Greeen Baggins has picked up the thread again, and so shall I. There is not a lot to talk about here, but rather just a few questions to answer.
Lane gives three basic ways to take the “I am righteous” language of the psalter. One is say that the psalmist is not claiming a perfect righteousness. The second is to say that David’s righteousness was comparative. The third is to take such language as typological and as spoken by the Messiah. I actually take it in all three senses. The first sense is qualified by other professions of sinfulness by the same writer, the second is contextually grounded — when the Bible says that the elders of the church are to be blameless, this does not mean absolutely blameless. And John Day has written a fine book — Crying for Justice — that presents a fine case for seeing Christ in all the psalms. So, when offered these three options, I would say, “Yes, please.”
Lane worries about something that I am not interested in doing at all. “The interpretation of the Psalms does not lead in a direct line to our own application, by-passing Christ.” To which I would say, “Of course not.” No Christian can ever by-pass Christ. Why would this even come up?
He also asks what I mean by “justifying vindications” on page 178. I do not mean some sort of process justification, whereby my initial justification (which cannot be improved upon) is somehow improved upon. What I mean is that the lexical range of justifying, vindicating language in Scripture is much broader than the two and only two senses allowed by many in the current debates. Those two are ordo justification in Paul and demonstrative justification in James. If you start to casually turn to any other passages, or any other books, someone is going to bring you up on charges. But Jesus is justified. What does that mean? The psalmist is vindicated. What does that mean? On page 178, I was not trying to smuggle another meaning into ordo justification, in order to make it more elastic. I was trying to show that this word is used in the Bible in more than two senses. Having a range of meanings greater than two doesn’t bother us with words like kosmos. We roll those definitions right into our Calvinism, and everybody is happy. Why do we stumble when the words begin with dik– instead of kos?
Lane also asks if I believe we can know if we are decretally elect? Yes, I believe that we can know this with genuine assurance, but I believe that this assurance is grounded on faith alone, and not on the basis of sight, as Lane seems to indicate. I agree with Turretin that God’s decrees become visible as they come to pass, but we have to be careful here. In other words, I know that God decreed, from before all worlds, that I would drive down my driveway this morning. I know this was decreed because that is what happened. Had it not been decreed, it would not have happened. But I don’t see my election, or my regeneration for that matter, the same way. My election does not present itself to me as a datum that I can see, touch, or hear. But I can know, and the New Testament writers encourage us in this knowledge (1 Jn. 5:13). But that knowledge is, throughout the course of our lives, obtained through faith alone. We walk by faith, not by sight, but this means we walk with confidence (with faith), not with trepidation.