The following was initially a blog post. I have refrained from editing out matters of informality etc.
Disclaimer: While I am a reasonable typist, I nonetheless cannot type at speech-speed at the best times, much less on a laptop keyboard. Consequently, these notes vary from word to word to close summary, and much of the ground in between. To be sure of precise wording, you will of course need to consult the tapes or CDs.
Richard Gaffin: Union with Christ
Several aspects of union
The union and solidarity involved here are all-encompassing. The issue of union with Christ extends from eternity to eternity: "before the foundation of the world" (Eph 1.5) to future glorification (Rom 8; 1 Cor 15). Thus "in Christ" is predestinarian, redemptive-historical, and applicatory union - "all of the above." In maintaining such distinctions, we are maintaining several aspects of a single union, not several unions. We must not deny any of these, nor blur the distinctions.
Romans 16.7 ("those who were in Christ before me") presupposes a "before and after" of being in Christ. Paul knows himself as chosen before the foundation of the world in Christ, and yet, there was a time when he was outside Christ, and thus remained a child of wrath like the rest (Eph 2.3). Thus a crucial issue in view for the ordo salutis is: What effects this transition from wrath to grace, to this being in Christ?
Present union
Several facets of present union, too, may be noted.
The union is mystical. This term is suggested by the language of the apostle in Ephesians 5.31: the union of Christ and Church is a "great mystery." This points to the intimacy involved, but makes a clear important consideration: such intimacy does not remove or blur the personal disctinction between Christ and the Christian; the personal identity and integrity of each is not effaced. Christ retains His representative and substitutionary role.
The union is spiritual. This "spirituality" is not in the sense of immaterial, nor in a Platonic sense, but with reference to the indwelling and the activity of the Holy Spirit. Such definition protects against confusing this union with other kinds of union. It is neither ontological nor hypostatic nor psychosomatic, nor even somatic, nor yet merely intellectual or moral. The new relationship between Christ and Spirit lies back of this. The incarnate Christ is so transformed by the Spirit and in possession of the Spirit, that He has Himself become life-giving Spirit. This is a functional equation between Christ and the Spirit which yet does not efface personal distinction between Son and Spirit. The two are one. This is reflected in Romans 8.9-10, which employs all the possible combinations: you are in the Spirit, the Spirit is in you, Christ is in you, you are in Christ. These are different ways of looking at the single union. So also Ephesians 3: to have His Spirit in your inner person is for Christ to dwell in your hearts. Present union thus has a reciprocal character: believers are in Christ, and He is in them.
The union is inherently vital. Christ's indwelling by the Spirit is the very life of the believer (Col 3.4; Gal 2.20).
The union is indissoluble, being rooted in election before the foundation of the world. It is thus infallibly certain of reaching its eschatological goal.
This union, as much as anything, is at the center of Paul's soteriology.
The legal and relational distinction
The two belong together
There is a tendency in distinguishing Paul's legal and relational concerns, to place them in tension, or as coexisting but separable; or perhaps, as optional metaphors for the same reality. When this is done, the forensic is almost always diminished.
This way of viewing things is the source of considerable confusion. Rather, we need to look at things this way: Answering to the relational matter of sin as guilt in Paul, the forensic (judicial) and the participatory belong together. The forensic does not function apart from the participatory. The latter includes, but is not to be equated with, the renovative. Both the forensic and the transformative dimensions are functions of the relation: union with Christ. Christ in us continues to be Christ for us; in union with us, Christ continues to have forensic as well as transforming significance.
The role of faith
Faith plays an essential role in being united to Christ, which is reflected in 1 Corinthians 15.1-2. At stake is whether those who have received the truth have believed in vain: thus, faith involves receiving and is to be persevering - standing, holding fast (v. 2). Faith as believing in Christ, entrusting myself to Him (reflected in the phrase pistis eis Christon especially): this is extraspective (looks away from self to Christ) - faith as such is effective for union with Christ. Faith is seen as the bond of union viewed from the human side. It is the effect of the work of God, whose call is effective in calling sinners. In this union, they are crucified and resurrected.
