Justifying Faith Has No Side Hustles

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Introduction

Tom Hicks and Garrett Walden recently fired up their keyboards in order to interact with “the Moscow doctrine” on justification. Their article can be found here. The point of the article is to deal with “Wilson’s problematic doctrine of faith and its relationship to justification.” Okay then.

I need to clear away some debris first, but if you want to cut to the chase, my explanation of the mistake that Hicks and Walden are making is largely contained in the large section near the end of this post. You know, the antepenultimate section. The one entitled “Oh, for Pity’s Sake.”

You, dear reader, are a busy person, I realize. You may need to go check that part out first because you can’t afford to wade through all my preliminary horsing around. So the teaser is this. The mistake they are making is borne out of a steadfast refusal to let me agree with them. In that section, I make a valiant attempt to make it clear that my views on the instrumentality of faith in justification are, by the standard of the Westminster Confession as a jar of olive oil, extra virgin.

I think I do a pretty thorough job, if it’s myself that says it.

In the Meantime

Now in the meantime, for some reason, a belief is circulating to the effect that we here in Moscow are dangerous and need to stopped. Kevin DeYoung warned everybody away from us because of tone and mood, but his effort wound up using more gunpowder than it delivered shot. Nothing was harmed in the course of that exchange except for a few TGC movie reviews. But if tone and mood complaints are not the thing to accomplish it, we still must be stopped, and so maybe it is because of our Trinitarian problems but—because we are as Nicene as Athanasius on a good day—that is not going to be a fruitful line of criticism for them either.

And so yet another angle that is being tried is through a rehash of some Federal Vision issues. We are not to be listened to because of our undermining of justification by faith alone. And so we come to this article by Hicks and Walden.

So let us think of it this way. We are still in the exploratory stage. This is the time when the approved theologians have thrown a platter of spaghetti against the wall in order to determine which noodle might stick the best. The Moscow mood noodle did not. The sola fide noodle comes next. If that fails, they will move on to the doctrine of the Trinity, an area where not one person in a thousand will understand the nature of the dark allegations, but they will be able to gather that they are supposed to mark and avoid us for reasons that are to be located in the deep things of God.

Baxter and Me?

The intention of the article is to show that Richard Baxter was heterodox on the doctrine of justification, which I believe he certainly was. The corollary was that I am teaching something akin to what Baxter was teaching. That’s what we might call the false part of all this.

The problem with this thesis is that I have never read Baxter on justification. And if we go by his sentiments on justification that were quoted in this article, I strongly disagreed with those. On top of that, I found myself agreeing with the critics of Baxter as they were assembled in the article. What are we supposed to do now? I do not think it would be proper to acknowledge that I must be some kind of a neo-Baxterian simply because Tom Hicks did his dissertation on Baxter and had some material left over that looked usable.

The only thing that Hicks and Walden wind up establishing here is that Banner of Truth should discontinue publishing Baxter, and that it would okay for them to start publishing me. Not that they would ever do that, of course. I’m just dreaming out loud . . .

One of the critics of Baxter that Hicks and Walden cited was Andrew Fuller, a man who had himself been falsely categorized as having an affinity with Baxter. Just like somebody else I know. Fuller knew exactly what this felt like and now, so do I.

Well, shoot, me too. I object strenuously, but a fat lot of good that seems to be doing.

There Are Two Sorts of Debate

There are two kinds of debate. One is when Jones says X and Murphy says Y, and then they have it out. This is what happens to me when Jones says that Baptists should quit withholding the sacrament of baptism from their covenant children. That results in an actual debate with real disagreement that both sides understand they are having. In this instance, Jones is Presbyterian and Murphy is Baptist.

But the second kind of debate is when Jones says X, and Murphy says that he, Jones, is actually maintaining Y, and that Y is really bad, and so Jones says no, he isn’t saying Y, and then Murphy says yes, yes, he most certainly is, and so quite a bit of time and energy are expended. Heat is also generated, and book deals are signed. This kind of debate is what we call a high-level theological debate. And that is what we are dealing with here. In spades.

Ah, but I do. I mean exactly the same thing. If you want to find out why I say that and how I can say that, then read on, MacDuff.

This whole thing is a debate between Hicks and Walden, on the one hand, who affirm justification by faith alone, and Wilson, on the other hand, who affirms justification by faith alone. Try to follow us closely here. You may have trouble keeping up. This is deep theology, and so hip waders are advised.

