Introduction
According to John Milbank, Protestant accounts of forensic justification involve God treating the sinner as if they were righteous without making them just. ‘The idea of justification as imputation . . . is not acceptable . . . [God's] decision to treat us as just immediately makes us just. . . . We must indeed receive, as Aquinas taught, an infused habitus of justitia.’Footnote 1 Milbank echoes the standard objection that traditional Protestant accounts of justification amount to a legal fiction rooted in an overly extrinsic, forensic conception of imputation, which fails to renew the believer's nature.Footnote 2 As Étienne Gilson memorably states: ‘with the Reformation, there appeared this conception of a grace that saves a man without changing him, of a justice that redeems corrupted nature without restoring it, of a Christ who pardons the sinner for self-inflicted wounds but does not heal them’.Footnote 3 Instead of forensic imputation, Milbank suggests Reformed theology emphasise its account of union with Christ, which should be reinterpreted in terms of ontological participation.Footnote 4
Milbank's comments were offered during a dialogue at Calvin College, at which Milbank's plea for a Reformed soteriology more amenable to metaphysical participation was strongly rebuffed. The contributions by Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin, Michael Horton and James K. A. Smith to the dialogue all insist that Reformed and Radical Orthodox theologies have fundamentally opposed conceptions of the creator–creature relation, with participatory metaphysics being emblematic of Radical Orthodoxy, and covenant being representative of Reformed theology.Footnote 5 Horton, therefore, makes it his ‘principal purpose . . . to compare and contrast the paradigm of ontological participation and the classic Reformed theology of covenant, defending the latter’.Footnote 6
Some Reformed theologians have responded to this legal fiction charge by employing the doctrine of justification to fund a ‘covenantal ontology’, which serves as an antidote to this participatory metaphysical paradigm. For Bruce McCormack, movements like Radical Orthodoxy have exposed the ontological ‘emaciation’ of the Reformation by comparison with Eastern Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism.Footnote 7 McCormack worries that the Reformers neglect the ontological implications of forensic imputation and thereby fail to expunge the residual influence of medieval participatory ontologies, which are more compatible with Catholic soteriology and vulnerable to legal fiction objections.Footnote 8 The solution, for McCormack, is to extend the scope of forensic justification, employing it to fund a ‘covenant ontology’.Footnote 9 Horton similarly seeks to respond to the New Finnish Interpretation of Luther, the New Perspective on Paul and Radical Orthodoxy, by eliminating medieval metaphysics and deploying forensic justification to fund a covenantal ontology which can safeguard Protestant soteriological commitments.Footnote 10 What is foundational in both McCormack's and Horton's proposals, and likewise in the dialogue at Calvin College, is a representation of participatory metaphysics and covenant theology as competing paradigms. For McCormack and Horton, only by constructing a covenantal ontology can Reformed theology respond to legal fiction objections, without ‘coming under the influence of a concept of “participation” in Christ that owes a great deal to the ancient Greek ontologies of pure being’.Footnote 11
I present an alternative approach, in which covenant and participatory metaphysics are not competing paradigms but complementary biblical motifs employed within a broader account of Christian doctrine which refuses to be overly determined by either. Such concerns regarding the proper proportion and scope of various doctrines are rarely merely semantic. A ‘covenantal ontology’ represents an overinflation of the doctrine of justification by faith alone, as justification is extracted from its setting within the economy of redemption and given a task – i.e. funding an all-encompassing ontology – which is not native to its constrained, yet crucial role in a more balanced ordo salutis. The consequence is that the pastoral concerns motivating Reformed soteriologies are attenuated, and the very legal fiction objections which engendered these covenantal ontologies are exacerbated. Reformed insistence upon the purely forensic, extra nos basis of justification secures the Reformational passion to provide the sinner with a sense of assurance of her acceptance before God, and to offer her consolation in the midst of her ongoing struggle with sin.Footnote 12 Yet additionally, an ontologically transformative account of regeneration and sanctification assures that the sinner's enjoyment of God, and God's fellowship with her, depends upon an intrinsic change of the believer's nature. The distinction between forensic justification and ontologically transformative sanctification guarantees that while transformation of the sinner's nature is necessary for salvation, the ground of their assurance is not subject to the vicissitudes of their imperfect progress in sanctification, but is located in the perfect righteousness of Christ. The expansion of the scope of forensic justification in a covenantal ontology undermines both these Reformational pastoral intuitions, as well as the capacity of Reformed soteriologies to rebut the legal fiction charge. By contrast, the soteriological integration of covenant and metaphysical participation as complementary but distinct motifs, defuses the charge of legal fiction and preserves the aforementioned pastoral insights.