Gaffin adds here - and I think it was an aside - that he has been putting all of this in personal/individual terms, but this is not meant to downplay the corporate - even the cosmic - dimensions. The call into fellowship with Christ is at the same time a call into the Spirit-baptized body (1 Cor 12.13), in the context of the entire creation anxiously longing for the future revelation of the sons of God, which will involve its own coincident being set free from the bondage of corruption (Rom 8).
Paul's ordo salutis: union with the exalted Christ by faith
(The above is Gaffin's own heading, whereas most have been my own; it seems to me he was already working in this subject area.)
This is the essence of the way of salvation for Paul. The center is neither justification nor sanctification. (Note: as mentioned earlier, Gaffin uses the term sanctification to refer to all "renovative" aspects of the gift of salvation.) This does not mean that justification is not supremely important; if it is denied or distorted, the gospel ceases to be gospel - good news for sinners. But there is an antecedent consideration which is more fundamental: Christ and our union with Him. As Calvin was fond of saying, as long as Christ remains outside of us, all He has suffered for us remains useless and of no value to us.
The salvation appropriated in Christ thus has two irreduceable facets, one forensic and one renovative. These answer to the two consequences of sin.
Reflections on Justification
These are "baseline observations" regarding justification and Paul. "Here, some differences between me and Dr Wright will come into view," Gaffin suggests.
1. In terms of current debates, Gaffin remains unpersuaded that the Reformation got it wrong, and for Paul justification is primarily about ecclesiology, and not soteriology; that it has to do primarily with fellowship rather than becoming a Christian. For Paul, justification undoubtedly has prominent implications, indisputably, and the New Perspective discussions have served to bring that out. These implications must not be downplayed through an individualistic soteriological mindset, and they have not been appreciated heretofore as they should. Yet: justification is a transfer term, referring to a component of what is effected in the transfer from darkness to light. Even in Galatians, Paul's teaching has its stark urgency, not simply because church unity is at stake; his rebuke of Peter is so unsparing because of what the broken unity is symptomatic of. The truth of the gospel is conflicting with Peter's conduct. The gospel is "the power of God unto salvation," and thus has a soteriological intention. This is clear from the more generalized assertions of Paul that salvation is by grace through faith - here "salvation" takes the place of justification elsewhere. Gaffin notes especially Titus 3.5: salvation is explicated as having been justified by faith. On this basis, he argues that we must read these other passages in continuity with Ephesians and Titus.
2. The deepest level, fundamental controlling feature (in Paul's doctrine of justification, presumably) is the contrast between Adam and Christ, as reflected in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15. In the former is a contrast between Adam as sinner (fallen) and Christ in His obedience in death. In the latter, the contrast is broader: between Adam as created (Gen 2), with Christ as the resurrection, as the bearer of eschatological life. We need to recognize the comprehensive scope of this contrast in 1 Corinthians 15 (cf. Col 1).
Here, Gaffin attempts to sweep aside some of the significance of Israel by arguing that Adam and Christ are seen as the representative and key figures in solidarity with others. Adam is first - no one is before him; Christ is last - no one is after Him; He literally is the eschatological man. But more than that, Christ is also the second, and thus there is no one between Adam and Christ. In other words, the sweep of Paul's outlook is that no one comes into consideration but Adam and Christ - not even David, Noah, Abraham, etcetera. No one "counts" between them; the story line is such that Israel's story falls "below the line." Israel's story subserves the larger story, which is given its ultimate profiling in Adam and Christ, in creation and consummation, each of which is determined by an Adam of its own. From this megaperspective, Paul's statements of Romans 5 and following must be considered. (Wright will later take Gaffin to task for imposing 1 Corinthians 15 upon Romans 5 - an interesting debate.) These dimensions are timeless in the sense of being perennial and enduring (not in the sense of being ahistorical). This is antecedent to matters of Israel's ethnicity. Paul's doctrine of justification, at its deepest level of concern is not about the unity in Christ of Jew and Gentile, as important and integral as it is. That is the ecclesiological epiphenomenon (yes, that's the term Gaffin used!) emerging from its soteriological one.
