iustitia aliena

This audio is gold, here.

Taken from J.V. Fesko’s book titled Justification: Understanding the Classic Reformed Doctrine, 32-34

One of the famous eighteenth-century debates that surrounded the doctrine of justification was the Marrow Controversy. The debate erupted in Scotland surrounding the republication of the a book entitled The Marrow of Modern Divinity. The book was likely written by Edward Fisher, a seventeenth-century theologian, and was published in two parts in 1645 and 1649. The book is a series of dialogues on the doctrine of atonement and the dangers of antinomianism and neonomianism. At the time of its publication, the book was recommended by two prominent Westminster divines, Joseph Caryl (1602-73) and Jeremiah Burroughs (1599-1646). Moreover, the author claimed to derive his work from the teachings of a number of prominent Reformed theologians including John Ball (1585-1640),  Theodore Beza, Heinrich Bullinger (1504-75), John Diodati (1576-1649), Thomas Goodwin (1600-80), Thomas Hooker (1586-1647), John Lightfoot (1602-75), Martin Luther, Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499-1562), Wolfgang Musculus (1497-1563), William Perkins, Amandus Polanus (1561-1610), Robert Rollock (1555-99), and Zacharia Ursinus, to name a few. When the book was originally published, there was no uproar. The same cannot be said when it was republished in Scotland.

In Scotland in 1718 the book was republished because an English Puritan soldier brought the book with him into Scotland, and it eventually fell into the hands of Thomas Boston (1676-1732). Boston was so pleased with the work that he and a colleague had the work republished. The book displeased a number of ministers who apparently held neonomian views and therefore condemned the book for its supposed advocacy of antinomianism. A careful reading of the book will reveal that it did not advocate antinomianism, but rather set forth sola fide. Like Calvin before, Fisher was careful to distinguish but not separate justification and sanctification and recognize that sinful man is justified by faith alone to the exclusion of works:

[Fekso quoting The Marrow of Modern Divinity] “Therefore, whensoever, or wheresoever, any doubt of question arises of salvation, or our justification before God, there the law and all good works must be utterly excluded and stand apart, that grace may appear free, and that the promise and faith may stand alone: which faith alone, without law or works, brings thee in particular to the justification and salvation, through the mere promise and free grace of God in Christ; so that I say, in through the mere promise and free grace of God in Christ; so that I say, in the action and office of justification, both law and works are to be utterly excluded and exempted as things which have nothing to do in that behalf. The reason is this: for seeing that all our redemption springs out from the body of the Son of God crucified, then is there nothing that can stand us in stead, but that only wherewith the body of Christ is apprehended. Now, forasmuch as neither the law nor works, but faith only, is the thing which apprehends the body and passion of Christ, therefore faith only is that matter which justifies a man before God, through the strength of that object Jesus Christ, which it apprehends.”

Despite the book’s careful delineation between justification and sanctification the Assembly of the Church of Scotland condemned it as antinomian. Nevertheless, there were a number of minister, including Thomas Boston, who cam to the book’s defense, noting that it simply contained doctrinal truths couched in scriptural language and in phrases taken from Reformed confessions and catechisms. The Assembly eventually rebuked those who defended the book, but no further action was taken and the controversy eventually dissipated.

Marrow men unite!

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Taken from Michael S. Horton’s Lord and Servant: A Covenant Christology in the introduction under the heading, “Systematic-Theological Development.”

“The heart of the Reformation complaint was that the medieval church had turned the gospel into a new law.  In other words, it had failed to properly distinguish law and gospel, command and promise, imperative and indicative.  This was in no way a distinction between the Old and New Testaments, but rather ran throughout both.  While we must beware excluding the principle of law from the new covenant and the gospel from the old, I am following the suggestion that the biblical covenants themselves call for organization under one of those two rubrics.  Our Reformation forebears were not wide of the mark, therefore, when they said, “Therefore, the law and the gospel are the chief and general divisions of holy scriptures, and comprise the entire doctrine comprehended therein” (Ursinus).

Of course the Reformers were not the first to have been impressed with this paradigm of law and gospel.   They themselves were influenced not only by their reading of Paul but also by Augustin’s reading of the apostle to the gentiles.  So how did covenant theology come to identify three basic covenants in the biblical motif of covenant a way of expressing the inherent unity of God’s external works in creation, redemption, and consummation.  A broad consensus emerged with respect to the existence in Scripture (Noahic, Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic), but these are all seen as specific subcovenants of these broader arrangements.  I will merely summarize these three overarching covenants here, without further exegetical ado, to expand on them under their appropriate topics in this volume.

