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Issues in New Testament Theology PDF
Issues in New Testament Theology PDF
NEW TESTAMENT
THEOLOGY
by RICHARD B. GAFFIN JR.
Selected Articles on
Biblical and Systematic Theology
This book was compiled upon the occasion of
Dr. Richard Gaffin’s 80th birthday. The
Reformed evangelical community celebrates
his life and ministry.
* Kurt Galling, ed., Die Religion in Geschickte und Gegenwart, 3rd ed.,
Ill (Tübingen: J. C. ¬. Mohr, 1959), 242-262.
* James M. Robinson and John B. Cobb, Jr., eds., The New Hermeneutic
{New Frontiers in Theology, II, New York: Harper & Row, 1964), pp. 1-77.
CONTEMPORARY HERMENEUTICS AND STUDY OF Õ. T. 131
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
5
"Wo gab es einen Halt im Leben, wenn alle seine Inhalte historisch
bedingt und also historisch vergänglich sind?"; quoted by H.-G. Gadamer
in RGG\ III, 370 (art. "Historismus").
134 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
6
Gerhard Ebeling, "Word of God and Hermeneutic," The New Herme-
neutic, p. 103: "Word is, taken strictly, happening word. It is not enough
to inquire into its intrinsic meaning, but that must be joined up with the
question of its future, of what it effects. For ultimately the questions as
to the content and the power of words are identical."
7 Ernst Fuchs, "Was ist ein Sprachereignis?," Zur Frage nach dem his-
torischen Jesus (Gesammelte Aufsätze, II, Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, I960),
p. 429: "Deshalb ging ich dazu über, die Geschichtlichkeit der Existenz
als Sprachlichkeit der Existenz aufzuweisen und den Text selbst als Helfer
für dieses Bemühen in Anspruch zu nehmen."
CONTEMPORARY HERMENEUTICS AND STUDY OF Õ. T. 137
8
E. g., recently and with explicit reference to the question of herme-
neutics, De Heilige Schrift, I (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1966), 163-167.
CONTEMPORARY HERMENEUTICS AND STUDY OF Õ. T. 141
9
"Holy Scripture and Its Key," International Reformed Bulletin, 32-33
(Jan.-Apr., 1968), 49.
142 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
are concerned with the same subject matter. Both are oriented
to, and derived from, the history of redemption. In a word,
they share a common interpretative interest.
This point can be made more precise and concrete as far
as the writers of the New Testament are concerned. From a
redemptive-historical perspective — a perspective which for
the believer there is and can be none more basic — the in-
terpreter today is in the same situation as was, say, the apostle
Paul. Together they look back upon the climactic events of
Christ's death, resurrection, and ascension, while together they
"wait for his Son from heaven" (I Thess. 1:10). Both are
concerned with explicating the same redemptive-historical ten-
sion between "already" and "not yet" in which they are
caught up. In dealing with the New Testament, then, we
must avoid that distorting outlook which consists, as Vos puts
it, in "viewing the new revelation too much by itself, and not
sufficiently as introductory and basic to the large period
10
following." Rather we must see, again quoting Vos, that
"we ourselves live just as much in the N.T. as did Peter and
11
Paul and John." I would express it somewhat more pointedly
by saying that, in terms of those factors which are most basic
in defining the task of interpretation, namely, the nature of
the subject matter and the position of the interpreter, we
must understand that our interpretation today, that is, in-
terpretation in the context of the church, stands closer to the
teaching of Paul or the preaching of Peter than the latter
stand to the prophecy of Isaiah or the psalms of David.
This outlook has many implications which need to be ex-
plored further. I indicate here one which especially interests
me. The proper, pointed theological concern of Christ's
people is concern with history, the history which has realized
their redemption. This concern begins already in the New
Testament. More particularly, in a dialectically gifted, syn-
thetically disposed thinker like Paul, the coherent normative
statement for which the church strives begins to take shape.
This means, then, that over its entire expanse, particularly
20
Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments (Grand
Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1948), p. 325.
" Ibid., p. 326.
144 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
I
Taking a very large view and surveying biblical studies as
a whole over the past century, it is fair to say that few de-
velopments, if any, have had such a far-reaching impact as pre-
occupation with the eschatology of the New Testament writers,
a preoccupation which has eventually come to dominate New
Testament studies. This development has involved intense de-
bate, but a basic consensus has emerged, and this consensus, it
should be recognized, differs in certain important respects from
the previously accepted understanding of eschatology (although
we note in passing that so far as explicit use of the word
228
THE USEFULNESS OF THE CROSS 229
2
According to the evidence cited by J. Carmignac, "Les Dangers de
L'eschatologie," New Testament Studies, 17(1970-71) :365f.
3
Carmignac, op. cit., esp. pp. 383-390.
4
1 . H. Marshall, "Slippery Words, I. Eschatology," The Expository
Times, 89, 9(June 1978) : 264-269.
230 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
either have not yet read the New Testament carefully or, for
whatever reasons, are not able to perceive what it says.
II
The biblical warrant for a broadened understanding of escha-
tology can be briefly indicated along several lines.
1 ) A global, elemental consideration, that comes from taking
in the history of revelation in its organic wholeness, is the essen-
tially unified eschatological hope of the Old Testament, a hope
which, to generalize, has a single focus on the arrival of the
Day of the Lord, inaugurated by the coming of the Messiah.
From this perspective, the first and second comings, distin-
guished by us on the basis of the New Testament, are held
together as two episodes or parts of one (eschatological) com-
ing. The traditional viewpoint, by emphasizing as it does the
distinction between the first and second comings, giving rise
to its systematic conception of eschatology, has lost sight of
this unity and the way even in the New Testament, particularly
the gospels, these two comings are mixed, so intermingled that
the difficulty interpretation sometimes has in distinguishing
them is well known.
2) Historically, a broadened understanding of eschatology
emerges with the renewed attention, beginning right at the
close of the last century, to what, according to the Synoptic
gospels, is obviously the central theme of the proclamation of
Jesus, namely, the Kingdom of God.ñ In reaction to the ideal-
istic misunderstandings of older liberalism, interpretation of all
schools has come to the conclusion, whether or not subsequently
dispensing with the exegetical conclusion as a piece of outdated
5
The work usually credited with initiating this epoch-making turn in
interpretation is especially that of Johannes Weiss, Jesus' Proclamation
of the Kingdom of God, trans, and ed. R. H. Hiers and D. L. Holland
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971; German original, 1892) and also
Albert Schweitzer, e.g., The Quest of the Historical Jesus, trans. W.
Montgomery (London: A. & C. Black, 1910; German original, 1906),
chapters 19, 20. An overall eschatological assessment of Jesus' teaching,
often overlooked but with better balance and much greater fidelity to the
Gospel records, is already present in Geerhardus Vos, The Teaching of
Jesus Concerning the Kingdom and the Church (Grand Rapids: Eerd-
mans, 1958; first ed., 1903).
THE USEFULNESS OF THE CROSS 231
Ill
Two passages, both in Paul, serve well as a point of departure.
A brief examination of each of them in turn will disclose a
decisive and controlling perspective, one that is, I am inclined
to say, the key to understanding all other statements in the
New Testament on Christian suffering.6
6
For the discussion in this section and at a number of points through-
out the rest of this address, I want to acknowledge the stimulus of the
following: E. Lohse, Märtyrer und Gottesknecht, 2. ed. (Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1963), pp. 199-203; W. Schräge, "Leid, Kreuz
und Eschaton," Evangelische Theologie, 34(1974): 141-175; P. Siber,
Mit Christus Leben. Eine Studie zur paulinischen Auferstehungshoffnung
(Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1971), pp. 99-190; R. Bultmann, Der
zweite Brief an die Korinther, ed. E. Dinkier (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1976), pp. 227-232; but especially J. D. G. Dunn, Jesus and the
Spirit (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1975), pp. 326-338, and several
essays of Ernst Käsemann: "For and Against a Theology of Resurrec-
tion," Jesus Means Freedom, trans. F. Clarke (Philadelphia: Fortress
Press, 1969), pp. 59-84; "The Saving Significance of the Death of Jesus
in Paul," pp. 32-59 and "The Cry for Liberty in the Worship of the
Church," pp. 122-127 in Perspectives on Paul, trans. M. Kohl (Philadel-
phia: Fortress Press, 1971); "Ministry and Community in the New
THE USEFULNESS OF THE CfcOSS 233
7
Cf. M. Zerwick, Biblical Greek, trans. J. Smith (Rome: Pontifical
Biblical Institute, 1963), p. 13.
THE USEFULNESS OF THE CROSS 235
IV
Misunderstandings can crop up at this point. I want next
to take up one of them. In the theological currents that have
swept over the world during the past 10-15 years, no issue has
been a more intensive concern than that of suffering. Human
suffering is a central theme in the theology of revolution and
other liberation theologies. Suffering is both the target and
means of revolutionary praxis. In particular, in the writing
program of Jürgen Moltmann, the sequel to the Theology of
Hope is The Crucified God, in which the principle of pain,
suffering and abandonment is taken up into the very being
(better, becoming) of God himself and structures relationships
within the Trinity. Suffering, in Moltmann's view, is first of
all, antecedently inner-trinitarian. 8 If I read correctly, it is
increasingly clear that the theology of hope is not so much
that. Rather, because, for one thing, it is not directed by a
more sure prophetic word, it is a theology, not of genuine hope,
but of uncertain expectation, expectations predicated on what
man is able to wrest of his future within the giveness of his
mortality.
But this is not the hope of the New Testament. Paul does not
glorify suffering as an end in itself. Nor does he absolutize
suffering and death as essential to man as man (or God as God).
For him, life and death are not a binary opposition that consti-
tute the deep structure of human existence, so that to remove
death from man would be to deprive him of his humanity.
Rather, Paul is certain that at Christ's return we shall all be
changed (I Cor. 15:51), that the mortal must put on immor-
tality (vs. 53), and mortality be swallowed up by life (II Cor.
5:4). And he has this confidence, we may be sure, not as a
lingering remnant of late Jewish apocalyptic not yet purged
from his thinking, but as an integral element of his revealed
gospel.
But now, with this clear, with this absolutely crucial es-
chatological reservation made, we must go on to appreciate that
as long as believers are in the mortal body, that is, for the
8
The Crucified God, trans. R. A. Wilson and J. Bowden (London:
S C M Press, 1974) esp. pp. 200-290; cf. the helpful analysis of R.
Bauckham, "Moltmann's Eschatology of the Cross," Scottish Journal of
Theology, 30(1977) : 301-311.
236 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
V
Romans 8:17 says that we are God's adopted children, "if
in fact we suffer with him (Christ) in order that we may also
be glorified with him." This clause, in its context, further
clarifies the picture for us at several important and disputed
points.
1) Sometimes it is argued that the sufferings mentioned in
the passages looked at are the sufferings of Paul the apostle,
specifically apostolic suffering which excludes the rest of the
church. But a number of considerations tell against this restric-
tion: In II Corinthians, Paul says that the whole congregation
shares in his sufferings (1:7). In Philippians, the fellowship of
Christ's sufferings and conformity to his death are, along with
righteousness by faith, essential aspects of union with Christ
(3:9,10). And here in Romans 8, as we shall presently see
more clearly, suffering with Christ plainly includes all believers
and is inseparable from their adoption.
To be sure, Paul's sufferings are those of an apostle; they
THE USEFULNESS OF THE CROSS 237
9
Cf. J. Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, trans. M.
Kohl (London: S C M Press, 1977), pp. 357-361.
238 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
yi
We may now look briefly at £olossians 1:24, where Paul says:
"I rejoice in my sufferings for you and in my flesh I fill up
what is lacking in Christ's afflictions, for the sake of his body,
that is, the church." Certainly £he vital, Spiritual union between
the glorified Christ and })eliev£rs is an explanatory presupposi-
tion of this striking an$ much debated statement.12 However,
12
Particularly useful for its careful survey of the history of interpre-
tation is J. Kremer, IVas an den Leiden Christi noch mangelt (Bonn:
Peter Hanstein, 1956).
THE USEFULNESS OF THE CROSS 241
13
E.g., R. Yates, "A Note on Colossians 1:24," Evangelical Quarterly,
42(1970): 91f.; F. F. Bruce, Commentary on the Epistle to the Colos-
sians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1957), pp. 215f. ; A. Oepke, Theological
Dictionary of the New Testament, trans. G. W. Bromiley, 4(Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967): 1098.
14
The view of Augustine, Luther, Calvin and many older commenta-
tors (cf. Kramer, op. cit., pp. 177-183) ; more recently, e.g., H. Carson,
The Epistles of Paul to the Colossians and Philemon (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1960), p. 51.
