Ye shall all be taught of God.” The Apostle John says to believers: “Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and know all things . . . and the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you; and ye need not that any man teach you; but as the same anointing teach you of all things, and is of the truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in it.” I John 3, 20.27. This teaching of the Spirit authenticates itself, as this same Apostle teaches us, when he says; “He that believeth on the Son of God, hath the witness in himself.” I John 5, 10. “I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because you know it, and that no lie is of the truth.” Private judgment, therefore, is not only a right, but a duty; from which no man can absolve himself, or be absolved by others.

Thirdly, we believe in the universal priesthood of believers; that is, that all believers have through Christ access by one Spirit unto the Father. Eph 1,18; that we may come with boldness to the throne of grace ; that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. Heb. 4, 16. “Having, therefore, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us through the veil that is to say, his flesh; and having an high priest over the house of God; we may draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.” Heb. 10,19-22. To admit, therefore, the priesthood of the clergy, whose intervention is necessary to — for us the remission of sin and other benefits of the redemption of Christ, is to renouncethe priesthood of our Lord, or its sufficiency to —- reconciliation with God.

Fourthly, we deny the perpetuity of apostleship. As no man can be a prophet without the Spirit of prophesy; so no man can be an apostle without the gifts of an apostle. Those gifts, as we learn from Scripture, are, plenary knowledge of the truth derived from Christ by immediate revelation, Gal. 1, 13; and personal infallibility as — and —. And the seals of the apostleship were as Paul teaches us, when he says to the Corinthians, “Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience, in signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds.” 2 Cor. 12, 12. As prelates claim to be apostles, and who demand the same confidence in their teaching, and the same submission to their authority, as that due to the inspired messengers of Christ, without pretending to profess either the gifts or signs of the apostleship, we cannot submit to their claims. This would be [to] render to erring men the subjection due to God alone or to his divinely authenticated and infallible messengers.

Much less can we recognise the Bishop of Rome as the vicar of Christ on earth, clothed with the authority of even the Church and the word which was exercised by our Lord while here in the flesh. It is plain that no one can be the vicar of Christ who has not the attributes of Christ. To recognise the Bishop of Rome as Christ’s vicar is therefore virtually to recognise him as divine.

We must stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free. We cannot forfeit our salvation by putting man in the place of God, giving one of like passions with ourselves the — of our — — life which only to him in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, and in whom dwells all the fullness of the Godhead.

Other and equally cogent reasons might be assigned why we cannot with a good conscience be represented in the proposed council. But as the Council of Trent, whose canons are still in force, pronounces accursed all who hold the principles above enumerated, nothing further is necessary to show [that] ourdeclining your invitation is a matter of necessity

Nevertheless, although we cannot return to the fellowship of the Church of Rome, we desire to live in charity with all men. We love all those who love or Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. We regard as Christian brethren all who worship, love, and obey him as their God and Saviour; and we hope to be united in heaven with all who unite with us on earth in saying, “Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Rev. 1, 6.

Signed on behalf of the two General Assemblies of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. of America.

John Williamson Nevin defends his liturgy for baptism

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We turn our attention next to the doctrine of the Liturgy with regard to Baptism. Exception is taken to it, as teaching baptismal regeneration, substituting a mechanical ceremony for the righteousness of faith, and making a mere outward form to stand for the work of the Holy Spirit. Let us see how the matter really stands.

In somewhat bewildering contrast with this, the same service, which is thus charged with making to little of the sinner’s justification, has been reproached for making a great deal too much of his original guilt and condemnation. Many at least, at the Synod of Dayton, could hardly trust their ears when they heard a Professor of Theology, in the Reformed Church, say there, openly, that he for his part, could not go with the Liturgy, where it speaks of deliverance of our children through baptism “from the power of the Devil;” he did not believe it to be so bad with the children of Christians naturally as that; it was enough to appeal to the common sensibilities of parents (mothers in particular), to prove the contrary! This sounds strange certainly; but it needs only a little reflection to perceive, that it is, after all, only the working out at a new point of the same false spiritualism, which finds it so hard to understand or acknowledge on the other side, the presence of any real objective grace in baptism.

