On Iron Sharpens Iron, Dr. Dewey Roberts speaks against the Federal Vision (FV). Much of what he says I have no disagreement with, though bearing in mind my comments below that could be because I’m not familiar enough with FV theology to know better. Based on what I have read, I think it is largely in grave error, in most of the ways that Dewey explains.

However, the fact that something is largely in error doesn’t mean that it is entirely in error. This fundamentalist-like assumption has produced a lot of dodgy dealings from Reformed folks, especially over the FV view of justification. For example, in the podcast (55:21) Dewey says final justification is not Christian because it is indistinguishable from the view of the man on the street about salvation; i.e., try your best to live well, and trust God to honor that. He goes on to say that any kind of final justification (even Piper’s thoroughly Reformed view [ John Piper, Does God Really Save Us by Faith Alone? on Desiring God (September 2017).] ) is indistinguishable from justification by works.

But this is both a shameless misrepresentation of the FV view of final justification, and the very kind of unexacting, imprecise theology of which Dewey accuses (ex) Federal Visionist Doug Wilson later (1:14:15). In fairness to Dewey, he is by no means alone; when John Piper wrote Does God Really Save Us by Faith Alone? a large number of Reformed bloggers lost their minds. You only need to hit google for a minute to see the kind of breathless hand-wringing, pearl-clutching, finger-shaking, and general histrionics that goes on any time someone in the Reformed camp voices the opinion that works have something to do with how God judges us.

This wouldn’t be so bad if it reflected the Bible’s actual teaching. The trouble is, on this point the FV gets things right, but many Reformed folks would rather build a pyre of strawmen than refine their thinking.

Take Dewey as an example. I assume he does not deny that there will be a final judgment in which God renders a verdict of not guilty (i.e., justified, vindicated) over everyone who is faithful to him. But this rendered verdict on the final day just is a final justification. So Dewey’s language is already very ambiguous; when he says “final justification” he means something much more than the words suggest. He is really wanting to say that the final justification, which he agrees does happen, is nothing more—is not in any way differently judged—than the initial justification we receive upon believing.

But to say this is to deny that the rendered verdict is in any sense on account of the life we have lived. If it is merely a restatement of that initial justification we received the moment we put our faith in Jesus, then nothing we do afterward has any bearing on it. The problem is that this runs aground directly on straightforward passages like Matthew 16:27; 25:34–40; Romans 2:6–7; Galatians 6:7-9; Proverbs 24:12—and, negatively, 1 Corinthians 6:9–10; Galatians 5:19–21; Ephesians 5:5; 1 Timothy 1:9; Hebrews 12:14; Revelation 22:15. It is, ultimately, to remove any expectation of hearing, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

A possible response would be to draw a distinction between verdict and sentence; but this seems to be merely a more confused version of the very distinction I explicitly uphold further down, between the grounds and instrument of justification, so it can hardly function as an objection to my view.

It seems to me that Dewey is stuck between a rock and a hard place of his own making. It is not the Bible which has created the “problem” of final justification for him; it is his own imprecise thinking about faith, imputation, and salvation generally.

The diachronic nature of faith

Dewey wants to say that there is no distinction at all between the initial verdict at the moment of faith, and the final verdict on the last day. In the sense of what grounds the verdict, he is absolutely right—we have right standing before God only because we are identified with his vindicated Son (e.g. Romans 6:3–6; Galatians 2:20), and not because of anything we do at any point whatever to merit his favor.

Related: Baptism as a pledge of allegiance

Indeed, the verdict is not actually about us at all: it is about Jesus. The final judgment is not a judgment of whether we are righteous or unrighteous in the absolute sense, but rather of whether we are represented by Jesus or representing ourselves. We are represented by Jesus when we commit ourselves to loyally rely on him—whether that commitment lasts a single second, or a hundred years. Our representation by Jesus is identical at the moment we exercise faith, and the moment we stand before him after a life of faith.

But NB: the life of faith—the life of loyal reliance—is not irrelevant to the final verdict, because it is faith which unites us to Jesus in the first place!

