JC Ryle Verses John Calvin on the Separation of Justification and Sanctification
“Christ cannot be torn into parts, so these two which we perceive in him together and conjointly are inseparable—namely, righteousness and sanctification. Whomever, therefore, God receives into grace, on them he at the same time bestows the spirit of adoption [Romans 8:15], by whose power he remakes them to his own image. . . Yet Scripture, even though it joins them, still lists them separately in order that God’s manifold grace may better appear to us.” — John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960), Bk. 3, chap. 11, sec. 6).
“But the plain truth is, that men will persist in confounding two things that differ–that is, justification and sanctification. In justification the word to address to man is believe–only believe; in sanctification the word must be ‘watch, pray, and fight.’ What God has divided let us not mingle and confuse” (JC Ryle, Holiness: Introduction).
Martin Luther: Justification/Salvation is Perpetual
From the archives of the Australian Forum:
The present continuous nature of justification was the genius of Luther’s emphasis. In “The Disputation Concerning Justification” (1536). He says:
. . . forgiveness of sins is not a matter of a passing work or action, but comes from baptism which is of perpetual duration, until we arise from the dead. — Luther’s Works(American ed.; Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press; St. Louis: concordia, 1955), vol. 34, p. 163.
. . . Forgiveness of sins is not a matter of a passing work or action, but of perpetual duration. For the forgiveness of sins begins in baptism and remains with us all the way to death, until we arise from the dead, and leads us into life eternal. So we live continually under the remission of sins. Christ. is truly and constantly the liberator from our sins, is called our Savior, and saves us by taking away our sins. If, however, he saves us always and continually, then we are constantly sinners. — Ibid., p.164.
On no condition is sin a passing phase, but we are justified daily by the unmerited forgiveness of sins and by the justification of God’s mercy. Sin remains, then, perpetually in this life, until the hour of the last judgment comes and then at last we shall be made perfectly righteous. — Ibid., p.167.
For the forgiveness of sins is a continuing divine work, until we die. Sin does not cease. Accordingly, Christ saves us perpetually. —Ibid., p.190.
Daily we sin, daily we are continually justified, just as a doctor is forced to heal sickness day by day until it is cured. — Ibid., p.191.
Kevin DeYoung Sings to the Flock at the 2012 T4G Conference
“DeYoung finished the message by making many good statements about obedience in the Christian faith, but he was simply talking out of both sides of his mouth.”
Here we go. The lonely lovers of the truth are already singing the praises of Kevin DeYoung for “getting it right” at the T4G. Gag. Actually, I have more respect for Tullian Tchividjian because he causes me to work less. Messages like this one from I was born sitting on a fence post DeYoung have to be meticulously unraveled and explained. But here is the easy part via my I was born with good ole’ fashioned horse sense grandmother: “Birds of the feather flock together.” At the beginning of the message, DeYoung identified himself as a New Calvinist. It is what it is. His theses that New Calvinists just need a little tweaking in regard to the relationship of obedience to sanctification, doesn’t fly with me. He runs with a bunch that believes in perpetual justification, and mere tweaking doesn’t fix heresy.
DeYoung began his message with about fifteen minutes of humor which I found both annoying and out of place when one considers the gravity of this subject in our day. Finally, when he got into some substance, he reiterated the fact that New Calvinism is a “resurgence” (because everyone else is out to lunch spiritually). He also said that the “centrality of the gospel” is the primary concern of the movement. That is, central in sanctification. This is just the same old song and dance; preaching reconciliation to the already reconciled is just as important as the reconciled preaching reconciliation to the unreconciled. From there, and throughout the message, DeYoung flips back and forth between toeing the New Calvinist line and the importance of putting forth effort in sanctification. At some points, he is actually theologically correct in the sermon, stating that we must “work out what God has worked in,” but then flips back to the contradictory New Calvinist position throughout the message. It’s pathetic.
In his introduction to the main points of the message after almost 30 minutes of foolishness, he starts out strong by saying that sanctification requires both hard work by us and the grace of God. Amen, but then he listed the four points of the message: growth in godliness requires Spirit powered, gospel-driven, faith fueled effort. Even though he describes “effort” as one of the four points, it isn’t, the message is really a three point message about the three different things that drive effort in sanctification. This is a grammatical twisting. Effort does not stand alone as one of the points because the other three points are modifiers. And, effort in sanctification is not, “gospel-driven”; that’s blatantly false.