The Professor of Theology referred to taught in this case, of course, blank Pelagianism. Here precisely lay the old theological quarrel between Pelagius and St. Augustine. Pelagius, appealing to the common sensibilities of human nature, would not allow that children are born into the world under the curse of original sin, which is the power of the Devil. St. Augustine maintained the contrary, and what is especially noticeable, confounded Pelagius most of all, by appealing to infant baptism, which could have no meaning, he said, except in the light of a deliverance from the curse of sin conceived of in this real way. So, we know, the Church, also, decided against the heresiarch and his followers; and the decision has been echoed by the orthodoxy of the Christian world, from that day down to the present. We content ourselves with quoting now simply the plain words of the Heidelberg Catechism, the symbol this Professor of Theology has bound himself as with the solemnity of an oath to teach. “by the fall and disobedience of our first parents, Adam and Eve, in Paradise,” the Catechism tells us, Question 7, “our nature became so corrupt, that we are all conceived and born in sin.” On this then follows the question: “But are we so far depraved, that we are wholly unapt to any good . . . and prone to all evil?” to which is thundered forth, as from Mount Sinai, the soul-shaking answer: “Yes; unless we are born again by the Spirit of God.” And is not this what we are taught no less plainly in the New Testament? “That which is born of the flesh,” our Saviour says to Nicodemus (John iii. 6.) “is flesh”–that is, mere human nature in its fallen character, which as such cannot enter the kingdom of God, but is hopelessly on the outside of that kingdom, and so under the power of the Devil; only “that which is born of the Spirit, is Spirit;” and for this reason it is, that a man must be born again, “born of water and the Spirit,” in order that he may have part in this salvation. But why pursue the argument in this way? Must we go about proving at length for elders and deacons, or for the people at large, in the German Reformed Church, that the Scriptures teach the doctrine of Original Sin? The very children in our Sunday-schools have a sounder theology on this subject, than the Divinity Professor, who so exposed himself in regard to it at the Synod in Dayton.

A Pelagian anthropology leads over naturally to a spiritualistic construction of the whole Christian salvation; in which, as their is no organic power of the Devil or kingdom of darkness, for men to be delivered from, so there will be no organic redemption either, no objective, historical order of grace, in the bosom and through the power of which, this salvation is to go forward; but all will be made to resolve itself into workings of God’s Spirit that are of a general character, and into processes of thought and feeling, on the part of men, with no other basis than the relations of God to man in the most common, simply humanitarian view. Is there then no organic redemption needed for men, into the sphere of which they must come first of all, in order that they may have power to become personally righteous, and so be able to work out their salvation with fear and trembling, as knowing it to be God that worketh in them both to will and to do of His own good pleasure? Has the Church been wrong in believing through all ages, that “we must be delivered from the power of darkness, and translated into the kingdom of God’s dear Son” (Col. i. 13), not as the end of our personal goodness and piety, but the beginning of it, and the one necessary condition first of all, without which we can make no progress in goodness or piety whatever? Has the Church been wrong in believing, that such change of state, such transplantation from the kingdom of the Devil over into the kingdom of Christ, must in the nature of the case be a Divine act; and that as such a Divine act, it must be something more than any human thought or volition simply, stimulated into action by God’s Spirit? Has the Church been wrong in believing, finally, that the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, the sacrament of initiation into the Church, was instituted, not only to signify this truth in a general way, but to seal it as a present actuality for all who are willing to accept the boon thus offered to them in the transaction?

Baptismal regeneration! our evangelical spiritualists are at once ready to exclaim. But we will not allow ourselves to be put out of course in so solemn an argument, by any catchword of this sort addressed to popular prejudice. The Liturgy avoids the ambiguous phrase; and we will do so too; for the word regeneration is made to mean, sometimes one thing, and sometimes another, and it does not come in our way at all at present to discuss these meanings. We are only concerned, that no miserable logomachy of this sort shall be allowed to cheat us out of what the sacrament has been held to be in past ages; God’s act, setting apart those who are the subjects of it to His service, and bringing them within the sphere of His grace in order that they may be saved. We do not ask any one to call this regeneration; it may not at all suit his sense of the term; but we do most earnestly conjure all to hold fast to the thing, call it by what term they may. The Question is simply, Doth baptism in any sense save us? Has it anything to do at all with our deliverance from original sin, and our being set down in the new world of righteousness and grace, which has been brought to pass in the midst of Satan’s kingdom all around it, by our Lord Jesus Christ?