15
E.g., E. Lohse, Colossians and Philemon (Philadelphia: Fortress
Press, 1971), p. 70; R P. Martin, Colossians and Philemon (London:
Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1974), p. 70; R. J. Bauckham, "Colossians
1:24 Again," Evangelical Quarterly, 47(1975): 169f. That the conception
of the messianic woes provides a more general background to the escha-
tological suffering in view in verse 24 may very well be the case.
1Q
E.g., J. B. Lightfoot, Saint Paul's Epistles to the Colossians and to
Philemon (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, [1879]), pp. 165f. ; E. Lohmeyer,
Die Briefe an die Philipper, and die Kolosser und an Philemon (Gôttin-
gen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1953), p. 78; E. Percy, Die Probleme
der Kolosser- und Epheserbriefe (Lund: C. W. K. Gleerup, 1946), pp.
130f.; H. Ridderbos, Aan de Kolossensen (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1960),
pp. 156-159; W. Hendriksen, New Testament Commentary. Exposition
of Colossians and Philemon (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1964),
pp. 86f.
242 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
the question, what does Paul mean ? How when he has just said
that all the fulness dwells in Christ (vs. 19), can he go on to
speak of "filling up" what is lacking in his afflictions? The
answer would appear to lie in what Paul says elsewhere about
our sharing in Christ's sufferings and the fellowship of his suffer-
ings. The critical factor here is the special, unique and ultimately
unfathomable solidarity between Christ and the church. This
union is such that not only can the sufferings of believers be
viewed as Christ's and as being conformed to his death, but
also the personal, past-historical sufferings of Christ and the
present afflictions of the church are seen together as constituting
one whole. Again, certainly not in the sense that the sufferings of
the church have some additive atoning, reconciling value. But
there are aspects other than soteriological from which the
church's sufferings can be bracketed with the suffering of Christ
himself. These aspects we may designate apostolic or missio-
logical, having to do with the gospel-mission in the world of
the church together with its Head.
With Professor Murray, we must say, in reference to this
verse, that, together with the sufferings of Christ, in their suf-
fering believers "are regarded as filling up the total quota of
sufferings requisite to the consummation of redemption and the
glorification of the whole body of Christ."17 Without construing
this "total quota" into the doubtful view that the suffering of
each Christian hastens the Parousia by mechanically reducing
a fixed quantity of sufferings still outstanding, still this verse
points us to consider that an important aspect of the rationale
for delay between the resurrection and return of Christ is the
necessary role of suffering for the gospel and its advance ap-
pointed to the church. Also, I would suggest in passing and as a
matter for further discussion, that what Paul says here has a
definite bearing on the much-debated issue of the nature of the
covenant and the role of Christ as covenant mediator and the
last Adam. The suggestion, at least, is that the Spirit-worked
suffering obedience of the church, which is the fruit of self-
abandoning faith that rests in and lives out of its covenant head,
is, together with his own obedience, as Murray puts it, integral
and necessary to attaining the full possession of the eschato-
logical inheritance.
17
J. Murray, The Epistle to the Romans, 1(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1959) : 299.
THE USEFULNESS OF THE CROSS 243
VII
In bringing these remarks to a close, I want to broaden them
in two directions:
1) In making the emphasis I have so far, it is of course
essential to maintain balance within a larger context. Some may
be uneasy that I have spoken in the way I have, with Calvin,
of the "usefulness of the cross" and that so much has been said
about the cross but so little about the Atonement. I want to
remove any uncertainty there may be in this respect. In the
tradition of historic Christian theology, especially since Anselm,
the cross and the Atonement have been virtually synonymous.
Again and again, in every generation (and ours is no excep-
tion), it has been truly crucial to stress the exclusive significance
of the cross of Christ, that his sufferings and death have an
atoning, reconciling efficacy that is true of none other. I would
not want anything I have said this morning to leave the impres-
sion that I do not share this concern fully.
But my particular concern today is to remind that it is after
all a matter of balance. Too much of church history, in consider-
ing the significance of the cross, has gotten trapped in a false
dilemma, the dilemma between Atonement (Christ as Mediator)
and conformity (Christ as example).18 The requisite balance is
nowhere more decisively and effectively struck than in I Peter
2:21-25. Christ suffered, Peter says, "for you," and in back of
that "for you" lies all the atoning uniqueness and exclusive
justifying efficacy of that suffering. Again, Peter tells us, "Christ
himself bore our sins in his body on the cross" and "by his
wounds you have been healed," and at that, not as if he were
one sheep among the rest, but as he was and is the Shepherd and
Overseer of the sheep who were going astray. At the same time,
however, Peter is intent on showing that a purpose, a particular
utility of Christ's sufferings and death is that "we might die to
sin and live for righteousness" and to "leave you an example
for you to follow in his footsteps." And those footsteps lead, as
Paul tells us, into "the fellowship of his sufferings" and "being
conformed to his death" (Phil. 3:10).
Galatians 6:14, if I read it correctly, is instructive at this
point. There Paul declares: "May I never boast except in the
18
Cf. G. C. Berkouwer, Faith and Sanctification, trans. J. Vriend
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952), pp. 135ff., esp. 158-160.
244 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
*An address, printed here with slight revisions, given at the National
Presbyterian and Reformed Congress, meeting at Grove City College,
Grove City, Pennsylvania, on July 17, 1979.
58
THE HOLY SPIRIT 59
II
It seems to me that a constructive searching of ourselves
does well to begin by recalling our heritage. That is indis-
pensable for getting our bearing and maintaining our balance
in the present. ¬. B. Warfield, for one, has taken the position
1
that Calvin is "preeminently the theologian of the Holy Spirit."
This may seem a surprising assessment and is certainly not the
popular view of Calvin. But, as Warfield points out, Calvin's
distinctive contribution is not, for instance, the doctrines of
God's sovereignty or of election and double predestination.
These he simply took over from Augustine and others. Rather,
his teaching on the work of the Holy Spirit is, Warfield writes,
"probably Calvin's greatest contribution to theological science.
In his hands for the first time in the history of the Church,
the doctrine of the Holy Spirit comes to its rights."2 Calvin's
Institutes, Warfield only slightly overstates, is "just a treatise
on the work of God the Holy Spirit in making God savingly
known to sinful man, and bringing sinful man into holy com-
munion with God."3 The internal testimony of the Holy Spirit,
by which we are brought to a saving conviction of the divine
origin and truth of Scripture (I. vii), is a particular doctrine
the church owes to Calvin. And under the term "regeneration"
he discusses at length (II. iii-x) the whole process by which
the Spirit subjectively renews the sinner.
The progression of the argument in Book III of the Insti-
tutes is particularly significant. There Calvin discusses the ap-
plication of salvation in the experience of the individual sinner.
With the rest of the Reformation he is clear that justification
by faith "is the main hinge on which religion turns" (xi.i).
But for Calvin justification has a broader and deeper setting.
That foundation, the opening and orienting chapter of Book III
tells us, is "the secret working of the Spirit." Without that
"secret working," that "secret energy of the Spirit," Christ
1
"J°bn Calvin the Theologian," Calvin and Augitstine, ed. S. G. Craig
(Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1956), p. 484, cf. p. 487.
2
Ibid., p. 487; cf. "On the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit," Selected
Shorter Writings of Benjamin B. Warfield, 1, ed. J. E. Meeter (Nutley,
New Jersey): Presbyterian and Reformed, 1970), pp. 213f.
3 Ibid., p. 486.
THE HOLY SPIRIT 61
remains outside us and all he has done for our salvation re-
mains useless and is of no value to us. "To sum up, the Holy
Spirit is the bond by which Christ effectively unites us to him-
self" ( i : l ) . This Spirit-worked union gives a share in all
Christ's saving benefits. Without it we have nothing, neither
justification, < nor sanctification, nor anything else. The appli-
cation of redemption in its entirety is suspended on the work
of the Holy Spirit in sovereignly uniting sinners to the exalted
Christ.
Calvin saw too the comprehensive scope of the Spirit's ac-
tivity, in creation as well as redemption. The overall develop-
ment of the Institutes reflects the insight, too often minimized
or even denied, that the various saving activities of the Spirit
are not apart from or in opposition to creation. Redemption is
the vindication of God the creator. The new creation in the
Spirit is the restoration and consummation of creation; it in-
cludes the renewal of the entire life of the creature made in
God's image. In Calvin's statements on the Holy Spirit there
is also a recognition of what we have subsequently come to
refer to as "common grace."
We can leave it to others to judge in detail just how ade-
quately and faithfully subsequent generations of the Reformed
tradition have maintained this heritage from Calvin. But cer-
tainly we are not wrong in saying that the work of the Holy
Spirit has been a constant and even distinctive concern. Unlike
other traditions, the Reformed tradition has not been content
to rest in faith as kind of an ultimate fact in salvation. Genuine
Calvinism is bound to probe deeper and ask the question,
"Where does this faith by which I am saved come from?"
"What is its origin?" And the answer found, the Reformed
resting point, is the sovereign and gracious working of the Holy
Spirit and in faith as a free gift of God alone. Especially with
the emergence of its doctrine of regeneration in the classic,
narrower sense, subsequent to the Synod of Dordt, the Re-
formed tradition has insisted that the entire soteriological
process is rooted in the work of the Holy Spirit.
Various aspects of the Spirit's activity in the believer were a
dominant, at times consuming preoccupation of the Puritans
in particular (e.g., John Owen's monumental A Discourse Con-
cerning the Holy Spirit, 1674). More recently, toward the
62 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
4
"On the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit," p. 205.
THE HOLY SPIRIT 63
Ill
Even a superficial glance at the New Testament with a con-
cordance in hand discloses an unmistakable pattern. The high
percentage of references to the Holy Spirit (approximately
80%) are found in just over half of the New Testament —
in Acts, the epistles and Revelation. There are only a relative
handful of references in the gospels.
More significant is the nature of this distribution of refer-
ences. In the gospels, so far as the present work of the Spirit
is concerned, the accent is on Jesus and his activity. For the
disciples, the Spirit is a matter of promise, a still future gift.
In Acts and the epistles, however, emphasis is on the present
reality of the Spirit as he is active in the church and at work
in believers. This pattern raises a key question: what explains
this difference, this decisive transition for the disciples? The
answer, of course, is Pentecost, what is variously described as
64 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
the baptism of (in, with) the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:5, 11:16),
or the outpouring (Acts 2:17,18,33; 10:45), or gift (Acts
2:38; 10:45; 11:17; 15:8), of the Spirit.
The New Testament, then, provides a dramatic, historical
perspective that is basic to understanding the work of the Holy
Spirit. It is fair to say that everything in the New Testament
about the Spirit's work looks forward or traces back to Pente-
cost; everything pivots on Pentecost, along with the death,
resurrection and ascension of Christ, with which Pentecost is
closely associated as a single complex of events. (Acts 2:32,33
make this association clear.) Accordingly, a basic question is
what really happened at Pentecost. What is the significance of
the baptism (gift) of the Holy Spirit?
Our first inclination is to answer this question in terms of
ourselves and to look for the primary significance of Pentecost
in individual Christian experience. This tendency is surely
borne out by contemporary developments, where, for example,
the basic understanding of Pentecost that many have is that it
is the model for a post-conversion, "second blessing" experience
of the Spirit's power to be sought by all believers. But this or
any other assessment of Pentecost primarily in terms of the
believer's personal experience is wrong, because it virtually
short-circuits a decisive element in New Testament teaching
on the work of the Holy Spirit and so distorts the whole.
Even more basic than Pentecost and its relation to the Chris-
tian life is the tie between Pentecost and the person and work
of Christ. Jesus himself points to this tie in Acts 1:5, where
the impending day of Pentecost is indicated to be the fulfillment
of the prophecy which climaxed the preparatory preaching of
John the Baptist (Luke 3:16): "He [i.e., Jesus, the Christ, cf.
vs. 15] will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire." Pente-
cost, then, is evidently the work of Christ. In fact, Pentecost
consummates his once-for-all accomplishment of our redemption.
From one perspective, it is even fair to say that the earthly
ministry of Jesus in its entirety consists in securing and then
communicating to the church at Pentecost the gift of the Holy
Spirit. This needs to be explored further.
The vital bond between the Spirit and Christ as incarnate
lies along two strands of biblical witness which intertwine and
condition each other. One line, so to speak, runs from the
THE HOLY SPIRIT 65
6
Our Reasonable Faith, trans. H. Zylstra (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1956), p. 387.
