Staff Review: Covenant and Salvation: Union with Christ
Author: Michael Horton
Publisher: Presbyterian
ISBN: 9780664231637
Paperback, 324 pages
As the third volume of Horton’s series on covenant theology, this volume is perhaps of special interest because it is most clearly focused on issues surrounding soteriology – issues such as law and gospel, imputation, justification, union with Christ, ordo solutis, etc. Consistent with the rest of the series, Horton seeks to develop the implications of a classic Reformed understanding of covenant with reference to these issues and in conversation with various modern streams of thought. I found this format engaging and educational, and appreciated many of his insights, especially in regard to imputation, law and gospel, and glorification. However, I thought his presentation of union with Christ and justification could have been nuanced further so as to do justice to its use in Calvin and Reformed theology.
Horton’s thesis in this regard is that “justification is exclusively juridical, yet it is the forensic origin of our union with Christ, from which all of our covenantal blessings flow.” (139) What is perplexing in this is not the forensic nature of justification but his insistence that justification is the ground of union with Christ rather than union with Christ being the ground of both the forensic and renovative benefits of salvation. The motivation for this insistence is laudable – to keep justification from being grounded in any way in ontological or moral changes in us. Horton seems to identify the concept of “union with Christ” solely with these renovative, progressive aspects of our salvation, and thus denies that it can be logically prior to forensic justification.
That way of speaking of “union with Christ” is surely current in some circles both now and in the past. But it does not seem necessary or accurate to understand the Reformed use of “union with Christ” in solely renovative terms. In fact, I would suggest, to do so is to miss the particular genius of Calvin’s logic concerning the distinction and inseparability of the forensic and renovative benefits of salvation. Calvin, typically, in answering the charge that a purely forensic justification would make the real renovation of life unnecessary, explained the necessity of both because of their inseparability in the person of Christ, to whom we are united by faith. The logic is this: Do you have justification? It is only because you are united to Christ by faith — and if you are united to Christ, you have sanctification too, for both are in Christ and Christ can not be torn apart. Some of the quotes Horton cites are themselves clear statements of this line of thought. For instance, he quotes Calvin:
Although we may distinguish them [justification and sanctification], Christ contains both of them inseparably in himself. Do you wish, then, to attain righteousness in Christ? You must first possess Christ; but you cannot possess him without being made partaker in his sanctification, because he cannot be divided into pieces [1 Cor. 1:13]. Since, therefore, it is solely by expending himself that the Lord gives us these benefits to enjoy, he bestows both of them at the same time, the one never without the other. Thus it is clear how true it is that we are justified not without works yet not through works, since in our sharing in Christ, which justifies us, sanctification is just as much included as righteousness. (Insitutes, 3.16.1)
Horton’s conclusion on the basis of this quote is, “Calvin recognizes here that justification need not be confused with sanctification by means of an all-encompassing ontology of union in order to recognize the inseparability of both legal (forensic) and organic (effective) aspects of that union” (emphasis his). Now, it may be true that Calvin would object to an ontological concept of union with Christ, but the problem would not be that it is “all-encompassing” of “legal” and “organic” aspects of salvation. In fact, the very key to his logic here is the logical subordinance of both justification and sanctification to union with Christ.
Calvin would not say, as Horton does, that “Forensic justification through faith alone is the fountain of union with Christ in all of its renewing benefits.” (143) The issue is not whether he would recognize an experiential progression from justification to newness of life – he would typically use this experiential progression in arguing specifically for the purely forensic nature of justification. His argument in this regard would be that by the nature of good works themselves, not as mere outward actions but as expressions of perfect love and fear of God, it is clear that they are impossible as long as we relate to God in doubt of his free forgiveness and acceptance. Any mixing of non-forensic elements into our justification before God makes it impossible for us to be assured of his love and acceptance and therefore impossible to perfectly love and fear him. And so the experiential necessity of forensic justification for sanctification is used to argue for a clear distinction of the forensic from any renovative element. However, when Calvin speaks of the idea of union with Christ in connection with justification and sanctification, he does not use it to refer to the renovative side only, but as an umbrella concept that contains both; he uses the idea of union with Christ to argue specifically for the inseparability of those elements. But if we conflate these two lines of argument, so that “union with Christ” becomes identified with the renovative aspect of salvation and is therefore seen as itself a consequence of justification, we may be expressing what Vos describes as the Lutheran, in contrast to the covenantal, outlook:
According to the Lutheran, the Holy Spirit first generates faith in the sinner who temporarily still remains outside of union with Christ; then justification follows faith and only then, in turn, does the mystical union with the Mediator take place. Everything depends on this justification, which is losable, so that the believer only gets to see a little of the glory of grace and lives for the day, so to speak. The covenantal outlook is the reverse. One is first united to Christ, the Mediator of the covenant, by a mystical union, which finds its conscious recognition in faith. By this union with Christ all that is in Christ is simultaneously given. (Richard B. Gaffin Jr., ed., Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation, (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R, 1980), 256.)
But, in agreement with some of Horton’s concern, should we not be wary that talk of “union with Christ” will invoke the idea that it is ontological change in us, being made “like Christ,” that is the basis of our justification? In this respect it is important to note that Calvin, in his dispute with Osiander, sought to refute that very idea. However, he did not do so by separating justification from union with Christ, but by correcting Osiander’s erroneous conception of the nature of the union. Calvin writes of Osiander, “He says that we are one with Christ. We agree. But we deny that Christ’s essence is mixed with our own” (Institutes, 3.11.5). In Calvin’s use of “union with Christ,” the locus of righteousness, and all other benefits, is to be thought of as Christ, not us. We are made partakers of it by our being joined to him, or even his indwelling of us, but in such a way that “Christ, having been made ours, makes us sharers with him in the gifts with which he has been endowed” (Institutes, 3.11.10). We are truly joined to him, but in such a way that he remains the repository of the totality of salvation. Because the Spirit is said to join us to Christ by faith, Osiander misunderstands and accuses Calvin of teaching that faith itself is righteousness. Calvin responds to the effect that, on the contrary, that the Spirit joins us to Christ by faith only points up the fact that we have nothing in ourselves but must be brought “empty” to Christ:
Thus is Osiander’s slander refuted, that by us faith is reckoned righteousness. As if we were to deprive Christ of his right when we say that by faith we come empty to him to make room for his grace in order that he alone may fill us! But Osiander, by spurning this spiritual bond, forces a gross mingling of Christ with believers. And for this reason, he maliciously calls “Zwinglian” all those who do not subscribe to his mad error of “essential righteousness” because they do not hold the view that Christ is eaten in substance in the Lord’s Supper. (Institutes, 3.11.10)
Further, Calvin’s implicating of Osiander in the eucharistic controversy suggests a helpful parallel. For, Calvin thinks of our union with Christ in the Lord’s Supper in the very same terms. As opposed to the idea that the real presence of Christ brought down and infused into us in the Supper, Calvin would instead describe our being brought up to him by faith through the Spirit. The point is that Calvin carefully defines his use of the idea of union with Christ so as never to make merit inhere in us, but always in Christ. This is, as far as I can tell, consistent with Horton’s main concern. - Jim Weidenaar, Westminster Bookstore Staff
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After just reading Gaffin’s “little” 110 page book on the ordo salutis, I would NOT have bought this Horton book (even while I appreciate and own many of his others) had it not been for this thorough and clear review. Thank you!
There’s been a pretty good(and lengthy) discussion on this over on the Thomas Goodwin site:
http://thomasgoodwin.wordpress.com/2007/10/11/gaffin-on-union-with-christ/#comments