It seems to me that perhaps people like Dewey are afraid that affirming the place of works in final justification is affirming that works ground our justification. Their thinking goes something like this: Since justification is all or nothing and cannot be lost (John 6:44 etc), and you’re justified at the moment of belief, there’s therefore nothing you need (or indeed can) add after that point. The verdict at that moment is “not guilty.” So if you need to add works to keep that verdict as “not guilty” when the final judgment comes, then the final verdict must be on a different basis than the original one—so you’re actually teaching justification by works.

Or, as one Reformed pastor put it to me on the basis of Romans 5:1, justification happens once and for all by faith in Christ. There are not multiple stages to justification. It happens once and for all by faith … If works are necessary in order to attain or even maintain salvation, then you’re not really saved.

But this is simply confused; compare it, for instance, to A. A. Hodge:

They [good works] are necessary to the attainment of salvation, not in any sense as a prerequisite to justification, nor in any stage of the believer’s progress meriting the divine favor, but as essential elements of that salvation, the consubstantial fruits and means of sanctification and glorification. [ A. A. Hodge, A Commentary on the Confession of Faith: with questions for theological students and Bible classes (Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1901), 301.]

Any Reformed thinker—any Christian at all—would agree that in fact you do need to do something to remain justified: namely, you must continue exercising faith. While this is a condition that a regenerate person ultimately cannot fail to meet since it flows out of his union with Jesus, justification is nonetheless conditional on faith. God’s verdict is always on account of our faith, but faith is not (typically) a one-time, synchronic act; it is an across-time diachronic one. True—if we were to die the instant we exercised faith, then God’s verdict would be on account of that (synchronic) faith. But as a rule, we die after a life of faith, and so God’s verdict is on account of that (diachronic) faith.

Either way, it’s on account of our faith. But faith looks different as a one-time act than it does when it extends to exist across time.

Related: How does imputation actually work?

So the first mistake Dewey (and others like him) make is treating faith as synchronic. It’s like they can’t conceive of a diachronic existence to faith. I strongly suspect this is because it won’t fit into their view of imputation itself. Because they see justification as involving a one-time and irrevocable “legal transfer” of works—Jesus’ for ours—they have to see faith as a commensurate one-time and irrevocable act.

But as my friend Rich Lusk notes, while the idea behind imputation is certainly true, the transfer itself is not of works between people, but of people between rulers or kingdoms (Colossians 1:13–14). It is not wrong to speak of imputation, but the devil is in the details—and there is an increasingly broad stream of Reformed theology which fundamentally bungles how it works. It is not imputation that makes us right with God, per se, but rather union and identification with Jesus. Lusk keenly argues that, following the likes of Luther, Calvin and Edwards, we should speak less of imputation (a forensic category) and more of incorporation (a covenantal category). Christ’s righteousness becomes ours not by legal transfer, but by covenantal union. This union includes a legal/forensic component, but much else besides. [ Rich Lusk, A reply to “The OPC Justification Report” on union and imputation (June 2006), 7.]

I think many Reformed theologians have lost sight of the fact that justification and imputation are both grounded in union with Jesus. We are imputed as righteous, with all the blessings that flow from this, only as we are incorporated into our covenant head, and he into us. In the language of Scripture, we receive what is his when he dwells in us and we dwell in him:

Because I live, you also will live. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. John 14:19–21; cf. John 15:4–7

The worky nature of faith

Notice the importance of obedience in John; it is not incidental to faith. This leads us to the second mistake of Dewey and his ilk. Building on the foundation of synchronic faith, they treat faith itself as completely passive and internal; as a mere matter of the heart, rather than the body; as if works were utterly separate from it, and could never be a part of it. But this is an emaciated, unbiblical view completely repudiated throughout Scripture. It is by abiding in God’s Son, as he abides in us, that we share in the verdict pronounced over him.

Now, this abiding is certainly his initiative, not ours—he starts it by indwelling us with his Spirit (John 3:8; 1 Corinthians 2:10–16; 1 John 4:13; Romans 8:9–10), so that before we can do anything of our own, we must first passively be drawn by, taught by, receive and belong to his Spirit (John 1:12–13; 6:44–45; Romans 8:9–10). Only then can we come to him.

But we do have to come. Faith is not purely passive. It is passive in receiving Jesus (Romans 4:5), but it is active in abiding in Jesus. In other words, faith is done to us in order to be done by us.