There are two axes (that's plural of axis, not tree-choppers) in Romans 5: sin to condemnation; righteousness to life. Righteousness corresponds to sin. Righteousness has its place in the "solidaric bond"; it is not itself a relational reality or concept, but rather has its sense in antithesis to sin as trespass of the divine will. Thus, righteousness is obedience to the divine will. Life answers to condemnation; thus justification is declarative, not renovative, even as condemnation is declarative. Consequently, justification is an acquittal - the rendering of a "not guilty" verdict; it is the forgiveness of sins as the non-reckoning of sins (as in Rom 4.7-8). This forensic transaction is in view in most of Paul's use of the verb dikaioo, involving a judicial reckoning, regardless how often that is explicit.
3. Union with Christ and justification. Justification takes place in union with Christ (Gaffin cites Gal 2.17; Phi 3.8-9). It flows out of being found "in Christ." This has often been eclipsed in the Reformed tradition; there is a tendency to treat justification as an "isolated imputative act," although this is more the case in the Lutheran tradition than in the Reformed. (Gaffin says he stands to be corrected on that point.) The Reformed have better recognized that justification manifests union with Christ (Gaffin cites Westminster Larger Catechism 69).
What about imputation? Does union with Christ as justifying leave no place for imputation by making it redundant? Gaffin again reminds us that this union does not destroy the personal distinction between Christ and believers; in does not cancel out for. Christ remains in a real sense "outside" the believer. If so, we must ask: What is the basis or ground of justification? Gaffin suggests three options: (1) Christ's own righteousness; (2) the union itself as such; (3) a righteousness being produced that is rooted in the transforming work of the Spirit.
Gaffin then suggests that the current readiness to deny imputation leads to (? sorry, I'm missing part of the thought here) taking either (2) or (3) as the ground of justification. (This is clearly untrue in Wright's case; see my comment section below.) With regard to (2), Gaffin notes that it is not a relationship, but a Person who justifies and saves. (This appears like a muddy argument to me; a relationship is with a person - but I suppose this is what happens when your category is "union itself as such," which looks rather meaningless to me. Perhaps someone can illumine me about a real position that Gaffin has in mind, but as is, I frankly just don't "get" the category.) With regard to (3), justification cannot be on the basis of the ongoing work of renewal in the believer, since justification involves the remission of all our sins. Christ's sacrifice for me, not the Spirit's work in me, is the basis for my remission. The renovating work of the Spirit is indeed involved in producing faith, but is not the ground of justification.
Gaffin thus concludes: Only Christ's righteousness is the ground of my being justified. But this "is virtually to be at the meaning of imputation." (Note this well. I will comment on it below.)
Gaffin closes this section on justification by turning to Calvin again. Ostensibly, he seeks to show how Calvin understands - and does not understand - Christ to be outside believers. We do not contemplate Christ outside ourselves from afar, that His righteousness may be imputed to us, but because we put on Christ and are engrafted into His body, and thus share His righteousness with Him. (I have to admit that I do not see here anything about Christ being outside believers. I may have missed something - that often happens in note-taking. But it sure looks to me like Calvin simply denies the notion.)
Eschatology and Ordo Salutis
Dr Gaffin barely got started on this subject in this session - as elsewhere, his topics ran over from one lecture period to the next. I perhaps should organize according to major topics, but I have chosen to present the lectures as is.
1. The Reformation, eschatology, and the ordo
Gaffin observes that the Reformation tradition has undoubtedly recaptured much of Paul's theology, but asks rhetorically: Can it do even better justice to it, particularly in its eschatological aspect?
Gaffin now begins his sustained attention to 2 Corinthians 4.16: the outer man is decaying, while the inner man is being renewed day by day. This is the basic profile of the Christian's existence between now and the return of Christ; here we have Paul's anthropology of the Christian in a nutshell.