70 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
IV
Once we have grasped something of the bond between the
Holy Spirit and Christ, we have a foundation for understand-
ing the Spirit's work in the church and individual Christian
experience. Actually, in discussing Pentecost in relation to
Christ we have already found it not only natural but necessary
to make repeated mention of the church. This happens, of course,
because Christ's work is never private, merely for himself, but
always messianic, for and in the interests of the church. The
life-giving gift (reward) of the Spirit, which he received from
the Father in his exaltation, he received, "not for his own
private use" (Calvin, Institutes, 111:1:1), but that he might
THE HOLY SPIRIT 71
share it with us, his people. The Holy Spirit is the central
blessing of the kingdom which, too, it is the Father's sovereign
good pleasure to give to Jesus' disciples (cf. Luke 11:13 with
12:32). Here we will only be able to reflect briefly on several
aspects of our sharing in this great kingdom gift.
1. Old covenant, new covenant and the work of the Spirit.
One much agitated question concerns the differences in the
Spirit's activity between the old and new covenants. Reformed
doctrine has never settled for pat answers to this question, in
terms of a sharp disjunction, say, between an external working
of the Spirit under the old covenant and an internal working
under the new. Admittedly, explicit Old Testament references
to the Spirit's work in individuals are sparse, but to structure
the difference between old and new by the distinction between
theocratic endowment and personal indwelling (the Spirit "on"
and "in"), is not only unconvincing but wrong. Both factors
interweave, for example, in David's prayer: "Do not take your
Holy Spirit from me" (Ps. 51:11). The surrounding verses
reflect an intense concern about sin, repentance, forgiveness
and salvation, a concern obviously flowing from the deepest
recesses of his person. More is at stake in David's plea than
the loss of his theocratic prerogatives and powers. Also, the
faith of Abraham, the model for all believers, both old and new
covenant (Rom. 4; Gal. 3), can only have its origin in the
regenerating activity of the Holy Spirit. Further, the piety and
prayers of the Psalms while not the average experience in
Israel, were still a model and norm for their day, and are
essentially continuous with the new covenant experience of the
Spirit's sovereign work of inner renewal and personal trans-
formation.
Yet, the writer of Hebrews says of old covenant believers
that "none of them received what had been promised. God had
planned something better for us so that only together with us
would they be made perfect" (11:39, 40). What does this
"something better" of the new covenant (cf. 7:22; 8:6) entail
for the experience of those presently under its gracious ad-
ministration, particularly for their experience of the Holy Spirit ?
Taken as a whole the New Testament seems to indicate one
fundamental and decisive difference between old and new cove-
nant believers. That is the Spirit-worked union New Testament
72 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
believers have with the exalted Christ, the life-giving Spirit, the
Christ who is what he is, because he has suffered and entered
into his glory. The covenantal communion with God enjoyed
by Abraham and the other old covenant faithful was an antici-
patory and provisional fellowship; it lacked the finality and
eschatological permanence of our union with (the glorified)
Christ, which is the ground and medium of our experiencing all
the other blessings of redemption.
The corporate or ecclesiological dimension of this union needs
to be stressed. Pentecost, as often pointed out, is the birthday
of the church as the new covenant people of God and the body
of Christ. In particular, the Spirit poured out at Pentecost
constitutes the church as a dwelling place of God in the Spirit
(Eph. 2:22), as the temple of God in which the Spirit of God
dwells (II Cor. 3:16). Believers are living stones who together
make up a great Spiritual house (I Pet. 2:5). Within this
temple-house, their relationship of dependence on Christ, the
cornerstone, may not be confused with, but at the same time
it may not be separated from their relationship of dependence
and responsibility toward each other.
But what further, in detail, are the experiential implications
of the difference between the old and new covenants, created
by union with Christ? Here Scripture is elusive. In fact, I am
inclined to say that we are on the wrong track if we are looking
for Scripture to sanction a specific pattern or routine of ex-
periences in the inner life of the believer. Joy in the Holy Spirit
(Acts 13:52; I Thess. 1:6; cf. Gal. 5:22), for instance, is some-
thing more, and different, than a particular psychic state or
emotional response. The Bible is just not interested in the ques-
tion of individual religious experience, at least in the way we
are inclined to be preoccupied with it. What the New Testa-
ment does disclose of the experiential newness of Pentecost
largely results as it accents the broader concerns about Christ
and the church already discussed. The individual repercussions
of the Spirit's working are in the background so that spelling
them out will probably always contain a problematic element.
But along these broader lines the difference between old and
new covenants is clear and bears emphasizing.
a) Christ has become life-giving Spirit. The Spirit is now
present and at work in believers as a result of the actually
THE HOLY SPIRIT 73
Spirit. "With one Spirit we have all been baptized into one
body, . . . we were all made to drink of one Spirit," Paul says
(I Cor. 12:13). All believers, without exception, share in the
gift of the Spirit by virtue of their union with Christ and,
correlatively, their incorporation into his body, the church,
which he (permanently) baptized with the Spirit at Pentecost.
The gift of the Spirit is present in the church on the principle
of "universal donation." On the other hand, the gifts (plural)
of the Spirit are workings of the Spirit variously distributed
within the church. No one gift (in this sense) is intended for
every believer. The gifts of the Spirit are given on the principle
of "differential distribution." This seems clear, for instance,
from the rhetorical questions posed by Paul at the close of I
Corinthians 12 (vss. 29,30) : all are not apostles, all are not
prophets, . . . all do not speak in tongues, etc. This is ulti-
mately so, it should be stressed, by divine design (the one body
with diverse parts), and not because of lack of faith or the
failure to seek a particular gift.
The significance of this distinction can be seen from another
angle. The gift of the Spirit, in which all believers share, is an
essential aspect of salvation in Christ (cf. Acts 2:38; 11:18,
where it is associated with repentance unto life). It is an actual
foretaste of the eternal life of the future. It is an eschatological
gift. Paul uses two figures that are especially well-chosen to
make this point. The Spirit already at work in all believers is
the "firstfruits" in the enduring harvest of renewal to be com-
pleted in the resurrection of the body at Christ's return (Rom.
8:23). Again, the gift of the Spirit is the actual "deposit," the
"first installment," the "downpayment" on the final inheritance
to be received in its fullness when Christ returns (II Cor. 1:22 ;
5:5; Eph. 1:13, 14). In distinction, the gifts (plural) of the
Spirit, variously distributed in the church, are provisional and
sub eschatological. This is clearly one of Paul's points in I Co-
rinthians 13:8ff.: prophecy and tongues, among other gifts,
have a provisional, limited function and so are temporary, des-
tined to pass away (vss. 8, 9), while those works of the Spirit
like faith, hope and love endure (vs. 13).
Of a number of implications that could be drawn here, just
two may be mentioned very quickly, a) All believers, not just
some, are "spiritual." We need to be both grateful and chai-
THE HOLY SPIRIT 75
"If we live in (by) the Spirit, let us also walk in (by) the
Spirit" (Gal. 5:25). Perhaps no other single statement better
captures the whole of our experience of the Holy Spirit than
this. The overall structure here is that which we find throughout
the New Testament, especially in Paul, for the Christian life
in its entirety: expressed grammatically, the Spirit is both an
indicative and an imperative in our experience. But always such
that the imperative is grounded in the indicative, the command
concerning the Spirit rooted in the reality of our having re-
ceived the gift of the Spirit. And never the one without the
other: the indicative without the imperative results in the in-
action of mysticism and quietism; the imperative without the
indicative produces a legalistic and moralistic striving that
denies the gospel.
The pattern of indicative and imperative also provides the
scope for us to appreciate the deep harmony in the Christian
life between the Spirit of God and the law of God. Where the
law functions to cut off and expose every effort of the sinner
to justify himself, where the law condemns, the liberating min-
istry of the Spirit stands in the sharpest contrast (Rom. 8:1-3;
II Cor. 3:6ff.). But where the Spirit functions to bring life
and freedom in Christ, there the content of the law and obedi-
ence to it make up the very substance of that freedom (e.g.,
Rom. 8:4; Gal. 5). This emphasis on the positive place of the
law in the life of the believer is a long-standing Reformed dis-
tinctive, and is needed in our own day more than ever, particu-
larly when it comes to a proper understanding of the work of
the Holy Spirit.
We began by noting the renewed interest of our times in the
work of the Holy Spirit, including the emergence of the charis-
matic movement. It would be a tragic loss, however — and the
church would be missing a great opportunity — if this interest
were to be expended on the differences between charismatic
and noncharismatic Christians, real and important as those dif-
ferences are. The task before the church today, both urgent and
promising, is to demonstrate unambiguously, in practice as well
as proclamation, that at its core the gospel concerns not only
the free and full remission of sin, but the reality of a new crea-
tion and eschatological life already present in Christ, the present
renewal and transformation of the believer in his entirety, ac-
78 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
cording to the inner man (II Cor. 4:16), and the redirection
and reintegration of human life in all its aspects.
The gospel is also the good news concerning the exalted
Christ, the life-giving Spirit. Where this awesome and glorious
truth is not really grasped, the church will be uncertain of itself
and ineffective in serving its Lord. With this gospel it is more
than equal to its mission in the world. In the power of Pente-
cost the church will live eloquently in hope of the glory to be
revealed (Rom. 18-25), confident in its expectation of a new
heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells (II
Peter 3:13).
WTJ 57 (1995) 103-24
1
G. G. Berkouwer, in Jerusalem and Athens: Critical Discussions on the Theology and Apologetics
of Cornelius Van Til (ed. E. R. Geehan; Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1971) 200, his
italics. In view primarily is Van Til's The Sovereignty of Grace: An Appraisal ofG. C. Berkouwer's
View ofDordt (n.p.: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1969).
2
Ibid., 203. "I wish I could have given better exegetical justification for this position than
I have" (p. 204).
3
Ibid.
103
104 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
"It can be rightly said that Paul does nothing but explain the eschato-
logical reality which in Christ's teachings is called the Kingdom." This
perceptive observation of Herman Ridderbos4 is certainly applicable to
1 Cor 2:6-16. Here, if anywhere, Paul is the interpreter of Jesus; this
passage is a virtual commentary on teaching preserved in Matt 11:25-27/
5
Luke 10:21-22.
The different placing of this unit in each Gospel raises questions that we
may pass over here. Most likely Luke gives us the right chronology by
connecting it directly with the return of the seventy [-two] ("at that same
hour," ›Ì ·˝ÙÁ ÙÁ ôpç, v. 21; cf. v. 17). Matthew's indefinite temporal
indicator, "at that time" (›Ì ›ÍÂfl̈ Ùˆ Í·ÈÒ˛, v. 25), probably reflects his
less chronologically oriented concern at this point.
In terms of internal structure and wording the two accounts are virtually
identical. The only noteworthy variation, beyond the time indicators just
noted, is also found in the introductory clauses. Matthew's prosaic "Jesus
answered and said" (v. 25) contrasts with Luke's "he rejoiced in the Holy
Spirit6 and said." The latter (which might also be rendered, "jubilant in
the Holy Spirit") accents the intensity of Jesus' involvement and the cli-
mactic nature of the words that follow. We are at a high point in Jesus'
earthly ministry.
This passage is often cited in discussing the deity of Christ—for what it
discloses about his unique identity as the Son of God and his equality in
being with the Father; particularly in the past 100 years or so it has been
focal in debates about the messianic self-consciousness ofJesus. Here, how-
ever, our primary interest is not in the person of Christ—the issue of his
essential deity—but in what he says about the activity of Father and Son
and the content of that action.7
4
Herman Ridderbos, When the Time Had Fully Come: Studies in New Testament Theology
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1957) 48-49. This statement strikes me as especially helpful for
appreciating the overall doctrinal or didactic unity of the NT in its historically differentiated
diversity.
5
We proceed here on the premise that, with traditioning and the redactional activity of
the respective evangelists duly taken into account, this material provides us with a reliable
record of what Jesus said. Authenticity is argued (on historical-critical grounds), e.g., by R.
Riesner, Jesus ab Lehrer. Eine Untersuchung zum Ursprung der Evangelium-Überlieferung (WUNT
2/7; Tubingen: Mohr, 1981) 220-21, 330, 335-37, 344-45, 434, 478.
6
Even if Ùˆ ‹„fl¯ is not the original reading, a reference to the [Holy] Spirit is most likely.
7
Unless otherwise noted, the verse references are to Luke's account.
SOME EPISTEMOLOGICA!, REFLECTIONS ON 1 COR 2:6-16 105
8
Many helpful treatments ofJesus' kingdom proclamation have appeared throughout this
century. Among those of book-length some of the older ones are still the best. See H. Rid-
derbos, The Coming of the Kingdom (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1962), and the
much earlier classic of G. Vos, The Teaching of Jesus Concerning the Kingdom of God (1903; repr.
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1958).
SOME EPISTEMOLOGICA!, REFLECTIONS ON 1 COR 2:6-16 107
under Christ as head" (Eph 1:22, 10).9 The kingdom of God is totalitarian,
in the most ultimate sense we can know and experience. It is not a partial
or part-time allegiance, involving only some of our efforts or just one sector
of our experience, or merely a part of our knowledge.