For the defense of the Liturgy it will be enough to place the matter now on the lowest ground. Our spiritualists admit that God may make baptism the channel of His grace–may cause the thing signified to go along with the outward sign, when He is pleased to do so; only they will not have it that His grace is in any way bound to the ordinance. Will they not admit then also, that the sacrament ought to be so used as to carry with it the benefit it represents; that God designed it to be in this way more than an empty form; and that it is the duty of all, therefore, to desire and expect through it what it thus, by Divine appointment, holds out to expectation? Who will be so bold as to say, in so many words, that baptism means no deliverance whatever from the power of sin, and that it is superstition to come looking for anything of this sort from it? Why then quarrel with the Liturgy for making earnest with the objective force of the sacrament in this view?

“You present this child here,” it is said, “and do seek for him deliverance from the power of the Devil, the remission of sin, and the gift of an new and spiritual life by the Holy Ghost, through the Sacrament of Baptism, which Christ hath ordained for the communication of such great grace.” Is it not true, that the sacrament has been ordained for that purpose, even if this be not exclusively or necessarily bound to its administration? If not, for what other purpose under heaven was it ordained? And if for this purpose, why should those who dome to the ordinance, not come seeking what it holds out in this way to the view of faith? Are they to come seeking nothing, expecting nothing, believing nothing? Or if otherwise, in the name of all common sense, tell us, O ye Gnostic dreamers, ye zealous contenders against formalities and forms, what then are they to seek?

The Liturgy, we allow, however, goes beyond [the] low view of the mere possibility of grace through the sacrament; it affirms that God, on his part, makes it to be always objectively just what it means. In other words, it teaches sacramental grace; and sees in it a birth-right title to all the blessings of the new covenant. This does not mean, that it regenerates or converts any one in the modern Methodistic sense of these terms; that it saves people by magic; or that it makes their final salvation sure in any way. Like Esau’s birthright, it may be neglected, despised, parted with for a mess of pottage. But all this does not touch the question of its intrinsic value, in its own order; as being a real Divine gift and power of Sonship, nevertheless, in the family of God, for which all the treasures of the earth should be counted a poor and mean exchange.

On this subject of baptismal grace, then, we will enter into no compromise with the anti-liturgical theology we have now in hand. In seeking to make the Liturgy wrong, it has only shown itself wrong; and the more its errors are probed, the more are they found to be indeed, “wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores.” Starting with Pelagianism on one side, it lands us swiftly in downright Rationalism on the other. “It is impossible,’ says the distinguished French Reformed divine, Pressense, in a late article, “to establish the necessity of infant baptism, except upon the ground that baptism imparts a special grace.” We are most decidedly of the same opinion; and for this reason we denounce this theology as in reality, whatever it may be in profession, hostile to infant baptism, and unfriendly, therefore, to the whole idea of educational religion as it has been based upon it in the Reformed Church from the beginning. Without the conception of baptismal grace going along with the baptism of infants, there can be no room properly for confirmation; and the catechetical training which is employed to prepare the way for this, may easily come then to seem a hinderance rather than a help, to the true conversions of the young to God. Then it will be well, if baptism fall not into general contempt, and so be brought to sink finally more and more into neglect altogether. To what a pass things have already come in this respect throughout our country, by reason of the baptistic spirit which is among us, and the general theological tendency we are now considering, we will not now take time to decide. Those who have eyes to see, can see for themselves.

Goldman Sachs, the Fed, and Wall Street in the Bible

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Hear this, you who trample on the needy
and bring the poor of the land to an end,
saying, “When will the new moon be over,
that we may sell grain?
And the Sabbath,
that we may offer wheat for sale,
that we may make the ephah small and the shekel great
and deal deceitfully with false balances,
that we may buy the poor for silver
and the needy for a pair of sandals
and sell the chaff of the wheat?”

via Passage: amos 7-8 (ESV Bible Online).

