Baptism of Carl Frederick

Carl Frederick, our fourth son, was baptized yesterday according to the BCP 1662.

Having come to a clear understanding of the ordinance over the past few years, and having escaped the evangelical/baptistic theology that I was taught, my wife and I were greatly blessed by our understanding of what God was doing by means of the “mystical washing”.

My point is that a right understanding of the grace of Baptism is a means whereby God increases our love and gratitude towards him. The sacraments are truly a means of grace, and not only towards those receiving them.

Contrasting Paul and James on Justification

Much time has been spent on reconciling Paul and James on justification. Too often James’ point is exegeted away into a vague and vacuous theory that he is just saying that works justify our justification.

While it is entirely true that works fuflill and complete our faith, James’s point is radical. He has the audacity to say that Abraham and Rahab were justified by works.

Ja 2.24 You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only.

This is the bold statement that Reformed theologians and commentators would rather die than say. After all, everyone knows that a man is justified by faith alone, apart from works, that this is the central doctrine of the Reformation, and that anyone who says different is a damnable heretic.

Here is a test of whether a man has rightly understood James: ask him if he believes that Abraham was justified by works.

There is only one correct answer, and that is yes.

My purpose in writing this article is to compare and contrast Paul and James. Both use the word group for “to justify” to mean that a man is declared righteous in God’s judgement. Almost everything else that they mean is different.

Paul is speaking of a sinner, whether Jewish or Gentile, and this means that the remission of sins is right at the heart of his usage of justification, because a sinner has to be forgiven at the same time that he is declared righteous, in the nature of the case. James is speaking of a righeous man, and takes two righteous examples, namely, Abraham and Rahab. Righteous people do not need to be forgiven, but they can still be assessed by God and declarede righteous.

Here is another point at which Reformed men baulk. After all, there is no-one righteous, no, not one, as Paul says. Well, that is only true if one is not speaking of those who have died, been buried, and then raised with Christ to walk in newness of life. Such people are truly righteous. They are not sinless, but they are righteous, because the Bible tells me so.

So then, Paul and James have different men in view – the unregenerate sinner and the converted believer.

Then there is the cause, or ground, of their respective justifications. The sinner is justified because Christ died on the cross for his sins, and he takes hold of that dual gift of forgiveness and righteous declaration by faith alone. That is sola fide

The righteous man is already in possession of the remission of his sins, and has been spiritually resurrected through baptism into Christ. The ground of his second justification is his works, plain and simple.

That does not mean that his works earn for him the remission of his sins. That honour belongs only to Christ and the cross. However, his works earn for him God’s righteous judgement that he is indeed righteous on the ground of his works.

At this point the Reformed theologian gets ants in his pants. But we have the obligation to take the Bible seriously, which means to take it at its word in its grammatical, plain sense. God spoke to Abraham after the testing in the matter of sacrificing Isaac and said:

Gen. 22:15   Then the Angel of the LORD called to Abraham a second time out of heaven, 16 and said: “By myself I have sworn, says the LORD, because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son— 17 blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies. 18 In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.”

What God calls blessing James calls justification, in a clear identification of the two things. God blessed Abraham and confirmed it with an oath because Abraham obeyed. Obedience is the stated reason for the blessing.

Can we take this text at face value and incorporate it into our theology? We had better, if we wish to remain faithful to the inerrant and inspired word of God.

Does it contradict sola fide? By no means. They are different justifications with different semantic domains, two different causes, and two different kinds of men. Pauls man is justified without working, and James’s man is justified by works and not by faith only. Paul’s justification ensures the sinners entrance into grace, and James’s justification is the completion of the sinner-become-righteous’s faith. Paul’s justification includes forgiveness, and James’s does not.

Introduction to my Galatians Commentary

FOREWORD
Through the heat and dust of the modern battles over the Bible the true issue has become increasingly visible. The issue are merely signs of the hurt that the church has inflicted upon itself. The true assault is upon the teaching authority of the prophets and the apostles and their message, and therefore upon the authority of the Lord Jesus, the Christ of God.

The prophets and apostles that I mean are neither Charismatic leaders nor Successionist Bishops, but the authors of scripture. These are the men who delivered the Bible into our hands by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and whose authority true Christians have always accepted. Many churches today, in spite of a formal acknowledgement of the authority of scripture, have in practice bought into the liberal contempt of authority in general, the scriptures as a whole, and the apostle Paul in particular.

The result has been an understandable rejection of the church by the general public. After all, if the church is telling people either in word or deed that the Bible is not reliable in everything that it teaches, it should not be surprised that it has become irrelevant in peoples lives. Sadly, there are millions of people still in these churches who have been deceived by the prophets of unbelief. They have been taught that Paul is just an ordinary man like us, and that his opinions should not be accorded more weight than they deserve.