This is why we are commanded to abide in him—it is something we must actively do (John 15:4; 1 John 2:28). As we have received Anointed Jesus the Lord, so we must walk in him (Colossians 2:6). And we do this, walking in him and abiding in him, by keeping his commandments (1 John 2:6; John 8:31). Indeed, we know that we abide in him, and he in us, because he has given us his Spirit (1 John 4:13)—but we know that he has given us his Spirit and abides in us because we keep his commandments (1 John 3:24)!

Put succinctly, we cannot work to receive Jesus (Philippians 3:9), but we must work to abide in Jesus (Philippians 3:12). Hence Turretin—whose Reformed bona fides are surely beyond any doubt—compares good works to eternal life as sowing to reaping:

Good works are required as the means and way for possessing salvation … Although works may be said to contribute nothing to the acquisition of salvation, still they should be considered necessary to the obtainment of it so that no one can be saved without them … Although God by his special grace wishes these duties of man to be his blessings (which he carries out in them), still the believer does not cease to be bound to observe it, if he wishes to be a partaker of the blessings of the covenant … For since good works have the relation of the means to the end (Jn. 3:5, 16; Mt. 5:8); of the way to the goal (Eph. 2:10; Phil 3:14); of the sowing to the harvest (Gal. 6:7,8); of the firstfruits to the mass (Rom. 8:23); of labor to the reward (Mt. 20:1); of the contest to the crown (2 Tim. 2:5; 4:8), everyone sees that there is the highest and an indispensable necessity of good works for obtaining glory. It is so great that it cannot be reached without them (Heb. 12:14; Rev. 21:27). [ Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, volume II (17.3.3, 4, 7, 12).]

Rich Lusk also makes an awful lot of sense on this topic:

Justification is best understood in terms of comprehensive union with Christ: God decreed our justification when he chose us in Christ, from before the foundation of the world. Our justification was accomplished and declared in history in the resurrection of Christ. We actually come to share in Christ’s justification when the Spirit works faith in us, uniting us to Christ. And our justification is consummated and concluded at the final judgment, when our whole lives in Christ receive God’s righteous verdict. Justification for the Christian must be viewed in terms of ongoing participation in the life of the justified Christ, through faith and the work of the Spirit. In this sense, we can follow Calvin and speak of our continual reception of justification as we abide in Christ. Justification is not a stand-alone doctrine, but an aspect of our union with Christ. [ Rich Lusk, Did Jesus Earn Our Salvation? Merit, Imputation, and the Resurrection of Christ in Lecture notes for Christ Church Ministerial Conference 2005: Justification: the Great Deliverance, 22. Emphasis mine.]

Related: Does James teach justification by works?

Normal (diachronic) faith involves a life of loyal reliance, because saving faith is loyal reliance. Normal (diachronic) faith involves a life of working to obey God’s commandments, because saving faith is a working faith (Galatians 5:6; James 2:18–22). Works are part of diachronic faith, which is why James can even say that they justify (James 2:21) They are the instrument of our justification because faith is the instrument of our justification, and they are a part of faith. (They are not, of course, the ground of our justification; that is the work of Jesus, as I have already made clear.)

To give an analogy, one does not need to do anything for a woman, in order to love her at first sight (synchronic); but if the initial love is genuine, one will certainly do things for her over time (diachronic), because love involves commitment, sacrifice, affection, etc. If you are never committing, sacrificing, or showing affection, then you are simply not loving her. If Jacob had refused to work for Rachel, how seriously would we take his assertion of love for her? In the same way, faith involves obedience, reliance, loyalty, etc. If you are never being obedient, reliant, or loyal, then you are simply not “faithing” God. You cannot be inwardly obedient, reliant and loyal while outwardly breaking God’s law, expressing independence, and going after other gods (e.g., cf. Philippians 3:19).

But by the same token, if you are being obedient, reliant and loyal, then that just is faithing God.

It doesn’t mean you’re working to earn your righteousness. It means you’re working to abide in Jesus, who is your righteousness. You know, the way the Bible repeatedly commands you to.