The True Gospel v. the Galatian Heretics

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In Augustine’s pastoral opposition to the Donatists, he made it clear that the very nature of the Gospel was at stake and he used Paul’s letter to the Galatians to prove it. He wrote to his friend Generosus:

Since you were pleased to acquaint us with the letter sent to you by a Donatist presbyter, although, with the spirit of a true Catholic, you regarded it with contempt, nevertheless, to aid you in seeking his welfare if his folly be not incurable, we beg you to forward to him the following reply. He wrote that an angel had enjoined him to declare to you the episcopal succession of the Christianity of your town; to you, forsooth, who hold the Christianity not of your own town only, nor of Africa only, but of the whole world, the Christianity which has been published, and is now published to all nations. This proves that they think it a small matter that they themselves are not ashamed of being cut off, and are taking no measures, while they may, to be engrafted anew; they are not content unless they do their utmost to cut others off, and bring them to share their own fate, as withered branches fit for the flames. Wherefore, even if you had yourself been visited by that angel whom he affirms to have appeared to him — a statement which we regard as a cunning fiction; and if the angel had said to you the very words which he, on the warrant of the alleged command, repeated to you — even in that case it would have been your duty to remember the words of the apostle: “Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.” For to you it was proclaimed by the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, that His “gospel shall be preached unto all nations, and then shall the end come.” To you it has moreover been proclaimed by the writings of the prophets and of the apostles, that the promises were given to Abraham and to his seed, which is Christ? when God said unto him: “In thy seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed.” Having then such promises, if an angel from heaven were to say to thee, “Let go the Christianity of the whole earth, and cling to the faction of Donatus, the episcopal succession of which is set forth in a letter of their bishop in your town,” he ought to be accursed in your estimation; because he would be endeavouring to cut you off from the whole Church, and thrust you into a small party, and make you forfeit your interest in the promises of God.

While Augustine directly quotes Galatians 1.8 and 3.16, the quotation of Genesis 15 is also anchored in Galatians as well: And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” As Augustine understands it, reducing the Church to a small sect within it is a different Gospel because the content of the Gospel preached to Abraham was a promise of redemption to all nations. The Gospel, in a significant sense, simply is the declaration that all nations are to be blessed in Christ.

Defining the Gospel as the blessing going to all nations alike without any nation having a special covenantal privilege corresponds rather precisely to Paul’s statements in Ephesians and Colossians.

This is in fact precisely Paul’s point in Galatians in his contrast between the promise to Abraham versus the Mosaic Law (3.15-18). The promise to Abraham was for a single seed, a single family (c.f. 3.29). But the Law, while necessary because of trangressions, did not allow a single family, but created divisions. The fact that God is one proved that the Law had to be temporary until the one seed could be found in Christ (v. 20; compare Romans 3.29, 30).

Luther, we should note, held to the same ground against Eck in their debate.

As for the article of Hus that “it is not necessary for salvation to believe the Roman Church superior to all others” I do not care whether this comes fro Wyclif or from Hus. I know that innumerable Greeks have been saved though they never heard this article. It is not in the power of the Roman pontiff or of the Inquisition to construct new articles of faith. No believing Christian can be coerced beyond holy writ.

(Roland Baintan, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther [Nashville: Abingdon Press] p. 89).

For a more comprehensive look at Galatians, Derrick Olliff’s excellent essay (though you may want to read his essay on the Gospel, first). For a brief overview of why attempts to make Galatians support a different sort of Law-Gospel distinction fail to deal with what the letter actually says, take a look at Tim Gallant’s “What Saint Paul Should Have Said.”

Repost: Wright, Righteousness, and Covenant

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N. T. Wright claims that in the Apostle Paul’s writings “righteousness,” as it predicated of humans, denotes “covenant membership.” When he wrote this in the New Bible Dictionary edited by Sinclair Ferguson, J. I. Packer, and David Wright, no one thought this was too big a deal. However, when he expressed himself again later in his excellent little book, What Saint Paul Really Said, his claims attracted a great deal more criticism, some of it worthy of consideration (i.e. Charles Hill’s review at Thirdmill.org).

Frankly, I originally thought that Wright’s claims about righteousness and covenant membership were somewhat overblown. What he rightly pointed out, as far I was concerned, was that Paul spoke of “justification” and “righteousness” as a forensic status especially in the context of dealing with the question of the status of believing baptized Gentiles in relation to believing baptized Jews (i.e. mainly Romans and Galatians). In most other epistles dealing with Christian life, faith, and conversion (see especially First Thessalonians for this last), Paul doesn’t find any need to mention justification or even righteousness. But all this only showed when Paul used the word. That was a totally different question from what the word actually meant. Just because Paul had a certain use for certain terminology doesn’t mean there aren’t other legitimate uses for that terminology.

