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Category Archive: Theology - Soteriology

Kant's impossible atonement - September 10, 2007
Nicholas Wolterstorff analyzes the "conundrum" of atonement in Kant's treatment of rational religion. We need to be forgiven for the evil we've done, and we are incapable of doing this ourselves. God has to do it. Yet, Kant assumes a...

Justification by grace - August 24, 2007
By definition, justification must be by grace. Since the eyes are organs of judgment in Scripture, to find "favor in one's eyes" is to be justified. Plus, "favor" just means "grace." We can put it more strongly: Justified by grace...

Christ's blood - July 30, 2007
In her recent book on blood in medieval theology and piety, Caroline Bynum summarizes the debates concerning blood in the middle ages. The TLS reviewer summarizes: "Bynum begins by describing the debates and practices of the famous controversial pilgrimage to...

Closing the Back Door - June 21, 2007
It may seem that emphasizing the promissory nature of baptism and the Supper is a reversion from the Reformation. On the contrary: In popular medieval piety, no common believer could have assurance simply by hearing the promises of God, receiving...

Verdict and Promise - June 20, 2007
Luther illustrates justification with the image of a mortally sick man and his doctor. The doctor is so certain that he is going to heal the patient that he declares him well already, and tells the patient to consider himself...

Asking questions - June 20, 2007
Picking up on my last post... So far as I know, no one has challenged my paper on justification exegetically. Perhaps someone has offered a devastating critique, one that shows I've misinterpreted every passage I discuss. If such a critique...

My work on justification - June 20, 2007
The PCA FV Report includes a brief, and fairly accurate, summary of a paper I wrote on justification. This is one of the few things on justification that I've published. Since some may read the Report without reading the article,...

The Gospel and Judgment - June 19, 2007
Does judgment according to works contradict the gospel? Does it reintroduce law back in the covenant of grace at the last minute? Is judgment according to works God's final "Gotcha"? Not at all. Judgment according to works is part of...

Adam, Merit, and the Judgment - June 19, 2007
It's been suggested that there is some conflict between my denial of human merit and my defense of judgment according to works. There is no conflict. There is not even a tension. Nary a whisper. We are judged, after all,...

Temporary benefits - June 18, 2007
Does the Apostle Peter conform to the Westminster Standards as interpreted by the Federal Vision Study Committee? At the beginning of his second epistle, Peter says that "divine power" has granted "everything pertaining to life and godliness" (1:3). God communicates...

Justification by faith - June 16, 2007
We are right before God because Jesus has obeyed perfectly, offered Himself on the cross, and received the verdict of righteousness in the resurrection, a verdict in which we are included by union with the Risen Christ. We come to...

Judgment by works - June 15, 2007
Of all the declarations of the PCA FV Study Report, the most mystifying is the one that reaffirms justification by faith and rejects final justification according to works. This became the central issue in the "debate" on the floor of...

Justification and Glorification - May 21, 2007
James Jordan sends the following concerning justification, glorification, and the gospel: The Nicene Creed says something else about the gospel. It says about Jesus Christ: Who (a) for us and (b) for our salvation. Then it expands: (a) came down...

Grace - May 18, 2007
The meaning of the word "grace" has been a central question in the Federal Vision discussions. On the anti-FV side, it's often said that "grace" means not only "unmerited favor," but "favor shown in the face of demerit." Pro-FV types...

Justification and purity - May 15, 2007
In his challenging revisionist treatment of justification (Judgment & Justification in Early Judaism and the Apostle Paul, Hendrickson), Chris VanLandingham examines various meanings of the verb DIKAIOO in both the Old Testament and intertestamental Jewish literature. He finds a close...

Justification and Community - May 15, 2007
NT Wright has become famous, or notorious, for suggesting that justification is a declaration concerning one's membership in the community of God. In his 2006 book Justified before God (Abingdon), Methodist theologian Walter Klaiber describes the Hebrew court situation in...

Adam the Completer? - April 27, 2007
On some constructions of the covenant of works, obedient Adam would have secured eternal life for his posterity. He would have achieved the eschaton of human destiny, as a human being, entirely from the resources given to him at creation....

Covenant of redemption, covenant of works - April 27, 2007
All theology is theology proper. Talk about creation or covenant, Israel or incarnation, justification or final judgment is talk about the Creator, the covenant Lord, the God of Jacob, the Son who takes flesh, the God who justifies and judges....