The implications of Jesus' words, in context, are entirely decisive; their
momentousness, though often missed, is inescapable. There is no area or
dimension of human knowledge that lies outside the scope of the revelation
in view in these verses, or for which that revelation is irrelevant. Any
epistemological endeavor true to these verses recognizes its absolute, exclu-
sive dependence on such revelation. To be truly "wise and learned" in the
creation, one must become a "little child" and receive the revelation of
God in Christ. Involved here is the epistemological ultimacy of the Creator-
creature distinction, the unconditional dependence upon God of the crea-
ture made in his image, for knowing as well as being.
In sum: according to Jesus, revelation is the exclusive and comprehensive
principium (foundation and norm) for human knowledge. In terms of clas-
sical Reformation predicates, revelation involves both a sola and a tota.
II
9
The NIV's rendering of ÂflÚ ÔflÍÔÌÔµfl·Ì ÙÔı ÎÁÒ˛µ·ÙÔÚ Ù˘Ì Í·ÈÒ˛Ì in v. 10a, "to be
put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment," is unfortunate because it
masks that the * 'heading up" of all things in Christ (v. 10b) has already begun (cf. Gal 4:4).
10
We may leave to the side here the question of the basic "outline" of 1 Corinthians. More
than one proposal is defensible, and no one ought to be pressed; see the various commentaries
and volumes on special introduction.
108 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
11
Suffice it here to say that Kantian/post-Kantian polarizings of rational and personal
knowledge, of whatever variety—modern or postmodern—are foreign to Paul.
12
Care must be taken not to read a narrow, one-sided theology of the cross out of (or into)
2:2. It has to be connected with equally sweeping and aphoristic assertions like 2 Tim 2:8:
"Remember Jesus Christ raised from the d e a d , . . . according to my gospel." On balance, the
center of Paul's gospel ("of first importance") is Christ's death and resurrection in their
significance as the fulfillment of Scripture (1 Cor 15:3-4), entailing ultimately the
soteriological-eschatological renewal of nothing less than the entire creation (2 Cor 5:17).
SOME EPISTEMOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS ON 1 COR 2:6-16 109
light of the cross and resurrection. According to this view, 2:6-16 expand
on and do not contradict "the word of the cross" in l:18ff. It is now widely
accepted, and so need not be argued here, that the passage is a direct, even
essential, continuation of the previous argumentation with its basic anti-
13
thetical theme. So far as the internal flow of the passage is concerned,
Stuhlmacher's proposal is persuasive: vv. 6a and 6b set the direction so
that, in chiastic sequence, w. 7-9 expand on 6b, w. 10-16 on 6a; in this
way 2:6-16 enlarge on 1:18-25 especially.14
Xb
3. God's Wisdom as Eschatological (2:6-9)
13
This brief overview is largely based on the survey of P. Stuhlmacher, "The Hermeneuti-
cal Significance of 1 Corinthians 2:6-16," in Tradition and Interpretation in the New Testament (ed.
G. F. Hawthorne; Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1987) 330-32; see also, e.g., the discussion of
the passage in F. Lang, Die Briefe an die Korintker (NTD 7; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1986) 38-48, and W. Schräge, Der erste Brief an die Korinther (EKKNT 8/1;
Zürich: Benziger, 1991) 242-45, 268-69; cf., among English-language treatments, the similar
stance of G. D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1987) 99-101.
14
Ibid., 333.
15
Among the considerable secondary literature pertinent to this section I mention esp.
W. D. Dennison, Paul's Two-Age Construction and Apologetics (Lanham, MD: University Press of
America, 1985) esp. pp. 55-85, a work with the same emphases as this section.
16
The rendering of this word with "mature" in most recent translations, though appar-
ently supported by Paul's usage of the word elsewhere (e.g., 14:20; Phil 3:15), blunts and
relativizes Paul's eschatological point here, better captured by "perfect," "complete." At any
rate, in view is not their (relative) subjective spiritual and moral condition. Rather, the
thought is along the lines of the definitive sanctification "in Christ" affirmed of the whole
church in 1:2. Related to that, the Ù›ÎÂÈÔÈ are not just some in the church in distinction from
the rest—an in-group of gnostic-like initiates—but all believers as such: those, as Paul has just
said (v. 5), whose "faith rest[s] not on men's wisdom, but on God's power." Beyond the
commentaries, see esp. the excellent discussion of P. J. Du Plessis, ‘≈À≈…œ”: The Idea of
Perfection in the New Testament (Kampen: Kok, 1959) 178-85, 204-5, 242-43.
17
Among the best discussions of this commonly recognized state of affairs is still G. Vos, The
Pauline Eschatology (1930; repr. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1979) 1-41.
110 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
18
the source of the supporting citation in the latter) is that "God's wisdom"
(v. 7), granted to believers, is of the aeon to come, the new and final age;
19
it is, in a word, eschatological wisdom.
Verse 8, which expands on the negative point of v. 6b, is to be read in that
light: " . . . which [God's mystery-wisdom] none of the rulers of this age
understood, for if they had understood it, they would not have crucified the
Lord of glory." While "the rulers of this age" may have in view primarily
those directly responsible for the crucifixion (cf. the specific mention of
Herod and Pontius Pilate in Acts 4:27), there is surely a broader association
with the wise, powerful, and well-born (Âı„ÂÌÂflÚ) in 1:26-28 (cf. 1:2Ô).20
The rulers of this age are representative; in them we see the most impressive
achievements of the present world-order, measured by the standards of
human rebellion and unbelief; within the creation, as presently subject to
the curse on sin (cf. Rom 8:18-22), they exemplify the most that it has to
offer and is capable of attaining.
All the more striking, then, is Paul's disqualification of the rulers of this
age, in the face of the age-to-come, eschatological wisdom of the gospel.
Moreover, the specific terms of this disqualification are clear: they do not
understand the gospel; their failure is not only moral but epistemological (a
point we will see made even more emphatically in v. 14). Coming to light
in this passage, therefore, is the epistemological difference between believers
and unbelievers, a difference of the most radical and far-reaching sort, in
that—it does not go too far to say—believers and unbelievers belong to two
different worlds; they exist in not only separate but antithetical "universes
of discourse."
Such rhetoric is subject to distortion and must be qualified—as Paul
in fact does. In the period until Christ's return, the two aeons overlap,21
so that in terms of psycho-physical makeup ("in the body," as "outer
man," e.g., 2 Cor 4:10, 16) believers continue to exist in the present, sinful
aeon (in that respect their resurrection is still a future hope; see esp.
1 Cor 15:35ff.). Until then they must not suppose (as Paul's opponents at
Corinth apparently did) that they are beyond or can override the escha-
tological Vorbehalt of 1 Cor 13:12 ("now we see but a poor reflection").
But such reservations, along with the anthropological complexities
undeniably involved, must not obscure that at the core of their being
18
See, e.g., Fee, First Corìnthians, 108f.
19
Despite what might be the surface impression from the language employed ("wisdom in
a mystery," "hidden"), v. 7 is not a lapse into the thought-world of gnosticism. If anything,
Paul uses (proto-)gnostic terminology here and elsewhere (e.g., the ¯ı˜È͸Ú-ÌÂıµ·ÙÈ͸Ú
distinction in w. 13-14) to make a decidedly antignostic point; cf. Rom 16:25-26; Col 1:26.
On Paul's redemptive-historical, eschatological understanding of µıÛÙfiÒÈÔÌ, see esp. H. Rid-
derbos, Paul: An Outline of his Theology (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1975) 46-49.
20
For a brief but, in my judgment, incisive and convincing refutation of the view that the
"rulers" are demonic powers, see Fee, First Corinthians, 103-4; cf. J. Murray, The Epistle to the
Romans (2 vols.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965) 2.254.
21
See, e.g., Vos, Pauline Eschatology, 36-41, including the diagrams in n. 45.
SOME EPISTEMOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS ON 1 COR 2:6-16 111
("heart," as "inner man," e.g., Rom 2:29; 2 Cor 4:16) believers are
"alive from the dead" (Rom 6:13) and so, as already raised with Christ
(Eph 2:5-6; Col 2:13; 3:1), are presently within the eschatological "new
creation" (2 Cor 5:17). More particularly, such qualifications as are neces-
sary must not be used to tone down the unrelieved antithesis between "the
wisdom of God" and "the wisdom of the world" in this passage, nor to
soften the nothing less than aeonic clash between them. Again, fundamen-
tally believers and unbelievers are in two different worlds.
With the gospel (and its implications) as the point of reference, there is
no point of contact epistemologically between believers and unbelievers,
however understood—whether by empirical observation or by rational re-
flection and speculation ("Jews require signs, Greeks seek wisdom," 1:22—
the exclusion intended is universal). The notion of such a common ground
or capacity, rational or otherwise, that can be used to build toward the
gospel, or otherwise prepare and dispose unbelievers to accept its truth, is
not only not present in this passage; it is alien to it, jarringly so.
Clear enough here already, in other terms, is what v. 10a states ("but
God has revealed it to us"): God's wisdom is revelation and is as such (as
in the Matt 11 /Luke 10 passage) not merely an alternative track, another,
second way of arriving at knowledge that human beings are otherwise quite
capable of achieving on their own. God's wisdom-revelation, focused in the
cross of Christ, is beyond the human competence and capacity to grasp and
determine, whatever the means—reason, intuition, observation, or feeling.
22
This has become widely recognized in this century; see, e.g., G. Fee, God's Empowering
Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994) 803-26, and
G. Vos' 1912 essay, well ahead of its time, "The Eschatological Aspect of the Pauline Con-
ception of Spirit," reprinted in Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation: The Shorter Writings
- 112 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
ofGeerkardus Vos (ed. R. ¬. Gaffin, Jr.; Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1980)
91-125; see also Vos, Pauline Eschatology, 162-66.
23
See Ridderbos, Paul, 117ÍT., esp. 120-21.
SOME EPISTEMOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS ON 1 COR 2:6-16 113
and resurrection (w. 2, 6-9), or, in terms of Matthew 11/Luke 10, "these
things" of the kingdom of God.
"The spirit of the world" only occurs here in Paul (and the rest of the
NT). Despite what might be an initial impression, the reference is almost
surely not to Satan as "the God of this age" (2 Cor 4:4) or to some other
spiritual being. Rather, it is coined to sharpen the antithesis to the Spirit
and his eschatological activity. The phrase captures the world, as humanity
in rebellion against God (cf. 1:20,21,27,28; 2:6b, 8), with the attitudes and
standards that characterize it as a whole. It seems close to the ˆÒ¸ÌÁµ·
("mind-set," "disposition," "attitude") of thefleshset in opposition to that
of the Spirit in Rom 8:6. As we speak of "the spirit of the times" or "the
spirit" that controls a culture, so here Paul speaks in effect, sweepingly, of
"the spirit of this world-age." This serves to point up, once again, the
inability of sinful humanity, the constitutional incompetence of sinners in
themselves to attain to a true knowledge of God, and so the absolute ne-
cessity of the revelation through the Spirit in view.
Verse 13 expands on the Spirit's revelatory role as that involves the
apostle. "We," inclusive of all believers in w. 10 and 12, now distinguishes
Paul from them (as in w. 6, 7).24 His speaking is a function of the Spirit's
controlling activity; his words are not human, this-age wisdom but gospel-
wisdom, "taught by the Spirit." The participial clause at the end, whatever
its exact meaning,25 accents this didactic activity of the Spirit.26
Verses 14-16 focus on the response to revelation—the believer's Spirit-
worked reception of the apostle's Spirit-taught words. In so doing they put
that response in the most fundamental possible perspective. Here—again
and in emphatic, antithetic fashion—emerge the twin factors of exclusive-
ness and comprehensiveness, the sola and tota of revelation. Only two re-
sponses are possible: acceptance or rejection; there is no middle ground, not
even a temporizing third alternative.27 This unrelieved state of affairs is
24
Although, by implication, other apostles—and even all believers, when they faithfully
communicate apostolic teaching—arc in view.
25
For the exegetical issues involved, see, e.g., Fee, First Corinthians, 114-15.
26
It is hardly correct to argue that throughout this passage Paul's dominant interest is the
Spirit's activity, through him, in producing Scripture (as does W. C. Kaiser, "A Neglected Text
in Bibliology Discussions: 1 Corinthians 2:6-16," WTJ 43 [1981] 301-19; see the pertinent
rejoinder of Fee, First Corinthians, 112-13 n. 63). At the same time, however, there are im-
portant implications for the doctrine of inspiration in v. 13—on the justified assumption that
it applies to what the apostle writes as well as to what he says. Striking here, particularly with
a view to ongoing debate about the doctrine of Scripture, is that the specific content of Paul's
message is not directly in view. Rather, it is considered in a purely formal fashion, and then not
merely as resulting from a revelatory encounter or in terms of underlying ideas or promptings
but as a plurality of words. The words of Paul, as such and ultimately considered, are not of
human origin but inculcated by the Spirit.