I identify this alternative approach through a project of critical theological retrieval, dialoguing with two seventeenth-century Reformed scholastics: English puritan Stephen Charnock and Dutch federal theologian Herman Witsius. The presence of participatory metaphysics alongside covenantal themes in Reformed scholasticism should be unsurprising. McCormack and Horton themselves recognise this, but allege that the presence of participatory ontologies within Reformed theology indicates a lamentable failure of consistency.Footnote 13 By contrast, I argue that Charnock and Witsius’ soteriological integration of covenant and participation represents a superior method for overcoming legal fiction objections over against the covenantal ontologies of McCormack and Horton.Footnote 14
My argument proceeds as follows. We begin evaluating the ‘covenantal ontologies’ of McCormack and Horton. I conclude that they are caught on the horns of a dilemma, either undermining the very Reformational concerns they set out to safeguard, or increasing Reformed theology's vulnerability to the charge of legal fiction. Subsequently, I exposit Charnock and Witsius’ soteriological integration of covenantal and participatory motifs. I contend that their approach maintains Protestant distinctives while defusing the legal fiction objection. Along the way, I respond to some contemporary Reformed critiques of participatory metaphysics and the interrelated notion of infused habits. In concluding, I hope to offer a suggestion for constructive Reformed dogmatics: instead of excising elements of participatory metaphysics, critically retrieve those elements, not as a rival paradigm over against covenant, but as a complementary motif.
Covenantal ontologies
McCormack's and Horton's ontologies represent a conceptual expansion of the notion of justification as the articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae. Both began their ontologies with this claim, as justification becomes more than one important affirmation among others, but rather, a substratum upon which is erected a covenantal ontology funding the entire sequence of Christian doctrine.Footnote 15 As Horton states, ‘Covenant is not something added to a metaphysics and ontology derived from some other source, but generates a worldview of its own. Covenant is not simply a theme, but an ontological paradigm in its own right.’Footnote 16 For McCormack, contemporary Protestants face ‘the question of how [the Reformers’] other commitments might be brought into line with their “central” doctrine . . . to explore the theological ontology implied in their understanding of justification’.Footnote 17
For McCormack, Luther and Calvin's insufficient attention to theological ontology undermines their assertion that salvific forgiveness consists in a forensic declaration rooted in Christ's extra nos righteousness. With regards to Calvin, McCormack notes two missteps: first, his locating of union with Christ logically prior to justification, and second, his failure to clarify the ontological status of this union, thereby allowing union with Christ, a work which appears to occur ‘in us’, to have priority over forensic justification, which is based in Christ's righteousness which is securely extra nos.Footnote 18 Similarly, Horton alleges that, ‘Forensic justification through faith alone is the fountain of union with Christ in all its renewing aspects’, and therefore, ‘the act of justification is logically prior to union’.Footnote 19 Although McCormack recognises that Calvin's prioritising of union with Christ aims to rebut the charge of legal fiction, he insists by contrast, that the best way to combat this charge is to ‘move beyond the Reformation in order to save it’ by constructing a covenantal ontology which requires neither participatory metaphysics nor the priority of union with Christ.Footnote 20
The core of McCormack's ontology is the claim that justification ‘does what it says’ or creates what it declares, i.e. the forensic declaration of justification is itself regenerative.Footnote 21 For McCormack, a person is constituted essentially by God's pretemporal election of humanity as covenant partners. Justification consists in the Spirit's revelation to an individual of their pretemporal constitution, and the regenerative effect of this declaration is the resultant change in the individual's activity.Footnote 22 The regenerative effect – or actualisation – of justification is therefore not an essential change, for our essence refers to our pretemporally fixed identity as a covenant-partner. Rather, the transformation effected by justification concerns our lived existence (or what McCormack calls, in distinction from our essence, our nature), and the extent to which our willed decisions align with our essential, elected determination.Footnote 23
Horton follows McCormack, but translates this covenantal ontology into the register of speech-act theory: ‘justification [is] an illocutionary speech-act (verbum externum) that, when identified with the Spirit's perlocutionary act of effectual calling, issues in repentance and faith’.Footnote 24 The problem with Reformed scholastic approaches to these matters is that ‘the notion of regeneration (as a new habit infused or implanted) before effectual calling (through the gospel's forensic announcement) is precisely what keeps justification from being constitutive across the entire ordo salutis’.Footnote 25 So rather than having various acts or logical moments of soteriology, some of which are forensic and some of which are ontologically transformative – as in a post-Reformation ordo salutis – the forensic declaration of justification ‘creates the new status and the new being of those who are in Christ’.Footnote 26
I have a few concerns with McCormack's and Horton's proposals. McCormack's claim that justification ‘does what it says’ suffers a similar lack of clarity to that which he identifies in the Reformational accounts he seeks to rectify. If justification is not a legal fiction but rather ‘makes us just’ because by the Spirit we act in correspondence to our essential determination, then the purely unilateral and extra nos character of justification is obscured. McCormack could respond by distinguishing between the act of justification as such, and its regenerative effects (i.e. actualisation in our lived existence). But, if McCormack is to maintain the extra nos character of justification, then this must be a rigid distinction, for while the declaration of justification concerns a righteousness that is purely extra nos, the same cannot be said for the effects or actualisation of justification, which involve the believer's acts of correspondence.
