Again, as I read through the new quasi-creedal “Statement on Christology” from R. C. Sproul’s personal publishing brand Ligonier, I want to appreciate that in most respects its affirmations are basically correct. Interestingly, in Article 13, it is part of the denial that happens to repeat something I quite agree is timely: that “forgiven” does not mean “merely overlooked or passed over” in a conventional sense of “dismissed as unimportant,” though it is definitely the case that “Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us” and that He “passed over” some sins in some senses, and “dismissed” all sins in a juridical analogy sense. Even the language of double imputation, here, is not wholly objectionable–everything depends on how we understand “imputed” to function within the whole economy of salvation.
Unfortunately, conventional Protestant and especially Presbyterian views are going to separate this element of Christ’s work from the rest, and that disjunction and the denials that support it are going to lead such theology farther and farther from the embrace of Christ:
Again, it is easy to agree that “merely overlooked” is an incorrect description of God’s response to sin. But the other denial is badly structured: It is simply the negation of the negation of the affirmation. It gives us no sense of what positive statement is being denied. What is important, though, is that there is a pretty obvious lacuna in the formula “imputed by faith.” In what sense do we mean “faith”? And what is the agency, and what the instrumentality, and how does that work out in terms of real causes, in the construction “by faith”?
Even in my Protestant days, I always found this construction unpersuasive except as one variant of the Biblical juridical or fiduciary analogy for God’s action of salvation–and the reason is the succession of non sequiturs and ad hoc quasi-dogmatic statements required to conjure in our minds a divine action “faith” which both functions as an infused habitual act of the individual agent intellect *and* can in no sense be called either “infused” or an “act” of that individual that might in any sense be called “work” or be considered “meritorious.” The result is a “by faith” that can have no concrete content, and an “imputation” that must be isolated from any actual change in the person being saved. When one considers “imputation” as accounting, pursuing the fiduciary analogy for salvation by faith, this amounts to God not giving credit on Christ’s account, but to His maintaining perpetually false books!
Of course, Article 13 would be just fine if by “imputed” we mean “credited,” and if we understand the divine justice to be displayed in that imputation because Christ’s surpassing merit and His blameless suffering are part and parcel of His determination that “when he appears, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.” In fact, we know that this is just how St. Paul describes the unity of these divine causes of salvation. Unfortunately, in the effort to be good Presbyterians, Sproul and his cohort proceed to restate a major soteriological heresy as though it were part of Christology–may God protect them!
Article 14 is the one that clearly departs from the “faith once for all delivered” about Christ and moves into territory that is dangerous for souls:
OK, skipping over all the well-rehearsed arguments on the subject of whether “justification by faith” or “justification by faith alone” is the message of the Scriptures, a matter in which practical Christians agree more than the wrong sort of doctrinaire thinkers will admit, let’s look first at the logic of the affirmation. It is a mess. Again we have the negation, or disjunction, “alone” used under a correlative structure of “to deny” in an affirmation (the second clause). Again, in the first clause, we have “alone” distributed to two terms in two different ways, and doubled with “apart from” in a way that seems to suggest that the presence of these things is somehow inimical to the others–that only in the affirmative rejection of “personal merit or works” can one have the affirmative presence of justifying faith.
These redoubled negations and disjunctions, which make the affirmation/denial structure incoherent and inadequate as a base for further teachings, are necessary because the plain affirmations would agree with Catholic doctrine, and the authors find themselves both compelled to do so and at a loss for any intellectually honest or rationally coherent way to do so. These are serious problems, because the Church would be quite happy to countenance my teaching something clearer and more forceful, such as “We are justified by an act of God conditioned on the person and work of Christ, a work apprehended by faith which is infused by the Holy Spirit, faith the content and object of which is the person and work of Jesus Christ, faith which is always by its very character an obedience and an acknowledgement of truth, faith which is always coordinate with hope and ordered toward charity; and without this faith, as habitual act, content, object, and obedience, none can be saved.”
In fact, you can find all of that in the Council of Trent, without bothering to look for anything more modern or “ecumenically sensitive” than that! Here, in fact, are the first several of what many consider an infamous series of anathemas (formal declarations of conditions that separate one from communion) from Trent’s decree on justification. You should notice that they fence off both “works salvation” and false understandings of “faith” in order to defend the understanding of salvation by grace through faith handed down from Christ and His Apostles:
- If any one saith, that man may be justified before God by his own works, whether done through the teaching of human nature, or that of the law, without the grace of God through Jesus Christ; let him be anathema.
