Justification, baptism, and faith

(Below is another comment of mine for Green Bagginses. This is #111 on the same thread as before...under David Gadbois's post Berkhof and Baptismal Efficacy. The bold text is quoted from Jeff Cagle's comment.)

To Jeff Cagle (#89):

(1) What does "objective justification" mean?

It means that Christ is righteous; and if we are included in His Church through baptism, then we are in Him; and if we are in Him, we are both counted righteous for His sake ("justified") and called to live righteously, lest we be cut off.

(2) It seems really clear that baptism is, for the FV position, an instrumental means of securing objective justification. That is to say, all who receive baptism receive OJ, and receive it at the moment of baptism, and receive it *because* they have been baptized.

Not quite. FV people seem to enjoy quoting WCF 28.1 in support of their own position: "Baptism is a sacrament of the New Testament, ordained by Jesus Christ, not only for the solemn admission of the party baptized into the visible Church; but also to be unto him a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, of his ingrafting into Christ..." That is to say, baptism is an instrumental means of solemn admission into the visible Church. As the next logical step, membership in the Church (which is Christ's body) means that the baptized person is incorporated into all that Christ is, including His righteousness. This is what I (somewhat clumsily) described as "objective justification."

This justification is in and through Christ, not in and through baptism. Maybe you think this is a distinction without a difference, but I think it makes all the difference in the world. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ" (Eph. 1:3). Not "in baptism," but "in Christ." "For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ" (Gal. 3:27).

Baptism is only the door to the house where Christ is the Host. It would be very odd, to say the least, to call a door "the instrumental means of hospitality."

(3) So then, since faith is the instrumental means of receiving the kind of justification that the decretally elect receive, but baptism is the instrumental means of receiving objective justification, it follows that we have two separate kinds of justification going on here. Not one type of justification, which might or might not last, but two types: one, received upon faith; the other, received upon baptism.

Since I've already argued that baptism is NOT the "instrumental means" of receiving justification, even on what I think is a standard FV view, let me answer the rest of this fairly quickly. There are not two kinds of justification, but there are different angles on, and differences of status with regard to, this one reality. What is the difference between baptism and faith, relative to justification? The connection between baptism and justification is indirect: baptism joins us to Christ, and in Him we are righteous. The connection between faith and justification, however, is direct: "For with the heart one believes unto righteousness" (Rom. 10:9). Righteousness--complete and lasting justification that transforms first a man's standing before God, and finally his entire spirit, soul, and body--is made available to us through our union with Christ in baptism; but it is truly claimed and owned by our believing response to what God has already done in our baptism. Baptism is God's doing, faith is ours, but both are equally a gift of His grace, so that no man may boast in His presence. To Him be all glory forever and ever! Amen.

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Baptism and faith

(Copied below is a comment I posted on Green Bagginses. It appears as #85 under David Gadbois's post Berkhof and Baptismal Efficacy.)

After reading through the whole list of comments to this post, I think one of the keys to this set of issues (and to the whole Federal Vision debate) has not yet been mentioned here.

David wrote: “…we should conclude that, likewise, baptism cannot be an instrumental means, alongside of faith, by which we lay hold of Christ’s righteousness unto justification.… Such an idea would be directly contrary to the Reformational doctrine of justification by faith alone (sola fide).” (emphasis mine)

David, I want to ask in all seriousness: Have you ever heard anyone associated with “Federal Vision” theology teach that “baptism [is] an instrumental means, alongside of faith, by which we lay hold of Christ’s righteousness unto justification”? Pastor Wilkins and others say many other things about baptism, but I don’t think you’ll ever find them saying this. Rather, their theological opponents take other things that they say and unsympathetically deduce from them that they must mean this. But it ain’t necessarily so.

It’s just as clear to the FV men as it is to any other Reformed theologian that baptism and faith are two very different things. For you to talk as though even the most ardent FV’er puts them in the same undifferentiated category, as “instrumental means” of justification, is simply misleading.