Upon examining McCormack's description of Barth's doctrine of justification (which, as he states, is the inspiration for his ownFootnote 27), it is evident that McCormack's account of justification requires him to maintain two claims that are in significant tension. McCormack's covenantal ontology forcefully rejects scholastic accounts of the ordo salutis, going so far as to object to the distinguishing of salvation into ‘aspects’ or ‘parts’.Footnote 28 He emphasises the unitary character of justification and rejects the need for justification's application or appropriation through the Spirit. For McCormack, justification must be complete in itself, simultaneously including both justification and sanctification, or, better, justification and its actualisation.Footnote 29
However, if McCormack is to maintain the extra nos character of justification, he is caught upon the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand, he can maintain – with Reformational conviction – that justification is a forensic declaration solely based upon Christ's righteousness, which is outside of us. Then justification and its effects, i.e. its actualisation, must be firmly distinguished, but in this case, his covenantal ontology, which insists that justification itself ‘does what it says’, or that ‘imputation is itself regenerative’, is called into question and the legal fiction charge is left unanswered.Footnote 30 At points McCormack seems to favour this approach, stating for example:
In him, Jesus, the death of the ‘man of sin’ has taken place, and yet this is not something that we can find in any event of our own lives; it is not something we can perceive as a determination of our own existence. However true it may be that ‘in Christ’ I am no longer the ‘man of sin,’ yet in myself I find that I am. Indeed, wherever I look at myself in my ‘physico-psychical existence,’ I find no evidence of that death.Footnote 31
How can McCormack claim that the transition from death fails to be a ‘determination of our own existence’, and that justification is not a legal fiction because justification itself affects a change in our existence/nature? If my existence is truly changed (i.e. if justification is not an entirely extrinsic reality making no impact upon my current existence), then how can it be that whereas ‘in Christ’ (i.e. in my essential elected determination) I am ‘no longer the “man of sin”, yet in myself I find that I am’? McCormack's covenantal ontology will struggle to respond to the legal fiction objection so long as he insists that justification is purely extra nos and, simultaneously, rejects an aspect of soteriology distinct from justification which is transformative.
At other points, McCormack undermines the firm distinction between justification and its actualisation. This allows him to both maintain his critique of the ordo salutis of Protestant orthodoxy and affirm his covenantal ontology, but it requires that justification concern an act that is based ‘within’ and ‘without’ the sinner, for the word of justification in this case includes its actualisation in the believer's nature. This results in the very charge he raised against Calvin: there is no clear distinction between the work of God within us and righteousness which is extra nos. It is this approach he more consistently takes. Although he allows that ‘justification and regeneration are conceptually distinguishable “moments” in a single act of God’, when he goes on to define this ‘single act’, it becomes clear that the ‘single act’ is just the declaration of justification.Footnote 32 It is God's judicial verdict, and although it is forensic, ‘a judicial act for God is never merely judicial; it is itself transformative’.Footnote 33 For McCormack, regeneration consists in the corresponding creaturely acts elicited by and included within the single divine act of justification: ‘God's declaration in justification is revelation, and revelation transforms the whole person . . . He/she is brought into a sphere where conformity of existence to essence becomes possible.’Footnote 34 In sum, God's single salvific act is his justifying declaration, which itself transforms the believer's nature. In that case, justification is not purely a matter of an extra nos righteousness, and the Reformation's ‘central’ doctrine, which McCormack seeks to safeguard and amplify, is imperilled. Anything which softens the firm distinction between the declaration of justification and its actualisation undermines the extra nos character of justification he sets out to safeguard. Yet if this firm distinction remains, it becomes difficult to ascertain how justification itself ‘does what it says’, the core of McCormack's covenantal ontology.