Faith and Grace - April 25, 2007
Faith is often characterized as a "receptive" and "responsive" disposition, or as "passive." Even if we accept standard definitions of faith, that characterization seems to overlook the variety of ways in which grace and faith can be related. There appear...

Luther on baptism and justification - April 10, 2007
In an article in Bruce McCormack, ed., Justification in Perspective, Carl Trueman makes some helpful comments about the assumptions and consequences of Luther's views on baptism and justification. "At the heart of Luther's mature understanding of baptism," he writes, "as...

Excerpt from a Funeral Sermon - April 08, 2007
Resurrection life isn't only for the future, not only for the end. Because Jesus rose on the third day, and because He poured out His Spirit on us, resurrection life has already begun to spread throughout this world of Sin...

Righteousness by faith - February 22, 2007
ERH sees faith not as a "religious" issue but as one of the driving forces of history. All revolutions begin in faith, and the faith that drives historical change is a faith that is reckoned as justice: "Faith is a...

Theopoiesis - November 17, 2006
Carl Mosser of Eastern College gave a superb presentation on deification at the ETS meeting. A large part of the presentation was a study of terminology. He noted that the Greek work THEOS (often thought to be equivalent to "God")...

Forgetfulness - October 10, 2006
Discussing Nietzsche's view of nobility, Alphonso Lingis emphasizes the role of forgetfulness. Though he's not writing theology, this is (making necessary allowances) one of the best descriptions of the existential effects of justification by faith that I've run across. I'm...

Trinitarian propitiation - October 07, 2006
Jesus is the propitiation for our sins. While "propitiation" has a concrete reference to the ark-cover and the firmament, it also has to do with pacifying wrath. But if Jesus is the eternal Son of the God whose name is...

Justice and Mercy - October 07, 2006
Suppose we said that Jesus received the Father's approval of His work by grace, rather than by strict justice. What damage does that do to our soteriology? I'm not saying this is the case; I'm merely trying to pinpoint the...

Complex reprobation - September 04, 2006
Bavinck writes: "It is wrong to conceive the decree as if it determined only a person's end and coerced him or her in that direction regardless of what they did. The decree is as inconceivably rich as reality itself. It...

Decentered Self of Protestantism - July 14, 2006
Guy Waters thinks that I'm abandoning the Reformation by questioning an ontology rooted in the notion of "substance." I say, On the contrary. In an article on the Reformation doctrine of justification, Berndt Hamm writes: "Behind this epoch-making change in...

Imputation of Righteousness - July 05, 2006
Waters also says, "Leithart also forthrightly rejects the Reformed doctrine of the imputation of Christ's righteousness to the believer." I don't do that either. What I have questioned, however, is whether we have exegetical grounds for distinguishing "imputation" as an...

Imputation: A Narrative Perspective - July 05, 2006
In his new book on the Federal Vision, Guy Waters claims, "It appears, then, that Leithart has called into question the historic Reformed doctrine of the imputation of Adam's sin to his posterity." I don't. But Waters is right to...

Charnock on Supernatural Salvation - May 18, 2006
Stephen Charnock argues that salvation must be supernatural because nature is insufficient for the task: "A change from acts of sin to moral duties may be done by a natural strength and the power of natural conscience: for the very...

Supernatural - May 18, 2006
Roger Haight offers this summary of the notion of "supernatural": "God is not supernatural in himself; he is simply the infinite and transcendent being; he is God. But viewed in relation to the human he is supernatural; that is to...

Spirit, Charity, Grace - May 18, 2006
Peter Lombard argued (Book 1, distinction 17 of the Sentences) that the Spirit is both the love by which God loves us and the origin of the love by which we love Him: "the Holy Spirit is the Love [amor]...

Preparation for justification - April 26, 2006
The medieval arguments in favor of the notion of preparation for justification through created grace are founded on anthropological and cosmological claims. McGrath summarizes the Summa Fratris Alexandri, which he calls "the first systematic discussion of the nature of created...

Active and Passive - April 26, 2006
Here is a hypothesis or suspicion, not a conclusion, much less a conviction: The notion that God rewards what we do with what we have, and the notion that we are purely passive in salvation are not, as they appear,...

Hodge and the deliverdict - April 26, 2006
Charles Hodge doesn't quite get to justification as deliverdict here, but he comes close: "[Paul] had just said that the believer cannot continue to serve sin. He here [in 6:7] gives the reason: for he who has died (with Christ)...