Oh, for Pity’s Sake

So here we come to the meat of the discussion.

And they make the same point here, a little more extensively, a point they begin by quoting me:

“’At the same time, life and obedience are essential characteristics of the instrumentality of faith, in just the same way that life is an essential characteristic of a seeing eye.’ Note carefully that Wilson says obedience is essential to the instrumentality of faith. The Reformed faith would agree that obedience is an essential characteristic of faith. But to say that its obedience is an essential characteristic of faith’s instrumentality is unorthodox. Faith’s instrumentality is the manner by which it receives justification. Wilson thinks justification is by faith in its act of obedience and not only by faith in its act of receiving and resting upon Christ.”

Hicks and Walden

Now I would plead with everyone to please track with me carefully here. Follow me closely.

Resting and receiving are specific verbs. To obey is a general verb. When someone rests, we know they are resting. The La-Z Boy is all the way back. When someone receives, we know they are receiving. Their palm is out and the gift is placed on that palm.

But when someone obeys, what are they doing exactly? We don’t know until we know what the command was. Someone might be obeying by closing the door, by sitting down, by taking a walk, by frying an egg, by getting out the ice cream, by warming up the car, and so forth.

Now with this distinction in mind, when is justifying faith obeying? Such faith is obeying when it is doing what it was told to do, and only what it is told to do, which is to rest and receive. When I am talking about justification and say that faith is obeying, I am not talking about feeding the poor, or going up the steps of a cathedral on its knees, or praying the rosary, or memorizing the Heidelberg Catechism. I am talking about faith doing only what it was told to do, which is to look to Christ, believe on Him, rest in Him, receive His blessing, and nothing else. Justifying faith has no side hustles.

The only kind of faith that can do what it was told to do in this respect is living faith, the only kind of faith that God ever gives to us. If God gives the gift of faith, it is a living faith that He gives. This living faith, because it is living faith, is able to do what it was created to do, which is to rest in Christ alone, to receive Christ alone. That is the only obedience in justifying faith that I am referring to. I am not referring to anything else.

When a small child in a high chair sees the spoon coming, he opens his mouth. He receives, and that is it. That is all. But if you were to put the same morsel in a dead man’s mouth, he would not be receiving anything. But—I hasten to add—even that act of faith that is manifested in the toddler opening his mouth, even that, is the gift of God, lest any man should boast. So if you want to find any daylight between my views and the Westminsterian view of justification, you are going to have to blow the hole yourself, which is what I think we are dealing with here.

Faith is the hand that receives what God puts into it, and even that hand was a gift from God. But when God gives the kind of hand that can receive justification, and rest in that reception, He does not give us a prosthetic limb with a titanium hand. So the justification doesn’t go clank when it hits the metallic hand. The hand that He gives us for receiving Christ is warm and alive. The disposition to rest in Christ alone is alive. A carcass cannot rest. A carcass cannot receive.

You see this portion of Westminster (and also 14.2, quoted earlier) is where we get the phrase receiving and resting. But receiving and resting is a function of life. A dead faith can’t receive. A dead faith can’t rest. So when a living faith, itself a gift of God, receives and rests in Christ alone, it is doing what God requires of it. This is a living faith that is obeying. Moreover, because it is not a dead faith, from the moment of its inception it “works by love.” This is the reason why it is able to rest and receive.

So think of it this way. Resting and receiving are the only verbs I want to allow as the instrument of justification. But we should have no problem at all allowing in adverbs. We must allow adverbs, if we are to remain consistently confessional. Obediently and lovingly don’t bring in any merit at all, but they are indicators of the presence of life. The actions of resting and receiving proceed from a new heart, a heart with a new disposition. The new heart rests for a reason. It receives with a certain attitude. In order to rest and receive it must be submissive, and to be submissive is to be obedient. So if the gospel is the only object, obedience is not a bad word.

“Faith does not justify as faith, as obedience, or as a part of regeneration. It only justifies by virtue of its reception of justifying content: Christ and his righteousness.”

Hicks and Walden

Faith does not justify. Amen. I never said that it did. “It only justifies by virtue of its reception . . .” Exactly so. And what was faith told to do? When faith rests and receives, it is being obedient. God commands us to believe, does He not?