Horton, unsurprisingly given his dependence upon McCormack when it comes to covenantal ontology, is confronted with a similar dilemma.Footnote 35 He does salutarily assert: ‘justification itself [does not] include its effects, but it generates them. Justification is exclusively juridical, yet it is the forensic origin of our union with Christ, from which all of our covenantal blessings flow.’Footnote 36 However, despite this distinction between justification and its regenerative effects, when Horton aims to combat the charge of legal fiction, this distinction is elided. Horton, like McCormack, is forced to affirm two incongruous claims. He contends that if forensic justification is the causal source of all other salvific benefits – including union with Christ – we will not have the problem of a work of God 'in us’ being prior to the declaration that we are ‘in the right’, declared solely on the basis of Christ's righteousness without us.Footnote 37 Yet in order to insist that the justifying declaration is not a legal fiction, Horton insists that we really and properly possess Christ's righteousness by virtue of our covenantal relation to Christ created by the Spirit, and therefore this union is not merely external, but is ontologically constitutive, effecting a vital koinonia.Footnote 38 Yet is this single union, which is both covenantal and ontologically constitutive, logically prior or posterior to justification? If it is posterior, then on what basis can we be declared to possess Christ's righteousness if we are not yet united with him? This is worse than a legal fiction, for in this case it is not merely a transformative relation that is lacking, there is not yet even a legal, covenantal relation. If it is prior, then union with Christ precedes justification, and a work of the Spirit which is ‘in us’ (i.e. is ontologically constitutive and transformative) is prior to the justifying declaration made entirely on an extra nos basis, precisely what Horton aims to avoid. Once again, it appears that laying all of the weight upon a single forensic and transformative declaration forces a choice between maintaining extra nos basis of justification, and overcoming the charge of legal fiction.Footnote 39
Allow me to summarise my concerns. To simultaneously defuse legal fiction objections and maintain the extra nos basis of justification, McCormack argues that justification itself ‘does what it says’, declaring to us our essential, pretemporal determination as a covenant partner (this is extra nos) and actualising this determination in us by reframing our lived existence to correspond to Christ's life (this is not extra nos). In this schema, justification and its actualisation must be firmly distinguished, otherwise justification's purely extra nos basis is obscured. However, to respond to the charge of legal fiction and maintain his covenantal ontology, McCormack must simultaneously insist that justification itself affects a change in the believer's nature, therefore the distinction between extra nos justification and its actualisation is elided. Horton faces a similar dilemma. To combat the legal fiction charge, Horton asserts that our relation to Christ is not merely extrinsic but is a vital, ontologically constitutive relation brought into being by justification. Yet on what basis are sinners declared to be ‘in the right’? If the justifying declaration is prior to the single covenantal and ontological relation of the believer with Christ, then the declaration of justification is baseless.Footnote 40 This is worse than a legal fiction, for we have no relation to Christ whatsoever by which we are considered to be in solidarity with him. If one makes this single, covenantal and ontologically constitutive relation prior to justification, then a work ‘in us’ is prior to justification, precisely what Horton seeks to avoid. Again, the purely extra nos character of justification is obscured. In sum, the failure of these covenantal ontologies to distinguish distinct forensic and transformative (or as we will soon see, covenantal and ontologically participatory) aspects of soteriology, render them unable to respond to the charge of legal fiction while maintaining Reformational distinctives.
Integrating covenantal and participatory motifs in soteriology
The integration of covenantal and participatory motifs allows Charnock and Witsius to retain characteristic Protestant claims while defusing legal fiction objections.