It bothers me that so many Reformed theologians are so spooked by the specter of works-righteousness that they aren’t able to accurately assess or truthfully represent a position that the Bible perspicuously teaches. Is what I’ve articulated above anything like the view of unregenerate people about how they will “enter heaven,” as Dewey puts it? Of course not. Is it anything like works righteousness? Of course not. Indeed, it is not this view that is dangerous to people’s souls—it is the view that says (and again, I quote), If works are necessary in order to attain or even maintain salvation, then you’re not really saved.

To which Paul, having just explained how he counts everything skubalon in order to receive the righteousness of Jesus by faith, nonetheless replies that he attains to the resurrection of the dead by any means possible (Philippians 3:11). He has not yet obtained it, but presses on to make it his own, straining forward, pressing toward the goal for the prize, since Anointed Jesus has made Paul his own (Philippians 3:12–14).

That’s how Paul faithed God. I’ll follow his example (Philippians 3:17) over Dewey’s any day, and twice on Sundays.

 5 comments

Yana

So many people have a warped view of sola fide, both believers and unbelievers. It can really create the impression that ours is a cheap faith and a cheap grace (cf. Bonhoeffer). See for example this clip, starting at 2:25 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36Oxbur_OAY.

And yet I felt a vague unease reading this post. Same with Piper’s article. It rubbed me the wrong way even though I agree that he’s right. We’ve just been so conditioned to shun any mention of works in relation to salvation, and it’s really unhealthy. It often leads to antinomianism.

On the other hand, I often seem to hear (confessional) Reformed folks pejoratively label any mention of our obligation to holiness and righteousness “pietism”, a term which I frankly find confusing. The Puritans had a similar emphasis on personal behavior, yet they’re never branded pietists. Maybe it’s because of Reformed squabbles with the Lutherans and Anabaptists, I dunno.

Dominic Bnonn Tennant

I doubt it’s any one thing, partly because it’s not any one kind of person. Some people just don’t know their history and react to anything that looks in their modern eyes like works-righteousness. Some people are fundamentalist confessionalists. But some people are in neither camp, yet still don’t seem able to think these things through. My sense is that they’re just too committed to a particular system of thought to be willing to make all the adjustments necessary for accepting the place of works in salvation. And they’re also heavily influenced by the Reformed echo-chamber; they don’t tend to read actual Federal Vision theologians, but rather get their understanding from summaries written by anti-FV thinkers. So they’ll confidently say that FV is simply works-righteousness, but they can’t actually articulate the FV position if you ask them.

You see exactly the same thing with the New Perspective on Paul. I think NPP often over-reaches (recognizing that, like FV, it is not a monolithic position). But the fundamental point is undoubtedly accurate: Paul’s concern in Galatians is not works-righteousness, but what it takes to become one of God’s people. This is actually profoundly obvious once you just let Galatians speak for itself, but so many Reformed folks are completely wrapped up in the law/gospel dichotomy. It’s the only way they can conceive of the gospel message itself. So any challenge to it goes directly into the heresy basket before the ol’ forebrain even has a chance to process anything.

Behaviorally, it reminds me a lot of banner-blindness. I work in marketing, and this is a major phenomenon in online user interaction: anything that contains certain visual cues linked to advertising is automatically filtered out by the subconscious mind before it even gets into conscious awareness; people literally don’t see what is right in front of their eyes. A lot of Reformed Christians seem to have the same problem with regard to works and salvation.

Yana

Interesting stuff. Speaking of NPP… (let me milk this opportunity)

So the idea is that when Paul talks about the law in Galatians, he means Mosaic law, and he’s just saying that the Gentile believers don’t have to follow all those rules in order to be saved? It’s basically talking about Judaizers, and not necessarily works-righteousness? I think can get on board with that. However, would that be true of every Pauline usage of “law”?

There are some other things I’m not so sure about.

What do you think about the rendering or “pistis” as “faithfulness” (instead of “faith”) and “charis” as “favor” (instead of “grace”)? Does this have any merit? What are the implications? I’ve seen it in connection with NPP stuff. Seems kinda fishy. I would like your opinion.

