4.17.2:

Godly souls can gather great assurance and delight from this Sacrament; in it they have a witness of our growth into one body with Christ such that whatever is his may be called ours.

We cannot be condemned for our sins, from whose guilt he has absolved us, since he willed to take them upon himself as if they were his own.  This is the wonderful exchange which, out of his measureless benevolence, he has made with us:

becoming Son of man with us, he has made us sons of God with him;

by his descent to earth, he has prepared an ascent to heaven for us;

by taking on our mortality, he has conferred his immortality upon us;

accepting our weakness, he has strengthened us by his power;

receiving our poverty unto himself, he has transferred his wealth to us;

taking the weight of our iniquity upon himself (which oppressed us), he has clothed us with his righteousness.

4.17.8:

First of all, we are taught from the Scriptures that Christ is from the beginning that life-giving Word of the Father, the spring and source of life, from which all things have always received their capacity to live.

‘I am’ he says, ‘the bread of life come down from heaven.  And the bread which I shall give is my flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.’  By these words he teaches not ony that he is life since he is the eternal Word of God, who came down from heaven to us, but also that by coming down he poured that power upon the flesh which he took in order that from it participation in life might flow unto us.

Accordingly, he shows that in his humanity there also swells fullness of life, so that whoever has partaken of his flesh and blood may at the same time enjoy participation in life.

New things (Isaiah 42:9, 43:19, 48:6)

New name (Isaiah 62:2, 65:15)

New Heavens and New Earth (Isaiah 65:17, 66:22)

New covenant (Jeremiah 31:31-34)

New spirit (Ezekiel 11:19)

New heart (Ezekiel 18:31; 36:26)

New life (Ezekiel 37)

New wine (Zechariah 9:17)

In return, we’ll have to sing new songs (Isaiah 42:10; Psalms 33:3, 40:3, 98:1, 144:9, 149:1; Revelation 5:9, 14:3).

And it’s all starting right now: ”If someone is in the Messiah–that’s New Creation! The old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

This can be seen clearly throughout the Old Testament, most notably in Solomon’s prayer at the dedication of the temple. Sin results in God’s judgment (e.g., famine, disease, invasion of a foreign power). Forgiveness of sins is sought as a means of reestablishing a proper relationship between God and his people, with a view to God relenting in his judgment.

When your people Israel are defeated before the enemy because they have sinned against you, and if they turn again to you and acknowledge your name and pray and plead with you in this house, then hear in heaven and forgive the sin of your people Israel and bring them again to the land that you gave to their fathers.

When heaven is shut up and there is no rain because they have sinned against you, if they pray toward this place and acknowledge your name and turn from their sin, when you afflict them, then hear in heaven and forgive the sin of your servants, your people Israel, when you teach them the good way in which they should walk, and grant rain upon your land, which you have given to your people as an inheritance. (1Ki 8:33-36 ESV)

What Solomon (and the psalmists) want is not mere forgiveness of sins, but rather forgiveness of sins with a view to God restoring Israel. Restoration of the nation is ultimate; forgiveness is pen-ultimate toward that end. This OT view of forgiveness as a means to salvation continues on into the New Testament and can be seen clearly in Romans 5:9-10, where Paul informs us that justification makes salvation possible, but is not itself the sum of salvation. “Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.”

The future salvation that Paul has in mind is, without doubt, the ontological renewal of the believer’s eschatological resurrection (as can be seen in the rest of chapter five and all of chapter six).  All of this snaps into focus, of course, when we consider that humanity’s primary soteriological hurdle is not our mere legal debt, but rather our ontological corruption. Imagine a man who is terminally ill. There is a treatment for his disease, but he is too in debt to afford the cure. His lender takes mercy upon him, cancels his debt and credits him the money needed to buy the medicine (double imputation?). But now imagine that the sick man never actually buys the medicine.  The canceling of the debt and the free gift of money is not, in itself, sufficient to save the sick man precisely because his dilemma extends beyond his financial debt. His most fundamental problem is that he’s dying. In the same way, the primary soteriological hurdle humanity must overcome is our ontological corruption — the destruction of the imago dei. Our problem runs deeper than mere behavior or legal debt; we are by nature children of wrath. Forgiveness of sins is not enough; we must be born again. Thus legal cleansing paves the way for ontological renewal  (1 Corinthians 15, new creation, regeneration, etc.) –  the ultimate telos of biblical salvation — but does not itself constitute our salvation.

So on this Good Friday, let’s remember what Christ died for. He died that our legal debt might be cleared, to be sure. But more than that. He died so that we might become partakers of his resurrection power. The fruit of Christ’s cross is not mere forgiveness, but resurrection.

