Paul's Passing Thoughts

Part One,    Part Two,

Part Three,    Part Four.

Again, the purpose of this interview is education, not debate from the interviewer. But to accentuate  the interview, I invite vigorous debate in the comment section. After his response here, I have decided to move on to the next topic.

Q: Me.

Responses in blue.

Italics are third-party references used in questions.

Continued from part 4. Q: I’m not so sure about that clarification. Let’s take a pure, unadulterated NC view of justification and see where you agree or disagree:

The Present, Continuous Nature of Justification; For all its strength, Reformed theology tends to relegate justification by faith to an initiatory action in the soteriological process. This is because it contends that the subjective (personal) justification of the believing sinner is a once-and-for-all, nonrepeatable act. Hence the relationship between justification and sanctification is seen as justification succeeded by sanctification.  AGREED

And…Since the life of holiness is fueled and fired by justification by faith, sanctification must constantly return to justification. In other words, our sanctification is fueled/motivated by the grace of salvation.  In a very technical sense, it is grace that precedes justification (i.e., the sovereign work of regeneration) that necessarily leads to justification, that brings us as Christians to the point of gratitude for grace.  Regeneration is a monergistic act of the Holy Spirit where as justification is a synergistic act between God and man (i.e., God promises IF we believe, THEN we will be saved/justified).  Traditionally, most classical “reformed” Christians have great difficulty labeling justification as synergistic, but that is because of the historical line of reasoning from Arminian and Pelagian forefathers.

Otherwise, the Christian cannot possibly escape arriving at a new self-righteousness. We cannot reach a point in sanctification where our fellowship with God does not rest completely on forgiveness of sins.  Foundationally, yes.  Exclusively, no.  There are other motivating factors for a Christian, But they all coincide with a God/Christ centered motivation.  The desire to be holy stems from a renewed heart’s love and passion to want to conform to the image of Christ, because of the gratitude for Christ, because of the joy found in glorifying Christ, his life, death and resurrection.

And…Christian existence is gospel existence. Sanctification is justification in action.  Agreed.

[Q] Second part of this question: I’m not so sure evangelicals would say that,  Any/all acts of obedience, we would say, are empowered alone by the Holy Spirit.  “It is God who works in you, both to will and to act.”  I am not an advocate of monergistic sanctification, so I hope I didn’t leave that impression.  Classical Christianity understands sanctification as a synergistic act between God and man.  God works in us, we work it out.  The difference between “reformed” synergism and non-reformed synergism is that the former is understood as a sovereign-synergism and the latter, not.

That being said, when I/we say any/all acts of obedience are empowered alone by the Holy Spirit, we make reference to the monergistic act of the Holy Spirit whereby the bondage of our will has been liberated “alone” by the power of the Holy Spirit, and from then on out, the entirety of our obedience drives its ultimate “power” from the Holy Spirit. “What do you have that you have not been given, and if you have been given it, why do you boast as though you have not…For by him and through him and to him are all things.  To God alone be the glory forever.”

[Q] Please distinguish this as opposed to sanctification by faith alone which evangelicals would reject out of hand. “Sanctification by faith alone…” does not mean we sit back and believe in some kind of fatalistic sanctification, that we just sit back and wait for God to, magically, “do everything.”  SBFA is, as Martin Luther described it, an active/living faith.  Utterly passive sanctification is agreeably just a fancy way of advocating antinomianism.  SBFA simply means, we are sanctified, we are changed and made increasingly holy, as we trust God, at his word, trusting him by believing and obeying everything in his word, not just the verses that talk about believing in the life, death and resurrection of Christ.  We trust him with all of our life by embracing and believing all of his word.

[Q] Third part of this question: How should we reconcile this with believers being described as “co-laborers with God”  and the Holy Spirit being our “Helper.”  To me, the reconciliation is very simple.  We have paradoxical revelations in Scripture, both transcendent and imminent dealings with God and man.  Both camps error when emphasizing one facet at the expense of the other (can you say Christological paradox? J).  The difference between the two theological camps rests within the understanding that there is paradoxical revelations/teaching in Scripture that can lead one to believe that, transcendently, God does everything or imminently, God waits for man to accomplish anything. 

[Q] Fourth: What’s you evaluation of the following statement:

Sanctification is cooperative. Agreed.

There are two partners involved in the work. I must work and God will work. Agreed.

If ever the extra-biblical maxim, “God helps those who help themselves,” had any truth, it is at this point. Again, this concept has validity so long as the balanced understanding of transcendence and imminence remains intact. Yes, God does draw near to those who draw near to him…If we abide in Christ, then he will abide in us…I believe in those contingent truths and promises like nobody’s business. 

The point of departure from we what we would describe as evangelical orthodoxy stems from an autonomous understanding or practice of synergism, once the believer has been regenerate.  The idea that once the HS has regenerated one’s life, somehow they are, for all practical purposes, autonomous, a sort of neo-deistic practice of the Christian life, that God has regenerated an individual and basically now, sits back for the rest of their spiritual life waiting to see what they will do with the regenerating  life they have been given.  This, we would say, is not how the Christian is to understand synergistic sanctification.  That would be better defined as self-righteous self-betterment.

We are not called to sit back and let God do all the work. We are called to work, and to work hard. To work something out with fear and trembling is to work with devout and conscientious rigor. It is to work with care, with a profound concern with the end result.  Agreed.  We would simply qualify this as being motivated to chase after our sanctification via. the Christ centered-gospel motivation.

Sanctification is, undeniably, a synergistic process.  God works concurrently with our human agency.  However, theologically, there is a difference between “reformed” and “non-reformed” synergism and concurrence.  For that reason, the previous entire statement can mean two different things to two different theological persuasions.