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Reformed Classicalist

Notes on Contemporary Theology: Part 2

RTS Papers / Systematic Theology 2 / Summer 2018


Donald MacLeod. “The Work of Christ Accomplished,” in Christian Dogmatics, 243-267

Robert Sherman. King, Priest, and Prophet, 169-218


In comparing MacLeod and Sherman on the atoning work of Christ, the former carries the burden of divine justice and the latter the Son’s proper role in the same. By now a common assumption is emerging, one that Sherman has already repeated: “the external works of the Trinity are undivided” (169).


Contemporary atonement theory has man needing to be reconciled to God, and in no sense the other way around. Here the atonement is basically manward. MacLeod gives scriptural reasons to see the primary effect being Godward; yet this runs him into raising a challenge to the doctrine of divine impassibility (248). How can God’s displeasure be turned if the divine is unaffected? More down to earth, is the penal substitutionary atonement an outmoded Western idea of justice? Critics like Green and Baker seem to pit restoration (righting wrongs) against retribution (punishing wrongs). MacLeod shows that the Scriptures do not set these in opposition.


Likewise with the expiation and victory metaphors (263). And complaining about vicarious retribution comes with this irony: “the judge has no right to let himself be judged in our place” (256)! Feminism only adds to the critique that the traditional view is patriarchal violence. It was violent, but “Jesus was not a child” (258), not unwilling and not unaware of the Father’s love for him. Sherman gathers together the various biblical sacrifices, showing that Christ’s work fulfills them all: that he is both priest and sacrifice. He also compares the dimensions of Christ’s sacrifice, showing how they cohere and complement each other. The cross both removes the obstacle and establishes our communion with God. Christ fulfills here, but also transforms some old meanings. He too addresses the modernist (and feminist) critiques. The divine initiative of atonement undercuts the modern caricature of humans placating a bloodthirsty (patriarchal) deity, or that humans are the ones suffering for redemption, thus justifying human abuse.


Key Terms: (#hilaskomai #etiology #ex #convenientia)


Robert Sherman. King, Priest, and Prophet, 219-280


Christ’s prophetic office shows the Spirit’s initiative. Jesus reveals that the whole Bible is about him and teaches with unprecedented authority. So he is both like and unlike the prophets before him (Deut. 18:15-18), being the final Word (Heb. 1:1-2). Jesus’ prophetic role, and with it the whole inherited conception of Israel’s prophet, was “assimilated” into his messianic role (223). Within the influence of the Spirit, both Christ and the church are “instruments of the entire Trinity” (236).


But we must never enable the old error that Christ was merely a Teacher, especially not within a modern pluralistic context. Such reduces the Word to worldly wisdom, the Christian life to moralism, and the cross to an exemplary influence. His farming metaphor (250) makes me think: How does this affect the order of teaching in the life of a church? Perhaps we teach it simultaneously or in cycles. The King must overthrow the old city [for the Father], the Priest then die like a seed on that soil (Jn. 12:24), and the Prophet reveal the new world [by the Spirit’s power]. Sherman reflects that, “it is hard to imagine communicating this multifaceted reality adequately in anything other than narrative form” (265).


His concluding thoughts draws out application from the Trinity’s diverse work of atonement in Christ to pastoral ministry. This writing was an attempt to transcend any one-dimensional view of the atonement: the three exercises of Christ’s offices being “three ways” that atonement plays out in the gospel. None of the three can be viewed in utter isolation. The remainder very helpfully applies to the pastor’s task: preaching, counseling, conducting worship, etc. We ought to combine that Puritan-like sense of where souls are at with a doctrine rich enough to shift in emphasis if one of the three angles is proving to be a stumbling block.


Richard Gaffin. “The Work of Christ Applied,” in Christian Dogmatics, 269-290


The form of Gaffin’s doctrine is clearly stated: “the work of Christ applied [is] … the work of Christ in his state of exaltation” (269). Treating the application of redemption exclusively in terms of the Spirit can lead to a few reductionisms. Barth denied the ordo salutis and the distinction between redemption’s accomplishment and application. Consequently the historic passing from humiliation to exaltation was not, for him, salvific. Properly conceiving the ordo salutis requires understanding the double effect of sin - legal and conditional - because the benefits in that order will answer to these two. Adoption and justification of the legal; effectual call, regeneration, and sanctification of the conditional.


