RSSRE: Grace, Merit, and Innocence
Peter wrote:
“Bill, I’m not sure which of my formulations you found confusing. Could you clarify.”
Peter, sorry to open a line and leave it off the hook. My last post grew rather large.
What I am thinking about is the “deliverdict.”
I am thinking it could mean a couple of different things:
1) A way of speaking of our translation from slaves of sin to sons of God like adoption (which Turretin placed under the loci of justification);
2) Or a way of folding a Murray-like definitive sanctification into our justification (something that would raise real problems (why not be justified by our own definitive sanctification rather than Christ’s merits?).
2) Or a way of denying the continuing reality of our total depravity, thus blurring our doctrine of simul iustus et peccator and establishing a kind of striving toward perfection (which I doubt you are saying).
Peter
September 28th, 2007 at 5:15 pm
Bill asked for clarification. Here’s some attempt at that.
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Yes, that’s getting at it. But I’m not quite talking about adoption. God passes judgment in our behalf by delivering us from the power of sin.
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I don’t see how folding definitive sanctification into justification makes it possible to be justified by our own definitive sanctification. If they are a single event, then one can’t be the basis of the other.
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Nope, that’s not what I’m saying. Definitive sanctification - deliverance from the power of sin - doesn’t instantly eliminate the possibility of sin.
Quite apart from “deliverdict,” though, I’d want to clarify what the simul means. If it’s a description of our existential situation, of course we are both just and also sin. It’s not, however, a description of our status. In Christ, we are righteous not sinners.
W.H. Chellis
September 29th, 2007 at 6:04 pm
Thanks Peter.
I am not a huge fan of the definitive sanctification formula. I understand what it is getting at biblically but I am not sure what it means. This could be my problem. Still, if we are definitively sanctified and justified at the same time, the moment we are forensically declared perfectly righteous through the perfect righteousness of Christ, we are also perfectly sanctified in a non-fornsic yet less than existential way. Why do we need Christ’s righteousness if we are perfectly sanctified?
I have read the material… but don’t get it. Could it be Murray set us up for a problem here?
Peter
September 29th, 2007 at 6:12 pm
Bill, definitive sanctification is not the same as “perfect sanctification.” Murray means that sanctification is a vector - it has a definite starting point, when God breaks the power of sin, and then continues from there. It’s the already/not yet applied to sanctification.
Beyond that, though “holy” often is as much a description of “status” in the Bible as “just” is. It doesn’t describe a “state of soul” but a standing - sanctified like priests to draw near to God.
On Murray: John Muether emailed me privately suggesting that I had misread Murray. John’s point was that Murray maintained a classical distinction between justification and sanctification even while acknowledging that Paul uses forensic language when describing definitive sanctification.
I think John’s correct in his reading of Murray, and I probably have overstated how close his formulation is to mine. I am saying something more than Murray said. Simply, Murray says that there’s a forensic dimension to sanctification, while I’m saying there’s a deliverance aspect to justification.
W.H. Chellis
September 30th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
Thanks Peter. I am familiar with Murray’s argument and understand the impact of the biblical passages. I suspect older theologians did as well. Still, the idea of definitive sanctification, I think, needs to be fleshed through out systematic categories a bit better. I know this is the opposite of what you are suggesting.
If sanctification is forensic? What does that mean, justification gives you the righteousness of Christ. It is perfect righteousness. It is also an alien righteousness. In sanctification the holiness is not alien but actual.
I fear that this creates problems for our view of justification. It suggests a sinner becomes, as the same time, covered in Christ’s righteousness and his own. Is this personal holiness, this definitive sanctification by imputation. It cannot be. That would be justification. Is it by infusion? Again, that would be a problem. We have no category for a definitive infusion of sanctity without a second blessing. I still wonder, who needs Christ’s rightousness when you have your own? If the answer is that this IS Christ’s righteousness, how is that different from justification?
O.K., it is a clean break from slavery to sin. But did we not have categories for that (regeneration, adoption, ect)? Why add to the confusion?
But my real issue is this: definitive sanctification is on the march. It has, as I feared, creeped into justification. This is how I understand your deliverdict and why I find it a bit scary. You are making personal holiness a part of our justification.