27
Contrary to the persistent, widespread misreading of 3:1, where Paul tells Corinthian
believers ("brothers") that he must address them not as ÌÂıµ·ÙÈÍÔ¿Ú but as Û·ÒÍflÌÔÈÚ, and
of v. 3, where he calls them Û·ÒÍÈÍÔfl. In 3:1-3 Paul is not seeking to rationalize or even
concede as normal a two-level distinction between spiritual and carnal Christians. Whatever
114 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
slight semantic difference there may be between the two adjectives used on the one side of the
contrast, both may be translated "fleshly" and are parallel to ¯ı˜ÈÍ¸Ú in 2:14. ("Here ¯ı˜fi
approaches the second meaning of Û·ÒÓ, namely flesh as existence turned away from God,"
according to J. van Genderen and W. H. Velema, Beknopte gereformeerde dogmatiek [Kampen:
Kok, 1992] 323.) The specific reason that Paul must write as he does is because of the presence
of "jealousy and quarreling" (ÊfiÎÔÚ Í·È ÓÒÈÚ)—a combination (in reverse sequence) that
occurs elsewhere in Paul only in describing "the works of the flesh" (Gal 5:19), in sharp
opposition (w. 16-17) to "the fruit of the Spirit" (w. 22-23), and "the works of darkness,"
in conflict with "the weapons of light" (Rom 13:12-13). The point of the imagery in w. lc-2,
then, is not that in their immature behavior the Corinthians, regrettably but as must be
expected, are acting like young, low-level Christians, but that they are not acting like Chris-
tians at all. Their behavior is the flat antithesis of Christian conduct; the figurative language
points to abnormal, deformed development and likely carries the nuance "infantile," "puerile"
—in that sense, "childish." Sin is sin wherever it is found, even in God's people.
28
" . . . atque asinus ineptus est ad symphoniam" (John Calvin, Opera quae supersunt omnia
[Brunsvigae: C. A. Schwetschke, 1863-98] 49.325).
29
By now the long-standing effort ought to have been put to rest to enlist this passage in
support of an anthropological trichotomy (with ÌÂıµ·ÙÈÍ¸Ú here referring to the human
SOME EPISTEMOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS ON 1 COR 2:6-16 115
believers, are transformed by the Spirit so that they are enabled to do what
¯ı˜ÈÍ¸Ú ‹ÌËÒ˘ÔÚ cannot. They are granted the Spirit-worked capacity
for appraisal and discernment so that, however imperfectly and even in-
adequately (13:12), they can truly understand God's revelation and know
it for what it is. In other words, the believer is taken up into the "closed
circle" of the Spirit's activity.
Along with the exclusiveness of the Spirit's activity, the comprehensive-
ness of that activity, the tota of revelation, also comes out in v. 15. The
discernment produced by the Spirit contemplates ‹ÌÙ·, "all things." This
echoes ‹ÌÙ· as the object of the Spirit's searching activity in v. 10. Both,
in turn, pick up on the ‹ÌÙ· in Matt ll:27/Luke 10:22, discussed above
with its implications.
Paul's point is not that ¸ ÌÂıµ·ÙÈ͸Ú, by the Spirit, transcends every
human limitation and so shares in God's exhaustive self-knowledge. Nor is
he suggesting that believers have expert, encyclopedic knowledge in every
area of human investigation—as if they know all there is to know about
God, self, and the universe. Becoming a Christian does not make one some
sort of super "renaissance man."
At the same time, however, we must not tone down this passage or
domesticate Paul's ‹ÌÙ·. His point is hardly that revelation is restricted in
its relevance to only a part of life, or, following Kant, that it concerns only
the moral-religious dimension of human experience. Rather, God's eschato-
logical wisdom, focused in Christ's cross and resurrection, is still in view
here and elaborates Jesus' sweeping kingdom vision in Matthew 11/Luke 10.
Such wisdom, Paul is saying, has a bearing on, in fact is essential for, a
true knowledge of everything there is to know about God, ourselves, and
the world.
The sense of this Spirit-worked assessment of ‹ÌÙ·—the full, compre-
hensive proportions involved—is further pointed up by the use of Isa 40:13
in v. 16. The reference to the nonderivative "mind of the Lord," God as
ultimate knower, brings into view as well a context (vv. 12-31) that, in the
Scripture at Paul's disposal, is difficult to match for rhetorical sweep and
power as a description of God's sovereign, all-inclusive control of every-
thing that transpires in the universe.
To that Paul adds, as the concluding note of the passage, "But we have
the mind of Christ." To have "the Spirit who is from God" (v. 12), without
overlooking the consequences and qualifications already made in vv. 13-15,
is to have "the Spirit of Christ" (Rom 8:9) and so, too, the ÌÔıÚ of
Christ,30—the exalted Christ, "in whom" as "the mystery of God" now
revealed in the church, "are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and
knowledge" (Col 2:2-3). This link in comprehensive scope between the
̽µ· come to its revived ascendancy); see J. Murray, Collected Writings of John Murray
(Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1977) 2.23-33, esp. 23-29.
30
On this interchange of ̽µ· and ÌÔıÚ, note that the Hebrew of Isa 40:13 has "–‘∫ of
the Lord." The LXX reads ÌÔıÌ ÍıÒflÔı (but in other ways the citation differs; the citation
in Rom 11:34 varies from both the Hebrew and the LXX, as well as 1 Cor 2:16); see E. E. Ellis,
116 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
Ill
1 Cor 1:17-3:22/4:21 is a significant apostolic apologia. In it come to
expression specific convictions decisive for the matrix of thought that shapes
Paul's teaching as a whole and in every aspect; nowhere in the Pauline
corpus are his basic concerns more on the line than here. This is the
thought-matrix that captured Dr. Van Til. These basic concerns were his,
too. No passage of Scripture, especially the closed circle of the Spirit's work
in 2:10-16, has had a more determinative impact on his life and thought.
In his time, in a singular and most resolute fashion, he contended for this
and related truth.32
In his life-long efforts, radiating an evident love for Christ and his church,
he challenged two fronts primarily: (1) the mainstream of modern and
contemporary theology, flowing from the Enlightenment with its
commitment to rational autonomy and "historical-critical" Sachkritik of
Paul's Use of the Old Testament (1957; repr. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981) 12 n. 10, 20 n. 5, 151,
174f.
31
Paul's use of ·Ì·ÍÒflÌ˘, with its semantic possibilities, in w. 14-15 is difficult, if not
impossible, to capture in English translation.
32
There are numerous places throughout his writings where Van Til sets out his basic
concerns; perhaps the best brief statement, coming toward the close of his career, is "My
Credo," in Jerusalem and Athens, 3-21.
SOME EPISTEMOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS ON 1 COR 2:6-16 117
33
That is, criticism of its subject matter (Sache)—in the sense of the right/mandate to
decide, if deemed warranted, that the Bible is wrong, in error. Stuhlmacher's very helpful
article (see above, n. 13) is marred in this respect. He begins his brief conclusion (342f.) with
the emphatic assertion, "Theological Sachkritik must remain silent with regard to this passage
[1 Cor 2:6-16]." What he goes on to say, however, about a circumscribed role for "the
historical critical method" as "a special human talent that may be put to the service of faith,"
is confusing at best. Everything here depends on how "critical" is understood. If in view is
"scholarly seriousness and gifts [applied] to the clarification of the linguistic form of Paul's
letters and the biblical books in general," who would object? But he continues: it is "both
dangerous and wrong to abandon critical thought and judgment in interpreting Scripture and
deciding matters of faith in general" (with a parenthetical reference to 1 Pet 3:15), which
means that "[t]heological thinking must proceed from the gospel. As such it must be—and
continue to be—critical in the light of its subject matter." Now, it appears, Sachkritik of
Scripture may in fact be necessary at points (just for the sake of the gospel!). Such Sachkritik,
however, standing in judgment on Scripture, can only be a function of rational autonomy, and,
if our passage teaches us anything, human autonomy (wisdom Í·Ù‹ Û‹ÒÍ·) resists all atten-
uation; by its very nature it seeks to control everything (and certainly cannot be enlisted in
the service of faith, at least not faith in the Christ of Scripture as God's inspired word). So far
as "Paul's letters and the biblical books in general" are concerned (in their original text form
as well as content, cf. 2:13), Sachkritik admitted at one point means, in principle, that it cannot
be excluded at any point. At any rate (though Stuhlmacher would likely disagree), such
Sachkritik is not what the Reformers had in mind when they vigorously affirmed the external
clarity of Scripture (to which he appeals, cf. pp. 328f.).
34
Schräge {Korinther, 269f.) provides a brief survey; the entire section, "Auslegungs- und
Wirkungsgeschichte" (pp. 269-78), repays careful reading and reflection.
35
There is no reason to suppose that the rise of postmodernism will diminish occasions for
such accommodations. So far as I can see, while postmodern epistemology may have aban-
doned the Enlightenment pretense to the neutrality of reason, it is, if anything, even more
resolutely committed to human autonomy—rational or otherwise.
118 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
All such efforts, however, run aground on the immovable rock of Paul's
unqualified ‹ÌÙ·. Every attempt to read our passage in partial terms or
to restrict its scope by categorical distinctions, of whatever kind, clashes
with the sweeping totality of Paul's vision. The antithesis in view leaves no
room for an amicable division of territory or a neutral terrain. The wisdom
of God is eschatological; it opposes all the wisdom of this age, all human
wisdom Í·Ù‹ Û‹ÒÍ·.36
Especially popular but damaging has been the notion that the passage
is limited to the "religious" sphere, as if Paul's concern is "spiritual" truth
in distinction from other kinds ("secular"), which are beyond his purview.
The pernicious consequences of this view are nowhere more palpable than
37
in its highly influential Kantian version. The noumenal-phenomenal dis-
junction supposedly functions to circumscribe (pure) reason and limit its
autonomous exercise, thus making room for faith and its free exercise. But
the effect, as Western culture of the past 200 years makes all too evident,
has been exactly the opposite. Increasingly, faith, especially faith in Christ
and the Scriptures, has been marginalized and banished into irrelevance.
The lesson is plain: give "secular" (= autonomous) reason an inch and it
will not rest content until it controls everything (which, by the way, simply
demonstrates the truth of our passage). Or, as Paul might warn the church,
"all things are yours . . . or nothing is yours."
36
In an otherwise fine and penetrating treatment of our passage, D. A. Carson is at best
misleading in saying, "But Paul is not addressing general questions of epistemology. He is not
even addressing how one comes to a knowledge of what some specific passage of Scripture
really means" (The Cross and Christian Ministry [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993] 64). Certainly, as
Carson immediately adds, "His focus is the fundamental message of the crucified Messiah."
But present as well are profound and essential considerations for any sound epistemology—
considerations, for instance, that exclude, as Carson himself does, an "ostensibly neutral
epistemology" (p. 65).
37
As a measure of how convoluted and even inverted the history of interpretation can
become, J. H. Jung-Stilling, a contemporary of Kant, believed Kant's philosophy to be a
confirmation of Paul; the Critique of Pure Reason, he held, is a virtual commentary on 1 Cor 2:14
(cited in Schräge, Korinther, 271 Á. 288)!
38
See, e.g., Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology (Phillipsburg, NJ: Pres-
byterian and Reformed, 1974) 24-28; A Christian Theory of Knowledge ([Philadelphia:] Presby-
terian and Reformed, 1969) 43ff.; cf. J. Frame, The Doctrine ofthe Knowledge of God (Phillipsburg,
NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1987) 49-61.
SOME EPISTEMOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS ON 1 COR 2:6-16 119
Without being able here to enter into this debate in any full way nor
wanting to suggest either that Van Til has had the last word and could not
have expressed himself better, I do propose that what he says about the
unbeliever's knowledge, far from betraying a vitiating flaw in his thinking,
points up a singular and important strength. Van Til, following Paul and
the Reformers, does not deny the (resourceful and valuable) know-how
unbelievers can display (building highways, brushing their teeth, writing
textbooks on logic, etc., often better than believers). But, following Scrip-
ture with Calvin, and even more consistently than the latter, Van Til cap-
tures the ambiguity of the Bible's, especially Paul's, assessment of the
unbeliever's knowledge.