Aquinas and merit - April 26, 2006
Strict justice, Aquinas argued, is only possible between equals, and since God and man are not equals there is never strict justice in God's dealings with us. Further, God being God, He is never put in debt to His creatures,...

Did Christ Merit Salvation? - April 26, 2006
According to Calvin, only in a qualified sense. McGrath says, "The later Franciscan school, the via moderna and the schola Augustiniana moderna regarded the ratio meriti as lying in the divine good pleasure; nothing was meritorious unless God chose to...

Eschatological merit - April 25, 2006
Augustine said that in crowning the merit of human works, he is simply crowning his own gifts: "si ergo Dei dona sunt bona merita tua, non Deus coronat merita tua tanquam merita tua, sed tanquam dona sua." McGrath points out...

Sacraments and Soteriology - April 25, 2006
Justification, Protestants confess, is a declaration of God as judge. But is this ever audible? Where? Is the judgment ever publicly promulgated? Is it merely the secret declaration in the heart? And if so, how can we be sure that...

Deeper justice - April 20, 2006
Cicero says, justice is rendering to each man his due, and Pelagius agrees. Paul says, justice is God's giving ungodly sinners eternal life, and Augustine follows Paul. Remigius of Auxerre noted the contrast: "Mea iustitia est malum pro malo reddere....

Objective/Subjective - April 20, 2006
McGrath notes that Augustine interpreted the genitive in the phrase "righteousness of God" in Rom 1 objectively, so that it was understood as the righteousness that God gives in saving sinners (in "making" them righteous). Ambrosiaster, as I pointed out...

Factitive Justification - April 19, 2006
There was a consensus among the theologians of Trent, McGrath argues, that justification was "factitive," a view that excluded that "a sinner may be justified solely as a matter of reputation or imputation, while remaining a sinner in fact." But...

True Lutherans - April 19, 2006
McGrath traces the odd development in Lutheran Orthodoxy of the notion that regeneration and faith precede justification in such a way that "where Luther had understood justification to concern the unbelieving sinner, orthodoxy revised this view, referring justification to the...

Ontological change - April 19, 2006
McGrath notes, "While justification was universally understood to involve the regeneration of humanity, the opinion that an ontological change is thereby effected within humans is particularly associated with the period of High Scholasticism and the development of the concept of...

Putting right - April 19, 2006
At least since the Reformation, the choices on the meaning of justification have been two: Either justification is a declaration of right standing or it's a making-righteous (as in Bonaventure's claim that the grace of justification purifies, illuminates, and perfects...

Entry language - April 19, 2006
NT Wright's denial that justification is "entry language" is usually taken as a criticism of evangelical Protestant treatments of justification. But his denial cuts deeper: From the high middle ages, Roman Catholic theologians taught that justification was a motus from...

Divine Energies and Orthodox Soteriology - April 19, 2006
In his new Being with God, Aristotle Papanikolaou points to differences between Vladimir Lossky and John Zizioulas on the issue of divine energies. For Lossky, the doctrine of divine energies is designed to "protect the real character of communion with...

Response to OPC Report on Justification - April 18, 2006
The following points are responses to the Report of the Committee to Study the Doctrine of Justification of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. I hope I will be excused for responding mainly to those portions of the recent OPC report on...

Washing, Spirit, Justification, Life - April 15, 2006
The sequence of assertions in Titus 3:5-7 is intriguing: God saved us according to His mercy By the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Spirit poured out on us through Jesus So that being justified by grace We...

Copernican Revolution - April 05, 2006
Some scattered thoughts inspired by comments from Chris Schlect and Doug Wilson at a faculty discussion of de Lubac today: How is it that theologians (like Norman Shepherd, Steve Wilkins, Rich Lusk, and others) who want to expunge the notion...

Aquinas and Cooperation - March 30, 2006
Exploring George Hunsinger's criticisms of Thomas' views on grace, Kerr argues that Thomas does not, as Hunsinger suggests, make human nature "conceptually prior to and independent of divine grace." Rather "it is by grace that the soul of the sinner...

Thomas on Merit - March 23, 2006
Commenting on ST I-II, q. 109, Frederick Bauerschmidt says that Thomas uses the word "merit" analogically when we speak of God rewarding human action "since we can act in the first place only because God has given us the capacity...

Mortification - February 26, 2006
Jehoash, pounding on the ground only three times, lacks the zeal to see the Lord's wars through to their conclusion. He's content with three victories over Aram, and is not willing to pound them until they are pulverized. He's willing...