Yet the recognition that the cross is pen-ultimate to an ultimate resurrection must not allow us to minimize the cross as the exclusive means by which we are saved. Resurrection only happens via the cross. And that’s why there can be no Easter without Good Friday. There is no new life without dying to the old man. The only true path to life is through death. The cross cancels the written code against us and opens the door for the renewing gift of the Spirit. Any soteriological system that focuses on the resurrection while forgetting that the cross is the sole means by which it is secured preaches a bloodless, vain, and powerless resurrection.

Praise God for the death of death in the risen Son of God!

Thus the cross and the resurrection are not the consummation of the biblical narrative, but rather the principle foreshadowing of the consummation. They represent the primary inflection point, but not the telos. They are a means, not an end; a deposit, but not the full down payment. As great as was the wrath and redemption of Messiah’s first coming, it will be eclipsed by the wrath and redemption of his second coming.

To think along these lines pushes the whole biblical narrative in eschatological directions. The best (and worst) is yet to come. Maranatha!

“I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.”

Church first, then salvation. But a quick glance at the volumes on my shelf that might loosely be called systematic theology in the Reformed tradition (Calvin, Turretin, Bavinck, Hodge, Heppe, Berkhoff, Frame), to say nothing of confessional documents like the 39 Articles, Belgic Confession, Second Helvetic Confession, and the Westminster Standards, indicates that each one deals with the application of redemption first, and then the church.

At one level, I have no great objection to this Reformed tradition. In some ways it’s a logical order, a number of these dogmatics and confessions teach the maxim, “no salvation outside the church,” and of course the boundaries between discussions of ecclesiology and soteriology are far from watertight. But it’s raised a question in my mind: what would a Reformed dogmatics, and more particularly a reformed soteriology, look like that followed the order of the creed.

“Conversion” is concnerd with the act of turning to God rather than with the adoption of a different kind of behavior. It is an expression which denotes the positive aspect of the act which is denoted negatively by repentance (Acts 26:18-20)…

[I]t is curious how a number of scholars speak of Luke moralizing the nature of repentance. [He cites esp German/Lutheran scholars.] It is difficult to see how else repentance could be envisaged when it is a question of turning away from sin and disobedience to God’s commands. What else is repentance concerned with if it is not concerned with a man’s moral life in the sight of God? This is clear from the teaching of John the Baptist as recorded in the Q tradition where he demands that men show the fruit of repentance (Matt. 3:8 par. Luke 3:8), and it is also part of the teaching of Paul (2 Cor. 12:21) and Revelation (2:16, 21f.; 9:20f; 16:11). Luke has not introduced anything new into the understanding of the word.

Luke: Historian and Theologian, 194-5.

But humanity’s value is contingent, and not intrinsic to who we are as creatures.  If we forget this we can fall into a sloppy anthrocentric theology that fails to take seriously the tenuous nature of human dignity. Athanasius (again) helpfully speaks of humanity’s creation as a two-fold movement. We were first created as creatures, and only subsequently were we  “given a share in the Image of the Word.” This two-fold distinction is important. The gift of the imago dei bestowed on us as creatures is a gift of grace not inherent to what we are as creatures. What’s more, if we fail to use this gift properly, it will be taken away from us.

Thus Genesis 1 cannot stand in isolation from Genesis 3. Left to run its course, sin is the undoing of the imago dei — the very source of our worth and dignity. Ultimately,  the person who insists on rejecting the imprint of  imago dei —who refuses to be an eikon that points to Another, and who instead strives to be self-referential—ultimately that person divests himself of the very thing that gives him worth. And it is for precisely this reason that the worth of humanity  inherent in our existence in the image of God must not be taken for granted. It was given to us as a gift and can also be taken away. If we reject the imago dei — which is necessarily a rejection of God — we will be reduced to mere creature, of no more worth than a brute beast. It’s in this sense that the apostle, quoting the prophets, can say in Romans 3 that “we have all together become worthless.”  (I take Paul to be speaking eschatologically here— referring to what will ultimately be  true of humanity if we persist in sin. In this age, the reprobate are no more fully depraved than Christians are fully glorified.)

Thus given the corrupting reality of Gen 3, it is proper and necessary to ultimately ground human dignity not simply in the imago dei of  Gen 1 (which has proven itself to be corruptible), but also in  the imago christi of 1 Corinthians 15. In other words, in glorification. It’s here the Christian possess a unique worth. It is only through participation in Christ’s resurrection that we possess an impeccable value. Only in Christ do we find an incorruptible worth. We bore the glory of the first Adam and it failed us. But the glory of the Second Adam cannot fail. And herein lies our true worth.