The Reformed scholastics’ soteriology is an extension of Calvin's duplex gratia. J. Todd Billings’ treatment of Calvin's theology of participation asserts that ‘while justification always and necessarily leads to real sanctification, the former is irreducibly forensic, and the latter involves a moral transformation of the believer by the Spirit’.Footnote 41 Calvin's doctrine of justification employs the language of forensic imputation, whereas his account of sanctification employs the language of infusion and is imbued with participatory language.Footnote 42 Yet crucially, both aspects of the duplex gratia are subordinate to union with Christ. As Calvin states, ‘in our sharing in Christ, which justifies us, sanctification is just as much included as righteousness’.Footnote 43 Despite the richness of Calvin's treatment, Billings recognises that there is ‘a limited amount of metaphysical ambiguity in Calvin's theology of participation’, which ‘can leave his thought open to be adapted to a wide range of metaphysical frameworks’.Footnote 44
Charnock and Witsius follow Calvin, asserting a differentiated unity of the double grace of forensic justification and participatory sanctification, united under union with Christ.Footnote 45 However, they move beyond Calvin by more explicitly enlisting the categories of participatory metaphysics.Footnote 46 Thereby, Charnock's and Witsius’ soteriologies include precisely those elements – an ontological participatory account of union with Christ, an infused habitus of justitia and a rejection of a merely forensic soteriology which treats sinners as if they were just without intrinsic change – which Milbank identifies as necessary for the rectification of Protestant dogmatic deficiencies.
According to Charnock, regeneration involves an infusion of habitual grace accomplished through participation in Christ. ‘By regeneration, I mean not a relative, but a real change of the subject, wrought in the complexion and inclinations of the soul, as in the restoring of health there is a change made in the temper and humours of the body.’Footnote 47 Regeneration is the restoration of the righteous habitude lost in original sin through the gift of ‘habitual grace’.Footnote 48 By renewing the creature's moral participation in God, this grace restores the creature to divine pleasure and allows it to perform spiritual acts. For Charnock, God cannot treat the sinner as just without an intrinsic change, for ‘the delight of God supposeth some real change in the object which is the ground of that delight, for God is wise in his delight’.Footnote 49 Or as Witsius similarly declares:
God can neither consider nor declare men to be otherwise than as they really are. For his judgment is according to truth. They therefore who are still under the dominion of sin . . . are judged and declared by God to be unregenerate . . . but they who are regenerated by his grace, created anew after his image, and heartily addict themselves to the practice of sincere holiness, are by him absolved from the charge of profaneness.Footnote 50
Neither Witsius nor Charnock assert that God treats the sinner as if they were righteous; instead, both insist that God's judgment of the sinner, and his communion with him or her, requires an intrinsic change in the subject. Without habitual restoration, it would be contrary to divine wisdom and rationality or God to have communion with the sinner. Charnock goes on to state that God ‘must, therefore, hate iniquity, and cannot love an unrighteous nature because of his love to righteousness, but in the very nature of the thing, because God, in regard of his holiness cannot converse with an unholy creature’.Footnote 51 This necessity is explicated through the medieval distinction between contingent determinations, which are ex pacto, and acts of intrinsic necessity, which are ex natura rei.Footnote 52 God does not merely contingently will to require the creature's regeneration prior to communion, but rather, it is necessary by virtue of God's own essential inclination to righteousness. Witsius likewise insists that because divine holiness is not arbitrary, but consists in the conformity of God's will to his nature, the regeneration of the creature is necessary for communion with God.Footnote 53 On this point therefore, Charnock and Witsius side with Aquinas and contradict Scotus and the via moderna, who contend that the necessity of habitual restoration is merely ex pacto rather than ex natura rei.Footnote 54
The habitual grace of regeneration consists in a participatory relation to Christ. As Charnock states
As there is a vital principle, an habit, a law written in the heart, so there is a likeness to God in the new [i.e. the regenerate] creature. Every creature hath a link to something or other in the rank of beings: the new creature is formed according to the most exact pattern, even God himself. In this the form of regeneration doth consist.Footnote 55