Dominic Bnonn Tennant

I’m going to be posting on these issues soon, God willing. In the meantime, a very brief summary:

The New Perspective basically holds that the Judaizers are not concerned with following rules to earn righteousness; they are concerned with the conditions of membership in God’s people, by which we receive righteousness. They are teaching that circumcision is still required to become a son of Abraham; Paul is aghast because circumcision puts you under Torah, and the whole point of Jesus’ death is that he was freed from Torah by submitting to its curse. Once he received the penalty of Torah, he was no longer under Torah. But if you are abiding in Jesus, then you, too, have died to Torah (Galatians 2:19–20; cf. Romans 7:4). But if you have died to Torah, how can you possibly say that circumcision is required to become a member of God’s people—when circumcision puts you under Torah?! Indeed, it was never Torah that made you a son of Abraham, a member of God’s people—it was faith (Galatians 3:6–9). If you rely on Torah for your membership in the covenant, you’re still under a curse, but Anointed redeemed us from that curse, so you can’t rely on Torah—it has to be faith (Galatians 3:10–14).

Once you understand the basic logic of Paul’s argument, and how he is reacting to the profoundly self-contradictory view of the Judaizers, everything in Galatians falls into place without any of the usual difficulties. (But rest assured, you will be accused of being a works-righteousness-promoting heretic as well.)

On pistis, I don’t think there’s any one rendering that is perfect for all contexts. Sometimes it definitely does mean faithfulness or loyalty; often it stands in roughly for the Hebrew concept of chesed. The pistis of Scripture is definitely not a passive, internal assent and trust; it is an active, worked-out allegiance and reliance. I think often “fealty” or “fidelity” would be better translations than “faith,” but not always.

On charis, I think “favor” is a good translation, and here’s why: the word “grace” is essentially meaningless to modern English-speakers. In fact, I doubt the vast majority of faithful Christians could define it. Imagine that—salvation is all of grace, and most Christians don’t know what grace even is, beyond a vague notion that it has to do with God’s goodness. In fact, if you study the way most people talk about grace, I believe they think of it as something like a substance that God exudes.

I have a strong desire to rid the Bible of Christianese—religious jargon that replaces clear, concrete words. Hence my use of terms like Anointed instead of Christ (which is not a surname), and Yahweh instead of LORD (which is not a title). (This is a mirror of my professional desire to rid websites of marketese—that puffy, meaningless hot air that allows marketers to use a large amount of space to say very little.) The term “grace” is definitely a case of Christianese for most people. Charis does simply mean undeserved help or favor, and I’d rather translate it as such—though that would need some finessing depending on the context. “For by favor you have been saved,” doesn’t really make any more sense than the traditional rendering. Something like, “For by undeserved help you have been saved,” while lacking the poetry I’d want, does convey the meaning more clearly. I think part of the problem is that English itself has been strongly influenced by both the Reformation and the Enlightenment, in ways which don’t necessarily make it conducive to easily rendering many of these Jewish concepts without sounding quite awkward, or using a lot more words than the original text.

Yana

Just translating “law” as “Torah” really brings a lot of clarity, actually. I appreciate your desire to get rid of Christianese. People do want to get rid of a lot of modern Christian parlance and go back to Scripture, but I guess we aren’t even aware how much the translations themselves are steeped in an older Christianese.

Interesting points on “grace”. I really always have understood “grace” more-or-less as “undeserved favor”. Maybe because I learned the concept in another language? In Bulgarian “grace” is rendered “благодат” (“благ” = “good, blessed” + “дат” = “giving”), as in God giving (salvation freely) out of His own goodness. In secular usage the word means natural goodness, as in abundance or plenty of natural resources (good soil, etc.) – which obfuscates the meaning a bit, but it certainly has a connotation of something that *you* haven’t merited or worked out; it’s a feature of the landscape itself, just like goodness is an attribute of God. And natural plenty is also an instance of God’s grace towards us – so there’s a lot of richness in that word. However, in my experience, even благодат mostly functions as Christianese, because no one bothers with definitions. It’s not necessarily how I came to understand the meaning of “grace”. I think the Biblical text just reveals the meaning of the word through context, usage and narrative, even when it isn’t translated in the best way. It’s our own discourse that muddles it afterwards.

But it is so true that people treat it like a substance! I think this is a carryover from Roman Catholicism. Like when there’s talk of “means of grace” – a concept that means many different things depending on who is using it. It’s one of those non-biblical terms that just create more confusion than clarity (while “Trinity”, for example, is non-biblical but useful – although even that might be contested).

Thanks a bunch, Bnonn. Looking forward to your posts.