Luther the Non-Protestant - December 16, 2005
Phillip Cary has a long, intriguing article in the Fall 2005 issue of Pro Ecclesia entitled "Why Luther is Not Quite Protestant." Cary touches on soteriological issues, particularly justification, and the relation of soteriology to sacramental theology. Early in the...

Eschatological Vindication - December 07, 2005
In his book on the work of Christ, Robert Letham has this neat summary of the relation of present to future justification: "faith has an eschatological side to it. Paul can say we are justified by faith (Rom. 5:1) but...

Myself In the Gaze of Another - December 03, 2005
This is not a paper, and that is not an ironic self-referential comment like Magritte's Ceci n'est pas une pipe. This really is not a paper. It is a gesture toward a paper, a collection of fragments and notes. There...

Luther and Imputation - November 17, 2005
Scott Clark presented a paper arguing that imputation was inherent in Luther's mature understanding of justification, challenging various alternative readings of Luther, particularly those arising from the Finnish Lutherans. He offered a number of helpful points: He gave a quick...

Anthropology and soteriology - June 29, 2005
Explaining the meaning of the image of God, Calvin writes, "there is no solidity in Augustine’s speculation, that the soul is a mirror of the Trinity, inasmuch as it comprehends within itself, intellect, will, and memory. Nor is there any...

Overheard in a pastor's study - June 24, 2005
Troubled parishioner: I know that God is utterly reliable. He always keeps his promises. I just don't know if the promises are for me. Pastor: But you hear the absolution every week, right? TP: Sure, but how do I know...

Luther and Aquinas - May 17, 2005
A further note from Haight: One of the criticisms he lodges against Aquinas and scholasticism is that it tended to treat grace and conversion in a mechanistic fashion: "This is a fundamental distortion of the dynamics of grace when it...

Nature, Supernature, and Grace - May 16, 2005
Underlying different doctrines of justification, and inseparable from them, are different notions of grace. The historical issues have been ably summarized by Roger Haight in his 1979 book, The Experience and Language of Grace....

Justification and eschatology - May 12, 2005
The notion of a "future justification" has come under criticism from some Reformed writers, though the idea has a fairly established place in Reformed thought (beginning at least with Vos). The opposition to the idea suggests that some Reformed soteriology...

Osiander and the Reformed Tradition - May 04, 2005
Julie Canlis has a helpful article on Calvin's response to Osiander in the International Journal of Systematic Theology (6:2 [2004]). A few points are worth highlighting: 1) She sees the response to Osiander as part of the reason why Reformed...

Justification and Reformation - May 04, 2005
In two older articles, Alister McGrath examines the sources for the Reformation doctrine of justification, covering ground also covered in his 2-volume Iustitia Dei. The first article, published in the Harvard Theological Review in 1982 (75:2, pp. 219-242) examines the...

Exhortation, May 1 - May 01, 2005
Suppose I told you that Trinity Reformed Church had been asked to perform a choir concert this morning? Would you be prepared? Or would it be like one of those dreams where you find yourself taking a test without studying,...

Aquinas on justification - April 28, 2005
Notes on Thomas Aquinas on The Effects of Grace, ST I-II, q. 113. 1) Article 1: Justification of the ungodly consists in the remission of sins, Aquinas argues, over against the claim that justification must involve some movement toward justice...

Augustine on Spirit and Letter - April 28, 2005
Some notes on Augustine�s Treatise on the Spirit and the Letter. 1) Augustine treats �letter�Ein 2 Corinthians as a reference to the law itself, which kills. The law kills, however, in the absence of the Spirit: �the letter of the...

Heavenly righteousness - April 28, 2005
Robert Reymond claims in his recent systematic theology that Christ's righteousness is in heaven and not on earth within the believer: "the Christian's righteousness before God is in heaven at the right hand of God in Jesus Christ and not...

Finnish Luther - April 27, 2005
Tuomo Mannermaa, Christ Present in Faith: Luther's View of Justification. Translated by Kirsi Stjerna. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005. 136 pp. For the past twenty-five years, Luther scholars in Finland have been pursuing a revisionary account of Luther's theology in conjunction with...

Baptism and Justification - April 20, 2005
Does baptism justify? Justification is, of course, an act of God. But that puts the question differently without deflecting it: Does baptism declare a justification for the person baptized? Assuming the Augustinian (and Reformed) view that baptism is an act...

