Westminster West and Westminster East on sola fide

http://upper-register.typepad.com/blog/2017/06/justification-and-union-with-christ-bibliography.html

“The Crucial Role of Union with Christ”, part 2

https://reformation500.wordpress.com/2013/01/29/the-crucial-role-of-union-with-christ-part-2/

... we “own” the righteousness of Christ because we are really are truly united to him; his righteousness is truly “in” us, as opposed to merely fictitiously attributed to us. The converse of that is also true: our sin is really and truly owned by Christ because we are really and truly united to him. That is one reason why he had to be “like” us, sharing our blood. In this second part, I look at the Old Testament evidence of union, which underlies the whole concept of sacrifice in the New Testament, and finish with pastoral advice on how this works out in the lives of Christians.

Old Testament evidence
Perhaps the most important evidence for the importance of union with Christ in the New Testament is the constant reference to Christ’s death as a sacrifice of the type described in the Old Testament. Paul, in Romans 3:35, starts out his presentation of the Gospel, which we have been tracing backward, by referring to Christ’s death as a “propitiation”, a direct reference to the temple sacrifice (cf. Hebrews 9:5, where this word is also used).

The sacrifices of the Old Testament are full of the imagery of union. In every case, the mode of offering is for the priest to lay his hand on the head of the animal to be sacrificed (Leviticus 1:4, 3:2, 3:8, 3:13, 4:4, 4:24, 4:29, 4:33) including the laying of both hands on the scapegoat (Leviticus 16:21). The essential symbolism of this laying on of hands is that of union…

Read more...

Reformation500: “The Crucial Role of Union with Christ”

Dr David Snoke, who is a founding elder at my home church, City Reformed PCA in Pittsburgh, has posted a new article at the Reformation500 blog:

The Crucial Role of Union with Christ, part 1

This problem lies at the root of many of the debates about the Gospel over the years, from the Reformation to the present-day debates with N.T. Wright. Wright accepts that our sins can be imputed to Christ, but he rejects the idea that Christ’s righteousness can be imputed to us…

The fundamental question before us is then how it can be just, that is, correctly judged, to impute Christ’s righteousness to us and to impute our sin to Christ. This leads to the question: is there ever any situation in which it is just to impute one person’s debt or credit to another? The answer is yes. Consider the following situations….

In all of these cases, the common element is that we feel that it is just to impute the debts and credits of one person to another if they are united together in a real union. They have become legally, or spiritually, one. In that case, justice actually demands imputation of the debt and credit of one member of the union to another. To the degree that I recognize the reality of the union, to that degree I feel the imputation as legitimate.

Our union with Christ is exactly of this nature. Christ’s death is our death if we are united to him, and his righteousness is our righteousness if we are united to him. In other words, the actual, real union with Christ is crucial for the imputation in the Gospel to be just. If we are not really united to Christ, then his death is nothing to us, and his life of no value to us….

New Testament evidence of union with Christ
The above argument fits with our sense of justice, but is it the teaching of the Bible? I believe that it is, and in fact, the Middle Eastern culture of the Bible would have made it much more understandable in those days.

The concept of union with Christ is clearly taught in Scripture, and has been affirmed by all orthodox Reformed traditions. The Bible has many different ways of presenting this picture. Jesus talks in John 15 of us being united to him like a branch on a vine:

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. (John 15:4-5)

This image of being “in” Christ, and simultaneously having him “in” us, is throughout the New Testament….

This (and I’m guessing there will be a part 2, and maybe more) is an excellent introduction to the concept of “Union with Christ” and also being “In Christ” in the Scriptures. I’d highly commend it to you.

Dave is also professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pittsburgh. He’s the author of A Biblical Case for an Old Earth, he writes about “science from a Christian perspective” at http://www.christianscientific.org/, and he leads an apologetics group at the church.

Dave has a keen interest in history, too, and he’s also preached a number of Reformation-oriented sermons, and he’s also led a number of discussions on the topic.

I’m very pleased that a number of individuals now have become contributors for Reformation500, including Dave now, along with Andrew Clover [a frequent commenter here and a Lutheran convert], [PCA] Pastor Tony Phelps, and Paul Bassett [along with yours truly]. My hope is to enable a very robust discussion to take place there among all the church traditions that came out of the Reformation, in such a way that the broader evangelical community can benefit from the history, principles and Scriptural understanding that came into focus during that period.

Please take a minute to check it out if you haven’t already done so.

Union with Christ

Scott Clark has posted a very helpful series on the doctrine of “Union with Christ”.