Another result of this arrogant rejection of apostolic authority has been the loss of the apostolic gospel that they preached. If the messenger has been discredited, then who will listen to the message? The message is of course justification by faith alone. John Calvin said that justification is the hinge upon which all true religion hangs, while Martin Luther famously called it the doctrine of the standing or falling church.

…This doctrine can never be discussed and taught enough. If it is lost and perishes, the whole knowledge of truth, life, and salvation is lost and perishes at the same time .

The truth is that where the gospel of justification by faith is lost, the church ceases to exist. A church with a false gospel and a different Jesus is not a church.

This is an assertion that does not sit well in our pluralistic age. Philosophical pluralism insists that no religious system or belief must be rejected, and that it is the height of arrogance to claim that one’s religion is exclusively true. The underlying assumption is that all religions are equally valid in principle, and in practice, equally ultimately irrelevant. Religious faith is tolerated provided it is not brought into the public square. Even so, faith without works is dead. A privatized religion is a dead and lifeless thing, and that is exactly as the pluralists think it should be.

The evangelical churches are by no means immune from this liberal spirit. Many are fully committed to the modern agenda. How interesting that the women priests measure has been passed in a Church of England that has more evangelicals in it that at any time in the recent past.

The reformers who restored the gospel to a dark and superstitious age had a very different view. They insisted that the gospel and the Bible that they proclaimed were fully authoritative and true in everything that they taught. They were no strangers to controversy, and formulated three criteria to assist believers in identifying a true church of Christ:
• Is the pure word of God being preached?
• Are the sacraments being properly administered?
• Is church discipline, meaning holiness, being practiced?
The church today, as always, needs to be brought to maturity through the discipline of apostolic preaching as recorded in the Bible.

The message of Galatians is particularly apt in these days when the whole world has gone running after a different gospel. The letter is a vigorous defence of Paul’s divine commission and the gospel that he preached. It is also a scathing attack upon false teachers, both then and now. It is a harsh medicine designed to cure a fatal disease – heresy.

The particular form that the Galatian heresy took was the belief that, for acceptance by God, namely, justification, or, the remission of sins, it was necessary for the Gentiles to become Jews by means of circumcision and obedience to the Mosaic Law. This implicitly denied the fact that the Lord Jesus, by his death and resurrection, has done everything necessary for our justification by faith alone, and, in doing so, it necessarily denied the gospel.

Paul’s letter to the Galatians is polemical. It asserts that there is something called truth and claims to be on its side. It also claims that there is something called false teaching and false teachers, with whom there can be no compromise or accommodation. This means that he is in many ways an anachronism in a modern world that devalues doctrine, abhors doctrinal controversy, and frowns upon any claim to absolute truth. Nevertheless, it not a bad thing to be out of tune with the ways of a world that expresses its rebellion against God by simply ignoring both him and his gospel. The present age is destined for destruction, together with all who refuse to love the truth, and we will escape the judgement to come only by clinging to God through faith in the truth.

This commentary therefore tries to discover what the letter meant to the author and those to whom it was addressed, and then to apply it to the situation that we find ourselves in today. Some may find many of the comments and opinions expressed in this commentary offensive. The intention of the commentator is to be as faithful to the spirit and the letter of the Galatian text as possible. This necessarily means that certain claims will be attacked and others endorsed. If the reader objects to this approach, he should not read this commentary.

The world and the church are sick with new variants of the Galatian plague, and the only treatment is fresh dose of the apostolic message of justification by faith.

Other places where justification doesn’t mean forgiveness

Continuing the topic of illegitimate totality transfer (ITT) it struck me on the way back from the school run that MOST instances of justification do not mean forgiveness plus being declared righteous, but simply being declared righteous.

In Luke’s Gospel the people justified God, meaning that they judged Him to be righteous. No mention or implication of forgiving God there, in the nature of the case. God justified the Lord Jesus by raising him from the dead, and again there is no suggestion of forgiveness. The man who perseveres in well-doing wil be justified by his works according to Paul.

So then, justification is usually used to describe righteous persons and Persons, not forgiven sinners.

Having said that, far be it from me to downplay our justification by faith alone. My purpose is to show that it is illegitimate to assume that forgiveness is always part of the meaning of justification.

The ONLY time that forgiveness is included in the semantic range of justification is when a sinner is justified. The Christian is not called a sinner in scripture, because it is assumed that he is righteous.

James’s man is justified by works and not by faith alone because he is no longer a sinner. God is justified by his works in the eyes of Israel. Jesus is justified by God by being raised to life again.

In other words there is a strong case to argue that MOST uses of the justification word group do not include forgiveness, but only being judged righteous.

Finally, it is thus right and proper to speak of a justifiaction by works while continuing a Reformation believer.

Justification Wars

Following on from the last article, I wonder if much of the tension would not be defused within the Reformed world if the Truly Reformed (TRs) understood that our justification by works does not mean our forgiveness by works. It may, but it probably will not.