The "problem" begins with Scripture itself. In describing how and what
the unbeliever knows, it does so in a deliberately ambiguous, paradoxical,
"dialectical" fashion, precisely and necessarily in order to make a crucial
point unambiguously and powerfully plain. According to Rom l:18ff.—a
passage Van Til is sometimes charged with downplaying or treating one-
sidedly—unbelievers both know and are ignorant; they understand and do
not understand, and they do so in the same cognitive moment. The knowl-
edge of God (of "his eternal power and divine nature," v. 20, that is, who
he is as the true and living God), is (a) clearly revealed in and around them,
(b) made evident to them, and (c) understood by them (w. 19-20). But this
truth is suppressed (or repressed, v. 18) such that their thinking is futile and
their uncomprehending hearts darkened (v. 21). As presumably wise (cf. "wise
and understanding," Luke 10:21; "wise Í·Ù‹ Û‹ÒÍ·," 1 Cor 1:26) they are
39
in fact foolish (the point made in 1 Cor l:20ff.). What they believe is God's
truth exchanged for a lie (v. 25), and their minds are corrupted, worthless
40
(·‰¸ÍȵÔÚ, v. 28).
The categories in w. 21ff., no less than in vv. 18-20, are cognitive or
contain a cognitive element. It is gratuitous to maintain that w. 18-20
describe an (adequate) intellectual knowledge while in w. 21ff. the knowl-
edge in view is defective only in a more than intellectual respect (that is,
41
it is not intimate or saving knowledge). Where is the exegetical basis for
this disjunction between cognitive and more than cognitive knowledge?
The knowledge of v. 21 is disqualified from a cognitive (as well as more than
cognitive) angle; the intellectual aspect may not be suppressed (no pun on
v. 18 intended!). That knowledge is a matter of "thoughts," "reasonings"
39
Rom 1:22 and 1 Cor 1:20 are the only two uses of µ˘Ò·flÌ˘ in Paul.
40
It is important to keep in mind that, while every human being without exception is in
its purview, this passage does not describe the actual experience of every unbeliever, partic-
ularly at the level of conscious psychology. Paul paints in bold, sweeping strokes, capturing the '
collective human condition as a result of the fall, the universality of solidarity in sin and its
consequences.
41
As do the authors (R. C. Sproul, J. Gerstner, A. Lindsley) of Classical Apologetics: A
Rational Defense of the Christian Faith and a Critique of Presuppositional Apologetics (Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 1984); there are more exegetical options to consider than they pose (p. 49f.).
120 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
42
On Paul's use of "heart" (Í·Ò‰fl·), see Ridderbos, Paul, 119f.
43
Not even cited in Classical Apologetics, even in a context where we might most expect it
(p. 49).
SOME EPISTEMOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS ON 1 COR 2:6-16 121
44
Van Genderen and Velema, Dogmatiek, 308,332; the entire treatment of the image of God
in chap. 8 (pp. 292-352) is most penetrating. (The early appearance of an English translation
of this book is greatly to be desired.)
45
See esp. the various writings of Van Til published together in Common Grace and the Gospel
(Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1973).
46
"The higher is our conception of man in his intrinsic essence, the greater must be the
gravity of his offense in rebellion and enmity against God Man conceived of as in the
image of God, so far from toning down the doctrine of total depravity, points rather to its
gravity, intensity, and irreversibility." "It may seem paradoxical, but the higher our view of
man's nature, the more aggravated becomes the depravity that characterizes man as fallen"
(J. Murray, Collected Writings [Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1977] 2.38-39, 45-46).
47
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (trans. E L. Battles; Philadelphia: West-
minster, 1960) 1.277 [2.2.18].
122 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
That is the situation of unbelievers, to vary the figure slightly: frozen per-
petually in the split second after the firing of a flash attachment in a dark-
room—with a blurred and fading, still indelible impression of everything
just illumined and yet now no longer seeing anything—knowing and yet
not knowing. This too, I take it, is the basic, controlling point that Van Til,
in his day, was concerned to make about the knowledge of the unbeliever.
The unbelievers in view in Rom l:18ff. are those in view in 1 Cor l:18ff.;
though considered from different perspectives, they are not two distinct
groups. Paul's scope in both passages is universal; the general considera-
tions of each apply, collectively, to all unbelievers; the two passages supple-
ment and reinforce each other. Paul would not have us be in any doubt:
those under the impact of God's general revelation (Rom 1:19-20)—in all
of its necessity, authority, sufficiency, and clarity48—are those who, just as
an expression of their rebellious struggle against the unrelenting, inescap-
able pressure ofthat revelation, "require signs . . . and . . . seek wisdom"
(1 Cor 1:22). All such efforts are Í·Ù‹ Û‹ÒÍ·; the apostle goes on to dis-
qualify and oppose them for what they are: the inevitable truth-suppression
(cf. Rom 1:18) of "this age," attempts that will never be able to conclude
that the gospel of Christ—and any epistemological considerations truly
conducive to the truth of the gospel—are anything but a "stumbling
block," (provable, verifiable) "foolishness" (v. 23).
Among the dissenting critiques of Van Til's epistemology and apolo-
getics, one of the more recent, and most massive, is Classical Apologetics.49 At
the heart of its proposal for "A Rational Defense of the Christian Faith" is
an extensive defense of natural theology, based primarily, so far as Scrip-
ture is involved, on an appeal to Rom l:18ff.
Remarkably, the authors virtually ignore 1 Cor 2:6-16. w In chap. 9
("The Spirit, the Word, and the Church"), there is a passing reference to
v. 9 (as well as similar references to the Matthew 11 /Luke 10 passage,
pp. 162f., 167); on pp. 170-72, w. 9-13 are quoted and discussed briefly for
their bearing on the doctrine of Scripture.51 Elsewhere, where we might
most expect it (or the Gospels pericope) to be treated,52 there is nothing, not
even a parenthetical reference. Most remarkably, v. 14 (the inability of the
48
See Van Til's masterful treatment of general revelation, "Nature and Scripture," in The
Infallible Word: A Symposium by the Members of the Faculty of Westminster Theological Seminary
(Philadelphia: Presbyterian Guardian, 1946) 255-93, esp. 261-75.
49
Full bibliographic details are above, n. 41.
50
Unless I have missed it and need to be corrected (the book has no Scripture index).
51
"This passage may well be the best in all of Scripture for putting together the revelation
of God, the inspiration of God, and the illumination of God" (Classical Apologetics, 171). This,
while certainly true, narrows the scope of the passage; see above, n. 26.
52
Chap. 4, "The Biblical Evidence Confirming Natural Theology" (where Rom l:18fT. is
discussed in some detail); chap. 13, "The Noetic Influence of Sin"; chap. 16, "The Self-
Attesting God"; chap. 17, "The Internal Testimony of the Holy Spirit."
SOME EPISTEMOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS ON 1 COR 2:6-16 123
53
This omission is all the more perplexing in authors who are committed Reformed theo-
logians, men whom we otherwise rightly honor for their outstanding contributions in effec-
tively communicating important truths of the Reformed tradition in our time.
54
" . . . above all every natural theology, wherever it sees the divine remoto spiritu Christi
[apart from the Spirit of Christ] resident in man or the world, has difficulty in coping with
1 Cor 2" (Schräge, Korinther, 272f.).
55
See esp. the important work of Richard Müller in rehabilitating the Reformed "scho-
lastics" and redressing the distortions of this currently widespread paradigm by showing the
deep and cordial continuity, despite all the differences in method, between the theology of the
Reformers and the seventeenth century. See esp. his Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: Volume
1, Prolegomena to Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), including the primary sources and
secondary literature cited throughout.
56
E.g., in topic 1, question 8 of his Institutes of Elenctic Theology (trans. G. M. Giger; ed.
J. T. Dennison, Jr.; Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1992) 1.23-28. This dis-
cussion, in continuity with the Reformers, is for the most part a helpful treatment of the
ministerial role of reason in theology ("an instrument of faith," section 7, p. 25). Toward the
end, however, he speaks of the use of arguments, both theological (based on Scripture) and
philosophical, in the effort to see atheists "converted" (converti), "so that by the principles of
reason the prejudices against the Christian religion drawn from corrupt reason may be re-
moved" (section 23, p. 28); cf. his not always clear comments on natural theology in question
3, pp. 6-9 ("natural theology" seems at points to be equivalent to general revelation).
124 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
57
See the informative account of M. I. Klauber, "Jean-Alphonse Turrettini and the Abro-
gation of the Formula Consensus in Geneva," WTJ 53 (1991) 325-38, and, more extensively,
his Between Reformed Scholasticism and Pan-Protestantism: Jean-Alphonse Turretin (1671-1737) and
Enlightened Orthodoxy at the Academy of Geneva (Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press,
1994), esp. 143-92.
58
See in this respect the perceptive discussion of van Genderen and Velema, Dogmatiek,
126-33; cf. Schräge, Korinther, 273 Á. 302 on Vatican √ s grounding of a duplex ordo cognitionis
on Rom 1:20, on the one hand, 1 Cor 2:7-8,10, on the other. All such "two-order" knowledge
constructions can only be maintained at the expense or compromise of what these passages
actually teach.
59
Despite the overall impression this article may leave, I have no desire to escalate but
would like to see reduced and clarified as much as possible the conflict in apologetics between
"evidentialists" and "presuppositionalists" (this designating nomenclature itself is already a
source of some confusion). Yes, there may be a certain amount of talking by each other and
mutual misunderstanding, especially where the debate takes place on a common Reformed
commitment (no, Van Til has not spoken the final word). But I am convinced that genuine
rapprochement can take place only where there is a common appreciation of those biblical
considerations drawn from Reformed anthropology and soteriology that control Van Til's
epistemology and apologetics—considerations, as I see it, that are much less clearly present,
even eclipsed, in the "classical" approach.
W7JG5 (2003): 165-79
INAUGURAL LECTURES
BIBLICAL THEOLOGY AND THE WESTMINSTER STANDARDS
Richard Gaffin is the Charles Krahe Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology at Westminster Theological
Seminary. This article is a slight re-working of his inaugural lecture given at the seminary on 16 October 2002 and
of a chapter in P. A. Iillback, ed., The Practical Calvinist: An Introduction to the Presbyterian &
Reformed Heritage. In Honor of Dr. D. Clair Davis (Fearn, Ross-shire: Christian Focus [Mentor], 2002),
425-41.
1
Vos (1862-1949) was Professor of Biblical Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary from
1893 until his retirement in 1932.
165
166 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
While my comments have these Standards primarily in view, they are largely
applicable as well, I take it, to other Reformed confessions, like the Three
Forms of Unity, although I make no effort to show that here.
È
1 begin with two observations of a more general sort pertaining to the often
alleged or perceived novelty of biblical theology. Without for a moment want-
ing to slight the epoch-making value of Vos's work, for which my admiration
continues undiminished, we misunderstand him if we fail to recognize his con-
tinuity with those who came before him. Contrary to the impression occasion-
ally left by some, it is not as if the church were stumbling about in interpretive
darkness until he burst onto the scene, lightening-like, toward the close of the
nineteenth century. In fact, already in the second century in the first great
struggle for its existence, the battle with Gnosticism, the church had impressed
upon it indelibly the controlling insight, as much as any, of biblical theology,
namely, that salvation resides ultimately not in who God is or what he has said,
but in what he has done in history, once for all, in Christ. Virtually from its
beginning on and more or less consistently, the church has been incipiently
biblical-theological.
Narrowing the scope to Reformed theology, Vos himself has observed:
. . . it has from the beginning shown itself possessed of a true historic sense in the
apprehension of the progressive character of the deliverance of truth. Its doctrine of
the covenants on its historical side represents thefirstattempt at constructing a history
of revelation and may be justly considered the precursor of what is at present called
biblical theology.2
2
Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation: The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos (ed. R. ¬. Gaffin,
Jr.; Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2001 [1980]), 232.
BIBLICAL THEOLOGY 167
II
3
H. N. Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of His Theology (trans. J. R. de Witt; Grand Rapids: Eerd-
mans, 1975), e.g., pp. 14, 45, 63, 91,177 n. 53, 205-6, 211, 214ff., 221-22, 268, 365, 378, 404.
4
I have not found it earlier than in his 1957 essay, "The Redemptive-Historical Character of
Paul's Preaching," in When the Tvme Had Fully Come (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1957), 48, 49. It is
apparently not present in pertinent discussions in Herman Bavinck, Vos, or G. C. Berkouwer,
although Vos, The Pauline Eschatology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1979/1930), ch. 2 ("The Interaction
Between Eschatology and Soteriology"), clearly anticipates it.
5
Ridderbos, Paul, 14.