An eternal compact between the persons of the Trinity, the covenant of redemption (pactum salutis) is represented in federal theology as the basis for all of God’s covenantal activity in history.  Accordingly, the Father elects a people whom he gives to the Son as their mediator and the Spirit promises to unite them to the Son.  Already we glimpse the intra-Trinitarian perichoresis that I will more fully develop in my discussion of creation: the Father does all things in the Son and through the Spirit.  Thus Trinitarian theology has always been not only a central concept but an organizing motif in the classic Reformed systems.

The two covenants executed in history are the covenants of creation and grace.  Created in righteousness and ethically equipped to fulfill the task of imitating God’s own “works” in order to enter his Sabbath “rest,” Adam as the representative head of the human race was already eschatologically oriented toward the future.  As a reward for his faithfulness to the covenant, he would lead humanity in triumphant procession into the everlasting consummation, confirmed in righteousness.  However, as a consequence of his disobedience and the mysterious solidarity of humanity in Adam, the sanctions of the creation covenant were invoked.  In contrast to the conditional emphasis of the pre-fall covenant, however, God issues a unilateral promise to overcome the curse through the woman’s offspring.  This covenant of grace, carried forward to Seth and his descendants, is renewed in the Abrahamic covenant, just as the works principle in the creation covenant is renewed in the Sinai covenant.  On the basis of the Messiah’s fulfillment of the covenant of works (in fulfillment of his mediatorial role assigned in the covenant of redemption), the people of God are accepted on the terms of the covenant of grace.  (x-xii)

Taken from the Institutes if the Christian Religion: 1541 French Edition, The First English Edition, John Calvin (translated by Elsie Anne McKee)

Now this is the true knowledge if Christ, when we accept Him the way He offered to us by the Father, that is, with the whole fullness of the heavenly riches, so that He may be a treasure of happiness for us and of all good things (Jn. 1[16]). However, to enter into possession of His riches we must first know the way by which He demonstrated in doing and fulfilling all that was necessary for our salvation according to the eternal counsel of God. That is why, as the gospel is the goal of our faith and Christ is identified by the gospel as it’s special goal so in focusing on Christ the central consideration of the gospel is what He did and suffered for our salvation (197).

 Informative and thorough review here.

A quote from the review:

For those of us who belong to a confessional church, we should work hard to understand how and why the particular doctrines we confess were formulated in a particular way. While a greater awareness of Protestant orthodoxy will not solve our doctrinal disputes or prevent our theological differences, we should at least know the theological convictions and expressions entrusted to us. We will always have dissenters – whether it is open theism, the new perspectives on Paul, or rejection of penal substitution. But perhaps if we knew the reasons for the truths we confess we would not be so easily wooed by attempts to redefine classical Protestant orthodox thought, even when done in the name of evangelical and reformed. For those interested, PRRD is a great place to start.

The first chapter titled “ROOTS: Our History” is available on pdf here.

To get your hands on the book go here.

“Now before beginning to treat each heading individually, it is good first to know what pertains to understanding all of it.  For the first, let it be resolved that human life ought to be ruled by the law not only as regards external honorableness but also as regards inward and spiritual righteousness.  However, this latter, although, although it cannot be denied, is considered by very few because people do not consider the Lawgiver, for the nature of the law should be valued according the nature of the Lawgiver.  If some king prohibited fornication, murder, and robbery by edict, I admit that someone who only conceived in his heart some desire to fornicate, or steal, or murder, without acting on it and without any attempt to put it into action, would not be bound by the penalty established for breaking the law.  Becausae the provision of the mortal lawgiver doe not extend beyond external honorableness, his ordinances are not violated unless the evil is put into action.  But God — before whose eye nothing is hidden and who does not stop short with external appearance of good but goes to purity of the heart — when forbids fornication, homicide, and stealing, He is prohibiting all carnal concupiscence, hatred, coveting of someone else’s goods, deceit, and everything else like these.  For since He is a spiritual Lawgiver, He speaks to the soul as much as to the body.  Now wrath and hatred are murder, as far as the soul is concerned; coveting is stealing; ill-regulated love is fornication.

But someone could say: “Human laws are concerned with the reason and will of people just as well, and not with fortutious happenings.”  I admit that, but the human laws mean the will which is expressed in action; for they consider with that intention each act was done but they do not inquire about secret thoughts.  That is why someone who abstains from outward transgression satisfies the laws of the government.  On the contrary, because God’s law is given to our souls, if we want to keep it well, it is out souls which must be principally be rebuked.  Now, even when they want to hide the fact that they despise the law, the majority of people in some way train their eyes, feet, hands, and other parts of the their bodies to keep what it commands, but their heart remains completely opposed to obeying it.  So they think they have well discharged their debt if they have hidden from people what appears before God.  They hear: “You shall not murder, you shall not commit fornication, you shall not steal,” so they do not take out their sword to kill, they do not mess around with lovers, they do not set hands on someone else’s goods.  All that is good.  But their heart is full of murder and burns with carnal concupiscence; they can only see their neighbor’s goods crookedly, devouring them with coveting, and so they are lacking what is the chief part of the law.  From where does such torpor come, I ask you, unless they ignore the Lawgiver and accomodate the righteousness to their own understanding?  St. Paul cries out loudly and strongly against this view, saying that “the law is spiritual” (Rom. 7[14]).   By that he means that not only does it require obedience from the soul, the understanding, and the will, but also an angelic purity which is cleansed of every carnal spot so that it savors of nothing but spirit.