New Calvinists trade the word “justification” for “gospel” so that this error is not completely obvious; ie, “justification-driven” or perpetual justification. Our effort in sanctification is not driven by justification because justification is a finished work and a legal declaration. We are not sanctified by justification, nor is justification the power source for our sanctification—regeneration is. Though there is agreement with orthodoxy on the other two, it must be assumed that all three are needed to power sanctification, so his premise is dead on arrival. Moreover, the fact that DeYoung states that justification (gospel) is needed in sanctification speaks to his like belief with all New Calvinists that justification and sanctification are linked together, and that sanctification must derive an efficacious element of its power from the gospel of justification. Game over. He can now dress this up any way he wants to, but that dog won’t hunt.
On his first point, “Spirit powered (effort),” even though no one would disagree that sanctification is Spirit powered, DeYoung uses this point to once again toe the New Calvinist/Gospel Sanctification line. He states that the Spirit’s role is to empower, show us “sinners” our sin, while mentioning that we as Christians run from our sin and want darkness (oh really?). He states this as a primary purpose of the Spirit’s work in sanctification: to illumine “sin/truth.” Deyoung primarily speaks of illuminating sin, but slips in “truth” along with it (“sin/truth”) to insinuate that sin is not the only thing he is talking about. But then he follows with the third role of the Spirit in sanctification which is to glorify Christ. Again, this is the same old New Calvinist line that restricts the use of Scripture for showing us two things only: our sin and Christ’s glory. He prefaces “sin” with “truth” to insinuate a general, or multiplicity of truth, but never specifies anything other than “sin.” This is deliberate deception. It’s the same old making the cross bigger as we see the depths of our sinfulness more and more, and the glory of Christ more and more. He then cites the staple New Calvinist Bible verse for this, 2Cor. 3:18 to make his point and refers to the “beholding as a way of becoming” truism.
In the second point (gospel-driven effort), he notes that “everyone agrees” that holiness flows from the gospel and good works flow from “good news.” Again, this, for all practical purposes is an admission that he believes in the fusion of justification and sanctification. And if justification is monergistic, well, you do the math. From here, DeYoung is simply trying to convince people that the horse is really a camel. He continued in the message to invoke the same old worn out all obedience flows from gratitude formula. You first contemplate the gospel and your sin which creates gratitude, then obedience flows from that. In real life, gratitude does not always walk with obedience, but often comes after. DeYoung at this point hints at orthodoxy by saying that there are “many other” motivations for obedience other than the cross, but of course, doesn’t mention them specifically or talk about them.
DeYoung finished the message by making many good statements about obedience in the Christian faith, but he was simply talking out of both sides of his mouth. He also prefaced those concluding statements with the same old “we can’t obey in our own strength” without any mention that it is not our strength only. If our strength is not involved in any way, who is doing the work? When we exercise, is it our own strength? And aren’t we supposed to do all things to the glory of God? So, if we are exercising to the glory of God, is the Holy Spirit lifting the weights for us? DeYoung criticized confusing cliché’s in this message while using the mega confusing New Calvinist cliché about “obeying God in our own strength.”
DeYoung lectured the audience about how Christians are confused by the way many are trying to make New Calvinism seem plausible in real Christian life. He acted as if his message was a clarifying voice among the background noise. What a joke. Everything about the message, especially the delivery, was a train wreck.
DeYoung is one of them. Birds of the feather flock together. He is trying to sell himself as a voice of reason among penguins. But he did make some troublesome, isolated statements about obedience. Though made out of one side of his mouth, I wonder, will he be invited back next year? I learned a lesson when I was in college: I tried to date three girls at the same time and ended up losing all of them. It will be interesting to see what the future holds for DeYoung. The penguin singing in the midst of the flock: “I just got to be me.”
paul
David Powlison’s Gnostic Counseling Paradigm
David Powlison is the major figure representing the counseling wing of Westminster Theological Seminary: the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation (CCEF). Powlison was mentored by Dr. John Miller who was a professor at Westminster. Miller was the father of Sonship Theology which was his own twist on the rediscovery of the doctrine of perpetual justification (Gospel Sanctification) via the Australian Forum think tank formed in 1970.
Powlison took the concept of progressive justification and used it to develop his Dynamics of Biblical Change project which is the foundation of counseling education at Westminster. Two former students of his, Paul David Tripp, and Timothy Lane, wrote a book entitled “How People Change”(HPC) which is a treatise on the “practical application” of Gospel Sanctification (the doctrine of the present-day New Calvinist movement). The title of the book is a lie; as we shall see, New Calvinists do not really believe that people change.
This is most evident when one reads pages 64 and 65 of HPC. Tripp and Lane describe Christians as “powerless,” “enslaved,” and “dead.” They further elaborate by writing, “When you are dead, you can’t do anything” (p. 64, HPC). How do dead Christians change? Obviously, they don’t. Hence, this is why the vast majority of present-day biblical counseling controlled by the CCEF machine is a farce: the counseling is not about change.