6
The first occurrence of ordo salutis, apparently, is in this sense, in the 18th century within
emerging pietismfromwhere it is taken over and eventually becomes widely current in both Lutheran
and Reformed orthodoxy. A precursor is present already at the time of the Reformation in Bullinger,
who speaks of the dispensatio salutis ["dispensing' ' or "administering of salvation' ']. While that expres-
sion does not take hold, the basic area that Bullinger (and later ordo salutis thinking) has in view, the
application of salvation, is a major concern for other reformers, like Luther and Calvin, as well as
subsequent Reformation orthodoxy, and increasingly in the period after the Synod of Dort,
Reformed theology focuses on the "ordo" aspect. The reference to Bullinger is cited by G. C. Ber-
kouwer, GeloofenrechtoaardigingQiampen: Kok, 1949),p. 24 [omitted from the ET, Faiñ and Justification
(trans. L. B. Smedes; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1949), 26]; cf. O. Weber, Foundations of Dogmatics
(trans. D. L. Guder; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 2:336-38; and W. H. Velema, Wet en evangelw
(Kampen: Kok, 1987), 125-28.
168 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
7
K. Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/2 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1958), 502-3; IV/3 (1962), 505-6.
8
Church Dogmatics IV/2, 502. Correlatively and most radically, he denies as well the historicity
of the fall, in the sense of the historical sequence of creation (a time of original beatitude at the
beginning of human history where sin was not yet present) and fall.
BIBLICAL THEOLOGY 169
"highly exalted" and "given the name above every name" did not follow, tem-
porally, his "obedience unto death" (Phil 2:8-9), that is, if it is not the case that
the incarnate Christ was for a time in the past, in history, actually exposed to
God's just wrath on the sins of his people, but now, subsequently and perma-
nently, for all eternity future, is no longer under God's wrath but restored to his
favor under conditions of eschatological life, then, as Van Til tirelessly pointed
out in critiquing Barth's theology, "there is no transition from wrath to grace in
history."9 But if there is no transition from wrath to grace in history, then there
is no gospel and we are, as the apostle says, in the most pitiable condition of still
being "in our sins" (1 Cor 15:17-19). The gospel, the salvation of sinners,
stands or falls with the historical before and after of Christ's humiliation and
exaltation.
Accordingly, with that before and after, with the historical distinction between
these two states, is given the irreducible distinction between redemption accom-
plished and applied, between historia salutis and ordo salutis, where neither one may
be allowed to diminish or eclipse the other. No matter how much we may wish
to be preoccupied with the redemptive-historical dimensions of the gospel as
being cosmic, corporate, socio-political (I write with an eye to the current evan-
gelical absorption, too often insufficiently critical in my judgment, with the work
of some associated with the New Perspective on Paul), the question of applica-
tion, of the ordo salutis in the more general sense, may not be suppressed or other-
wise evaded: How does the then and there of Christ's transition from wrath to
favor relate to the here and now of the sinner's transition from wrath to grace?
How do Christ's death and resurrection, then and there, benefit sinners, here and
now? What are those benefits and what is the pattern (ordo) in which they are
communicated to sinners?
Ill
From Barth I turn to Calvin and for two closely related reasons. Jn an espe-
cially instructive and edifying way, unparalleled in the Reformed tradition as far
as I have seen, he shows the absolute necessity of ordo salutis concerns and at the
9
' 'The present writer is of the opinion that, for all its verbal similarity to historic Protestantism,
Barth's theology is, in effect, a denial of it. There is, he believes, in Barth's view no 'transition from
wrath to grace' in history. This was the writer's opinion in 1946 when he published The New
Modernism. A careful consideration of Barth's more recent writings has only established him more
firmly in this conviction" (C. Van Til, Christianity and Barthianism [Philadelphia: Presbyterian and
Reformed, 1962], vii). A search of the phrase "transition from wrath to grace" in The Works of
Cornelius Van Til (CD-ROM; New York: Labels Army Co., 1997) indicates 74 occurrences in 59
different books and articles; almost all refer to its denial, and of these the large majority have in view
Barth's theology, either explicitly or implicitly. The phrase itself (as pointed out to me by Robert
Strimple) is taken over from G. C. Berkouwer's similar, though more muted criticism; see his The
Triumph of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956), 257 ("... the transi-
tion in history from wrath to grace is obscured"), 380 ("... there is no real place for a transition
from creation to the fall and, in the fallen world, from wrath to grace"); cf. also 234-36, 370.
170 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
same time has led the way in pointing to an ordo salutis faithful to the historia salutis,
to an appropriation of salvation that honors the redemptive-historical structure
and substance of Scripture.10
Book 3 of the Institutes is titled, "The Way in Which We Receive the Grace of
Christ: What Benefits Come to Us from It, and What Effects Follow." This title
plainly shows that Calvin understands himself to be concerned throughout
with the application of salvation ("the grace of Christ"), its "benefits" and con-
sequent "effects" (in their irreducible plurality and diversity, as he will go on to
show). All told, his concern is "the way" (Latin: not ordo, but modus, "mode,"
"manner," "method"), in which "we" (believers) "receive" this grace, in which
this salvation is appropriated by "us." With this concern restated in the opening
words of 3.1.1, the very next sentence reads: "First, we must understand that as
long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him, all that he
has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and
of no value tous." 11
In my opinion, on the matter at hand no more important words have been
written than these. Incisively and in a fundamental way, they address both the
necessity and nature of application, the basic concerns of an ordo salutis. So far as
necessity is concerned, to put it somewhat provocatively, Calvin is saying some-
thing like, "the redemptive-historical Christ, at least the Christ of redemptive
history as often conceived, is not enough"; in fact, he says, this Christ is "useless
and of no value to us"!
Certainly this Christ, his death and resurrection, including his ascension and
Pentecost, as the culmination of redemptive history, are the heart-core of the
gospel. They are "of first importance," as Paul says (1 Cor 15:3); he and other
New Testament writers make that abundantly clear. That centrality is not at
issue here. But to punctuate the gospel, particularly its proclamation, with a full
stop after Christ's death, resurrection, and ascension (allowing for his future
return) does not do the gospel full justice as "the power of God unto salvation,"
and as it involves "the revelation of the righteousness of God" (Rom 1:16-17).
In fact, as Calvin intimates, such a parsing of the gospel misses an integral compo-
nent, something absolutely essential.
10
C. Graafland, "Heeft Calvijn een bepaalde orde des heils geleerd?" in Verbi Divini Minister (ed.
J. van Oort; Amsterdam: ton Bolland, 1983), 109-27, concludes: "... so strongly did Calvin put
Christ and faith as the work of the Holy Spirit at the center that a particular order or sequence in
the application of salvation remains subordinate to that emphasis. In that sense Calvin's theology is
not to be termed an ordo salutis theology, and he would have never been able to summarize his the-
ology, as W. Perkins did his, under the title, 'the golden chain of salvation' " (p. 127) ["... Calvijn zo
sterk Christus en het geloof als werk van de Heilige Geest in het centrum heeft gesteld, dat een
bepaalde orde of volgorde in de applicatie van het heil duidelijk daaraan ondergeschikt blijft.
Calvijns théologie is in die zin geen heilsordelijke théologie te noemen en hij zou, zoals b.v. W. Per-
kins, zijn théologie nooit hebben kunnen samenvatten onder de titel: 'de gouden keten des heils' "].
11
J. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (ed. J. T. McNeill; trans. F. L. Battles; 2 vols.; LCC;
Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 1:537.
BIBLICAL THEOLOGY 171
12
"Dempta applicatione, redemptio non est redemptio"; quoted in H. Bavinck, Gereformeerde
Dogmatuk (Kampen: Kok, 1976), 3:520.
13
Bavinck, Dogmatiek, 3:494.
14
Ibid., 3:571; cf. 3:573.
15
I take it that careful exegesis has settled that the reference here is to the Holy Spirit. See,
building on Vos, Ridderbos, and John Murray among others, my " 'Life-Giving Spirit': Probing the
Center of Paul's Pneumatology," J£7S 41 (1998): 573-89, esp. 575-82, and The Centrali^ ofthe Resur-
rection (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1978; repr., Resurrection and Redemption: A Study in Paul's Soteriology [2d
ed.; Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1987]), 85-87. See also, e.g., 2 Cor 3:17; Rom
8:9-10; 1 Cor 6:17.
172 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
The second sentence of Book 3 of the Institutes, quoted above, not only high-
lights the necessity of ordo salutis concerns but also their essence. The pivotal, abso-
lutely crucial consideration, the heart of the matter, put negatively as Calvin
does here, is that Christ not remain "outside us" (extra nos}, that we not be "sepa-
rated from him" (ab eo). Or, expressed positively, as he presently does, that "we
grow into one body [in unum] with him." Here Calvin has in view the union that
exists between Christ and the believer, referred to repeatedly and in a variety of
ways throughout Book 3 and elsewhere in his writings. This union is the reality
he sees to be central and most decisive in the application of redemption.
It is essential to be clear about this union, about its nature and scope, especially
since it is easy to equivocate on or otherwise overlook irreducible distinctions, or
to make wrong distinctions, in discussing union with Christ. Expressed categori-
cally, the union of which Calvin speaks here is neither "predestinarían," in the
sense of election in Christ "before the foundation of the world" (Eph 1:4-5), nor
"redemptive-historical," being contemplated in him and represented by him in
his work, as the last Adam, in "the fullness of time" (Gal 4:4). Rather, in view is
union, he immediately specifies, as it is "obtained by faith" (fide), union as it does
not exist apart from or prior to faith but is given with, in fact is inseparable from
faith; as it has been categorized, union that is "spiritual" and "mystical."
This mention of faith, and the key role accorded to it, prompts Calvin, still
within this opening section (3.1.1), to touch on what would become a central
question in subsequent discussions about the ordo salutis, namely the origin of
faith, giving rise eventually in Reformed theology to the doctrine of regenera-
tion in a narrower sense. We observe, so Calvin, "that not all indiscriminately
embrace that communion with Christ which is offered through the gospel."
Why? Not because of some differentiating factor on our side. The answer is not
to be found by looking into ourselves or contemplating the mystery of human
freedom and willing. Rather, consistent with his uniform teaching elsewhere
about the total inability of the will due to sin, we must "climb higher" and con-
sider "the secret energy of the Spirit" (arcana Spiritus effkaciàf. Faith is Spirit-
worked, sovereignly and efficaciously.
The union Calvin has in view is forged by the Spirit's working faith in us, a
faith that "puts on" Christ (citing Gal 3:27), that embraces Christ as he is
offered to faith in the gospel. Faith is the bond of that union seen from our side.
"To sum up, the Holy Spirit is the bond by which Christ effectually unites us to
himself."
This, in a nutshell, is Calvin's ordo salutis: union with Christ by (Spirit-worked)
faith; being and continuing to be united with Christ by faith, faith that, through
the power of the Spirit, "embraces Christ, freely offered to us in the gospel"
(Westminster Shorter Catechism, 31). This "ordo" is at once simple as well as pro-
found and comprehensive, because on matters of application it keeps the focus
squarely on Christ—on Christ specifically as crucified and resurrected, on
Christ who is what he now is as he has suffered and is now glorified. It does not
lose sight of the various "benefits" and "effects" of salvation (see the title of
BIBLICAL THEOLOGY 173
Book 3), in all of their multiplicity, but recognizes, as he goes on to show, that
these have their place only within union with this presently exalted Christ, as
they are its specific outworkings, its inseparable as well as mutually irreducible
manifestations. It is an "ordo," I take it, that captures, better than other propo-
sals, the essence of "the great eschatological ordo salutis"1* taught in the New
Testament, especially by the apostle Paul.
IV
16
Adapting the language of Ridderbos, Paul, 200.
17
A glaring instance, not unknown among some Reformed teachers and pastors, is to maintain
that a person, as a grown child or adult, may be regenerate for some time, before becoming a
believer. John Murray's trenchant classroom comment on this (as I recall it): biblically considered,
the notion of a regenerate unbeliever is a "monstrosity"!
18
Two instances where the problem is palpable but not really addressed or resolved are A. A.
Hodge, "The Ordo Salutis: or, Relation in the Order of Nature of Holy Character and Divine
Favor," The Princeton Review 54 (1878): 304-21; and, more recently, J. Murray, Redemption—
Accomplished and Applied (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1955). Murray is clear that union with Christ "is
in itself a very broad and embracive subject" (p. 201) and "underlies every aspect of redemption
both in its accomplishment and its application" (p. 205). But how, in application specifically, ("spiri-
tual," "mystical") union is related to other aspects in the ordo he maintains is not made clear.
19
So, e.g., J. T. Mueller, Christian Dogmatics (St. Louis: Concordia, 1934), 320, 381; F. A. O.
Pieper, Christian Dogmatics (4 vols.; St. Louis: Concordia, 1951, 1953), 2:410, 2:434 n. 65, 3:8 n. 9,
3:398; see also the survey volume of H. Schmid, The Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran
Church (3d rev. ed.; Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1961), 48Iff. (note, though, the observation of Hollaz
concerning the respect in which mystical union "logically precedes justification," 481), 407-9, and
the table of contents, 11.