- If any one saith, that the grace of God, through Jesus Christ, is given only for this, that man may be able more easily to live justly, and to merit eternal life, as if, by free will without grace, he were able to do both, though hardly indeed and with difficulty; let him be anathema.
- If any one saith, that without the prevenient inspiration of the Holy Ghost, and without his help, man can believe, hope, love, or be penitent as he ought, so as that the grace of Justification may be bestowed upon him; let him be anathema.
- If any one saith, that man’s free will moved and excited by God, by assenting to God exciting and calling, nowise co-operates towards disposing and preparing itself for obtaining the grace of Justification; that it cannot refuse its consent, if it would, but that, as something inanimate, it does nothing whatever and is merely passive; let him be anathema.
- [Skipping a few at a time from here on down.]
- If any one saith, that all works done before Justification, in whatsoever way they be done, are truly sins, or merit the hatred of God; or that the more earnestly one strives to dispose himself for grace, the more grievously he sins: let him be anathema.
- If any one saith, that the fear of hell,-whereby, by grieving for our sins, we flee unto the mercy of God, or refrain from sinning,-is a sin, or makes sinners worse; let him be anathema.
- If any one saith, that by faith alone the impious is justified; in such wise as to mean, that nothing else is required to co-operate in order to the obtaining the grace of Justification, and that it is not in any way necessary, that he be prepared and disposed by the movement of his own will; let him be anathema.
- If any one saith, that men are just without the justice of Christ, whereby He merited for us to be justified; or that it is by that justice itself that they are formally just; let him be anathema.
- If any one saith, that men are justified, either by the sole imputation of the justice of Christ, or by the sole remission of sins, to the exclusion of the grace and the charity which is poured forth in their hearts by the Holy Ghost, and is inherent in them; or even that the grace, whereby we are justified, is only the favour of God; let him be anathema.
- If any one saith, that justifying faith is nothing else but confidence in the divine mercy which remits sins for Christ’s sake; or, that this confidence alone is that whereby we are justified; let him be anathema.
- If any one saith, that it is necessary for every one, for the obtaining the remission of sins, that he believe for certain, and without any wavering arising from his own infirmity and disposition, that his sins are forgiven him; let him be anathema.
- If any one saith, that man is truly absolved from his sins and justified, because that he assuredly believed himself absolved and justified; or, that no one is truly justified but he who believes himself justified; and that, by this faith alone, absolution and justification are effected; let him be anathema.
- If any one saith, that the grace of Justification is only attained to by those who are predestined unto life; but that all others who are called, are called indeed, but receive not grace, as being, by the divine power, predestined unto evil; let him be anathema.
- If any one saith, that the commandments of God are, even for one that is justified and constituted in grace, impossible to keep; let him be anathema.
One should always be very careful, too, about reading the canons of councils without due attention to the forms they were reading and hearing of the specific affirmations they reject, and their explanations of that background. Here’s a wonderful selection from the decree on justification:
Whereas all men had lost their innocence in the prevarication of Adam…they were so far the servants of sin, and under the power of the devil and of death, that not the Gentiles only by the force of nature, but not even the Jews by the very letter itself of the law of Moses, were able to be liberated, or to arise, therefrom; although free will, attenuated as it was in its powers, and bent down, was by no means extinguished in them.[…]
Whence it came to pass, that the heavenly Father…sent unto men, Jesus Christ, His own Son…that He might both redeem the Jews who were under the Law, and that the Gentiles, who followed not after justice, might attain to justice, and that all men might receive the adoption of sons. Him God hath proposed as a propitiator, through faith in his blood, for our sins, and not for our sins only, but also for those of the whole world.[…]
But, though He died for all, yet do not all receive the benefit of His death, but those only unto whom the merit of His passion is communicated. For as in truth men, if they were not born propagated of the seed of Adam, would not be born unjust,…so, if they were not born again in Christ, they never would be justified; seeing that, in that new birth, there is bestowed upon them, through the merit of His passion, the grace whereby they are made just. For this benefit the apostle exhorts us, evermore to give thanks to the Father, who hath made us worthy to be partakers of the lot of the saints in light, and hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the Kingdom of the Son of his love, in whom we have redemption, and remission of sins.[…]
By which words, a description of the Justification of the impious is indicated,–as being a translation, from that state wherein man is born a child of the first Adam, to the state of grace, and of the adoption of the sons of God, through the second Adam, Jesus Christ, our Saviour. And this translation, since the promulgation of the Gospel, cannot be effected, without the laver of regeneration, or the desire thereof, as it is written; unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.[…]
