Calvin and the Federal Vision

Calvin's Covenant Theology in Light of Contemporary Discussion

Jeon

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9781498274821
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

John Calvin (1509-64) was the pinnacle of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation in Europe. As we celebrate the five hundred-year anniversary of his birth, it is worthy to explore Calvin's covenant theology, which may be one of the best windows to understand and evaluate his theology as a whole. In recent years, the Federal Vision has been surfaced in the American conservative Reformed and evangelical circles. It has strong hermeneutical, theological, and practical attachment with Calvin. Although Calvin was a covenant theologian, he firmly maintained the evangelical distinction between law and gospel, especially in his exposition of justification by faith alone (sola fide) and salvation by grace alone (sola gratia) with a balanced emphasis of believers' covenantal obedience. Moreover, we will find out that Calvin not only applied the distinction between law and gospel to soteriology but also in the depiction of redemptive history. In Calvin, the distinction between law and gospel was foundational for the depiction of biblical vision of eschatology in the Garden of Eden before the Fall and under the Old Covenant. However, the exponents of the Federal Vision deny any validity of the distinction between law and gospel in hermeneutics, theology, and practice while they identify themselves with those of Calvin. In that sense, we may identify the Federal Vision not with the Protestant Reformation and Calvin but as consistent monocovenantalism in which they deny the distinction between law and gospel and apply that monocovenantal principle consistently to their understandings of hermeneutics, soteriology, the doctrine of double predestination, and sacramental theology.

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Covenant and Justification by Faith

By exploring Calvin’s theology, I will demonstrate that Calvin made a concrete balance between the concept of covenantal obedience and justification by faith alone (sola fide). He was careful to state that believers’ covenantal obedience has a definite role, not in the doctrine of justification, but in the process of sanctification while he embraced all the soteriological blessings within the category of the union with Christ (unio cum Christo). Calvin’s genius lies in the fact that he applied the law and gospel distinction in his understanding of justification by faith alone. In that sense, the distinction between law and gospel is a concrete hermeneutical and theological background in Calvin’s hermeneutics and theology.

However, the Federal Visionists deny applying the law and gospel distinction in their interpretation of justification by faith alone (sola fide), although they unanimously appear to affirm the Reformation principle of the sola gratia and sola fide. In doing so, they identify their new theology and monocovenantalism with Calvin and the Westminster Standards, though their theology is far from a fair representation of these views.1

The Law/Gospel Contrast and Justification by Faith

In contemporary discussion about Calvin’s soteriology and the doctrine of justification by faith, there has been a general tendency to ignore, bypass, and reject the law and gospel antithesis. In general, scholars have a tendency to focus on the union with Christ in their discussion on Calvin’s view on salvation and the doctrine of justification by faith. This exclusive emphasis on the union with Christ without referring to the law and gospel distinction has opened a floodgate of theological confusion in the exposition of Calvin’s doctrine of soteriology and justification by faith.2

Rich Lusk, an exponent of the Federal Vision, falsely argues that Calvin just paid “mere lip service to Luther’s law and gospel antithesis”:

Calvin paid lip service to Luther’s law/gospel antithesis, but it never became a controlling feature of his theology (and certainly not of his exegesis) as it was for Luther. In fact, Calvin took a much more positive view of the law’s role in redemptive history. According to Calvin the law does indeed show up sin, but that is accidental to its real purpose, which is to serve as a moral guide.

The law/gospel antithesis simply doesn’t work as a hermeneutic for a number of reasons. We will focus on two, first showing that law and gospel actually perform the same (rather than contradictory) functions, and then showing that they are simply two phases in the same redemptive program.3

However, my thesis is that we cannot discuss and exposit Calvin’s soteriology and his doctrine of justification by faith without referring to the law and gospel antithesis, on the one hand, and union with Christ, on the other. Calvin used the law and gospel antithesis to exposit Pauline soteriology, especially salvation by grace alone (sola gratia) and justification by faith alone (sola fide). And at the same time, he used the concept of the mystical or spiritual union with Christ to put together all the soteriological blessings, including justification and sanctification.

From the perspective of Reformation theology, the central problem of the New Perspective on Paul is the denial of the distinction between law and gospel. Critically endorsing monocovenantalism of the New Perspective on Paul, Lusk falsely argues that the New Perspectivists never deny Luther’s and Calvin’s “sola gratia and sola fide”:

To the extent that Reformed Protestantism has individualized the message of salvation, and to the extent that N.T. Wright, J.D.G. Dunn, and others call us back to a corporate view of salvation, it does indeed look like a ‘different gospel’ is being proclaimed. But these ‘different gospels’ are not really at odds, any more than eggs and omelets are at odds (to steal another of Wilson’s illustrations). Wright’s view gives the gospel a broader sweep (since he makes it clear the corporate includes the individual), but compared to our truncated version of the gospel it looks really different. The problem is our myopia. We’ve looked at the gospel from about two inches away for four centuries, and our long-distance vision is dysfunctional. Wright and others, meanwhile, are asking us to look at the gospel from 30,000 feet up. Or, to use an alternative illustration that Peter Leithart has used in his Eucharistic studies, we have gotten used to looking at the gospel through a narrow zoom lens; the ‘New Perspective’ gives us the wide angle view. Sure, it looks different, but that’s to be expected. The ‘New Perspective’ never denies that Paul actually taught what Luther and Calvin claimed-namely, sola gratia and sola fide.4

Certainly, Calvin’s sola gratia and sola fide are also mere lip service if Calvin made “mere lip service to Luther’s law/gospel antithesis,” as Lusk claims. In fact, Calvin’s sola gratia and sola fide are deeply rooted in the Pauline antithesis between law and gospel. In short, there is no sola gratia and sola fide if there is no antithesis between law and gospel in Calvin’s theology.