174 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
or works of God). Within the bounds of what they do teach, an explicitly articu-
lated ordo salutis is left an open question. The Standards do not foreclose that issue
for those who subscribe to them. 20
Second, such indications as the Standards do contain point to a position close
to Calvin's. That can be seen most easily from two parallel sections of the
Larger and Shorter Catechisms.21 At question and answer 58 the Larger Cate-
chism begins to take up "the application" of "the benefits which Christ hath pro-
cured." Following questions dealing primarily with the visible church/invisible
church (the elect) distinction and the "special privileges" of the former (59-64),
question 65 asks about the "special benefits" of the latter, with the answer!
"The members of the invisible church by Christ enjoy union and communion
with him in grace and glory." This answer structures the basic flow all the way
through question and answer 90: union with Christ (66-68); communion in
grace with Christ (69-81); communion in glory with Christ (82-90). Within the
scope of the application of redemption to the elect, then, union and commu-
nion with Christ are seen as most basic, encompassing all other benefits.
Answer 66 describes this union as being "joined to Christ," and specifies that
the union in view is effected "spiritually and mystically, yet really and insepara-
bly. ' ' The next two answers also refer to this union, as the goal of effectual calling,
as being "draw[n] . . . to Jesus Christ" (67) and "truly com[ing] to Jesus Christ"
(68). Then we come to answer 69, which, in addressing "the communion in grace
which the members of the invisible church have with Christ," speaks of "their
justification, adoption, sanctification, and whatever else, in this life, manifests their
union with him" (emphasis added).
So far as I can see, answer 69 is the most forthright assertion in the Westmin-
ster Standards on ordo salutis issues as usually discussed, and what is noteworthy
is that union with Christ is clearly not put in series with the other benefits men-
tioned, like one link in a chain. Rather, those benefits "manifest" being united
with Christ; that is, the former are functions or aspects of the latter.
Shorter Catechism questions and answers 29-32 are to the same effect, though
less clearly. Answer 29 brings into view "the effectual application" of redemp-
tion. Answer 30 is properly read as expressing the essence of that application!
20
Sequencing such as "... effectually called unto faith in Christ by His Spirit working in due
season;.. .justified, adopted, sanctified, and kept by His power, through faith, unto salvation" and
"... effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved..." (Confession of Faith 3:6), as well as
" . . . called, justified, sanctified, and glorified" (8:1), no doubt reflects the ordo adopted by many,
perhaps all, of the Divines. But that ordo is not being confessed as such; 3:6 is in the chapter dealing
with the divine decree and 8:1 in the chapter on the mediatorial person and work of Christ. Nor are
there instances of similar extensive sequencing present in those chapters that deal with the appli-
cation of redemption. (I am indebted to Robert Strimple for drawing my attention to the phrasing
in 3:6.) Some semblance of an ordo might also seem to be implied by the sequence of pertinent
chapters in the Confession and questions and answers in the Catechisms, but a comparison of the
three documents also reveals differences in ordering. The Standards do not stipulate, at least as a
matter of confession, a single, uniform sequence of benefits in the application of redemption.
21
I make no claim for a complete survey of the Standards here, although I hope not to have
overlooked anything important or counterindicative.
BIBLICAL THEOLOGY 175
taking place in effectual calling, it is the Spirit's "working faith in us, and
thereby uniting us to Christ." Answer 31 reinforces that the union in view ("to
embrace Jesus Christ") is the goal of effectual calling.
Question and answer 32 enumerate the present benefits of redemption
applied, but are silent about union with Christ. This omission is somewhat sur-
prising and unlike the parallel in Larger Catechism 69. In light of the latter as well
as their own immediate context, a better wording might have been! Question:
"What benefits do they that are united to Christ partake of in this life?" Answer:
"They that are united to Christ do in this life partake of justification, adoption, and
sanctification, and the several benefits which..." (changed wording in italics).22
We may conclude, then, that in the Westminster Standards the heart of the
application of salvation, underlying all further consideration of ordo salutis ques-
tions, is being united to Christ by Spirit-worked faith, a union providing for
multiple other benefits, without any one benefit either being confused with or
existing separately from the others. This is essentially Calvin's "ordo salutis,"
though not as clearly elaborated as one might wish.
Third, in the light of these observations, I offer for further reflection and
testing the following thesis on the overall relationship between biblical theology
and the Westminster Standards. The predominant concern of biblical theology,
as it has in fact developed, has been the once-for-all accomplishment of salva-
tion; for the Standards, the predominating concern is its ongoing application.
Both, biblical theology and the Standards, share both concerns, accomplish-
ment and application, but with different emphases. In terms of the historia
salutis/ordo salutis distinction, the former is biblical theology's major focus, the
latter, its minor focus; for the Standards these foci are reversed. Both, biblical
theology and the Standards, have the same dual or elliptical concern but with
differing accents. These respective accents need not be seen as mutually exclu-
sive; they are not antagonistic but complementary. At least for the large area of
soteriology, of the salvation revealed in Christ in both its once-for-all accom-
plishment and its ongoing application, there is no good reason why biblical the-
ology cannot work compatibly within the theological framework of the
Standards, to enrich that framework and at points perhaps improve its formu-
lations without fear of undermining it. The same may be said, as far as I can
see, of the other areas covered in the Standards.
Calvin's approach to ordo salutis issues, provided for as well, as we have just
seen, in the Westminster Standards, has multiple strengths. Here I highlight two
that emerge as he deals with the application of redemption in Book 3 of the
22
LC 69 and SC 32 also differ in perspective: in the former, justification, adoption, sanctifica-
tion, and whatever other blessings, all "manifest" union with Christ, while in the latter these other
"several benefits" are said to "either accompany or flow from" justification, adoption, and sancti-
fication (cf. SC, Q. 36). Both perspectives are true, but that of the LC is more basic and controlling.
176 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
Institutes, both chosen for their bearing on the doctrine of justification and its
biblically faithful maintenance today.
First, the basic flow of Book 3 is instructive. Chapter 1, as already noted,
introduces union with Christ by Spirit-created faith; chapter 2 further treats
faith (its "definition" and "properties"); chapters 3-10 take up "regeneration
by faith" and the Christian life ("regeneration" used here in a broader sense,
equivalent to sanctification in subsequent theology); chapters 11-18 then focus
on justification by faith (followed by chapters on Christian freedom, prayer,
election, and the final resurrection). What is remarkable here is the "ordo" (!):
Calvin discusses the change that takes place within the sinner, our ongoing
inner renewal and personal transformation, before the definitive change effected
in the sinner's legal status, our forensic standing coram Deo. He addresses the
removal of the corrupting slavery of sin before considering the abolition of the
guilt it incurs. All told, he treats sanctification, at length, before justification.
Such an approach contrasts conspicuously with subsequent Reformed and
Lutheran theology, where justification always (without exception?) precedes
sanctification.
Why does Calvin proceed as he does? More importantly, what enables him to
take this approach without compromising or minimizing the Reformation doc-
trine of justification, but rather, in taking it, to provide one of the classic discus-
sions of tnat doctrine? One can only admire what Calvin has achieved in
structuring the first 18 chapters of Book 3 as he did. Here is a truly impressive
theological coup.
The constantly echoing charge from Rome at that time (and ever since) is
that the Protestant doctrine of justification, of a graciously imputed righteous-
ness received by faith alone, ministers spiritual slothfulness and indifference to
holy living. In responding to this charge, subsequent Reformed and Lutheran
theology, concerned at the same time to safeguard the priority of justification to
sanctification, especially against Rome's reversal in suspending justification on
an ongoing process of sanctification, has asserted, more or less adequately, that
justifying faith is never alone in the person justified; as the alone instrument of
justification it is a working, obedient faith, in the sense that it is "ever accompa-
nied with all other saving graces" (Westminster Confession 11:2).
Calvin's approach is different. He counters Rome's charge, masterfully and,
in my opinion, much more effectively, by dwelling at great length (133 pages) on
the nature of faith, particularly its inherent disposition and concern for holiness,
distinct from the issue of justification and before beginning to discuss justi-
fication. He concerns himself extensively with sanctification and faith in its sanc-
tified expressions, largely bypassing justification and without having yet said
virtually anything about the role of faith in justification. He has taken this
approach, he says in a transitional passage right at the beginning of chapter 11
(the first on justification), because "It was more to the point to understand first
how little devoid of good works is the faith, through which alone we obtain free
righteousness by the mercy of God." Calvin destroys Rome's charge by showing
that faith, in its Protestant understanding, entails a disposition to holiness without
BIBLICAL THEOLOGY 177
23
"Let us sum these ['benefits of God'] up. Christ was given to us by God's generosity, to be
grasped and possessed by us in faith. By partaking of him, we principally receive a double grace:
namely, [justification and sanctification] " (Institutes, 1:725 [3.11.1]).
24
Institutes, 1:798 (3.16.1); elsewhere, most notably perhaps in his opening comments on
Romans 6, he speaks of those who "shamefully rend Christ asunder" (perperam ... Christum discer-
pere), when "they imagine that gratuitous righteousness is given by him, apartfromnewness of life"
(Commentaries on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans [trans. J. Owen; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1948], 217; my thanks to Mark Garcia for pointing me to this and other places in Calvin where this
expression occurs).
25
Institutes, 1:726 (3.11.1).
26
For a recent treatment on union with Christ andjustification in Calvin, reaching similar conclu-
sions, see C. B. Carpenter, "A Question of Union with Christ? Calvin and Trent on Justification,"
W7JM (2002): 363-86, esp. 371-84.
178 WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
done, once for all, in his finished work. In that sense, to speak of "alien righ-
teousness" is surely defensible.
At the same time, we should recognize, a definite liability attaches to this
expression. "Alien" suggests what is remote, at a distance; it can easily leave the
impression of an isolated imputative act, without a clear relationship to Christ
and the other aspects of salvation. In this regard, I have the impression that
some Reformed thinking on justification centers on a line, focused on the indi-
vidual sinner, that moves from my eternal election to its realization and docu-
mentation in history by my faith, produced by regeneration, that receives
justification. On this view Christ and his work are surely essential but recede
into the background, along with other aspects of salvation.
A different tone is heard in Calvin. In expressing himself on justification,
including imputation, he always, explicitly or implicitly, relates it to union with
Christ. Perhaps his most pointed statement on imputation in this regard is the
following:
Therefore, that joining together of Head and members, that indwelling of Christ in
our heart—in short, that mystical union—are accorded by us the highest degree of
importance, so that Christ, having been made ours, makes us sharers with him in the
gifts with which he has been endowed. We do not, therefore, contemplate him outside ourselves
from afar in order that his righteousness may be imputed to us but because we put on Christ and are
engrafted into his body—in short, because he deigns to mah us one with him. For this reason, we
glory that we have fellowship of righteousness with him.27
27
Institutes, 1:737 (3.11.10), emphasis added. Note that this statement occurs in a context where
he is intent on refuting Osiander's view that justifying righteousness consists of the believer's
"essential righteousness." In other words, the root of that serious error, a false understanding of
union, does not lead Calvin to tone down on his own understanding of union in relation to justifi-
cation but rather to assert that union most emphatically.
28
E.g., the recent sweeping rejection of R. H. Gundry, "Why I Didn't Endorse 'The Gospel of
Jesus Christ: An Evangelical Celebration' . . . even though I wasn't asked to," Books & Culture,
(January/February 2001): 6-9; see the helpful response of J. Piper, Counted Righteous in Christ: Should
We Abandon the Imputation of Christ's Righteousness? (Wheaton, 111.: Crossway, 2002).
BIBLICAL THEOLOGY 179
As added value, doing that will provide a much more effective response to the
persisting misunderstanding of Roman Catholics and others that the Reforma-
tion doctrine of justification renders sanctification unnecessary. It will also help
the heirs of the Reformation to keep clear to themselves something they have
not always or uniformly appreciated, namely how integral, no less essential
than justification, to the salvation accomplished and applied in Christ sanctifi-
cation is, involving as it does the pursuit of that "holiness without which no one
wül see the Lord" (Heb 12:14).
In fact, from Rom 8:29-30, to take but one instance briefly, it is fair to say that
in our salvation our sanctification is strategically more ultimate than our justi-
fication. For there sanctification, seen as culminating in our glorification, is the
goal aimed at, all told, in our predestination. Further, sanctification, in view as
our being "conformed to the image of his Son," contemplates and effects the
even more ultimate end, "that he might be the firstborn among many broth-
ers." Such is the stake the exalted Son has in sanctification—we may stress, the
personally involved, intimately engaged stake: his own ever-accruing glory in
the midst of that brotherhood comprising those, freely justified, who are being
conformed to his image.
That all-surpassing glory, as much as anything, ought to be the constant and
controlling preoccupation of the church in all matters of ordo salutis.