The Synod furthermore declares, that in adults, the beginning of the said Justification is to be derived from the prevenient grace of God, through Jesus Christ, that is to say, from His vocation, whereby, without any merits existing on their parts, they are called; that so they, who by sins were alienated from God, may be disposed through His quickening and assisting grace, to convert themselves to their own justification, by freely assenting to and co-operating with that said grace: in such sort that, while God touches the heart of man by the illumination of the Holy Ghost, neither is man himself utterly without doing anything while he receives that inspiration, forasmuch as he is also able to reject it; yet is he not able, by his own free will, without the grace of God, to move himself unto justice in His sight. Whence, when it is said in the sacred writings: Turn ye to me, and I will turn to you, we are admonished of our liberty; and when we answer; Convert us, O Lord, to thee, and we shall be converted, we confess that we are prevented by the grace of God.(source: CT06)
And the Council wisely addresses the many-layered causation that is always at work when we speak of a divine action that embraces Creation and Redemption and also each of the circumstances, down to the innermost thoughts, of every one of us:
Of this Justification the causes are these: the final cause indeed is the glory of God and of Jesus Christ, and life everlasting; while the efficient cause is a merciful God who washes and sanctifies gratuitously, signing, and anointing with the holy Spirit of promise, who is the pledge of our inheritance; but the meritorious cause is His most beloved only-begotten, our Lord Jesus Christ, who, when we were enemies, for the exceeding charity wherewith he loved us, merited Justification for us by His most holy Passion on the wood of the cross, and made satisfaction for us unto God the Father; the instrumental cause is the sacrament of baptism, which is the sacrament of faith, without which (faith) no man was ever justified; lastly, the alone formal cause is the justice of God, not that whereby He Himself is just, but that whereby He maketh us just, that, to wit, with which we being endowed by Him, are renewed in the spirit of our mind, and we are not only reputed, but are truly called, and are, just, receiving justice within us, each one according to his own measure, which the Holy Ghost distributes to every one as He wills, and according to each one’s proper disposition and co-operation. For, although no one can be just, but he to whom the merits of the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ are communicated, yet is this done in the said justification of the impious, when by the merit of that same most holy Passion, the charity of God is poured forth, by the Holy Spirit, in the hearts of those that are justified, and is inherent therein: whence, man, through Jesus Christ, in whom he is ingrafted, receives, in the said justification, together with the remission of sins, all these (gifts) infused at once, faith, hope, and charity. For faith, unless hope and charity be added thereto, neither unites man perfectly with Christ, nor makes him a living member of His body. For which reason it is most truly said, that Faith without works is dead and profitless; and, In Christ Jesus neither circumcision, availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith which worketh by charity. This faith, Catechumens beg of the Church–agreeably to a tradition of the apostles–previously to the sacrament of Baptism; when they beg for the faith which bestows life everlasting, which, without hope and charity, faith cannot bestow: whence also do they immediately hear that word of Christ; If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. Wherefore, when receiving true and Christian justice, they are bidden, immediately on being born again, to preserve it pure and spotless, as the first robe given them through Jesus Christ in lieu of that which Adam, by his disobedience, lost for himself and for us, that so they may bear it before the judgment-seat of our Lord Jesus Christ, and may have life everlasting.
(source: CT06, emphasis added)
But to say that such an all-embracing work of Jesus Christ is only actually effective when it carries with it a habitual exclusion of any effectual conversion, any grace which changes us and makes faith and hope and love part of us, is ludicrous; and what else can this constant and incoherent repetition of an “alone” and “apart from” that excludes portions of the promise of Christ be? To assert this “alone” and “apart from” in this radical and irrational manner is to deny the Gospel its goodness, the work of Christ its real fruit, to reject any real sense that “fruits worthy of repentance” are a real thing, that “walk worthy” is not a delusion but a serious matter of prayer and effort for all the saints. I do not want to say that this statement is trying to “deny the Gospel,” but it is hard to avoid saying so–better, perhaps, to point out that its errors can be relied on to scorch and wither the fruits of the Gospel, the fecund realities of the life-giving Creator’s work of Redemption, and to render the believer’s life arid and sterile.
Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear. In any case, it is important to note that this is where the statement lapses into rank heresy, clearly condemned by a ratified ecumenical council, and that it is in no way spiritually safe to follow where its authors, in their blindness, are leading.
It may also be worth noting that this is in no way a statement of Christology; it is a bit of soteriology gratuitously inserted to divide the faithful, for the authors of this statement know well that there are no orthodox Christian foundations of Christology properly so called that are not well comprehended in the Catholic tradition and the ecumenical councils, so that to clarify Christology is to express solidarity with the Church herself, that is, the Catholic faith. It is profoundly sad, and profoundly dangerous to souls, that some find it impossible to do so.