Still, since the Bible is authoritative, I thought it was a good thing to point out that the original situation in which Paul applied the doctrine of justification was arranged and recorded under the control and inspiration of the Spirit. While we can and should apply the doctrine in various ways as our particular circumstances demand, we dare not simply forget the original context in our exegesis. God told us about it for a reason. In this light, even if Wright was somewhat mistaken, it seemed obvious to me that his emphasis could be helpful to anyone who wanted to be faithful to Scripture. From this standpoint, Steve Schlissel’s pleas that Biblical studies on justification not be suffered to entirely ignore the issue of Jew and Gentile seem quite reasonables. I can’t help but wonder if the reaction to them in some quarters is more a reaction against Schlissel in general rather than the actual content of his statements on this issue.

It needs to be pointed out (not because it is unclear, but because highly-polarized and perjorative mischaracterizations are common) that Wright has always affirmed that justification is the conferring of a forensic status or righteousness in God’s sight—they are given legal right standing with Him. He never threatened the normal use of the word in Reformed dogmatics. On the contrary, he admirably defended justification as the conferring of a legal status and also popularized the need to distinguish justification from effectual calling in order to accurately reproduce Pauline theology. (Furthermore, he has consistently taught that this standing has an exclusively extrinsic basis in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

There is, however, more to be said regarding the meaning of righteousness or justification in relation to covenant status or membership. To have “right standing” can mean, by itself, just about anything. Two equals can have right standing with each other. Two strangers can get in an argument on the street, and when peace is restored, revert to being strangers who go on their way without any further relationship—which as strangers, would be a restoration of right standing. Obviously, this bare definition is simply not what the Apostle Paul means when he refers to God justifying the ungodly, not would it be the meaning used by Saul the Pharisee.

After all, Adam was God’s son (Luke 3.38). When God condemned him and Eve, they were disinherited from God’s family. By definition, reconciliation with God, being again accounted as righteous in his sight, would mean being restored as God’s children. In fact, it is difficult to think of a way that a sinful son of Adam could conceivably be pardoned of all his sins and accepted as righteous in God’s sight (Westminster Shorter Catechism #33), without being, in that very act, given status in God’s covenant.

Thus, Francis Turretin wrote that,

to no purpose do some anxiously ask here how justification and adoption differ from each other, and whether adoption is by nature prior to justification (as some hold, who think it is the first and immediate fruit of faith by which we are united and joined to Christ; or whether posterior to and consequent upon it, as others). For since it is evident from what has been said that justification is a benefit by which God (being reconciled to us in Christ) absolves us from the guilt of sins and gives us a right to life, it follows that adoption is included in justification itself as a part which, with the remission of sins, constitutes the whole of this benefit. Nor can it be distinguished from adoption except inasmuch as it is taken strictly for remission of sins, since in its formal conception it includes also acceptation to life, which flows from the imputation of Christ’s righteousness (Institutes, Vol. II, p. 668 / 16.6.7).

For God to give someone a relationship with himself is an inherently covenantal action. It is true that the prodigal son (Luke 15) could conceive of the idea of receiving some sort of forgiveness from his father without being restored to sonship, but his concept was quite obviously attenuated. If a father in that era were to say a son could only stay on the estate as a hired servant, he would be understandably perceived as disowning his son. Real forgiveness meant a restoration of the covenant relationship.

In short, if condemnation means expulsion from the covenant relationship then justification cannot fail to mean the restoration to the covenant relationship.

The discussion of the prodigal son, however, opens our eyes to why regenerate Jews and pagan Gentiles could both be said to have been justified when they heard the Gospel. Even though they enjoyed God’s love and favor, many barriers separated pious Jews from the presence of God in the Holy of Holies. They were sons and yet were treated as mere servants in many ways. Thus, again, Turretin:

Now although this privilege as to the thing [adoption, righteousness before God] is common to all the believers of the Old Testament, no less than to those of the New, who were both sons of God and had a right to the heavenly inheritance (to which after death they were admitted), still it is certain that the condition of believers of the New Testament as to the mode is far better in this respect: they are no longer in an infantile age, held like slaves under teachers and the rudiments of the world, when the were not able to have either the sense or the use of their right, animated by the spirit of bondage. But now being adults and emancipated by Christ, they are admitted to the sanctuary of the Father and have a full sense and fruit of their right, the Spirit of adoption being received, in virtue of which they can confidently cry out, Abba, Father. Paul refers to this when he says, “Christ was made under the law to redeem them that were under the law” (to with, under the curse of the moral law and under the yoke of the ceremonial law) “that we might receive the adoption of sons” (Galatians 4.4, 5). Not that only by which we are separated from the children of wrath and the Devil, but also that by which we far excel infants, who do not differ from slaves.