How specifically is redemption applied from Christ’s exalted state? First, resurrection and justification are linked in being God’s declaration of his righteous life. Then, ascending, he is to us a “life-giving Spirit” (1 Cor. 15:45), not merely guaranteeing a body-and-soul resurrection on the Last Day but power to our lives now. “Resurrection, ascension, and Pentecost, though temporally distinct, constitute a unified complex of events” (277). Something happened - Gaffin uses the word “transformation” (278) - when Christ was exalted that is then shared with his people, much of which is communicated by Scripture in the context of the heavenly intercession.


Our union with Christ takes up the second half of Gaffin’s reflections. He describes this union in its stages (predestinarian, past, present) and its aspects (mystical, spiritual, vital, indissoluble). “Union is the all-or-nothing reality on which everything depends in the application of salvation” (283). His argument leans heavily on Calvin’s famous words on the Spirit as “the bond” by which Christ’s work is connected to us. He closes by considering questions of justification and the status of Old Covenant saints, showing how the classic Reformed position handles whatever dilemmas emerge.


Key Terms: (#historia #salutis)


Michael Allen. “The Place of Justification” & “Justification and Participation”


In chapters 1 and 2 of his book on Justification, Allen shows that participation in God is “the goal” and justification “the ground” of the gospel. In the broader scope, theology proper (classically conceived) is foundational for the gospel: not merely for theologians to rightly order their system, but for every Christian to confidently believe the promises. Justification, unlike the being of God in se, is “an event in the history of God’s external works” (6). Thus soteriology is relativized by theology; justification relativized in turn within the whole soteriological matrix. We really have three options. Justification is: 1. the lens for all theology; 2. no lens at all; 3. an important lens among others. Allen shows how those who argue for options 1 and 2 fall short. What remains is to draw forth how justification informs our doctrines both of God and man. Various passages are mined to show how the gospel manifests divine attributes. Two Godward examples in Romans: 3:24-26 speaks of righteousness, and 9:22-23 of power, mercy and justice. Manward, justification shows “that we live on borrowed breath” (27), so that, both in Adam and in Christ, “human life is grounded outside of itself” (28).


After over a century of lament (from Schweitzer down to Wright) that we move beyond the “narrow” Reformational focus on legal guilt, “participation in Christ” has been put forth as Paul’s basic motif. That the successors of Calvin did not care about this is a myth owing largely to Torrance. Participation is “transformative fellowship in God’s living presence” (45). God graciously dwells with us by his own inherent life. We are transformed, not into divinity, but glorified humanity. As to the supposed conflict between justification and participation, the latter is the end (not means), and so is not competing for “how to get right with God.” For the same reason, the New Perspectives’ criticisms of justification as “the end” also fall. It is better to think of justification as the “forensic entryway of the gospel” (53), and indeed a prerequisite for participation; as God’s righteousness is a problem for covenant fellowship if things are not first righted.


Key Terms: (#discrimen #iustitia #imputata)


John Webster. “The Holiness of the Christian”


God’s holiness belongs to the eternal Trinity and pervades all of his relationships ad extra. Of the three main acts of the divine economy - creation, reconciliation, perfection - it is a part of the third, communication, that is addressed. “Communicated holiness” is derived, neither possessed nor transferred: God being its source and end (77). Webster’s chapter is the unpacking of a balanced definition of sanctification that gives praise to God and describes the work of faith and obedience as necessary.

As to “the work of the Holy Trinity” (79), it begins in Father’s election (Eph. 1:4). His choice aims at our holy action. The Son “accomplishes” this goal, while the Spirit “realizes” or “perfects” it (1 Cor. 6:11).


At this point the Reformed tradition has kept justification and sanctification distinct, so that the latter does not become “self-improvement” and the former does not become an “infusion” of righteousness (81). Another error is to understand the Spirit’s work as utterly subjective: “the birth of self-sufficiency” (83). To the contrary, sanctification demands the love of being a dependent creature where sin refused it. While sanctification is active life, it is exercised in faith: “evangelical sanctification” (86).


With the divine energies in sanctification have been covered, what characterizes this life in the saint is “mortification and vivification” (88). These are two aspects of one work: the “putting to death” and “putting on” that correspond to the dying and rising of Christ. While these are the structure, “freedom, obedience, and love” (92) are the new life itself. Holiness is freedom because autonomous liberty was not real: in fact it is explicitly defined as a movement against real nature. Holiness liberates us to obey and thus to produce according to our true design. More than once Webster says “set free for reality” (94). Law gives this freedom its form. Legalism is kept at bay not by dispensing with law, but by viewing law (its third use) within the covenant of grace. Holiness is love of God flowing also to our neighbors: is that which is most unlike my inward bent.