I understand the FV position to include the following: Baptism joins a person, objectively, to Christ. Since every baptized person is in Christ, then what is true of Christ is true of all baptized people corporately. Christ is righteous, all of Him; thus His body the Church is righteous, with all its members. Christ is holy; thus, Christ’s body is holy, every member of it (in more or less the same way that the children of one believing parent are holy, because they are joined to Christ by covenant, 1 Cor. 7:14). It is for this reason that the Apostles speak to churches as they do–for example, 1 Cor. 1:2, where “the church of God which is at Corinth” equals “those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus” (despite the Corinthians’ obvious personal unholiness!). So everyone who is in Christ objectively (i.e., in the Church through baptism) is just as objectively “justified” and “sanctified,” because they are in Christ, and He is perfectly righteous and holy.

BUT at the same time (and who in the FV would deny this?) the righteousness that we have objectively in Christ has to be taken to heart, lived out and made permanent, or it ultimately becomes worthless. Christ’s justification and sanctification become ours in baptism, but we must still make them ours through faith and good works, both of which are gifts of God’s free grace alone in accordance with His eternal decrees. These are the justification and sanctification that bear fruit for eternal life.

To sum up: Baptism brings us into Christ, the Righteous and Holy One. To belong to Him is to be (covenantally?) justified and sanctified. But we also need to believe on Christ. It is this faith in the heart that leads to justification of the sort that is personally owned by the faithful Christian. Baptism grants us a share in Christ’s justification; faith applies His justification to us. Each one allows us to say that we are “justified,” and legitimately so, but from different perspectives and with different results.

In any case, baptism and faith are alike in this: Both are the good work of God within His people. His grace is everything.

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Happy Thanksgiving Day

The First Thanksgiving by Jean Louis Gerome Ferris (1863-1930)

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Out of the Silent Planet

C. S. Lewis always seems to have amazingly profound things to say and consummate skill in saying them--the two qualities that every good writer needs.

From Out of the Silent Planet, consider this speech by Weston (the interplanetary imperialist) and then Ransom's attempt to translate it for Malacandrian hearers. After reading the second version, how can the ideas of the first seem anything but ludicrous and hypocritical?

Weston: "To you I may seem a vulgar robber, but I bear on my shoulders the destiny of the human race. Your tribal life with its stone-age weapons and bee-hive huts, its primitive coracles and elementary social structure, has nothing to compare with our civilization--with our science, medicine and law, our armies, our architecture, our commerce, and our transport system which is rapidly annihilating space and time. Our right to supersede you is the right of the higher over the lower."

And the "translation" by Ransom: "Among us, Oyarsa, there is a kind of hnau [rational creature] who will take other hnau's food and--and things, when they are not looking. He says he is not an ordinary one of that kind. He says what he does now will make very different things happen to those of our people who are not yet born. He says that, among you, hnau of one kindred all live together and the hrossa have spears like those we used a very long time ago and your huts are small and round and your boats small and light and like our old ones, and you have only one ruler. He says it is different with us. He says we know much. There is a thing happens in our world when the body of a living creature feels pains and becomes weak, and he says we sometimes know how to stop it. He says we have many bent [bad] people and we kill them or shut them in huts and that we have people for settling quarrels between the bent hnau about their huts and mates and things. He says we have many ways for the hnau of one land to kill those of another and some are trained to do it. He says we build very big and strong huts of stones and other things--like the pfifltriggi. And he says we exchange many things among ourselves and can carry heavy weights very quickly a long way. Because of all this, he says it would not be the act of a bent hnau if our people killed all your people."

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Every moment

Let me live every moment
in the light of that Day
when I will see the face of Him
whom my soul loves!

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Food for thought: Two quotes from Charles Williams

“Sir Bernard occasionally alluded to himself as a neo-Christian, ‘meaning,’ he said, ‘like most neos, one who takes the advantages without the disadvantages. As neo-Platonist, neo-Thomist, and neolithic too, for all I know.’”
—Shadows of Ecstasy

“God only gives, and He has only Himself to give, and He, even He, can only give it in those conditions which are Himself.”
—War in Heaven

What, then, is a real (not a "neo-") Christian? What kind of people must we be if we belong to this God?

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