Turretin goes on to refer back to his discussion of the covenant of grace (10.2), demonstrating that he sees adoption as a covenant identity.

So Wright’s idea that justification declares believers to be members of God’s covenant through Christ is not far-fetched. Indeed, it is impossible to escape. To be given, by declaration, right standing with God, is inherently to be given covenant status with him.
The question remains: Is Wright really getting into Paul’s mind to bring up such a meaning? Wright’s commentary on Romans shows that he finds this connection in Paul himself. Commenting on Romans 4.11 he writes:

We should note, in particular, that Paul’s effortless rewording of Gen 17:11 indicates clearly, what we have argued all along, that for him a primary meaning of “righteousness” was “covenant membership.” God says in Genesis that circumcision is “a sign of the covenant”; Paul says it was “a sign of righteousness.” He can hardly mean this as a radical alteration or correction, but rather as an explanation. The whole chapter (Genesis 15) is about the covenant that God made with Abraham, and Paul is spending his whole chapter expounding it; if he had wanted to avoid covenant theology he went about it in a strange way. Rather, we should see here powerful confirmation of the covenantal reading of “righteousness” language in 1:17 and 3:21-31. “He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the covenant membership marked by the faith he had while still uncircumcised” (Romans, 494-495).

Consider also Paul’s thought on what is reckoned:

  • So, if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the law, will not his uncircumcision be reckoned as circumcision? (Romans 2.26)
  • He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be reckoned to them as well, and to make him the father of the circumcised who are not merely circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised (Romans 4.11, 12).
  • This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are reckoned as offspring (Romans 9.8).

Add to this how closely justification is tied to membership in Abraham’s family (Romans 4, Galations 3.23-4.6).

Paul’s interpretation would be backed by what the Bible says about Phinehas. Just as Abram was reckoned righteous when he believed God so Phinehas was reckoned righteous when he slew a Moabitess and apostate Israelite.

Then Phinehas stood up and intervened,
and the plague was stayed.
And that was counted to him as righteousness
from generation to generation forever (Psalm 106.30, 31).

What does being reckoned righteous entail? We are told in Numbers 25.11-13:

Phinehas the son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, has turned back my wrath from the people of Israel, in that he was jealous with my jealousy among them, so that I did not consume the people of Israel in my jealousy. Therefore say, “Behold, I give to him my covenant of peace, and it shall be to him and to his descendants after him the covenant of a perpetual priesthood, because he was jealous for his God and made atonement for the people of Israel.”

Of course, the concept of justification can occur in contexts that don’t use that exact word. In Romans chapter 2 the forensic meaning of “justify” is rendered undeniable by the context of the judgment of God. To ask for God to judge favorably is to ask for God to justify. Thus, Ezekiel 20.37-38 provide more evidence that being justified means being put into a covenant relationship:

“As I entered into judgment with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt, so I will enter into judgment with you,” declares the Lord God. “And I shall make you pass under the rod, and I shall bring you into the bond of the covenant; and I shall purge from you the rebels and those who transgress against Me; I shall bring them out of the land where they sojourn, but they will not enter the land of Israel. Thus you will know that I am the Lord” (Ezekiel 20.37, 38).

God’s message through Ezekiel reiterates a major theme in the Exodus that is tied to the covenant made with Abram in Genesis 15 when he was counted as righteous for believing God. The sequence is that God spoke promises to Abram and Abram believed so that God accounted Abram righteous and then made a covenant with him. But this covenant itself promises that God will vindicate his descendants: “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions” (Genesis 15.13, 14, emphasis added). By promising to judge Israel’s oppressors God was promising to vindicate Israel, to justify them, to declare them to be righteous. Just as Abram had no outward evidence that he was favored by God as an “exalted father” (the meaning of his name) and simply had to cling to God’s promise of offspring and inheritance, so the Hebrew slaves hardly seemed to belong to a powerful and faithful God.But God’s promises are of much more value than the way things seem to be at present. Moses brought the message that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was now going to fulfill his covenant promises. They believed Moses and they were publicly declared to be righteous. This was demonstrated in the plagues on Egypt culminating in the slaying of the firstborn and the Passover sacrifice and meal.