In saying that this is the meaning of the law, we are not bringing forward a new exposition of our own but we are following Christ, who is a very good expositor of it.  For becauase the Pharisees had sown among the people the perverse view that one who did not commit any external act against the law was one who kept it well, He rebukes this error by saying that “an indecent look at a woman is fornication and all those who hate their brothers are homicides” (Matt. 5[22ff, 28ff]).  For He makes all who have simple conceived some anger in their heart, guilty of judgment; and all who by murmuring show some offense of heart, guilty before the consistory; and all who by doing harm have openly declared their evil intent, guilty of the Gehenna of fire.  Those who have no understood this imagined that Christ was a second Moses who brought the gospel law to supply what was lacking in the Mosaic law.  That is where this popular saying came from, that “the perfection of the gospel law is much greater than that of the former law.”  This is a very perverse error.  For when we later summarize the precepts of Moses it will appear by his very words what great insult they do to God’s law in saying this” 

-John Calvin.  Taken from John Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion: 1541 French Edition. The First English Edition, translated by Elsie Anne Mckee, pages 119-120.  

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  “Removing, then, mention of law, and laying aside all consideration of works, we should, when justification is being discussed, embrace God’s mercy alone, turn our attention from ourselves, and look only to Christ….If consciences wish to attain any certainty in this matter, they ought to give no place to the law.”   (Calvin Institutes 3.19.2, quoting via Horton’s Covenant and Salvation: Union with Christ).

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Three Uses of the Law on the White Horse Inn

Michael Horton: Well, what do we do then about the Law in terms of its different uses? What are the different uses of the Law? Is the law there only to tell us that we haven’t kept it? Are there any other uses of the Law?

 Rod Rosenbladt: The Reformers talked of three uses. Both the Lutherans and the Reformed talk of three uses of the Law. Luther and, I think, Calvin would have agreed that the major use of the Law was what you referred to from Galatians—to break all source of false images we have of our self and bring us to dust. Our self-righteousness is dying on the floor in arriving heap. As a preparation to drive us to Christ who has died for us in the place of all of our rebellion.

 Then, they also talked about a first use of the law, the civil use of the law that they said applied to everybody. That this would be true of everybody on earth, some sort of basic Romans 2:14 and 15, basic, basic, basic Law put into every human being, not a full tilt ethics but the basics, so that our systems of judges and jails and all of that should reflect that first use of the law and keep me from killing my neighbor in order not to steal his wife or his speedboat. There will be jails and courts to deal with that and that’s God’s good gift to keep sinners from doing what we would do by nature.

 And then a third use of the Law; that’s for Christians only. That fleshes out what is it that I am to reflect as a Christian if I’m not free in the sense of libertine. What is the Christian life to look like? And it was to flesh that out. This is what it’s to look like—it was content, it was “this is what it would look like.” Is it still Law? Yeah, it’s still Law and if that use of the Law is killing you, you go back to the second use and go to Christ again. This is why in the White Horse Inn and the MR we have as a theme “Christ death is great enough to even save a Christian.” Christ death could even save a Christian. And I think both of us—our traditions could easily get into that, that third use stuff for most of the sermon, and we ought not do that. (italics mine)

“This transcription of “Rightly Dividing the Word: Law and Gospel” is a
broadcast of the White Horse Inn radio program that originally aired on May
22, 2005 and is posted with permission. The White Horse Inn exists to equip
Christians to “know what you believe and why you believe it.” For more
information about the White Horse Inn, please visit www.whitehorseinn.org or
call (800) 890-7556 .

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To get the White Horse Inn quotes above in context go here

and especially here (questions and answers 1-21).

Why do you not restrain yourself, and deter others from prying into these things which God wills should be hidden from us, and which He has not delivered to us in the Scriptures?  It is here the hand is to be laid upon the mouth, it is here we are to reverence what lies hidden, to adore the secret counsels of the divine Majesty, and to exclaim with Paul, “O man, who art thou that repliest against God?” (Rom. 9:20).

Taken from Martin Luther’s The Bondage of the Will, page 53.

This book sounds good.

Here are the contributors:

Richard D. Phillips (Author, Preface, Contributor), Joel R. Beeke (Contributor), W. Robert Godfrey (Contributor), Philip Graham Ryken (Contributor), R. C. Sproul (Contributor), Derek Thomas (Contributor), Carl R. Trueman (Contributor)