Law/Gospel and Gnosticism - April 20, 2005
David Yeago offers a powerful critique of certain construals of the law/gospel distinction in a 1993 article from Pro Ecclesia. He does not doubt that law and gospel must be distinguished, but contends that when the law/gospel distinction becomes the...

Newman on Justification - April 15, 2005
I hope to post more elaborate comments on Newman's classic and challenging Lectures on Justification (recently reprinted by Wipf & Stock), but a few tidbits with have to suffice. 1) Newman frames the whole discussion by distinguishing between justification and...

Luther on Law and Grace - April 13, 2005
I posted this a short time before my web site went down, and I don't believe it's been restored. David Yeago offers a stimulating discussion of Luther�s views on gospel and law in a 1998 article in The Thomist. Yeago...

On the Indwelling Christ - April 06, 2005
From Luther's Freedom of a Christian: "as our heavenly Father has in Christ freely come to our aid, we also ought freely to help our neighbor through our body and its works, and each one should become as it were...

Berkhof on Justification - April 05, 2005
Distinctions between inner and outer, between status and being, run through Berkhof's treatment of justification in his systematic theology. For instance: Justification does not, as some languages imply, "denote a change that is brought about in man" but rather means...

Jungel on Justification - March 19, 2005
Eberhard Jungel�s 2001 volume, Justification: The Heart of the Christian Faith (T&T Clark) has a lot of useful material (and some not so useful material). I found Chapter 3, �The Justification Event�Eto be the most useful. Below, I�ve summarized his...

Law - February 24, 2005
Perhaps the central dogmatic/systematic challenge raised by the New Perspective on Paul is the claim that Paul's concerns about "Law" do not have to do with an eternal, unchanging expression of God's righteousness but with the contingent and temporary institutions...

Regeneration and Justification in Vermigli - February 24, 2005
Frank James, translator of Vermigli's treatises on predestination and justification, has these intriguing comments on Vermigli's views on the relation of justification and regeneration: "Vermigli's understanding of forensic justification is not particularly unusual. Indeed, it corresponds generally with the Reformed...

Justification and Sacraments - February 24, 2005
Vermigli discusses the role of works in salvation, arguing that those who do not live uprightly and practice virtue "shall not come to eternal salvation," yet these works are the "fruits of faith and effects of justification, not causes." He...

Calvin on Justification - February 23, 2005
Craig Carpenter offers a careful comparison of Calvin and Trent on justification in an article in WTJ (2002). A few specifics: 1) He summarizes the Tridentine position by following Robert Godfrey's analysis, but perceptively suggests that Godfrey illegitimately collapses everything...

Kolb on Luther and Chemnitz, Revisited - February 14, 2005
A perceptive Lutheran reader asked whether I was endorsing an antinomian position in my favorable summary of Kolb's article on Luther and Chemnitz. He pointed out that Kolb's position relies on an illegitimate separation of God and His Law, and...

Philosophy and Self-Justification - February 10, 2005
Alain de Botton notes in his book Status Anxiety that many societies see a direct relationship between reputation and self-image. If others hold me in contempt, then I must either defend myself against their contempt or accept their contemptuous assessment....

Chemnitz and Luther - February 10, 2005
Robert Kolb offers this helpful analysis of the differences between Luther and Chemnitz on justification: "Luther understood justification as the execution of the wages of sin . . . upon sinners and their simultaneous resurrectionto new life in Jesus Christ....

Creation and Justification - February 10, 2005
Oswald Bayer has a typically provocative essay in the Forde Festschrift, in which he explores the cosmic dimensions of justification by faith. A few highlights: 1) He points out that Luther's explanation of the First Article of the creed already...

A Doozy from Forde - February 10, 2005
"The assertion of 'justification by faith' in the sixteenth-century Reformation can be understood only if it is clearly seen as a complete break with 'justification by grace.'" So says Gerhard Forde. Marc Kolden begins a brief essay in By Faith...

Theology of the Cross - February 03, 2005
Speaking of Forde, his little book on Luther's Heidelberg Disputation (1518), entitled On Being a Theologian of the Cross includes a number of insights worth pondering. 1) Theological Thesis 15 of the Disputation states that free will could not "remain...

Lutheran "Deliverdict" - February 03, 2005
In the Husbands and Treier volume, Robert Kolb discusses various contemporary Lutheran theologians who are attempting to bring Luther to bear on contemporary theology and life. He focuses attention on Gerhard Forde, Wilfried Harle, Oswald Bayer, and a few others....

