Union with Christ – Reformed Forum

I have a question. What are the views of the Reformed Forum. LOL.

Camden,
In my reply of Dec. 21 at 12:14pm, I was thinking not of your above audio (congrats on 200+ episodes, BTW!), but of three Youtube videos Lane has on union that do not make much of election, nor deals specifically with Horton.
My apologies.

But does Tipton talk of election? We ought to make much of it.

Further, if he was critiquing Horton (or anyone else) he’d have gone long way toward clarity had he cited & interacted with what he disagrees with, and stayed away from vague references and the near-slanderous charges of semi-pelagianism or crypto-Lutheranism.

The deliverance from the twofold problem of sin is eschatological. I reject perfectionism as Tipton, Gaffin, and anyone else subscribing to the Westminster Standards does (WCF 13.2). Christ offers a full salvation from sin—that includes complete deliverance from its corruption as well. But that salvation is not consummated until the believer dies or the Lord returns (cf. 1 Cor 15:50-56; Heb 12:14).

I desire to interact, but I struggle to continue to have to answer these types of questions that frequently overlook basic features of confessional Reformed theology. Just read the quote again: “Our savior not only delivers us from sin’s guilt, but also from its corruption.” Do you believe in the resurrection? Is that simply deliverance from guilt? Please, I urge you to pick up a few books on the subject. For instance, read Sinclair Ferguson’s The Christian Life, Murray’s Redemption Accomplished and Applied, Gaffin’s Resurrection and Redemption, or any decent systematic theology (Bavinck, Hodge, Turretin).

Our savior not only delivers us from sin’s guilt, but also from its corruption.

So you believe in sinless perfection after conversion and that there is no remaining corruption of the old man in the new creation? Paul disagrees with that. Obviously Romans 7 says otherwise.

To focus on sanctification above all else as Tipton does, is essentially neo-legalism. Everyone is a sinner. This is why good works before faith do not justify. It’s also why good works after faith do not justify. Good works are done to please God and out of gratitude. No amount of good works can earn favor with God. That’s why the laborers in the field all receive the same reward. It’s the same reason the prodigal son receives the same favor as the elder brother.

Pharisees always want to point to themselves and their accomplishments rather than pointing to God’s mercy and His pardon of sins. The fact is the worst criminal on death row can be saved while the most holy works of a Mother Teresa deserve hell because they are not done in faith.

Charlie

Well I think, I found the answer. Calvin also taught as Luther that justification by grace through faith is the chief or sole benefit we obtain from which all other benefits are derived. So justification is the cause and sanctification the effect of justification, for both Calvin and Luther. Horton is right, the primacy of justification is both a reformed and lutheran tenet. Book 3, chapter 17. section 10 of the Institutes is where Calvin writes that the forgiveness of sins is the only blessedness we receive from Christ:

“Since, then, all the kinds of blessedness extolled in the Scripture are vain so that man derives no benefit from them until he obtains blessedness by the forgiveness of sins, a forgiveness which makes way for them, it follows that this is not only the chief and highest, but the only blessedness” John Calvin

With Horton I would agree that, though we must credit our subjective faith (the fact that we believe) to the sovereign, regenerating work of the Holy Spirit in us, the object of that faith as such remains Christ in Himself (i.e., in both His Person, and work, outside of us), rather than Christ in us. It doesn’t seem incompatible with what Gaffin says:

Further, for Paul sanctification is not only a process involving us in our activity but is also and first of all “definitive sanctification,” a decisive, definitive, once-for-all act of God, underlying our activity. A central point of Romans 6–7, for instance, is that while sin is a reality for the believer, it is not my Lord. Because of union with Christ in his death and resurrection I am no longer sin’s slave. Sin is indwelling but not overpowering; for the believer indwelling sin is not enslaving sin.

In fact, as we have already seen, sanctification is an aspect and outcome of the reality of the resurrection already experienced by the believer and its ongoing, progressive realization has no deeper perspective from which it can be viewed than that it is a continual “living to God” by those who are “alive from the dead” (to be sure, “in the mortal body,” Rom. 6:11–13). Or, as Paul puts it in Ephesians 2:10 – perhaps the most decisive biblical pronouncement on “good works,” sanctification is a matter of those – note, just those who are “saved by grace through faith and not by works” (vv. 8–9) – who “have been created in Christ Jesus for the good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”

The point here is that “The path of good works runs not from man to God, says Paul, but from God to man.” Ultimately, in the deepest sense, for Paul “our good works” are not ours, but God’s. They are his work begun and continuing in us, his being “at work in us, both to will and to do what please him” (Phil. 2:13). That is why, without any tension, a faith that rests in God the Savior is a faith that is restless to do his will.