The regenerate believer's soteriological participation in Christ is parallel to the creature's creational participation in being. Just as every creature's being consists in a participation in perfections eminently possessed by the divine essence, so regeneration consists in the participation of the sinner in Christ's holiness, which is the original according to which the regenerate creature is modelled. As he states, ‘Christ is full of purity, righteousness, charity, patience, humility, truth, and in a word, all the parts of holiness; then the form and image of Christ in the new creature can be no other than a lively representation of those divine qualities.’Footnote 56 For Charnock and Witsius, while the creature's being remains a participatory imitation of God regardless of sin, regeneration involves a higher participation in God's own holy love, as the creature's habitude is refashioned according to the model of Christ's faculties.Footnote 57
Reformed theologians sometimes worry that habitual infusion involves an uncreated, ‘quasi-physical’ divine substance being fused with creaturely nature.Footnote 58 These critiques – and related worries that infusion signals a devaluation of created nature or directs the sinner to herself rather than God for consolation – have a significant pedigree. Although the breadth of these critiques cannot be addressed here, perhaps a few clarifying comments will suggest that the language of infused habits need not be prematurely rejected. This critique depends upon a reifying of the notion of ‘infusion’, which does not necessarily match the employment of this category within Reformed scholasticism. For Charnock and Witsius, regenerative infusion does not involve a ‘quasi-physical’ infinite substance being mixed with the creature's finite substance, but a participation in Christ, as the creature's faculties are reoriented according to the model of Jesus Christ's holy knowing and willing. They speak of participation in robust terms – as a ‘new being’, a partaking of the ‘divine nature’, and a communication of ‘the life of God’Footnote 59 – but, it is not a fusion of the creature's finite substance with the infinite divine being resulting in a tertium quid. Charnock states:
The acts of a renewed man, and the acts of a natural man, are the same in the nature of acts, as when a man loves God and fears God, or loves man or fears man . . . there are the same motions of the soul, the same substantial acts simply considered . . . but the difference lies in the objects; the object of the one is supernatural, the object of the other natural.Footnote 60
Charnock refers to the habit infused in regeneration as ‘supernatural’, because of the object of the creature's affections, and because it ‘is not an excitation, or awakening of some gracious principle which lay hid before in nature . . . but a reassertion as of man from death; a new creation’.Footnote 61 Regeneration involves the infusion of a supernatural habit, because it is divine grace which perfects nature. George Lindbeck extends this response, in describing the manner in which modern Catholic theology has responded to similar objections:
Inherent righteousness is simply the effect in human beings of incorporation into Christ and of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. It is not a quasi-independent external product of God's efficient causality. . . . Insistence on infused created grace becomes a way of saying that union with Christ is genuinely transformative of the human person. Thus it can be argued that when Aristotelian categories are given a participationist interpretation, they can no longer be as easily misused.Footnote 62
Horton wonders why mere recourse to the Spirit's agency in the believer (i.e. actual grace) cannot discharge all the functions traditionally performed by infused habits.Footnote 63 Yet as Lindbeck suggests, the notion of infused habits interpreted along participatory lines provides the metaphysical density to describe the Spirit's work in the redeemed individual in conforming them to Christ. The Spirit's continuing agency in bringing about this act of intrinsic participation in Christ is indispensable, but the remaining question is whether an account which dispenses with habitual grace altogether can adequately denote the intrinsic change enacted by the Spirit's ongoing work in the believer?
Charnock and Witsius follow Calvin in distinguishing between justification and regeneration, which represent two distinct but inseparable relations included within union with Christ. Charnock explains:
There can be no justification without [regeneration]. We are not justified by an inherent righteousness; yet we are not justified without it. We cannot be justified by it, because it is not commensurate to the law by reason of its imperfection; we cannot be justified without it, for it is not congruous to the wisdom and holiness of God, to count a person righteous, who hath nothing of righteousness in him.Footnote 64
Regeneration involves an ontological, participatory relation which secures the reality of the believer's intrinsic transformation, and justification involves a covenantal relation to Christ as our head, which guarantees that the basis of the forensic declaration of justification is entirely extra nos. ‘The matter of [justification] is without us, the rights of Christ; the matter of [regeneration] within us, a gracious habit. The form of the one is imputing, the form of the other is infusing or putting into us.’Footnote 65 The purely extra nos basis of justification secures that though ‘inherent righteousness’ is necessary for communion with God, it is not the basis upon which the sinner is forgiven, accepted and assured that they have moved ‘from condemnation to absolution’.Footnote 66 Only justification can secure a sinner's consolation and