Seifrid on Luther on Justification - February 03, 2005
Mark Seifrid has an important article contrasting Luther and Melanchthon on justification in the Husbands and Treier volume on the subject. He examines a private discussion between the two Reformers that took place in the home of Johannes Bugenhagen in...

Atonement, Some Basics - January 31, 2005
Some basics on the atonement for class lecture. HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION The church has never creedally determined the doctrine of the atonement. Several models of atonement have dominated the landscape since the patristic period. Each of these contains an element of...

Luther's Deliverdict? - January 31, 2005
Aulen again, quoting passages from Luther's Galatians commentary: "To destroy sin, to smite death, to take away the curse by Himself, to bestow righteousness, bring life to light, and give the blessing: to annihilate the former, and to create the...

Eschatology and Theology Proper - January 26, 2005
Leave it to Barth to cut through a lot of confusion and clarify the theological necessity for an eschatological conception of salvation: "The New Testament speaks eschatologically when it speaks of man's being called, reconciled, justified, sanctified and redeemed. In...

Cross and Culture: Sacrifice and the Redemption of Society - January 24, 2005
This is based on a lecture delivered at NSA several years ago. I have not been able to prepare this for publication, though I hope to do so someday. My title is �Cross and Culture,�Ebut that needs to be made...

McCormack on Justification - December 22, 2004
Bruce McCormack�s article on justification, alluded to in an earlier post, is quite good. He rightly points out that �the term �justification�Ehas its home in the judicial sphere,�Ebut equally rightly points out that God�s judgments are different from human judgments:...

Faith and Justification - December 21, 2004
Berkhof has some intriguing comments about the distinction between "active or objective" justification and "passive or subjective" justification. The first refers to the declaration that God makes concerning the sinner, that the demands of the law have been met and...

"Deliverdict" and Sola Gratia/Sola Fide - December 20, 2004
If �justify�Eis both a verdict (�this person is righteous�E and the carrying out of a sentence (�this person is delivered from slavery to Sin�E, then clearly justification cannot be based on anything that the righteous person does. Justification is purely...

Reformers and Fathers on Justification - December 20, 2004
Chemnitz has some interesting comments on how the Reformers handled the patristic usage of �justification,�Ewhich did not match their own usage. He admits that the �fathers mostly take the word �justify�Efor the renewal,�Ewhich is not the Reformation definition of �justify,�Ebut...

Chemnitz on Justification and Renewal - December 20, 2004
Chemnitz cites the views of the German Roman Catholic Johann Gropper (1503-59). According to Chemnitz, he �argues at great length that Christ by his obedience did not merit only the remission of sins but also the Spirit of renewal; and...

Biblical Theology of Justification - December 11, 2004
Here's a methodological oddity in some treatments of justification: On the one hand, justification is taken as a sum of the gospel. On the other hand, virtually the ONLY discussion of justification in the OT is philological �Ethe meaning of...

Judgment and the Gift of Life - December 11, 2004
In John 5, Jesus claims that His authority to pass judgment and His power and raise the dead both come from the Father. How are these two prerogatives related? Are they identical? Does Jesus give life and condemn to death...

Imputation - December 09, 2004
Luther writes (Commentary on Gal 2:20), "Christ and I must be joined together so that He lives in me and I in Him - and what a wonderful way of speaking that is. For because He lives in me, whatever...

Grace - December 09, 2004
Robert Preus has a refreshingly unreconstructed chapter on divergent views on grace in his 1997 Justification and Rome. He asks why recent Catholic-Protestant dialogues have not addressed the issue of grace more directly, and claims that the affirmation that "justification...

Abraham and Justification - December 09, 2004
Martin Chemnitz provides an intriguing discussion of Abraham's justification in his classic Examination of the Council of Trent. He pinpoints the debate between Protestant and "papalist" as follows: The issue is whether the ground of our justification is found in...

The Word Was "A God"? - November 30, 2004
Much has been made by Jehovah's Witnesses and other groups of the absence of the article in John 1:1: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was A God," is the preferred...

Bayer on Luther - November 26, 2004
Oswald Bayer says that for Luther faith is "divine work in us," and that means for Luther that God "slays the old nature that belongs to the old world, the old Adam, and makes us new creatures, a new creation."...

