Justification, Volume 2

Michael Horton, Michael Allen, Scott R. Swain

• Publisher: Zondervan Academic
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780310578390
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

The second of a two-volume project delving into the doctrine of justification. Michael Horton seeks not simply to recover a clear message of its role in modern Reformed theology, but also to bring a fresh discovery of the gospel in a time when contemporary debates around justification have reignited.

The doctrine of justification stands at the center of our systematic reflection on the meaning of salvation and grace as well as our piety, mission, and life together. And yet, within mainline Protestant and evangelical theology, it's often taken for granted or left to gather dust in favor of modern concerns and self-renewal.

Volume 2 embarks on the theologically constructive task of investigating the biblical doctrine of justification in light of contemporary exegesis. Taking up the topic from a variety of theological vantage points, Horton engages with contemporary debates in biblical, especially Pauline, scholarship.

• Part 1 draws out The Horizon of Justification from the Old Testament narratives of Adam and Israel.
• Part 2 defines The Achievement of Justification in the blood of Christ and seeks to lay the groundwork for understanding its extent.
• Part 3 focuses on The Gift of Righteousness, delving into a clear articulation of what justification means, its mechanism, and the role of works on the day of judgement.
• Part 4 proposes a way forward for Receiving Justification and understanding faith and justification within the broader framework of union with Christ.

Engaging and thorough, Justification shows that the doctrine of justification finds its most ecumenically significant starting point and proper habitat in unity with Christ, where the greatest consensus, past and present, is to be found among Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant theologies.

PART 1

THE HORIZON OF JUSTIFICATION

CHAPTER 1

ADAM AND ISRAEL

The church has always struggled to avoid, on the one hand, a Marcionite temptation to pit the God of redemption and grace against the God of creation and law and, on the other hand, a tendency to assimilate the gospel to the law. Church fathers like Irenaeus, Chrysostom, and Augustine refer explicitly to the covenant with Adam and the Sinai covenant as law-covenants distinguished from the covenant of grace.¹

Similarly, elaborating the law-gospel distinction, the Reformed tradition developed a covenant theology that distinguished between the conditional covenants sworn by the people (Adam and Israel) and the unconditional oath sworn by God (the protoeuangelion of Genesis 3:15 and the Abrahamic, Davidic, and new covenants). The mediatorial work of Christ is construed in this light: Jesus is the Last Adam, who by his active obedience fulfilled the covenant and won for his coheirs the right to eat from the Tree of Life. Thus the Sinai covenant was the script for a geopolitical and typological theocracy analogous to Hamlet’s play-within-a-play, recapitulating Adam’s original vocation. And “like Adam, they broke the covenant” (Hos 6:7). Nevertheless, the evangelical promise remained all along the basis for redemption from the curse of sin and death.

This narrative is not only exegetically demonstrable but also provides the best doctrinal coordinates for atonement and justification. The law at the heart of creation was not circumvented but satisfied by the self-offering of the incarnate Son. I make this case by attending, first, to the relation of Israel to Adam and, second, to the relationship of Sinai to Zion. There has been a happy renaissance of interest in the Bible’s covenant theology over the last half-century, but questions hinge on the type of covenant theology we find there.

But first, allow me to sketch an outline and genealogy of monocovenantalism—that is, the widespread tendency to reduce diverse covenants to a single type. No less than in modern dogmatics has biblical scholarship been given to a priori dogmas driving exegesis. Just as the biblical phrase “the righteousness of God” has come to be construed even lexically as a purely positive concept (e.g., deliverance, deliverdict, rectification, etc.),² there is an a priori assumption among many biblical scholars and theologians that “covenant” is an inherently gracious concept.³

At one end of this spectrum is the tendency to assimilate the gospel to the law. The one relationship with God is considered basically nomistic but modified in a gracious direction by being covenantal.⁴ E. P. Sanders insists that the one covenant is gracious because all along Israel “gets in” by grace; God even provides all sorts of ways for them to “stay in” by grace-assisted obedience. Sanders’s own citations (e.g., of election conditioned on foreseen merits) call into question even this gracious “getting in.”⁵ In any case, Sanders recognizes that Paul does not agree with this position, but instead of seeing Paul as carrying forward the longing for a new and better covenant in the Hebrew prophets themselves, he treats the apostle as an innovator: “Paul in fact explicitly denies that the Jewish covenant can be effective for salvation, thus consciously denying the basis of Judaism. Circumcision without complete obedience is worthless or worse (Rom. 2.25–3.2; Gal. 3.10).”⁶ Sanders concludes, “Paul’s view could hardly be maintained, and it was not maintained. Christianity rapidly became a new covenantal nomism, but Paulinism is not thereby proved inferior or superior.”⁷

James Dunn demurs from Sanders’s stark contrast, focusing on a more restricted scope for Paul’s polemic: the ethnic exclusion of gentiles from the covenant community.⁸ In fact, from Sanders’s description of Second Temple Judaism, Dunn goes as far as to conclude (beyond Sanders himself) that “ ‘covenantal nomism’ can now be seen to preach good Protestant doctrine: that grace is always prior; that human effort is ever the response to divine initiative; that good works are the fruit and not the root of salvation.”⁹ Similarly, Walter Brueggemann: “Thus I suggest that E. P. Sanders’s term covenantal nomism is about right, because it subsumes law (nomos) under the rubric of covenant. . . . By inference, I suggest that grace must also be subsumed under covenant.”¹⁰ N. T. Wright notes in Climax of the Covenant, “The overall title reflects my growing conviction that covenant theology is one of the main clues, usually neglected, for understanding Paul,”¹¹ and since writing that, he has developed this motif with profound insight. Nevertheless, especially in his recent study of the atonement (The Day the Revolution Began), he also sees the various biblical covenants as the outworking of an original “covenant of vocation” given to Adam and Eve—a commission to rule and subdue, bringing reality under the lordship of Yahweh.¹²