So what’s going on? Basically, it starts with Plato and what was later known as Gnosticism. Some refer to Gnosticism as “Platonism for Dummies,” but the basics are easier to explain through fundamental Platonism. Plato believed man was unable to know reality. The following excerpt is a good explanation of Platonism 101:
Plato, the most creative and influential of Socrates’ disciples, wrote dialogues, in which he frequently used the figure of Socrates to espouse his own (Plato’s) full-fledged philosophy. In “The Republic,” Plato sums up his views in an image of ignorant humanity, trapped in the depths and not even aware of its own limited perspective. The rare individual escapes the limitations of that cave and, through a long, tortuous intellectual journey, discovers a higher realm, a true reality, with a final, almost mystical awareness of Goodness as the origin of everything that exists. Such a person is then the best equipped to govern in society, having a knowledge of what is ultimately most worthwhile in life and not just a knowledge of techniques; but that person will frequently be misunderstood by those ordinary folks back in the cave who haven’t shared in the intellectual insight….the Allegory also attacks people who rely upon or are slaves to their senses (Analysis of The Allegory of the Cave by Plato Online source:123helpme.com/view.asp?id=135077).
Because the common man is enslaved to his own senses and can only comprehend what he can sense from the material world which is merely shadows of reality, Plato devised what we now call a cybernetic loop. This is a process that evaluates the outcomes of experience/circumstances/data for the purposes of making adjustments or reaching goals. Since the common man is not enlightened, the next best thing is to devise a system that gives him guidance from the criteria that he can experience with his senses. The enlightened ones, who should lead and govern the common man, develop these cybernetic loops to help guide mankind in their world of dark shadows. Plato believed in a world ruled by philosopher kings. Below are some illustrations of cybernetic loops:
These loops can be complicated and may involve loops that evaluate other loops. Below is another illustration in regard to Plato’s philosophy:
Plato had a vast influence on Augustine who is primarily responsible for the total depravity of the saints tenet found in Reformed theology. This prism had a profound influence in the forming of the gospel of perpetual atonement, or the idea that the effects of Christ’s death on the cross wasn’t a finished work, but was progressive for the purpose of maintaining a righteous standing for the saints. See illustration below:
This is opposed to the gospel that rejects the total depravity of the saints and propagates an enablement through the new birth:
In the second model, the believer has the responsibility to learn and apply the word of God to their lives. But the first model, because it relies mostly on Platonist philosophy, also borrows the cybernetic loop for its “practical application.” Therefore, New Calvinists merge progressive justification into various cybernetic loops for “practical application.” Since the saints are supposedly unable to keep the law because they are still totally depraved, there has to be a way for the saints to continually partake in the same gospel that saved us. In order to come up with a way to do this, the New Calvinists went back to the basics: Plato. The first illustration of this is from CCEF’s The Journal of Biblical Counseling vol. 18, number 1, Fall 1999:
The following are illustrations from HPC and Powlison’s Dynamics of Biblical Change:
In the following excerpt from Dr. Devin Berry’s “How to Listen to a Sermon,” Berry uses a C-loop concept to explain the New Calvinist theory on how the saints receive the word of God. The illustration following the excerpt is mine:
Note this cycle: Paul, from the Word, delivers words. The Bereans, from Paul’s words, go to the Word. The Word cycles from God, through the preacher, to the people, back to the Word, and this, verse 12 tells us, produced belief in the God of the Word. An important thing to note is that this happened daily – suggesting a regular interaction between preaching, personal study, and the Word.
The goal of all of this is not change in the believer which is impossible anyway according to their theology because Christians are still totally depraved. The goal is to make the cross (or, the works of Christ) bigger by a deeper and deeper knowledge of how totally depraved we supposedly are. This is illustrated by the following chart produced by a New Calvinist organization:
Below is a C-loop that can illustrate the above chart:
New Calvinism’s Objective Deception and Kinship With Mysticism
I have been watching the “Wide Is The Gate” video series by Caryl Productions. The series addresses “Christianized New Age Spirituality.” The series has many excellent observations. The following are the major ones:
- Eastern Mysticism that teaches creation is God, and that God is in every person, has been integrated into mainstream Christianity.
- Over the years, the integration has been fine tuned to appear orthodox.
- When one aspect of such a movement is exposed, they change the name.
- The Bible predicted that Christianity would be saturated with such false doctrines in the latter days.
There are two major movements right now that are being used by the kingdom of darkness to promote its major agenda: to get Christians as far away as possible from learning and doing God’s word. The folks at Caryl Productions are spot on; the New Age Movement never went away, it is alive and well under a different name, and in a local church near you. The video series addresses one of the major movements: the I am divinity crowd, and the practical application is various formulas for discovering one’s own inherit godhood. A mass of Christian thought, in various forms, falls under this category: “I am my own god.”