In 1 Corinthians 4:7 Paul puts to the church those searching rhetorical questions, “Who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?” (NIV). These questions, we should be sure, have the same answer for sanctification as for justification, for our good works as well as for our faith. Both, faith and good works, are God’s gift, his work in us. The deepest motive for our sanctification, for holy living and good works, is not our psychology, not how I “feel” about God and Jesus. Nor is it even our faith. Rather, that profoundest of motives is the resurrection power of Christ, the new creation we are and have already been made a part of in Christ by his Spirit.

Gaffin, R. B. (2006). By Faith, Not by Sight: Paul and the Order of Salvation (77–78). Paternoster.

Having listened to Horton a lot, I believe his concern in prioritizing the forensic aspect of union with Christ over any mystical or ontological union with Christ (a position that he reaffirms in his more recent Christian Faith), is that the ground of that union (i.e., the basis on which my subjective participation in Christ, “how” I am in a state of union with Him) always remains the saving work of Christ (His incarnation, life, death, resurrection, ascension) outside of me and never shifts or transitions to the ground of Christ’s “renovative” work in me, let alone any aspect of my “attendant human response” to that work.

I’m not sure how union with Christ being a “faith-union” avoids making that transition if “faith” (i.e., the presence of saving faith) is defined to be an “attendant human response” (thus synergistic) rather than a direct sovereign (monergistic) work of God. Though the role of “works” (i.e., actions) is rejected, isn’t faith itself a necessary (albeit non-meritorious) “work” under that concept? How does this differ from the infamous “covenant faithfulness” redefinition of “faith” that is characteristic of, say, Norm Shepherd and the New Perspective?

Let me qualify this last statement where I said Dr Tipton is correct on his assessment of lutheranism and Horton. i think he’s correct in that he’s identified some key differences in the order between justification and sanctification, in the lutheran (justification precedes sanctification) and reformed tradition (justidcation and sanctification are simultaneous),

Now he’s still wrong in charging lutheranism and Horton with semi pelagianism. He also fails to recognize that luthernism clearly teaches that immediately after a christian is justified by grace through faith, his heart is changed, his relationship with god is changed, and he wants to do nothing but good works. So sanctification is one milisecond after justification in lutheranism, and simultaneous in calvinism. We may as well say that it’s simultaneous in both, and that one can not take place without the other. Bot lutherans and calvinists agree that the elect are both justified and sanctified, the unsanctified christian does not esxist.

OK, thanks Camden. I think this episode 213 makes it clear that Dr. Tipton, like Calvin affirms that sanctification proceeds from our faith union with Christ. Now I think that Dr. Tipton is correct on his assessment of lutheranism and Michael Horton.

Dr. Tipton instead claims that these two gifts (justification and sanctification) proceed from Union with Christ and not faith. This is problematic, because even if we define Union with Christ as the effectual call as Dr. Tipton does…

I’m sorry, but I really think you’ve misunderstand Tipton on several important points. He does not say union is the effectual call. Neither does he say that sanctification does not proceed from faith. Union with Christ is a faith-union. I think he’s very clear in this interview, but you can hear him speak about sanctification on another occasion at http://reformedforum.wpengine.com/rfs13/.

Calvin: FAITH is followed by two simultaneous gifts sanctification and justification
Tipton: UNION with Christ is followed by faith (justification) and sanctification
Lutherans: FAITH (justification) is followed by sanctification

As you can see the risk of antinomianism is high under both Tipton and the lutherans since both identify faith with justtification. While Calvin put faith (by which we are united to Christ) ahead of justification and sanctification, faith encompasses it for Calvin.