assurance of salvation, because Christ's extra nos righteousness is ‘perfect in our [covenant] head’, whereas intrinsic righteousness only ‘aspires to perfection’.Footnote 67 Witsius similarly states: ‘Regeneration, consists in absolute qualities inherent in the soul, which are as so many resemblances of the perfections of God: but a right to life is a mere relation. . . . The right to life rests wholly on the righteousness and merits of Christ, which are entirely without us.’Footnote 68 By virtue of union with Christ, two acts simultaneously occur: the Father declares the sinner righteous on the basis of the sinner's covenantal relation to Christ his covenant head, whose extra nos righteousness is imputed to him; and the Spirit refashions the habitude of the sinner according to the image of Christ's holiness through the sinner's participatory union with Christ. Charnock notes this distinction, stating: ‘Justification cannot bring us into communion with God without regeneration; it may free us from punishment, discharge our sins, but not prepare us for a converse, wherein our chief happiness lies.’Footnote 69 Justification frees the sinner from punishment, for it consists in the declaration that we are ‘in the right’ on the basis of our covenantal union with Christ, as his covenant-keeping obedience is imputed to us. Yet justification cannot, as both Charnock and Witsius argue, prepare the sinner for eternal communion with God.Footnote 70 From God's side, the regeneration of the creature is necessary because God innately rejects that which is contrary to his perfection. From the creature's side, the regeneration of the creature is necessary for the creature to enjoy the blessedness of communion with God; for the transformation of the creature's habitude is precisely that which allows them to love God, and therefore find him delightful and satisfying.Footnote 71 In sum, the distinct covenantal and participatory relations entailed by justification and regeneration are requisite aspects of Charnock's and Witsius’ soteriologies, with both of these relations consisting in inseparable aspects of the believer's union with Christ.
As previously explained, McCormack and Horton are concerned that, if justification and intrinsic transformation occur simultaneously, or worse, regeneration is thought to precede justification, the extra nos basis of justification is obscured. Yet it is not clear why this is the case. To be sure, one must insist that the regeneration of creaturely dispositions is insufficient for the justifying verdict, as the believer fails to sufficiently adhere to the law both before and after regeneration. But if this is the case, then the justifying declaration can only occur on the basis of Christ's extra nos righteousness, which is credited to us by virtue of our covenantal relation to him. Once the basis or ‘matter’ of justification is thereby secured, all intrinsic transformation being determined as inadequate for the justifying verdict, why would the logical simultaneity, or even priority, of an inner work be detrimental to the integrity of extra nos justification? It is unclear why an inherent transformation prior to justification is more problematic than an inherent transformation after justification. The significant point is solely justification's basis.
Horton likewise worries that because a participatory ontology is retained in Reformed scholasticism, justification and regeneration are ‘given different ontological fields of discourse that allow them to drift apart like tectonic plates’.Footnote 72 Unless justification is ‘the ontological source of that change’ effected in sanctification, there occurs an inevitable bifurcation of the two graces.Footnote 73 Yet Charnock contends:
There is a distinction between justification and regeneration, though they never are asunder. Justification is relative; regeneration internally real. Union with Christ is the ground of both; Christ is the meritorious cause of both. The Father pronounceth the one, the Spirit works the other; it is the Father's sentence and the Spirit's work. The relative and real change are both at the same time.Footnote 74
As Calvin famously states, ‘Christ cannot be divided into parts, so the two things, justification and sanctification, which we perceive to be united together in him, are inseparable.’Footnote 75 Given the logic of Horton's own forensic ontology, in which causal priority is given to a forensic declaration, one can see why the subsequent blessings of the ordo must function in the same ontological register as their communicative source. However, Charnock and Witsius follow Calvin in giving logical priority to union with Christ, asserting that, just as Chalcedonian christology insists that Christ's single supposit can subsist in two distinguishable but inseparable natures, so the believer's union with Christ can be distinguished into two distinct but inseparable aspects. If the priority is granted to union with Christ in this way, forensic justification is not required to fund a theological ontology which undergirds all aspects of the ordo salutis. Justification then does require a distinct ‘ontological field of discourse’, for it does not effect a change within the believer's nature, but creates a legal relation simultaneously accompanied by a distinct but inseparable participatory relation that is ontologically transformative.