White on NT - November 26, 2004
White in fact does not even cover all the passages concerning justification within the texts that teach the doctrine. Romans 6:7 is absent from his Scripture index, and he lists the "key Pauline passages" that deal with justification as Romans...

God the Judge - November 26, 2004
Near the heart of the Protestant doctrine of justification (as Barth saw) is the insistence that God, not man, is Judge. Efforts at self-justification are NOT merely moralistic efforts to recommend ourselves to God (though they are that). Efforts at...

Scriptural Use of "Justification" - November 26, 2004
James White (in The God Who Justifies)issues this important caution in his treatment of the meaning of the Hebrew and Greek word-groups for justification and righteousness: "there are obvious instances in which the biblical term speaks of a moral or...

Calvin on Faith and Obedience - November 18, 2004
Did Calvin teach that faith is obedience? Sam Waldron of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary says Yes and No to that. On the one hand, Waldron argued in an ETS paper, Calvin does teach that faith is obedience, not only inseparable...

Justification and the Gaze - November 11, 2004
A thought inspired by Oswald Bayer's Living By Faith: Justification and Sanctification: The doctrine of justification has something �EI know not what �Eto say to the postmodern suspicion of "the objectifying gaze." Justification is fundamentally about the gaze of God,...

Justification is the Beginning - November 10, 2004
Justification is not the end of a story, but the beginning. Consider Noah, who was righteous in his generations, and who was seen/judged righteous before Yahweh. To be justified is to be distinguished from the wicked generation. To be justified...

Two Kinds of Righteousness - October 27, 2004
Some intriguing quotations from Luther's treatise on Two Kinds of Righteousness. 1) The first sort is "alien righteousness": "The first is alien righteousness, that is the righteousness of another, instilled from without. This is the righteousness of Christ by which...

Justification and "Life Situation" - October 25, 2004
Can God change a person�s �legal standing�Ewithout changing his �life situation�E It would seem not: 1) The life condition of someone who is not justified is a situation of being �under the curse�Eor �under the reign of Death and Sin.�E...

Girard the Gnostic - September 30, 2004
In his new book Violence, Hospitality, and the Cross, Hans Boersma offers this insightful and devastating criticism of Girard's construct of a non-violent atonement: "One of the main reasons that [Girard's] theory continues to increase in popularity is that he...

Justification and Sacramental theology - August 14, 2004
Many Protestants today, perhaps most in the Reformed churches, believe that justification by faith is threatened by a high sacramental theology. The more efficacy you attribute to baptism, the less prominence you give to faith. While it is true that...

Cross and Culture - July 09, 2004
This is a brief overview of a project on the atonement, first delivered as my inaugural lecture as Senior Fellow of Theology at NSA a few years ago. (I don't think this has been posted already; if it has, my...

Assurance - April 29, 2004
One of the charges brought against the Auburn Avenue theology is that it undermines assurance. Raising the question of assurance is fair game, but it is also highly ironic. It is not as if the Reformed churches have the issue...

Pattern or Person - April 26, 2004
David Yeago makes this important comment about Luther's "catholic" turn after 1518: "For Luther after 1518, Christ is central not as pattern but as person; we are saved by the faith that acknowledges his authority, competence, and willingness to rescue...

Imputation - April 26, 2004
McGrath gives an account of the development of the doctrine of imputation within early Reformation theology. He notes that there are elements of the doctrine already in the early Luther: "The reinterpretation of grace as an absolute external, and faith...

Grace and Reformation - April 26, 2004
Alister McGrath's discussion of Luther's theology of justification in his standard work, Iustitia Dei, shows that understanding grace as favor Dei rather than as a "medicinal substance" was an essential part of the Reformation doctrine of grace. He writes, "The...

Faith - April 19, 2004
According to the etymological and historical study of Wilfred Cantwell Smith, "believe" once had the range of meaning of the Greek PISTEUO and the Latin CREDO, and meant basically to entrust or commit oneself to something, to pledge allegiance. As...

Luther on Justification - April 19, 2004
Robert Jenson has a brief but very challenging comment on Luther's views on justification in the Fall 2003 issue of the Westminster Theological Journal (which, incidentally, under the editorship of Peter Enns is promising to be a lively forum of...

On the Meaning of "Grace" - April 14, 2004
One of the issues currently being debated in the Reformed churches is the meaning of "grace." Some have argued that the word should be restricted to specifically redemptive gifts and favors, which means that the word properly describes only God's...