[c. 53:47ff, Tipton] “The way that I want to construe the difference between regeneration and definitive sanctification can be put this way: Regeneration does not in itself involve human agency at any level – it is a monergistic, recreative act of God. Period. Eph. 2:5, ‘While dead in trespasses God made us alive together with Christ’…

“However… After Paul moves from 2:5 through 2:7, he comes to 2:8 and what’s invoked? You’re saved by grace (Eph. 2:5) – and it’s all renovative, sovereign work of God – you’re saved by grace διὰ πίστεως – through faith… See, the attendant human response comes into view in 2:8 – it is not in view in 2:5. And then, what metaphor does Paul use in 2:10 to describe a faith-enlivened believer? What is it?… ‘Created in Christ to walk…’

[55:50] “…Definitive sanctification is distinguished from regeneration in the sense that it is a faith-engaged, faith-enabled, renovative work of God. Sanctification always – read the Systematics’ texts – always involves an attendant human response. And so, no sooner are you made alive by the sovereign, monergistic, renewing work of God – regeneration – then you are raised, renewed, to what? Walk. And that walk involves your attendant human response to that renovation. So that there’s a fine line between regeneration and definitive sanctification, but that line does exist.”

[c. 57:20, host question] “…If [definitive and progressive] sanctification are both faith-enabled, synergistic processes, then how do we distinguish the two?”

[Answer, Tipton] “You distinguish the alpha-point from the progress that is made from that alpha-point. There is an alpha-point for faith. There’s an alpha-point for a raised or resurrected walk. And (no surprise here that) the best category to use to describe the definitive breach with sin is resurrection. Resurrection involves two distinct but related facets — what is it?: the being raised, and the rising and walking.

“And so, when we’re thinking about a distinction between regeneration and the definitive aspect of sanctification… Faith is not itself a foundational feature of regeneration proper. Regeneration proper is God recreating and renewing – monergism all the way. Sanctification is something that invokes and engages the believer. And whenever that punctiliar moment is – when you are engaged as a resurrected saint, freed from sin’s dominion – that alpha-point, whatever that is, is the definitive feature of sanctification realized in the ordo salutis.

Questions then:

1) Tipton clearly understands “faith” in Ephesians 2:8 to necessarily involve what he calls “attendant human response”, and “synergistic” (and skipped the phrase “and that not of yourselves…” which seems to still indicate monergism, but that’s not my point). If faith is the instrumental cause of justification (as everyone seems to agree), but faith is itself an “attendant human response”, is not one then contingently justified based on his “response”? Since God has regenerated, we have escaped Pelagius, but have we then embraced Arminius?

2) His fine-point between “distinctive” and “progressive” sanctification is no distinction at all. The “alpha-point”? Isn’t it inherently problematic to call anything “definitive” that is in any way contingent upon “human response”?

3) Would it not be both more Biblically accurate and more helpful to see the sovereign act of God in “regeneration” as itself monergistically entailing the very “resurrection” that Tipton posits as the “alpha-point” of definitive sanctification, and only subsequent to, and as a result of, that definitively-sanctifying work of God would we then see the need to “walk” in that “newness of life” in any sort of faith-enabled, synergistic, response? Doesn’t “regeneration” entail “resurrection” (as two aspects of the same monergistic act).

4) It seems we lose more than we gain (both in clarity and accuracy) from either differentiating regeneration from “definitive sanctification”, or from weak attempts to distinguish “definitive” from “progressive” sanctification. That is, why go to such great lengths to posit a “definitive” yet “synergistic” “alpha-point”, versus just acknowledging God’s monergistic work of definitive sanctification (e.g., the utterly passive language and sense of Romans 6:2-4a) as the real “alpha-point” of our subsequent synergistic, faith-enabled “walk” in that reality (per Rom 6:4bff)?

Bill, I followed up on the episode 207 thread. I think you’ve equivocated unknowingly on “regeneration.”

Bill, the semi-pelagian comparison came up for schemes that would allow for faith to precede regeneration. That is structurally similar to semi-pelagianism. Would you agree? People would have some innate ability to respond to the gospel before the Spirit effectually renews their minds and wills.

Dr. Tipton’s concern over this similarity arose over comments Dr. Horton makes on pp. 129-130 of his book Covenant and Salvation, in which he calls justification the source of calling, regeneration, sanctification, and glorification. If justification is the source, and justification is by faith, how then does faith not precede [in some sense] regeneration, etc.? Dr. Horton responds to this question in episode 207 by saying he wouldn’t want to use the language of “source” today. Moreover, it seemed clear to me and others who listened that Dr. Horton also distinguished between a justification that is declaration and justification that is by faith on account of the imputed righteousness of Christ.

