I've listened to this and the two follow up programmes, and I'm still not sure what Horton's position is. Understanding what Tipton believes is much easier, even if I don't always agree with it.
"Union with Christ" is something of a verbal placeholder or umbrella term. It summarizes a number of doctrines feeding into it.
Our union with Christ is grounded in election and redemption. Christ died to redeem the elect. That, in turn, forms the basis for all the other spiritual blessings that the elect enjoy, viz. regeneration, adoption, justification, propitiation, sanctification, perseverance, glorification.
There's also a sense in which we're united with Christ through regeneration. Election and redemption objectively unite us to Christ while regeneration subjectively unites us to Christ.
A more detailed explication of our union with Christ would have to detail the soteric categories which comprise union. We'd define union at the level of the constituent categories, for union isn't something over and above the categories which comprise it. Rather, union is a construct that's abstracted from those constituent categories.
The language of union has never been very clear to me. I can understand union in a marriage or earthly adoption. The union of a marriage is something like the vows that constitue the covenant, right? The union of adoption is the forensic declaration by the courts, right?
But theologians don't seem to be using union in this way, even though they acknowledge that these are pictures of union with Christ. Tipton and Horton for instance describe union as the basis for adoption, not as synonymous with it. And if we tie it to the covenant where do we place it? At the pactum salutis? At the inauguration of the new covent or the historian salutis? At the application of our redemption in the ordo salutis?
You speak of it as being grounded in election and redemption, but I'm not sure what this means either. Is Christ's death to redeem the elect identified with the union, a result of the union, or the basis for the union?
I've listened to this and the two follow up programmes, and I'm still not sure what Horton's position is. Understanding what Tipton believes is much easier, even if I don't always agree with it.
ReplyDeleteWhere do you stand on the Union debate?
"Union with Christ" is something of a verbal placeholder or umbrella term. It summarizes a number of doctrines feeding into it.
ReplyDeleteOur union with Christ is grounded in election and redemption. Christ died to redeem the elect. That, in turn, forms the basis for all the other spiritual blessings that the elect enjoy, viz. regeneration, adoption, justification, propitiation, sanctification, perseverance, glorification.
There's also a sense in which we're united with Christ through regeneration. Election and redemption objectively unite us to Christ while regeneration subjectively unites us to Christ.
A more detailed explication of our union with Christ would have to detail the soteric categories which comprise union. We'd define union at the level of the constituent categories, for union isn't something over and above the categories which comprise it. Rather, union is a construct that's abstracted from those constituent categories.
Thanks, Steve.
ReplyDeleteThe language of union has never been very clear to me. I can understand union in a marriage or earthly adoption. The union of a marriage is something like the vows that constitue the covenant, right? The union of adoption is the forensic declaration by the courts, right?
ReplyDeleteBut theologians don't seem to be using union in this way, even though they acknowledge that these are pictures of union with Christ. Tipton and Horton for instance describe union as the basis for adoption, not as synonymous with it. And if we tie it to the covenant where do we place it? At the pactum salutis? At the inauguration of the new covent or the historian salutis? At the application of our redemption in the ordo salutis?
You speak of it as being grounded in election and redemption, but I'm not sure what this means either. Is Christ's death to redeem the elect identified with the union, a result of the union, or the basis for the union?