Of the three controversies surveyed briefly in this chapter, perhaps none of them better illustrates the diminished influence of the Reformed confession, and the rise of the QIRC in the conservative Reformed churches, than the thirty-year struggle over the doctrine of justification. The history and nature of this controversy have been discussed in detail elsewhere, and those discussions need not be repeated here.²¹⁰ What is most significant for the purposes of this essay is that the controversy exists at all, because there is no single doctrine in the history, theology, and confessions of the Reformed churches since the sixteenth century on which there has been more unanimity of thought and expression. The fact that there have been a controversy involving the dismissal of one faculty member from a major Reformed seminary, several official ecclesiastical committees, reports, and actions, and numerous books and articles is best explained as evidence that the Reformed confession no longer functions as the norm of theology, piety, and practice in conservative Reformed churches. What has taken its place is the QIRC.

Consider briefly the teaching of the Reformed confessions on the doctrine of justification. In BC 22, we confess that faith is something that is kindled in the hearts of the elect, that it “embraces Jesus Christ with all his merits, appropriates him, and seeks nothing more besides him.” The confession continues by teaching that “either . . . all things which are requisite to our salvation are not in Jesus Christ, or if all things are in Him, then those who possess Jesus Christ through faith have complete salvation in Him.” Either Christ is a complete Savior or he is not. On this basis we confess, according to the BC, that we are justified by faith alone (sola fide) “by faith apart from works.” Furthermore, our confession is crystal clear that when we confess that we are justified through faith alone we mean to say that faith is “only an instrument with which we embrace Christ our righteousness.” In other words, there is nothing intrinsic to the act of faith itself that makes it any part of the ground of justification. Rather, the ground of our justification, according to the BC, is Jesus Christ. “Imputing to us all His merits, and so many holy works which He has done for us and in our stead, [He] is our righteousness.” In article 23 the confession clarifies that faith in the active obedience is only “relying and resting upon the obedience of Christ crucified alone, which becomes ours when we believe in Him.” In case, however, someone might seek to find a way to redefine the Reformed definition of faith in the act of justification, article 24 asserts that, as important as Spirit-wrought sanctity (good works) is as a fruit and evidence of our justification, they play no role whatsoever as part of the ground or instrument of justification because “it is by faith in Christ that we are justified, even before we do good works.

This doctrine of justification was articulated in stark contrast to that which was propounded at the Council of Trent in 1547. At Trent, Rome declared that our cooperation is necessary toward eventual justification, that justification is a process and not a punctiliar, definitive divine declaration. Trent denied explicitly that faith, in justification, is only confidence in the divine mercy. According to Trent, under the “new law,” the law can be kept by grace and cooperation with grace unto final justification. The council explicitly condemned the Protestant doctrine of justification of sinners on the basis of the imputation of Christ’s alien righteousness.

If, as it has seemed to the Reformed for more than four hundred years, there is a stark difference between the Roman and Protestant doctrines of justification, and if the Reformed confession is completely clear about what we believe about justification, then there must be other reasons why this controversy exists. The first and most obvious explanation is ignorance. Too many Reformed people, even ministers and elders, are not sufficiently familiar with the basics of the Reformed doctrine of justification, its background, and its intent. Second, and more seriously, this crisis is the fruit of a sincere but misguided desire to produce sanctity among God’s people. The method of the revisionists, however, is essentially that of the Romanists and the Remonstrants. In the confessional scheme, sanctity is the logically necessary result of justification. The paradox of the Protestant view is that sanctity, the goal, is not achieved by aiming at it directly, at least not when justification is in view. It was for this reason that, in his 1548 lecture on Galatians 5:6, Calvin said, “When you are engaged in discussing the question of justification, beware of allowing any mention to be made of love or of works, but resolutely adhere to the exclusive particle.”²¹¹

The “works” to which Calvin referred are condign merit, that is, Spirit-wrought sanctity that meets the terms of divine justice and congruent merit which God, according to medieval theologians, graciously imputes to our best efforts. The “love” to which Calvin referred is the Roman definition of faith in justification as “faith formed by love” (fides formata caritate), that is, the reality of sanctification in the life of the believer. In place of “love” and our merit in justification, Calvin pointed readers to Christ’s merit for believers, the benefit of which is received through faith alone. It is the qualifier alone to which Calvin referred when he spoke of the “exclusive particle.” In other words, Calvin said, in effect, “do not cave into the Roman pressure to add sanctity to the instrument of justification but hold on to sola fide.

According to Luther (and Calvin after him) the temptation to add human cooperation with grace, in justification, is best described as the “theology of glory” (theologia gloriae) in contrast to the “theology of the cross” (theologia crucis).²¹² By this contrast Luther was warning against the confusion of the divine and the human. Christian theology is a theology of the cross. It does not seek to know God apart from his revelation in Christ. In the doctrine of justification, it does not seek to stand before God apart from the imputed righteousness of Christ. Conflation of theology as we know it with the way God knows, the theology of glory, is a form of rationalism because it diminishes the scandal of the cross and of the gospel: the justification of sinners.²¹³

It was this very impulse that caused the Council of Trent, Session 6, to declare that the righteousness with which we are infused, and which increases in believers, is “preserved and also increased before God through good works” (canon 24) and that such righteousness (iustitia) is not “merely fruits of and signs of justification obtained.”²¹⁴ In effect, Rome came to agree with Paul’s critics in Romans 6:1, “Shall we sin that grace may abound?” The rationalist-moralist answer has always been to preclude anyone from thinking that it might be possible to “sin that grace may abound” by making it very clear that God justifies only good people, but any such doctrine cannot be squared with Paul’s unequivocal declaration in Romans 4:5 that God “justifies the ungodly.” This is the seductive power of rationalism and moralism. It seems to offer an explanation of the ways things work, but it does so at the expense of all the facts and by smoothing over difficulties. Though it makes Christianity seem more reasonable and a better path to sanctity to say or imply that God justifies the good, that is neither what Scripture teaches nor what we confess.

Notes

210. “Colleen Carroll, The New Faithful: Why Young Adults Are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy (Chicago: Loyola, 2002). See also Robert E. Webber, The Younger Evangelicals: Facing the Challenges of the New World (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002), 77–80. Christian Smith, however, paints a less optimistic picture of the spiritual state of American teenagers. See Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). Though American teenagers are interested in spiritual things, they are inarticulate about the faith largely because their congregations have refused to teach them anything of substance.”
211. “Ergo quum versaris in causa iustificationis, cave ullam caritatis vel operum mentionem admittas: sed mordicus retine particulam exclusivam.” CO, 50:247.
212. LW, 31:225.
213. Chapter 4 of this work is devoted to this problem.
214. H. Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum, 30th ed. (Freiburg: Herder, 1955), 298.

©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.

Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from R. Scott Clark, Recovering the Reformed Confession (P&R Publishing, 2008), 108–113. To continue reading, please consider ordering the complete book from the publisher or on Amazon.

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Post authored by:

• R. Scott Clark

  

  R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He is professor emeritus of church history and historical theology at Westminster Seminary California, where he taught for 29 years. He also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007 and the Heidelcast since 2009.

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