In this manner you shall eat it: with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord’s Passover. For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt (Exodus 12.11-13; emphasis added).

God’s liberation of the Israelites takes place a courtroom situation. He is declaring and enforcing a judicial verdict in favor of his people and against the Egyptians. This is especially evident in the Passover meal, in which God judges the Egyptian gods who hold the Israelites captive, while providing escape from condemnation by the blood of a lamb or goat.

Thus there is judgment followed by being brought into a new or renewed covenant at Sinai, just as in Ezekiel’s prophecy and in the sequence of Genesis 15 itself. What all this might mean, I am not sure. But it certainly gives us reason to think of theological justification as being declared in right relation to God and thus a member of his covenant.

Paul was not the only one to see the relational point of justification or righteousness. James cites Genesis 15.6 just like Paul does, but adds an interpretative statement: “‘And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,’ and he was called the friend of God” (James 2.23). Being given the status of righteous before God means being made God’s friend. It may well be that this is a covenant term itself. “My companion stretched out his hand against his friends; he violated his covenant” (Psalm 55.20).But friend has another connotation in some relationships—that of close advisor or member of one’s council. Haman had these sorts of friends (Esther 5.10, 14; 6.13)—notice that he summons them at will and they are also called his “wise men,” a term already used in Esther to denote members of an advisory council for King Ahasuerus. The high priest’s advisors who sat with him were also referred to as his friends (Zechariah 3.8). Job’s friends seem to play this role, albeit rather badly.Thus Jesus says of his disciples that they are his friends because he shares in his doings, and he promises them that their requests will be granted by his Father:

You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you (John 15.14-16).

Jesus had said virtually the same thing about Abraham many centuries earlier.

Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? For I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him (Genesis 18.17-19).

The Lord proceeds to tell Abraham of his plan to visit Sodom and Abraham advices God to not to destroy the town for the sake as few as ten righteous men who might be there. No wonder Jehoshaphat called Abraham God’s friend (Second Chronicles 20.7) and that James followed his example. Being justified means being given access to God’s throneroom as a member of his council.

Jesus’ contrast between servants and friends (John 15.14-16) reminds us of Paul’s contrast between servants and sons and takes us back full-circle to his doctrine of justification and its relationship to covenant membership.

Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise (Galatians 3.23-29).

Remember, the reference to Abraham has been mentioned in the context of a discussion of the Abrahamic Covenent. God vindicated Israel from Egypt because “Israel is my firstborn son” (Exodus 4.22) and because “God remembered his covenant with Abraham” (Exodus 2.24). And so we are justified because we are sons in the Seed of Abraham.

“Christianity & History” by Joe Sobran

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Ignorance is often hidden behind an urbane surface. Many otherwise educated people lack the most elementary understanding of certain subjects. One of these is religion.

When I was an aspiring Shakespeare scholar during my college days, I was surprised to find that most commentators on Hamlet missed the play’s religious aspect. Prince Hamlet is evidently a Catholic, but he has been a student at Wittenberg, home of the Reformation. He puns on the Diet of Worms. His father’s ghost laments that he was murdered without a chance to receive the sacraments, a fact Hamlet recalls when he hesitates to kill his uncle at prayer; Hamlet later sends two former friends to their deaths without confession. Ophelia, an apparent suicide, is given a Christian burial, to the scandal of her gravediggers.

None of this would have been lost on the ordinary Elizabethan playgoer. Whether the ghost comes from purgatory or hell, whether the old sacraments are efficacious, whether Ophelia is damned — these are questions that would have occurred to everyone in the audience, Catholic, Anglican, or Protestant. Modern scholars consign them to footnotes. But Elizabethans would have agreed with the Anglican Samuel Johnson (writing two centuries later) that Hamlet has descended to a diabolical level by seeking the damnation of his enemies.

Read the rest: Joe Sobran On Christianity and History | the mind-body politic.