Calvin’s careful analysis of the doctrine of justification by faith alone demonstrates his application of the hermeneutical principle of the antithesis between law and gospel. Luther’s struggle to discover the Gospel finally concluded when he used this important hermeneutical tool, the antithesis between law and gospel. In his treatise, ‘Sermon on the Twofold Righteousness,’ on April 13, 1519, Luther articulated justification by faith alone, stating that “alien righteousness” (iustitia aliena) excludes the moralistic and ethical concepts of justification for “through faith in Christ,” the righteousness of Christ which is “infinite righteousness” becomes “our righteousness.”5 Calvin used and applied this motif throughout his theological system. Calvin, in his final edition of Institutes of the Christian Religion of 1559 and in his commentaries, clearly expounded justification by faith alone, employing the law and gospel hermeneutical principle that Luther developed and applied.

Man is justified by faith, Calvin pointed out, excluding “the righteousness of works.” Man embraces “the righteousness of Christ through faith, and clothed in it, appears in God’s sight not as a sinner but as a righteous man. Therefore, justification is the acceptance by which God receives us into his favor as righteous men. It consists in the remission of sins and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness.”6 Contrary to this, the medieval Sophists held that man is justified by fide et operibus, by “both faith and works.” Their major theological problem, according to Calvin, was a failure to admit a radical antithesis between the principle of law and gospel, elaborated by Paul in Romans 10:5–9 and Galatians 3:11–12:

Still they do not observe that in the contrast between the righteousness of the law and of the gospel, which Paul elsewhere introduces, all works are excluded, whatever title may grace them [Gal. 3:11–12]. For he teaches that this is the righteousness of the law, that he who has fulfilled what the law commands should obtain salvation; but this is the righteousness of faith, to believe that Christ died and rose again [Rom. 10:5, 9].7

To be sure, Calvin applied the Pauline antithesis between law and gospel as an absolutely essential hermeneutical and theological background for the doctrine of justification by faith alone in Jesus Christ who died and rose again in his exposition of Galatians 3:11–12 and Romans 10:5–9. The distinction between law and gospel (Legis et Evangelii discrimen) excludes all concepts of works in Calvin’s doctrine of justification by faith alone, for faith embraces the righteousness of God. Calvin emphatically explained how Paul clearly analyzes this in his Epistles:

For faith is said to justify because it receives and embraces the righteousness offered in the gospel. Moreover, because righteousness is said to be offered through the gospel. For in comparing the law and the gospel in the letter to the Romans he says: “the righteousness that is of the law” is such that “the man who practices these things will live by them” [Rom. 10:5]. But the “righteousness that is of faith” [Rom. 10:6] announces salvation “if you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and that the Father raised him from the dead” [Rom. 10:9 p.]. Do you see how he makes this the distinction between law and gospel: that the former attributes righteousness to works, the latter bestows free righteousness apart from the help of works [Emphasis added]? This is an important passage, and one that can extricate us from many difficulties if we understand that that righteousness which is given us through the gospel has been freed of all conditions of the law. Here is the reason why he so often opposes the promise to the law, as things mutually contradictory: “If the inheritance is by the law, it is no longer by promise” [Gal. 3:18]; and passages in the same chapter that express this idea. Now, to be sure, the law itself has its own promises. Therefore, in the promises of the gospel there must be something distinct and different unless we would admit that the comparison is inept. But what sort of difference will this be, other than that the gospel promises are free and dependent solely upon God’s mercy, while the promises of the law depend upon the condition of works?8

Likewise, Calvin interpreted Romans 10:5–9 in light of the antithesis between law and gospel. Moreover, he emphasized that Romans 10:5–9 is “an important passage” to make a distinction between “law righteousness” and “faith righteousness,” which is the concrete biblical and hermeneutical background of justification by faith alone (sola fide). Thus, the antithesis between law and gospel is a biblical theological reference point upon which Calvin drew justification by faith alone, excluding human merit and obedience in this arena. This point is contrasted with the background of the medieval Schoolmen’s concept of meritorious salvation, which was embraced in meritum de congruo et meritum de condigno.

After Calvin discussed Romans 10:5–9 as “an important passage” to denote the antithesis between law and gospel, he began to pay close attention to another important Pauline passage to discuss the same subject matter, namely Galatians 3:11–12. Commenting on Galatians 3:11–12, Calvin separated the two opposing principles of works and faith. It is important to grasp Calvin’s emphasis that “law righteousness” is distinguished from “faith righteousness” in light of the antithesis between law and gospel:

The second passage is this: ‘It is evident that no man is justified before God by the law. For the righteous shall live by faith [cf. Hab. 2:4]. But the law is not of faith; rather, the man who does these things shall live in them’ [Gal 3:11–12, Comm., cf. Vg.]. How would this argument be maintained otherwise than by agreeing that works do not enter the account of faith but must be utterly separated. The law, he says, is different from faith. Why? Because works are required for law righteousness. Therefore it follows that they are not required for faith righteousness. From this relation it is clear that those who are justified by faith are justified apart from the merit of works—in fact, without the merit of works. For faith receives that r...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Covenant and Justification by Faith
• Chapter 2: Covenant and Redemptive History
• Chapter 3: Covenant and Election
• Chapter 4: Covenant and Baptism
• Chapter 5: Covenant and Eucharist
• Conclusion
• Bibliography