This was a very good response to Wenger. Marcus Johnson has done the Church a good service in this response.

http://www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/51/51-3/JETS%2051-3%20543-558%20Johnson.pdf

Charlie, I believe you’re wide of the mark on Gaffin’s and Tipton’s view. If you continue to refuse to read Gaffin’s own writing on the subject in By Faith, Not By Sight at least listen to his interview on the gospel and sanctification. You can download it here. Good works are never the ground of justification—or even simultaneous with it. Gaffin affirms this throughout calling it a “no brainer.”

The sanctification that is simultaneous, yet distinct and inseparable with justification is definitive sanctification (cf. Rom 6; 1 Cor 1:2; 1:30; 6:11 – By Faith, Not By Sight pp. 58ff and Resurrection and Redemption, p. 41ff and 124-126). Tipton and Gaffin refer to the believer’s death with Christ and the breach of the power of sin in that event. Sin is a twofold problem: both guilt and corruption. A transformation is required to deal with the corruption.

I sense that you have rather small view of sanctification. You can’t exhaust the notion of the Spirit’s work in sanctification as simply “doing good works.” Did your good works crucify you with Christ? Have you died to sin because of what you did? Yet you are 100% correct to affirm that good works are the result and evidence of justification—as well as the other aspects of the Spirit’s work in a believer’s life. Progressive sanctification, on the other hand, is the Spirit’s continued work in a believer’s life such that they put to death the deeds of the body and do good works. These works, though done in the Spirit, are neither merit nor contribute to justification in any way.

To claim that Gaffin’s and Tipton’s view of union with Christ doesn’t require atonement or the imputation of Christ’s active and passive obedience is extremely unfortunate. The forensic aspect of the gospel is essential. Without justification in which believers receive the imputed active and passive obedience of Christ, they have no merit and no pardon of sins. Christ’s work does not accrue to them. The important point here, however, is that Calvin’s construction of the duplex gratia dei, which Gaffin and Tipton are presenting, protects the forensic from becoming a renovative category. Justification, as forensic, is entirely extrinsic. It strictly deals with the guilt of sin. It doesn’t change your condition, but remedies your status. But praise God that the salvation we receive in Christ is a full salvation. Our savior not only delivers us from sin’s guilt, but also from its corruption. I don’t know about you, but I’m happy to be united to such a savior.

The noted inconsistency he had with Dr. Horton’s argument in Covenant and Salvation was that justification acts as the forensic basis of calling.

For Tipton, if justification somehow precedes effectual calling / regeneration, and justification is still by faith, then faith precedes regeneration. This is structurally akin to the Arminian position. Tipton asked for greater clarity on what it means for justification to be the forensic basis of calling without resolving to this problem.

If he holds to the type of view your ascribe to him, why does his criticism take this form?

Horton’s logical proposition is that justification is forensic and provides the basis for regeneration, effectual calling, and conversion on the basis that without the particular atonement for the elect none of that would be logically or theologically possible in the first place. Even Herman Hoeksema called this an “eternal justification”. Scripture says that Christ is the “lamb slain from the foundation of the world”. That’s the literal rendering when modern translators do not read their own theology back into the text. (Cf. Rev. 13:8 NKJ with Rev. 13:8 ESV).

To accuse Horton’s view of being semi-pelagian would require that Horton held to universal atonement, which he obviously does not. Therefore one can infer that Tipton wishes to create a straw man to deflect criticism of his own departure from the Westminster Standards which say emphatically the very opposite of what Gaffin and Tipton claim for the doctrine of “union of Christ”:

Chapter 11: Of Justification

1. Those whom God effectually calleth He also freely justifieth;1 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,2 they receiving and resting on Him and His righteousness, by faith: which faith they have not of themselves; it is the gift of God.3

See also: WLC 70 | WSC 33

Furthermore, the union with Christ is based on faith, not a fusion of natures in some mystical encounter. Therefore, any idea of an existential encounter that makes justification subjective is inherently the error of the Manichees and Osiander as Calvin emphatically refuted that view. There is no infusion of God’s divinity or righteousness into the believer on the basis of “union with Christ” since that union is by faith or intellectual assent to the doctrines and logical propositions essential to salvation. Faith is not irrational but is a set system of logical beliefs outlined in Scripture (Jude 1:3) and systematized in the Westminster Standards, the Three Forms of Unity and even the Anglican Formularies.

For all practical purposes what Tipton and Gaffin do is make forensic justification adiaphora and “mystical union with Christ” essential. It is a deliberately ambiguous fusing of objective justification with subjective infusion, i.e. sanctification.