Semi-Pelagianism and Faith as the Instrument of Existential-Mystical Union with Christ (Pt 1)

Semi-Pelagianism and Faith as the Instrument of Existential-Mystical Union with Christ (Pt 2)

Semi-Pelagianism and Faith as the Instrument of Existential-Mystical Union with Christ (Pt 3)

Semi-Pelagianism and Faith as the Instrument of Existential-Mystical Union with Christ (Pt 4)

Semi-Pelagianism and Faith as the Instrument of Existential-Mystical Union with Christ (Pt 5)

The donum superadditum and the doctrine of man: a foundational difference between Protestants and Roman Catholics

This is a slightly edited re-post of a topic I put up at Beggars All some time ago. The topic is relevant to some of the discussions of panentheism, which have been showing up in some of the comments.

At the heart of the differences between Roman Catholics and Protestants, there are key differences understandings, both in terms of their understanding of the doctrine of God, but also of the doctrine of Man.

Peter Escalante has, in the context of a discussion about civil authority, given a fairly succinct overview of one of the key differences. I’m not fully prepared to engage in a discussion of all of this -- it involves different concepts of man, and different consequences in terms of the doctrine of justification. But I’ve been following this excellent discussion, and I wanted to pass it along while it was still fresh in my mind.

It involves Rome’s understanding of the donum superadditum with regard to the state that Adam was in before he fell. Briefly, Protestants say that man, created in the image of God, was “very good,” and when he fell, it resulted in a spiritual death. God’s legal declaration, imputation of righteousness and union with Christ are what’s required to restore man back to his pristine, pre-fall state. Rome, on the other hand, holds that, not only was Adam “very good,” but that he had some “super-added gift of grace”, which made him what he was. (Why God would not have created him “complete”, but “needing some super-added grace, is beyond me). But according to the Roman Catholic paradigm, man lost only this “super-added grace” in the fall, all other things being equal, and it is that “superadded grace” that needs to be restored. Hence the need for an “infusion of grace” in Roman doctrine. [This accounts for the difference in which Calvin described man as “spiritually dead,” and hence “totally inable” or “totally depraved,” whereas Roman Catholics merely believe that man was “impaired” but with an otherwise full capacity to please God with his own grace-assisted works.]

Peter describes it this way:

For us, man originally had connatural beatitude, and when he fell, the reduced and superficial participation in that beatitude still possible to him, in an extrinsic way, was what we call temporal felicity or civic righteousness. But for RC, original felicity was a donum superadditum, and the status of original creation was thus left unclear, with at the very least a strong suggestion that much of what we think of as creation is in fact the effect of the Fall- an anti-Hebraic gnosticism which marred the thought of the ancient Greek church (and modern EO), and Rome too, though a more Biblical countertendency was present in the West and finally came into full victory with the Reformation. Given that the RC think of the New Covenant as the restoration of the donum superadditum, its relation to the temporal is ambivalent at best and hostile at worst. But for us, the New Covenant a) disables the heteronomous and unattainable Law which measured our alienation, and b) grants full citizenship in the Kingdom of God, simply by trust in Christ and union with Him. This means that the reality of original beatitude is poured into the forms of the creational order, and slowly transforms it spiritually, until all things shall be made new (emphasis added).

There are many, many concepts tied up in this one little paragraph, and it would take a long time to extract the meaning from them. But the one I want to focus on is that, right from the outset of their understanding of man, Protestants and Catholics differ.

John Fesko, in his Justification: Understanding the Classic Reformed Doctrine, describes this situation with respect to the “donum superadditum”:

It seems as though much of the debate over infused versus imputed righteousness hinges upon the presuppositions of each party. The typical Reformed understanding is that Adam was created upright, or righteous, and that God justified, or declared righteous, the initial creation as well as man in his declaration that everything was “very good” (Gen 1:31). We see the Westminster Larger Catechism echo this point when it states that God created man in “righteousness, and holiness, having the law of God written in their hearts, and the power to fulfill it” (q. 17). By way of contrast, the typical Roman Catholic understanding of Adam’s original state holds to the necessity of infused righteousness. Roman Catholic theologians typically hold to the idea of the donum superadditum (“superadded gift”). Medieval Roman Catholic theologians, for example, argue that the donum superadditum was a part of the original constitution of man, that it represented his original capacity for righteousness. We see then, from the outset, that man in his fallen state required infused righteousness in the form of the donum superadditum. If man requires infused righteousness in the prefall state, then he would most assuredly require it in his sin-fallen but redeemed state. The original state of man, then, is an issue that must feature in any dialogues over the question of imputation (John Fesko “Justification: Understanding the Classic Reformed Doctrine” Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing Company, pg 372.)

Michael Horton, in his Covenant and Salvation: Union with Christ, expands on this concept greatly. “According to the federal theologians, Adam and Eve were never in a state of grace before the fall. Endowed in their creation with all of the requisite gifts for fulfilling God’s eschatological purposes, there was nothing lacking requiring a gracious supplement” (194). If anyone is interested, Horton develops this topic quite extensively, relying on Bavinck’s account.

This is one of the key differences between Protestants and Roman Catholics, and it is one of the distinctions that the Reformers made -- a (very likely unwitting) Roman misunderstanding and accretion that somehow became the law of the land at Trent.