Michael Horton. “Kingdom of God,” in Christian Dogmatics, 363-391


For Horton, the Lordship of YHWH and the universal kingdom of God are tied to the covenant that God makes with his people. This was the case with Adam, with Israel, and then in Christ with the church. After the pattern of ANE suzerain treaties, Deuteronomy as a whole (perhaps the Pentateuch as a whole) and Exodus 20 in miniature, comprised the Treaty of the Great King, with the histories as prologue, followed by stipulations, sanctions, and ceremonies.


Horton sees the promise made to Abraham as twofold: 1. “earthly land and seed” and 2. “heavenly land and blessing for the nations” (365). These issue forth into what Paul treats as two distinct covenants (Gal. 3-4), the one ratified at Sinai through Moses made the land and seed typological. The old nation’s destiny was rooted in oaths made at Sinai, but the salvation of Israelites was by the same faith in the promises to be fulfilled in Christ. Jeremiah 31 reinforces Horton’s reading of Paul in having the Abrahamic and Mosaic as distinct covenant arrangements.


In other words, Horton sees more discontinuity between the old and new than, say, Robertson. The kingdom in view takes the shape of the covenant, and so there emerges an eschatological kingdom. The prophets look forward to it, and Christ fulfills it in two advents. This is “from above,” an “eschatological inbreaking rather than an immanent historical process” (374). In light of the fundamental misunderstandings of the kingdom, Horton engages with the leading contenders in modern theology. They flow on a spectrum from underrealized to overrealized (375). And all millennial expectations invest the period with what Amillennialists expect of the new creation.


The Great Commission replaces the elements in the Garden often called the “cultural mandate,” and so the new and lasting kingdom is spread by the gospel. The outpouring of the Spirit transformed the disciples’ expectation of the kingdom from local-ethnic to universal. Horton concludes by considering the the church in a complex of suffering in this era, engaging in the ultimate “holy war,” namely the spiritual, and awaiting the Beatific Vision that we do not separate from the bodily resurrection.


Questions certainly remain here: 1. In what sense does the Great Commission "replace" elements of that "cultural mandate"? Only antinomianism would say that about the law per se. On what ground then does this new gospel commission do so with either marriage or Sabbath or labor (Horton wouldn't argue these)? Or is it only a right way to conceive of the civil sphere: and that in either its national or natural rights or free market dimensions?


G. K. Beale. “The Eschatological Conception of New Testament Theology”


Beale attempts to refine the “already / not yet” lens in eschatology with the more central New Testament idea of new creation. Inauguration (already) and consummation (not yet) are but phases of the larger new creational reality. The language of “last days” makes them identical to the church age, so that historic salvation and present experience of it are “eschatological in nature” (18). At the head, the cross killed the old world and the resurrection gave birth to the new. The great biblical theologians following Vos recognized eschaton and resurrection to predominate, but they never combined them as the central New Testament doctrine.


How does his thesis fare in illuminating all of the other apostolic ideas? Beale lists ten doctrines. Though he begins with missiology, there is anthropology implied in Christ as the renewed Image and vice-regent of the eternal kingdom. The Second Adam subdues the creation where Adam and Israel failed. As Christology, new creation is foreshadowed in the miracles (full restoration) and casting out demons (final victory). The Holy Spirit was a promise of the end of the age, uprooting sin from and bearing fruit in new hearts. Regeneration is the start of the new creation in each member’s experience (2 Cor. 4:6, 5:17); and sanctification is the process of the new man’s being fit for that world. The present dimension of justification may be viewed in terms of the final verdict: the judgment for believers having “been pushed back” (33) to the historic work of Christ.


Reconciliation is holistic. It begins in ending the hostility between God and man, but flows outward to make peace of the cosmos and has implications for how we heal relations in the present. New creation also interprets law. Following from the previous point, it was the ceremonial law that alienated Jew from Gentile, man from various elements of nature. The law distinguished the holy people with these markers. Now Christ alone distinguishes. In church, Sabbath and sacraments point us forward by the ultimate rest, renewal, and fellowship meal. Finally, tribulation is promised to coincide with this whole progress of the new creation throughout the church age.


(#redemptivehistorical #Beale #biblical #theology)

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