At the other end of the monocovenantal spectrum is the biblical-theological program rooted in Karl Barth and carried forward by Ernst Käsemann, J. Louis Martyn, Richard Hays, and Douglas Campbell. Here, the law is assimilated to the gospel. There is one covenant of grace that is synonymous with the eternal election of Christ and, with him, all of humanity. There can never be a reciprocal relationship with God, Barth insists.¹³ Appealing to Barth (CD IV/1, 57), Campbell insists that “God’s relationship with humanity is fundamentally unconditional and benevolent. In more biblical parlance, it is covenantal. In theological or dogmatic terms, it is elective, in the sense especially that Barth recovered so insightfully.”¹⁴ Thus, “covenantal” equals “unconditionally gracious,” because of universal election. Accordingly, “God does not conditionally act toward humanity at all.”¹⁵ Thus, the traditional Reformed distinction between a covenant of law (or works) and a covenant of grace represents a “contractual” system, he insists.¹⁶ Campbell insists therefore that Sanders’s “covenantal nomism” is just as dangerous as “legalism.”¹⁷ “No strings attached” is probably not the first impression that Deuteronomy 28 has on a casual reader. However, like Picasso’s retort to critics who said that his portrait of Gertrude Stein did not bear her likeness, the monocovenantalist replies, “No matter, she will.”

THE COVENANT OF CREATION

In order to demonstrate the distinctive character of the original covenant, I begin by highlighting its elements. It was (a) based on law (with the act-consequence connection), (b) federal or representative of all humanity “in Adam,” (c) with the reward of confirmation in everlasting life, immortality, and righteousness.

According to the founding narrative of the Hebrew scriptures, humanity—represented by Adam—came into being as an image-son of the Creator Yahweh, an image that he shared with his partner, Eve.¹⁸ The Westminster Confession summarizes succinctly, “The first covenant made with man was a covenant of works, wherein life was promised to Adam; and in him to his posterity, upon condition of perfect and personal obedience.”¹⁹ Reformed theologians have also designated this the covenant of creation, of law and of life.

Although the word

(berith) never appears in Genesis 1–3, it is hard to think that Israel could have even imagined a relationship with God on the part of a creature that was not covenantal. Walther Eichrodt observes, “Even where the covenant is not explicitly mentioned the spiritual premises of a covenant relationship with God are manifestly present.”²⁰ In addition to a preamble and historical prologue identifying the suzerain and his just claim, the text features a stipulation with a sanction: everlasting life for obedience and death for disobedience, as well as the sacramental tree of life standing as a reward for faithful fulfillment of the divine commission.²¹

First, the basis of this covenant was law rather than grace. Given the integrity of human nature as created by God, it is not surprising that grace and mercy do not enter the picture until the promise in Genesis 3:15. Assuming that law is the opposite of love, our modern culture finds it difficult to comprehend the integral relationship of law and love in ancient Near Eastern societies. In the Bible, God’s moral law merely stipulates what love looks like in concrete relationships. The suzerain is represented as a shepherd, father, guardian, and benefactor of the people. Nevertheless, the relationship is conditional, with the vassal swearing fealty and assuming the responsibility for carrying out the covenant’s sanctions upon the penalty of death for treason against the suzerain’s love, wealth, and protection. The conviction that law merely stipulates the concrete rule of love is stated explicitly in Deuteronomy 6:5 (cf. 10:12) and of course by Jesus in his famous summary of the law (Matt 22:38; cf. 1 John 4:21). As Max Stackhouse has observed, “The sociotheological idea of covenant is so rich with ethical content that it gives moral meaning to all it touches.”²² If the fall had never occurred, the relation of humanity to God, to each other, and to their fellow creatures would have been a symphony of love with each member playing his or her role in the orchestra.

The name given in biblical scholarship to this original constitution is the act-consequence connection.²³ While the gospel is a surprising and foreign announcement, this law of creation is so woven into the human consciousness that no concept is more universally recognized in the world’s wisdom literatures.²⁴ It is the law of reaping what you sow, the Stoic idea of going with the grain of nature, of karma and samsara, getting back what you dish out. This principle dominates Israel’s horizon, provoking some of the most fascinating theodicy literature in the Hebrew Bible, such as Asaph’s wrestling with the prosperity of the wicked in Psalm 73 and the book of Job. The disciples assumed the principle when they asked Jesus whether a man was blind from birth because of his sin or that of his parents (John 9:2–3). Not all sickness, disease and natural disasters were signs of God’s displeasure, but God sent them episodically (and restricted to certain people, places, and things) as a foretaste of the waste that would come upon the nation as a whole if God judged the covenant to be thoroughly violated. It was through this prism of the act-consequence connection at the heart of the Sinai pact that Israel interpreted the story of Adam.

Second, the Scriptures represent this original coven...