Author: py3ak

Geerhardus Vos, The Eschatology of the Old Testament, p.7, speaking of Romans 8 says:

This is a longing, a prayer, a beseeching of God that only the redeemed subject of religion can experience. The groaning of the irrational creature is left far behind by it. The Christian alone can experience it and does experience it with such intensity that it became to Paul in itself a prophecy of fulfillment. It is like the craving hunger that knows there must be bread somewhere.

Is anyone else reminded of C.S. Lewis?

The Reformed Orthodox were very clear that faith is justifying only because it is receptive of Christ. Heinrich Heppe collects evidence of this in his, Reformed Dogmatics, pp.553 and 554:

The condition to which the attribution of Christ’s righteousness is attached is not the performance of a work (for by works fallen man can merit nothing nor satisfy God in any way), but only faith in Christ and his work of redemption. But this faith effects justification not as a meritorious work or as the root of good works, but purely as a causa instrumentalis, not for one moment as a condition fulfillable by man,�for a condition of justification can only be laid down by the law, but not by free grace, and the single real condition of justification is perfect obedience to the law.

Mastricht (VI, vi, 14): “It is worth while inquiring how faith inflows into justification.�(1) It does not do so as the meritorious cause of it.�Nor (2) because of faith;�but we are justified through faith”.

Witsius (III, viii, 52): “Nor does it seem to me an accurate statement, that faith is the condition which the gospel demands of us, that we may be held righteous and innocent with God. Strictly speaking the condition of justification is nothing but perfect obedience. � This the law enacted. Nor did the gospel substitute another; it teaches that the law has been satisfied by our sponsor Christ. It is at once the duty of faith to accept and by accepting to make its own satisfaction offered for it.”

Crocius 1223: “So not only are those works excluded from the act of justification, which are emitted by a man before faith and conversion, but also those which proceed from faith.”

Burmann (VI, v, 25): “Indeed faith is so opposed to works in this matter that it even excludes itself, if it is considered as a work. Although regarded by itself it is a work, in justification it is not regarded after this manner but purely as an instrumental work.”

Bucan (XXXI, 34): “In what sense are we said to be justified by faith? It is not regarded in its own intrinsic dignity or merit, nor as a work or a new quality in us, nor in its force and efficacy minus love; nor because it has love added to it or works through love; nor because faith imparts the Spirit of Christ, by whom the believer is rendered just because we are bidden seek righteousness not in ourselves but in Christ; but because it seeks and embraces the righteousness offered in the Gospel Rom. 1:16,17. As regards justification faith is a purely passive thing, bringing nothing of ours to conciliate God, but receiving from Christ what we lack.”

(Formatting altered for greater ease in reading)

Faith is not a meritorious cause of justification; faith does not meet the demands of the law; faith does not justify because it produces good works, nor do the good works that proceed from faith play any role in justification. The only reason we are justified by faith is that faith apprehends Christ our righteousness.

But what more iniquitous than to hold blasphemous opinions, and not to give way to those who are wiser and more learned than ourself.� Now into this unwisdom fall they who, finding themselves hindered from knowing the truth by some obscurity, have recourse not to the prophets� utterances, not to the Apostles� letters, nor to the injunctions of the Gospel but to their own selves:� and thus they stand out as masters of error because they were never disciples of truth.� For what learning has he acquired about the pages of the New and Old Testament, who has not even grasped the rudiments of the Creed?

Leo the �Great, Letter XXVIII, to Flavian (the Tome)

Principal Fairbairn explains how the doctrine of headship, that humanity derives its condition from that representative man with whom it is union, is a source of comfort, even considered under the aspect of that guilt and pollution we partake of in Adam:

And though, like every other peculiar doctrine of the Gospel, it will always prove a stone of stumbling to the natural man, it will never fail to impart peace and comfort to the child of faith. Some degree of this he will derive from it, even by contemplating it in its darkest side by looking to the inheritance of evil which it has been the occasion of transmitting from Adam to the whole human race. For, humbling as is the light in which it presents the natural condition of man, it still serves to keep the soul possessed of just and elevated views of the goodness of God. That all are naturally smitten with the leprosy of a sore disease, is matter of painful experience, and cannot be denied without setting aside the plainest lessons of history. But how much deeper must have been the pain which the thought of this awakened, and how unspeakably more pregnant should it have appeared with fear and anxiety for the future, if the evil could have been traced to the operation of God, and had existed as an original and inherent element in the state and constitution of man ! It was a great relief to the wretched bosom of the pro digal, and was all, indeed, that remained to keep him from the blackness of despair, to know that it was not his father who sent him forth into the condition of a swine-herd, and bade him satisfy his hunger with the husks on which they fed; a truly consolatory thought, that these husks and that wretchedness were not emblems of his father. And can it be less comforting for the thoughtful mind, when awakening to the sad heritage of sin and death, under which humanity lies burdened, to know that this ascends no higher than the first parent of the human family, and that, as originally settled by God, the condition of mankind was in all respects “very good?” The evil is thus seen to have been not essential, but incidental ; a root of man’s planting, not of God’s; an intrusion into Heaven’s workmanship, which Heaven may again drive out.

Typology of Scripture, V.1, P.2, C.1

Boethius explains this in his little tractate, The Trinity is One God not Three Gods:

But the Divine Substance is Form without matter, and is therefore One, and is its own essence. But other things are not simply their own essences, for each thing has its being from the things of which it is composed, that is, from its parts. It is This and That, i.e. it is the totality of its parts in conjunction; it is not This or That taken apart. Earthly man, for instance, since he consists of soul and body, is soul and body, not soul or body, separately; therefore he is not his own essence. That on the other hand which does not consist of This and That, but only of This, is really its own essence, and is altogether beautiful and stable because it is not grounded in any alien element.

John Calvin,Lectures on Lamentations, Lecture 10 on 3:24

But Paul meant that the faithful ought so to fix their minds on God alone, that whatever might happen, they would not yet cease to glory in him. Why? because God is their life in death, their light in darkness, their rest in war and tumult, their abundance in penury and want.
It is in the same sense our Prophet now says, when he intimates that none hope in God but those who build on his paternal favor alone, so that they seek nothing else but to have him propitious to them.