While sanctification does follow justification, even Hodge says that justification is the ground for sanctification and not vice versa. Therefore to so link justification and sanctification in the doctrine of union that justification loses its status as the sine qua non of the Gospel is not to refute the Lutheran view as Tipton asserts–it is in fact to assert the Roman Catholic view of infused righteousness and to confuse faith and works. In short, it makes obedience the basis for justification rather than justification being the basis for obedience.

WCF 11:1 absolute refutes everything Tipton has to say about “union with Christ” in this discussion.

The Thirty-nine Articles likewise refutes Tipton and Gaffin’s view:

Article XI
Of the Justification of Man
We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by faith, and not for our own works or deservings. Wherefore that we are justified by faith only is a most wholesome doctrine, and very full of comfort; as more largely is expressed in the Homily of Justification.

Article XII
Of Good Works
Albeit that good works, which are the fruits of faith and follow after justification, cannot put away our sins and endure the severity of God’s judgement, yet are they pleasing and acceptable to God in Christ, and do spring out necessarily of a true and lively faith, insomuch that by them a lively faith may be as evidently known as a tree discerned by the fruit.

Good works are the evidence of a credible profession of faith before men. They do not and cannot put away our sins in any sense whatsoever, not even in the doctrine of “union with Christ”. Unfortunately, that is what Tipton and Gaffin’s view implies. We are after all just forgiven.

Charlie

My point stands—perhaps even more firmly than before. Please listen to and read the man’s own criticisms of the NPP and the salient features of the FV before making specious claims about his theology. We owe it to him as Christian brothers.

Charlie,

Have you read Gaffin’s By Faith, Not by Sight? It’s a critique of the New Perspective on Paul. Let me also encourage you to find a copy of Gaffin’s debate with N. T. Wright on the subject. I find it incredibly irresponsible to claim that Gaffin or Tipton hold to views similar to the NPP.

Tipton’s position is not anywhere close to Osiander’s. He roots his understanding of the relationship of justification to sanctification squarely in Calvin’s conception of the duplex gratia Dei. They are distinct, yet inseparable benefits. This is nothing new.

Excellent comments, Rupert. The fact is Tipton’s view is that of Osiander, who also confused justification and sanctification and made them “infused”. The distinction between an alien imputed righteousness and an infused righteousness via progressive sanctification is a distinction fundamental to the Gospel itself. In fact, it caused the Protestant Refomation! To emphasize the doctrine of union with Christ as some sort of mystical and existential encounter rather than a union based on faith and believing correct doctrine is essentially the papist error. Our union with Christ comes from simply believing the propositional truth claims of the Gospel and what Jesus and Paul teach in logical propositions. It is not a Neo-Orthodox existentialism.

Again, Tipton and Gaffin are innovators. They represent a neo-legalist view invented by modern “new perspectives on Paul and Calvin” movement. This might explain why Norman Shepherd’s legacy continues at WTS PA and why so many Federal Visionists have been totally exonerated in the PCA and the OPC. How the mighty have fallen!

The real question is whether or not Tipton’s view is in line with the Scriptures and the Reformed standards. Furthermore, is Tipton’s view closer to Rome than to the Reformation, including both Lutheranism and Calvinism? The answer is that both Gaffin and Tipton are guilty of Osiander’s heresy whereby justification and sanctification are deliberately confused for the sake of promoting sanctification as an infused righteousness as the basis for salvation. Unfortunately, the Bible unequivocally says that justification is the sine qua non of the Gospel. Sanctification is always imperfect and to emphasize union with Christ above justification by imputed righteousness is to in effect promote a Roman Catholic view of salvation and justification via the backdoor.

Right you are Jon! Our mate Rupert would like us to think that we get the benefits of Christ in a sequence of partial installments. But this is to divide Christ! In all fairness, though, I don’t think Rupert (or his muses at WSC) would say that we get the further installments based upon the condition of our being good. They would say, rather, that the later bits of our salvation all flow from the first bits (namely, justification) as necessary consequences.

Yea, He did say this. No one get a sliver of Christ at point A and then the rest if there good at point B. They get the whole thing or nothing. They get all the benefits at once or nothing. in him we have every spiritual blessing.

Is Definitive Sanctification at the moment of Regeneration or Sanctification? It is the former according to the ‘New Perspective on Calvin’ folks, in line with Murray recasting the ordo salutis (if there is such a thing as def. sant., which is highly debatable). Regeneration (ala effectual calling) is the place of mystical union. Listen more carefully my chap, Sheesh.