Acquainted with Death - April 08, 2004
This article is reprinted from Tabletalk 25.4 (April 2001): 9-10, 54. Thanks to John Barach for typing it up for use here. Many today boast of near-death experiences. I do not. I have never had a near-death experience. But I...

Gaffin on Ordo and Historia Salutis - March 30, 2004
Richard Gaffin�s work always makes for challenging and edifying reading, and his inaugural lecture as Charles Krahe Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology at Westminster Seminary, published in the Fall 2003 issue of the Westminster Theological Journal is no exception....

Atonement in Narrative Context - March 20, 2004
If we understand the cross and resurrection as the climactic events of the gospel narratives, what do they mean? In asking this question, I am not at all casting doubt on traditional satisfaction theories of the atonement, which are amply...

Analytic Justification in Luther - March 20, 2004
David Brondos has an important article on Luther's notion of justification in the Winter 2004 issue of Pro Ecclesia. Brondos distinguishes between analytic conceptions of justification (that justification is the work of Christ by which one becomes righteous) from synthetic...

Auburn Avenue - March 17, 2004
Here are a few thoughts on the Auburn Avenue controversy, snipped from an intervention I made on a discussion list. The specific issue in question is Steve Wilkins's claim that all who are baptized receive "every spiritual blessing in Christ."...

Soteriology and Creation - March 14, 2004
Any idea of cooperation with grace rests on a nature/grace dualism. To say that I cooperate with grace implies that I have some sort of independent power of action that is not always already the product of grace. That is,...

Forgiveness and Glorification - January 31, 2004
Jim Jordan suggests that justification as forgiveness of sins always also includes glorification. The "robe" that covers us (imputed righteousness) is likewise a garment of glory and beauty, so that we are invested for office at the same time we...

Strange Doings - December 19, 2003
There are strange doings in the Reformed world these days. One of the strangest I've come across recently are comments from one Reformed elder who complained that NT Wright's views on justification were introducing a new Romanism. According to this...

Hafeman on Future and Present Justification - December 03, 2003
As I've considered Hafeman's take on future and present justification (summarized in an earlier post), I've come to have some important reservations. First, as I noted at the time, Hafeman's construction leaves me uncertain about the role of union with...

Milbank on Reformed Pelagianism - November 23, 2003
John Milbank claims that Reformed theology has allowed Pelagianism to come in under the guise of a covenant theology that includes the covenant of works (especially when the Mosaic covenant is treated as a covenant of works). The problem with...

Medieval Debates on Atonement - October 17, 2003
In a footnote to the aforementioned article, Muller briefly discusses the medieval debates about the atonement. He points out that the medieval doctors stressed the passive obedience almost to the exclusion of the active; the active obedience was merely preparatory,...

Barth on Infralapsarianism - September 24, 2003
Well, Barth at least agrees that there is a nature/grace dualism implicit in the infralapsarian position. Strikingly, he points to the danger of anthropocentrism in supralapsarianism, arguing that by making the salvation of individual x and the damnation of individual...

Barth and Berkhouwer on Election - September 24, 2003
I'm poring over Barth and Berkhouwer on decrees and election, and seem to be making some progress. Try this: The doctrine of the decree is not merely THAT everything is predetermined. When the decree is formulated this way, it is...

Back to Supra/infra - September 17, 2003
Back to supra/infra: On reflection, I think the main issue in my rethinking of this has been my hostility to any nature-grace scheme, which seems to be encouraged by the infra position. In the infra framework, creation exists (in the...

Supra/Infra - September 16, 2003
I have long considered the debate of infra and supralapsarianism a classic example of the excesses of Reformed orthodoxy and scholasticism. I still like Bavinck's even-handed treatment of the issues in his Doctrine of God. But I have to confess...

Calvin on Christ - September 10, 2003
Some impressive quotations from Muller's Christ and the Decree (p. 36): This is Calvin (Inst 2.12.1): In discerning Christ's merit, we do not consider the beginning of merit to be in him, but we go back to God's ordinance as...

Fuller on the Law - September 04, 2003
Some time ago, John Robbins put my name in a list of theologians influenced by Daniel Fuller and John Piper. (I was in the good company of John Frame, Dick Gaffin, and others, so I was actually honored.) The funny...

Open Theology - September 03, 2003
I've long thought that open theology, the notion that God does not and cannot know future contingent events, is simply consistent Arminian theology. Richard Muller's description of Arminius's view of "middle knowledge" (in God, Creation, and Providence in the Thought...

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