Witsius’ and Charnock's soteriologies demonstrate the possibilities which arise when covenant and ontological participation are integrated as complementary motifs rather than rival paradigms. By giving a priority to the believer's union with Christ, and speaking of that union in terms of two distinct yet indivisible relations, Charnock and Witsius overcome the charge of legal fiction while preserving Protestant distinctives.Footnote 76 They affirm the necessity of an intrinsic change in the believer's nature and employ the notion of infused habits to richly describe the Spirit's creation of this participatory relation to Christ. They likewise maintain the insufficiency of this intrinsic transformation for the justifying verdict, and that it, crucially, cannot foster assurance and consolation, given that despite the transformation of the believer's habitude, they will continue to sin. Therefore, the forensic verdict of justification which absolves the sinner of guilt is solely based upon a covenantal relation to Christ, whose righteousness is entirely extra nos. Therefore, Charnock and Witsius can admit that, if justification was the sort of relation that could stand in isolation, one might worry that its purely legal status is in danger of being seen as a ‘legal fiction’. However, justification is not a freestanding word, but one aspect of the believer's union with Christ. To raise the spectre of an individual declared legally in the right without intrinsic transformation requires a division of Christ's person, for the priority of union means that what is fundamentally communicated in the ordo salutis is a relation to Christ himself.
Conclusion
I hope to raise a question for contemporary Reformed dogmatics, and additionally, as I will soon suggest, for Radical Orthodoxy as well: has the presentation of covenant and metaphysical participation as rival paradigms hamstrung our soteriology?
John Webster contends: ‘The fact that “God is the subject of this science” is crucial to questions of proportion and order in systematic theology. No other doctrinal locus can eclipse the doctrine of the Trinity. . . . The Christian doctrine of God excludes any other articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae.’Footnote 77 McCormack and Horton represent another approach, employing forensic justification as a hermeneutical key by which to construct a covenantal ontology. Yet forensic justification is not fit for this purpose, and the resulting soteriology distorts the proper scope of forensic justification and the more fitting proportion characteristic of Charnock's and Witsius’ soteriologies. In contrast to McCormack and Horton, I have not sought to intensify the unique aspects of Protestant thought, nor to excise the participatory metaphysical elements which Reformed Orthodoxy shares with medieval Catholicism. Rather, I hope to have shown that through employing metaphysical participation and covenant as complementary motifs, Reformed theology can address the legal fiction challenge, while maintaining Protestant soteriological distinctives. It is the confusion of covenantal and ontologically participatory aspects of union with Christ that leaves covenantal ontologies unable to simultaneously address both concerns.
A common objection levelled against Radical Orthodoxy by Reformed theologians, is that it is overdetermined by metaphysics at the expense of less universal and idealistic (i.e. more contingent and particular) aspects of Christian teaching. For example, Webster worries that ‘genealogies of modern theology that trace its putative disarray to earlier philosophical compromise (with nominalism or whatever) have limits’, ‘because the office of metaphysics is ministerial not magisterial’.Footnote 78 For Webster, the overdetermination of all tracts of Christian teaching by participatory metaphysics leads to the atrophy of those doctrines that are not conducive to this metaphysical style of analysis and the hypertrophy of those doctrines which are.Footnote 79 This objection does not solely apply to accounts of doctrine which are heavily invested in ‘Hellenistically’ inspired metaphysical systems, but likewise to the trend within modern theology towards constructing expansive ontologies or revisionary accounts of metaphysics. While the avoidance of metaphysical issues may lead to unwitting subservience to implicit ontological commitments, to turn the loci of Christian doctrine into the raw material from which all-encompassing ontologies are extracted seems to, in its own way, expand the dogmatic scope of metaphysics beyond its ‘ministerial’ bounds.Footnote 80
With regards to Radical Orthodoxy at least, Horton echoes Webster's critique; ‘one detects in [Radical Orthodoxy] (and Milbank in particular) the danger of assimilating the concrete event of the cross into speculative philosophy’.Footnote 81 Justin Holcomb offers a similar diagnosis, identifying an idealism at work in Radical Orthodoxy, but offers a telling prescription, ‘The Reformed covenantal approach is a helpful supplement to Radical Orthodoxy's emphasis on ideality and its allergy to particularity.’Footnote 82 Milbank contends that what is lacking in Reformed theology is a robust participatory metaphysic which can fund Calvin's theology of union with Christ. Charnock and Witsius possess just such an account, and thereby raise a corresponding question for Milbank himself. Might Radical Orthodoxy benefit from an account of covenant as moral history, which checks the unrestrained inflation of metaphysics beyond its ministerial bounds, lending a density to God's contingent acts in history? Might the judicious integration of covenant and participation enable theologians – both Reformed and Radically Orthodox – to bring to speech the surpassing richness of all that is entailed by the claim that God has, through a man from Nazareth crucified under Pontius Pilate, reconciled the world to himself?Footnote 83
