Live your theology.

Does the Reformed tradition breed an unbiblical fear of works?  Perhaps fear is the wrong word.  Let me elaborate: When I write a particular sermon that  I call  the “If you’re a Christian, act like it” sermon, my Reformed cohorts can get kind of squirrelly.   Eyes dart back & forth.  Eyebrows raise.  Thumb and index finger move to stroke the chin.

I preached one on Sunday evening.  1 Timothy 1:3-11.  Paul’s charge for Timothy to live out true doctrine out of faith & love naturally leads for a call to repentance and obedience to the Christian and a proclamation of the Gospel to the unregenerate.  But why the discomfort?

That works have no part in our justification is a doctrine clearly taught in the Scriptures (Ephesians 2, etc.).  This truth was obscured by a hegemony in the church that valued tradition and non-biblical authority more than the Bible itself.  It took a Reformation to give an unfiltered gospel to the masses.  Reformed Christians today continue in the Reformation tradition, but perhaps we have become something of an overprotective mother when it comes to justification and works.

How so?  Raise your hand if the mere mention of works made your doctrine alarms go off sending you into full apologist mode, scanning to see if I’m about to get all Pelagius up in this blog.  Go ahead.  I can see you through your webcam.

And that response is what I’m talking about.  I’m thinking that we’ve become so careful to guard against the ever popular heresy of salvation (full or part) via works that we get all itchy whenever works are brought up.  ESPECIALLY when works are brought up in conjunction with a call to, you know, actually do them.

As a result of this, we are constantly having to put caveats in our speech whenever we discuss works.  Just like the good Calvinist knows to say “providence” and never “luck” so the good Reformed believer knows never to mention good works without adding “Not that [works] will provide you with salvation.” — Not that there’s anything wrong with that!  I’m a Presbyterian, so naturally I’m fond of precision.  But too many caveats sometimes lead us to bend our thinking away from Biblical doctrine and into a warped theology that allows us to declare “We are not saved by works.  Therefore, I don’t need ‘em!”

A few weeks ago I tweeted that I see far more Christians struggle with antinomianism (armchair definition: Faith in Christ makes the moral law irrelevant. Sin and be free, faith will bail you out).  Several folks replied that they were shocked that such was the case, having grown up in churches where salvation was offered for those who ne’r took a sip of beer.  They wondered where I was going to church.  While a legalistic attitude (if not legalism) is common among certain groups — I think w\ us Reformed peeps it can be just the opposite.  We get that we’re not saved by what we do.  It’s a part of our heritage.  Salvation by Grace alone through Faith alone is the gigantic belt buckle of the Reformed cowboy.   In some cases the buckle is getting too big for the britches, and we overreact when someone points out that you still need to wear chaps when you’re riding the trail.

//end cowboy illustrations

Anyone seeing this, or am I making things up again?  If you have noticed it, how do you deal with it?

By this point in our look at the first chapter of Benjamin B. Warfield’s The Plan of Salvation we’ve seen the biblical pattern of salvation narrowed to a Theistic, Supernatural, Evangelical course.  Warfield now sub-divides that group by identifying where a reliance of a naturalistic or man-centered approach can still be found (no matter how slight).  He begins by examining two groups who while ostensibly Supernatural and Evangelical, still give room to some form of naturalism or sacerdotalism.  First up are the Lutheran Evangelicals, adherents of a “conservative Reformation”. While this group has separated itself from Rome, there can still be found an underlying sacerdotalism, whether it be found in the form of baptismal regeneration or consubstantiation. The other group involved are those pesky Dutch Remonstrants and their semi-pelagianism: the evangelical Arminians. Sacerdotalism isn’t the problem, but a naturalistic man-centered basis for salvation can still be found. The true Reformed and biblical plan for salvation should be uncolored by any influence of of either of these things.

Warfield suggests that the principle classification would should be looking for among evangelicals is not so much the influence of sacerdotalism or naturalism but rather how God exerts his saving power on men:

“The point of division here is whether God is conceived to have planned actually himself to save men by his almighty and certainly efficacious grace, or only so to pour out his grace upon men as to enable them to be saved, without actually securing, however in any particular cases that they shall be saved.”

So the Arminian will say that God has universally made salvation possible to every man. This salvation is from God alone, but there is still a responsibility in man to get all Captain Picard and say “Make it so.”  The problem with this universalist line of thinking is evident.  If as the supernaturalist says, God alone saves the souls of men, and not man, and God alone works his saving grace directly on the soul, a evangelicals hold, then it follows that a God who universally does this to all men should see all men saved.  Unitarians would say here, Amen. Arminians would say, “uh… well, not exactly” and point out man’s responsibility.  But by doing so appeal to naturalism in a professed supernatural system.

“The precise issue which divides the universalists and the particularists is,  accordingly, just whether the saving grace of God, in which alone is salvation, actually saves. Does its presence mean salvation, or may it be present, and yet salvation fail?”

The consistent view in the Theistic supernatural evangelical course is that of the particularist, held by the apostles, Augustine, and the Reformed church at large.  God deals with men on an individual basis and saves them by his grace through an immediate regeneration.  God’s salvation is applied by God and is immediate and sure – not merely allowing for the possibility of salvation. The particularist alone is able to proclaim Soli Deo gloria and remain consistent within his course of thought.

Monday: A break from Warfield in favor of Mr. T’s continuing commentary on the Westminster Shorter Catechism.

Tuesday: Back w\ the end of chapter 1 – A three-way battle royal between Supralapsarians, Infralapsarians, and Amyraldians!

As finals approach for Seminary I’ve been brushing up & re-reading some books that we’ll be discussing or that I have to make presentations on. One such book is B.B. Warfield’s The Plan of Salvation. In it Warfield lays out (you guessed it) God’s plan for the salvation of Man. The opening chapter, which was the introduction to a series of lectures Warfield gave which became the book lays down the paths towards salvation.

He begins by examining Deism and Theism. Often time Deists will appeal to a perceived freedom from God (who no longer has any direct involvement in the world which He created). Warfield shows these people to be slaves to law through an Ackbar-esque proclamation that Deism is a trap. If we are bound by the laws that God put in place at creation with no hope of divine intervention, there is no hope, or no plan for salvation. Things simply move on. Warfield dismisses this view as dumb and moves onto theism, skilfully halving the views of theists on salvation as he goes along.

There are fundamentally only two doctrines of salvation: that salvation is from God, and that salvation is from ourselves.

Can’t wait to wade further in through the rest of the week!