Tipton and Gaffin posit progressive sanctification as equally ultimate with justification, both rooted in existential union with Christ which is made at the effectual call and regeneration.

Also, how in all of God’s good green earth does justification of the ungodly apart from any relational, transformative, or legal righteousness equal semi-Pelagainism? It seems the other side of the argument is semi-Pelagian. Read Francis Turretin in his third Volume in his section on Justification against the Papist Bellarmine and see what I mean.

Cheerio!

Amazing to see, that after 1500 years there are “blokes” like Rupert who still don’t understand semi-Pelagianism. Also, did Tipton really argue that definitive sanctification is logically prior to justification, or is Rupert just makin’ stuff up?

Maybe the problem arises from Murray and his view that justification is declarative because it is constitutive. You blokes are the semi-Pelagians, not the fellas on the West Coast. How many Norman Shepherd’s does WTS need before it realizes it has lost all confessional integrity? Shepherd blinding Clowney, blinding all but the HT guys and O. Palmer Robertson (good chaps!). Your methodology is flawed. Cartesian causality through and through

I will listen to the lectures as time permits. Thank-you.

Peace,

Charlie

The application of justification most definitely comes through the instrument of faith, which is itself a gift of God. Anyone who has read Charles Hodge or the Westminster Confession of Faith knows this. It is Reformed theology 101. Basically, however, Tipton’s critique of Horton and others is a straw man at best and a non sequitur at worst. Justification has been decreed for the elect prior to their birth and hence in that sense it is an “eternal justification” provided for beforehand, before the foundation of the world. (Ephesians 1:4-5, 11). Tipton’s accusation that Horton and the Lutherans are semi-pelagians because of an alleged justification by faith prior to regeneration would be justified IF that is what they teach. It isn’t, therefore, it is a straw man argument and Tipton ought to know better. I might agree that modern Lutherans in general have some tendencies in the semi-pelagian direction, namely their insistence on common grace. Modern Lutherans, including the late Walther, do not insist on logical consistency. One could legitimately argue that Luther himself rejected common grace if we read his section on the sovereignty of God in The Bondage of the Will.

I would argue that the neo-Kuyperian doctrine of the free offer and common grace is semi-Arminian and therefore a proto-semi-pelagianism. On that score Horton, Tipton and both WSCal and WS PA are semi-Arminians and thus have semi-pelagian tendencies.

The problem I have with making the union with Christ the penultimate focus of Reformed soteriology is that it focuses on an existential/mystical union, which is subjective. The Westminster Confession does not begin with theology from below. It begins with Scripture, where all good theology should begin. The focus is on God and the eternal decrees. Your contention that salvation is 100% God and 100% man implies synergism, not monergism. Salvation is ALL of God. Calvin and Luther both agreed. All this focus on moralism, human responsibility, etc. is true to a degree but to make it the end all and be all of Reformed theology ultimately leads to the very antinomianism and liberalism you pretend to combat. If you don’t think so, take a hard look at the PCUSA and other mainline denominations that once were bastions of moral rectitude.

The fact is God will not share His glory with any man. To give credence to the theonomists/reconstructionists/post millennialists is to deny total depravity and to focus on an overly optimistic view of man. What I keep hearing on this program is humanistic optimism, not the doctrines of grace.

Despite the continual misrepresentation of Gordon H. Clark’s theology on this program, the fact is Clark was not an antinomian or a rationalist. His theology was focused primarily on defending divine and special revelation in Holy Scripture as THE word of God. There is no disjunction between the inspired word of God in written form and what God intended for us to understand of His thoughts.

Since God predetermined from all eternity to justify His elect by the particular atonement of Christ, there is indeed a sense in which the elect are “eternally” justified. The application of that justification in the elect is through the instrument of faith, preceded by regeneration. Since faith itself is a gift, man does not get credit for believing either. In fact, progressive sanctification itself is not synergistic as some Reformed folks insist. Even progressive sanctification is itself an absolutely monergistic work of God in the elect. That we are responsible to obey is beside the point.

BTW, I’m thankful to Carl Trueman for pointing out that the term “Reformed” is not reified. There is a great diversity with the wider Reformed tradition. WS PA doesn’t speak for everyone.

Soli Deo Gloria

Charlie

maybe David is really Charlie (or “Charllie”) – has anybody looked into this? – I mean, nobody can drop as many consecutive comments as sweet baby Ray (except maybe Drake S.)