The host of the video makes a good point that in contrast, true evangelicals believe God to be outside of man, as opposed to mankind being inherently one with deity. Of course, the host is speaking in regard to the need for salvation. Now comes the evil sibling claiming, “the centrality of the objective gospel outside of us.” The contenders in the video make the point (and rightly so) that Christianized mysticism focuses on subjective “truth,” and the goodness within instead of God’s objective truth, and His goodness outside of us. But again, like they state well in the video, the movement continually retools in order to slip in unawares.
Enter New Calvinism. Their the centrality of the objective gospel outside of us (group A) would seem to be the perfect storm against the centrality of the subjective gospel inside of us (group B). This bunch are not amateur deceivers by any means. They introduce themselves as the extreme antithesis, while the goal is exactly the same. In fact, the practical application of both are identical: contemplationism. A primary theme in the video is the spiritual contemplationism of Christianized New Age Spirituality. And New Calvinism is no different.
I will now explain how both movements attain the exact same goal, but with different means. New Calvinists point to the means as a way to distinguish themselves from the other camp and to appear as contenders for a true gospel. New Calvinists believe that ALL reality is interpreted through “Christ” and His works. It isn’t about what Jesus SAYS to us, per se, it’s about who he is as a “person.” In the words of Paul David Tripp: “He comes as a person, not as a cognitive concept that we insert into a new formula for life” (How People Change, p.27). Tripp then proceeds (in the same book) to explain a complex Gnostic concept for replacing the learn and do “formula” propagated by Christ in Matthew 7:24-27.
Hence, rather than to say, “Truth is subjective and is found inside of us and we make truth whatever it is to us,” New Calvinists say, “Truth is found completely outside of us and is interpreted through a deeper and deeper knowledge of Christ and His works.” That’s supposedly an objective truth, but what does it mean? How do we gain a deeper and deeper knowledge of Christ as a person? By learning His word and doing it? No, because that’s not learning more and more about Christ, that’s doing what Christ commands, and since all objective truth is outside of us, we are still totally depraved and are unable to obey Him anyway.
Furthermore, New Calvinists believe that any doctrine indicating an infusion of Grace into the believer at salvation is a false gospel, and was the very crux of the Reformation; true spiritual life must remain outside of the believer. They concur with the new birth, but the new birth, to the New Calvinist, means that we are still spiritually dead and totally depraved; we have life in us (Christ), but we are still spiritually dead.
So, how do Christians change? According to New Calvinists, they don’t, but rather manifest the active obedience of Christ—the active obedience of Christ while He lived on Earth is imputed to us in this life as we “manifest” that obedience via Christ who indwells us by the Holy Spirit. How does that happen? It happens as we gain deeper and deeper knowledge of Christ through the Scriptures. To the New Calvinist, the Bible is an “objective” book about Christ only, a tool for gaining deeper knowledge about Christ. If we use it for that purpose only, the Spirit is involved, but if we use the Bible for the purpose of learning God’s imperatives for the purpose of obedience, that is using the Bible in the exact same way that the Pharisees used the Torah. Supposedly. According to New Calvinists, one is of the Spirit, the other is the “dead letter of the law.”
The final equation is simple: gospel contemplationism. Group A, and group B end up at the same place: seeking God through meditation and contemplationism. The only difference is the object of the meditation. And both are subjective. When New Calvinists have to see Jesus in every verse of the Bible, the results are bound to be subjective. Besides, New Calvinists believe we are still totally depraved, and anything that is inside of us is subjective; ie, we really can’t know anything—we are incapable of applying cognitive truth. What’s the difference between that and the new age idea that real truth is unknowable? Nothing. The New Calvinist way to spiritual life is meditation on Christ, and then sit back and watch what Christ might do. Paul David Tripp calls this, “New and surprising fruit.” Whatever we see in the Bible is imputed to us in the same way that righteousness was imputed to us when we were saved, resulting in “manifestations of Christ.”
The following exercise may lend some understanding on this. Find a passage in the Bible that has absolutely nothing to do with the gospel. For instance, God telling Adam to name all of the animals He created. Then, ask ten different Christians to draw a gospel meaning from the verse (ie, what does the passage say about Christ, His works, and the gospel). You can be sure that you will get ten different observations. But New Calvinists would say that all ten interpretations must be correct because they concern the gospel, and gospel interpretation is always attended by the Spirit. The subjective is therefore true because it came from a narrow, supposedly objective prism (even though a gospel result is always to be assumed). However, New Calvinists do recognize a structural aspect to the Scriptures that instructs them on how to organize church polity, but this is seen as a practical necessity for organization, not sanctification.
There is simply no difference between the two. They both seek to draw Christians away from the application of cognitive truth by replacing it with contemplationism.
paul
Paul's Passing Thoughts 
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