What’s more (as Augustine teaches us) God sees us in the present as we will be at the resurrection. Who we are in our future glorification is more true of who we really are, than who we are in the present. Those whom God foreknew… he glorified. The me that God foreknew is not the me of the present, but the me of my future glorification, the me that has been perfectly conformed to the image of Christ. This new me is the real me. Thus the idea that God has to “look away” from us because of our sin, and that he only sees Christ, is not quite right, even if it’s trying (however poorly) to make an important theological point. God doesn’t look away from us in order to love us, nor does he pretend that we are something other than we are. Rather he looks squarely at who we are in the present, imputing to us the reality of who we will one day be in glory because of Christ’s redemptive work. And it’s in who we will be in glory, when at last the imago christi secures for us a unending participation in the imago dei,  that we find our lasting worth.

Here’s an interesting snippet from her abstract:

…in the first two chapters, James gives a high view of God’s work in calling and redeeming, providing wisdom to his people, and instilling the long-anticipated new covenant that they might live in obedience, humility and purity in accordance with his character and will. Because of God’s saving work, he justly judges those who fail to live mercifully, while his mercy triumphs for those who obey. God begins the work and sustains those who ask; but only those who submit to the “perfect law of freedom,” whose faith works, receive mercy when God enacts his final justice.

I’ve always been struck by the New Covenant reference in James 1:21; from what I’ve seen and heard Mariam does well bringing out the flavor of salvation in James, not just as a one-off event, but as God’s work through the life and trials of the believer.

For Augustine, God observes our need and offers us a participation in Christ, resulting in a reverse incarnation. He became as us so that we could become as him. This is justification for Augustine.

For Biel, God observes our need and establishes an agreement (pactum) wherein if we do all that is within us to perform a true act of love toward God, he will grant us the grace of ontological renewal. This is justification  for Biel (Pelagian, to be sure).

But for Calvin, God’s justice stands in the way of him granting the grace of ontological renewal outright. God must first be propitiated in relation to his justice. God sends Christ to pay the just penalty for our sins, removing the legal barrier between God’s justice and God’s desire to be gracious. This is justification for Calvin.

Thus Calvin’s doctrine of justification adds a layer to his soteriology not present in Augustine and Biel. For Augustine and Biel, there is no need for God to be propitiated prior to his offering us the grace of ontological renewal; God’s justice does not stand in the way of his mercy. But for Calvin, God’s desire to be gracious and his ability to be gracious are at odds. Thus Christ’s death is necessary in Calvin’s system in ways not seen in Augustine and Biel. Herein lies a major difference in their respective soteriologies, and consequently their respective doctrines of justification.

I agree with Calvin that Christ’s death was necessary. And I agree with Augustine that justification is primarily about ontological renewal. And I agree with Biel that God is not bound by human standards of justice. And I think that Athanasius charts a course wherein all three of these can be brought together.

For the theologians of the via moderna, the divine justice does not bind God in his relation to humanity. God simply grants the blessing of ontological renewal to whomever he chooses sans the atoning death and resurrection of Christ. God is so ontologically other in relation to humanity that strict justice cannot obtain. God is not bound by anyone or anything–neither sin nor righteousness requires him to respond in a fixed way. Theoretically, God could send a saint to hell and a sinner to heaven. Thus, in a very real sense, atonement is not necessary for the conceptual framework of the via moderna.

But Calvin rejects the medieval distinction between the “two powers” of God. For Calvin, God’s nature is such that he is bound to honor that which is honorable and to condemn that which is condemnable. Man has sinned; justice must be served. This puts a gracious God in a bit of fix. He desires to be gracious, but it would not be fitting for God to grant the grace of ontological renewal to sinners. So how can God be both gracious and just? Enter the cross of Christ. Christ suffers the just consequences of our rebellion as our substitute and legal representative; justice is served. Now the way has been opened for God to grant us the grace of ontological renewal. Thus for Calvin, justification is not about how to become ontologically renewed, but about clearing the way for such renewal. Thus his doctrine of justification is focused on forgiveness of sins and legal status.

In many ways, it seems that Augustine anticipates the medieval distinction between the two powers of God. Like Ockham and Biel, Augustine’s soteriology does not seem to require an atoning sacrifice as a prerequisite for God to act graciously toward us (he says something to this effect in his Enchridion, though I don’t have the book in front of me). For Augustine, we are sick (ontologically corrupt) and in need of medicine (the divine life of Christ); nothing stands in the way of God freely offering us the needed remedy. Augustine’s doctrine of justification skips right past legal categories and directly to ontological categories.

I’m of the mind that Augustine and the via moderna have it right when it comes to God’s utter transcendence. Strict justice does not obtain between creator and creature. But unlike Calvin, neither Augustine nor the via moderna have a proper appreciation of the need for atonement, nor do they make the cross central in ways that reflect the NT emphasis. Is there a way to embrace the “two powers of God” distinction and yet have a robust atonement theology that makes ample use of Christ’s death and resurrection? Yes there is, and I’ll write more about that later.