So allow me to deal with a cluster of comments next that show these two gents representing me as saying that “faith + obedience in some other arena results in justification.” If I were saying that, it really would be bad. If I were to say that justifying faith rests in Christ, receives Christ, and then tithes ten percent of its income, then Hicks and Walden would be correct in their concerns. But I do not say anything like that. I hotly deny it. I throw rocks at it. If Kevin DeYoung didn’t already think I cuss too much, I would hurl a few imprecations at it.

Here are those comments.

But does justifying faith do anything? It certainly does. It rests and it receives. And in the hope that Hicks and Walden might read this particular sentence, that’s the only thing that justifying faith ever does. But . . . does it do these things in a particular way? Does it need to be alive in order to rest this way? Does it need to be living in order to be receptive like this? The answer is obviously, clearly, yes.

So I do not collapse the distinction between faith’s receptive aspect and faith’s active aspect. I am not sending justifying faith out into town in order to help little old ladies across the street, thereby earning Merit Points that can be turned in at the Justification Mart. I am simply saying that faith’s receptive aspect is alive, and so is faith’s active aspect, and they each respectively do what they were created to do, and told to do, and not something else. And doing what you were told to do is obeying.

The faith that God gives is alive from the moment that God first gives it. It is not a dead, inert faith that receives justification, and then somehow comes to life after that. It is alive from the get-go. And this living faith, at each stage, does what it was given in order to do. And the very first thing it does is rest and receive. That obedient resting and receiving is the instrument of justification.

The position that Hicks and Walden want to maintain about the mechanism of this is therefore incoherent. They say, “The Reformed faith would agree that obedience is an essential characteristic of faith. But to say that its obedience is an essential characteristic of faith’s instrumentality is unorthodox.” But this is to say that obedience is an essential characteristic of faith, but that it must leave this essential characteristic behind—thereby ceasing to be what it is—when it undertakes to do anything related to resting and receiving. How is this possible? In order to act as the instrument of justification, this faith must leave an essential characteristic of its very nature behind? Justifying faith must die in order to rest and receive, and then it comes to life again when the topic is sanctification?

Now when we believe the gospel, we do it by resting in and receiving the work of Jesus Christ on our behalf. And when we do this, what are we doing? We are doing as we were commanded. What is the name for doing as we were commanded? It is called obeying. The gospel is a summons that must be obeyed (2 Thess. 1:8). God commands all men to repent (Acts 17:30). God commands all men to believe (1 John 3:23). This is done by abandoning all hope of self-improvement and self-reformation, and casting ourselves upon the mercy of God, sealed with the blood of Jesus Christ, plus nothing else. Plus nothing else.

This whole thing reminds me of the Marrow controversy in 18th century Scotland, not excluding the blinkered condemnation of things they did not understand by the General Assembly, would not investigate properly, and refused afterwards to clean up. This issue is an awful lot like that one. And Donald MacLeod says, echoing Thomas Boston, that . . .

Coda About the Optics and Politics of the Thing

I trust I have made myself clear. When living faith rests and receives the righteousness of Jesus Christ, these are the only activities that God uses as instruments for our justification. This is what I believe.

Now this presents Hicks and Walden with a dilemma. If they were to say something like “Thank you for clarifying. We can see that you are within the boundaries of historic Reformed orthodoxy. Apologies for giving you the Andrew Fuller treatment,” I would say “Thanks. Completely forgiven.” The thing would be over as far as I was concerned. But it would not be over for Hicks and Walden. They would be stepping into their very own firestorm. How dare they acquit me as orthodox on one of the central FV slanders? And nobody likes creating their very own firestorm. So there’s that.

But if they ignore my explanation above, or refuse to accept it, this will be yet one more demonstration to the people who are leaving their churches as to why they feel the need to leave such old guard churches. This would not be “doing theology,” but rather “doing politics,” with theological terms as weapons. The truth of God is food for the sheep, and the sheep need to be fed. But the reply will be that shepherds need to fight the wolves in order that they might continue to feed the sheep. Right, that is correct. But if instead of doing that, you fight with fellow shepherds over turf concerns, and you won’t accept a plain statement of orthodoxy from them if it conflicts with those turf concerns, at some point the sheep are going to turn away in disgust. As it appears they are starting to do.

P.S.

I linked to a YouTube clip on the image above, but haven’t watched it—so I don’t know if it is any good. But I thought I should link to it as thanks for the use of their graphic. Regardless, the reply to the question they raise in their title is no, I am not redefining faith. See above.