My experience of Reformed web lists does not leave me optimistic. There is such a low level of basic English comprehension, and such an absense of exegesis, that I fear that nothing will change the perspective of perhaps the majority – unless their leaders take an enlightened view. In my judgement much of modern Reformed religion is Reformed Baptist, does wet dedications, and has a hyper-individualistic soteriology.

Many, if not most, are totally committed to the once-saved-always-saved heresy, to the extent that I do not believe that they actually believe in perseverance in faith and obedience. For them TULIP has become TULIO.

Thinking about it, since they do not accept the Dortian doctrine of persevering faith and obedience as defined by Dort, repentance is simply not urgent, because nothing can affect your justification by faith alone. Nothing.

That makes a justification by works for those who have been justified by faith alone into an abomination.

Illegitimate Totality Transfer

James Barr, definer of ITT.

Many Reformed Pastors and thinkers instinctively recoil upon hearing that a man will be justified by his works on Judgement Day. After all, every Reformed man knows that justification – the remission of sins – is by faith alone apart from works, as Paul so eloquently and lengthily teaches in Romans and Galatians.

We also know that the heart of Rome’s error is that they include human works with the cross as a ground of our justification. It is central to the Reformed faith that the cross is the sole ground of our justification.

More than that, when we read the standard Systematic Theologies it is rare indeed that we encounter justification language used in any other context than that of sola fide.

What then must we make of the fact that James says in so many words that we are justified by works, and not by faith only? The thing that I want to draw attention to is the fact that James uses the word “to justify” to describe God’s assessement of our actions.

It is not controversial to say that it is highly problematic to speak of a justification by works. Hysteria and surging anger are often the consequences of this kind of speech. Other words like heresy soon follow.

What, then, are we to say about James himself? Was he a heretic? Why did he use the word “justify” to describe God’s judgement of our actions? Must we say with Luther that this piece of scripture is right strawy epistle?

In my view it is impossible to decanonize this letter, or to disregard it, or to tame it by saying that James is talking about a justification of our justification. He actually says that it a man who is justified by his works, not his justification.

Here is a possible solution, and it involves the concept of an illegitimate totality transfer.

An ITT happens when we impute the entire semantic range of a word into every text where it is used. A word may have a wide range of meaning, and even have meanings that are entirely inappropriate in certain contexts. A cosmos may mean the starry sky or it may mean a lovely mauvish flower that grows at the roadside in Africa. When we say, “Look at the beautiful cosmos” our meaning will depend upon the context, not the entire semantic range of the word.

Let us apply this to Paul and James on justification.

When Paul says that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law, he has firmly in view both the remission of sins and the verdict of God that the man who believes in Christ is righteous. The semantic range that he is using includes both forgiveness and the imputation of righteousness to the sinner. He makes this explicit by quoting King David saying that the man whose sins are overlooked is blessed.

The Reformed faith has used the justification word group almost exclusively to refer to Paul’s teaching of sola fide.
This is where the problems begin, because we illegitimately transfer Paul’s semantic range directly into James’s letter.

James uses the word in a slightly different way, but it makes all the difference in the world. He has retained the meaning of a forensic, legal imputation of righteousness, but the idea of forgiveness and remission of sins is nowhere in sight. In using the word in a different context he has tweaked the semantic range to suit his purposes.

That means that he can say that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone without in the least bit contradicting the apostle to the Gentiles, because he is not discussing how a sinner is forgiven. He is explaining how the man who has been forgiven – or justified by faith alone – experiences another justification by works.

How do we know that forgiveness is not in view when he says that a man is justified by works? Well, he refers to Genesis fifteen where Abraham was justified before God simply by believing, and then shows how this faith was fulfilled when he attempted to sacrifice Isaac in obedience to the divine command, resulting in his justification by works.

Clearly Abraham was already forgiven in Genesis fifteen, as well as when he first believed and obeyed in Ur – Genesis twelve. Abraham was therefore already in a state of grace when he was justified by works in Genesis twenty-two. This is important for determining the semantic range of the word “to justify” in James. James does not include forgiveness. Abraham was not forgiven because he obeyed, but he was accounted righteous because he worked.

When this is understood the difficulties involved in speaking of a justification by works disappear. Clearly it is only those who have already been justified by faith alone who are capable of being justified by works. Clearly the second justification is different from the first one in a most significant way – it does not mean that our works earn for us the remission of our sins.

Positively it means that the faith that justifies necessarily produces the fruit of obedience, and that this evangelical obedience is a true justification, namely, a judgement by God that those believers who obey him are actually righteous on the basis and ground of their works.

So then, a man is justified by faith only apart from the works of the law – forgiven and accounted legally righteous – as well as being subsequently justified by works and not by faith alone. Indeed the proof of our justification by faith alone is our works, which gains for us a second justification – a righteous assessment, but sans forgiveness – that is by works and not by faith only.