In the discussion over at Greenbaggins, one of the FV critics said something important. I responded to it there, but I want to amplify my response here. This is what he said:
“We are not justified by a dead faith. We are not justified by a living faith, either. We have a living faith because we are justified. We are justified by a receiving faith. Remember, God justifies the UNGODLY (not AS ungodly, but WHILE ungodly.) Sola fide means that faith is the means, not the analytic ground. Accordingly Reformed is enough, while FV is bloated soteriology.”
And here is my response. Does God justify the unregenerate? According to the ordo, God gives me a new heart, and as a consequence I repent and believe. As I result of believing, I am then justified. Regeneration is first.
This new heart, is it alive or dead? If dead, then how is it different from my old heart? If alive, then how did it happen that the repentance and faith that proceeded from it fail to share in that life?
You point to a “receiving faith.” How can faith act as an agent in this way without being alive? A dead faith cannot receive. A living faith can receive. Of course faith is not the analytic ground, or any other kind of ground. But it is the act of believing rendered by a new creature, quickened by the Holy Spirit of God. Only a living faith can grasp the living Christ.
And I need to add just a bit more to what I said there. This controversy has been going on for years now, and I cannot recall any of the FV critics making a serious attempt to untangle the order of the ordo. I have presented this argument a number of times, and I do not know what the response of the critics, besides sidestepping, is. If regeneration is first, as it is, then what does this mean? What are the implications? In order to have a non-living faith (so that Christ will ostensibly have all the glory), it is necessary to put regeneration somewhere else in the ordo. But where to put it? If I am made alive first thing, then all my actions after that point partake of that life. How could they not?
Faith is not living because it is an independent creature with a life of its own. Faith is living because it is a description of what the new heart, just given that life, now does. The new heart, the living heart, the heart of flesh, repents and believes. This repentance is real, alive, because it is not coming from a corpse. This faith is real, alive, because it is far more than the intellectual assent of one who is still spiritually dead.
And in this exchange, I hope it is obvious that in the name of splitting hairs in defense of the purity of the evangel, the defenders of that evangel have missed one of the central glories of the Reformed faith. We are made alive (a nano-second or so) before we are justified. We are alive (a nano-second) before we turn from our sins. We are repentant (a nano-second) before we believe. And when we believe we are then justified.
And of course I know you can’t put a stop watch on these things. The ordo is simply making a critical theological point by placing regeneration first for illustrative purposes. So what is that point? It is that life pervades the whole shebang.
And that life is the sheer, unadulterated, exuberant, overflowing, monergistic grace of God. God speaks and the dead bones live. The dead bones become a living man. The living man repents and believes, turning away from his old comfortable graveyard, and turning toward his everlasting home. He believes in Christ, and God imputes everything that Jesus did, said, has, or will have to that living man. He receives it all by faith. What faith? The only kind he has, the kind God gave him when He breathed into his nostrils the breath of eternal life.
And you want to say this is not “really” Reformed? Wake up, man! I put two whole fistfuls of the black beans of Calvinism into the grinder, and then put five extra tablespoons of the resultant black powder in the coffee filter. I then put a fork in the bottom of the coffee pot. When the fork floats, the coffee is ready. Don’t come around here saying the coffee isn’t strong enough!