Paul makes a categorical distinction with regard to the believer: both an "inner self" and "outer self." (Gaffin suggests, by implication, also Rom 7.22 and Eph 3.16). This is not, however, a partitive distinction, as if Paul were referring to two distinct natures or personal entities. Rather they are best take as "aspectival" - both are true of the Christian as a whole. The single "I" is both inner and outer - a single total verbal subject.
The "outer" refers to the body, the members. "Inner" equals the heart. Yet the outer is more than the narrowly physical; it refers to "the psychophysical package," the "'I' in my functioning." The inner is who I am at the core of my being, in my "prefunctional disposition and giving rise to my functioning." (This is difficult, and Gaffin almost sounds self-contradictory, since he has just said that both are true of the Christian as a whole. I trust that my readers will recognize the innate difficulty of articulating these matters.)
We are more than what we think, say, or do. Paul is not bifurcating or dichotomizing. What is true for the inner self is not yet true for the outer, only within the outer man. (Take careful note of this now/not yet theme; Gaffin will have profound development of this in his final lecture.) Until death, what is true of the inner man is not yet true for the body but only true in the body.
Gaffin appeals to 2 Corinthians 4.7's mention of treasure in clay jars, suggesting that it includes a representative statement for all believers. (I have to assume that he realizes that its first referent is to Paul himself and perhaps his co-workers.)
The distinction in 4.16 is not the same as Paul's distinction elsewhere between the old self and the new self. Paul is clear that the old man is crucified with Christ; the Christian has put off the old self and put on the new. The single subject in 4.16 is the new man in Christ, existing in the modes of inner self and outer self. These antithetical realities remain operative as death and life. There is decay of the outer man, corresponding to life of the inner man, which experiences ongoing renewal.
(Not at all) Brief Thoughts
It might be fair to say that Gaffin's presentations progressively contained more fuel for thought as they went along. This session had a great deal of meat to chew, and continues to be a source of reflection for me.
I would like to make a handful of sympathetically critical comments here.
1. I am sympathetic with much of what Gaffin said regarding justification. Over against Wright, I do agree with him that justification is a "transfer term" (although Gaffin's implication that it is not soteriological for Wright is somewhat misleading). And it was good to hear Gaffin stress that the ecclesiological implications have not been adequately stressed in the past, and that this insight must not be compromised through "an individualistic soteriological mindset."
Still, I'm not entirely convinced that Gaffin's reading of Galatians is quite on the money. He rightly observes that "the truth of the gospel" was at stake in Peter's conduct - but it seems to me that he went a bit far afield to turn the Peter-Paul confrontation into a soteriological issue. The real question is: what "gospel" was Peter contradicting in abandoning the Gentiles' table? It cannot be seen as "good works" being made "meritorious," since in the case of 1 Corinthians 5, abandoning table with a fornicator is mandated. And that indicates that Paul is concerned, not that Peter is enforcing (even by implication) a "ladder-climbing theology," but that Peter is destroying the common bond Christ has forged between Jew and Gentile. "Gospel" here has to do with the new salvation-historical moment Christ has achieved, creating one new man from two (to borrow the language of Ephesians).
2. I am sympathetic toward, but also somewhat wary of, too, the suggestion that a passage such as Titus 3.5 should control our reading of Paul's other passages. Now, to be fair, Gaffin said "in continuity with": e.g. Galatians and Romans must be read in continuity with Ephesians and Titus. If by "in continuity with," Gaffin intends, the sundry epistles must not be allowed to be set in contradiction with each other, I wholeheartedly agree. And I do think that Wright's insistence that justification is not a transfer term is (or ought to be) correctable by appealing to Titus. Yet two caveats are in order. (1) Paul is not saying the same thing every time he talks about justification. (2) Let's be sure we understand the point of Ephesians and Titus before we deploy them to overturn careful exegetical labour in Romans and Galatians. I assume that Gaffin would agree with me on those two points, but I think it only fair to try to be clear regarding them.
3. As for Gaffin's axe-grinding on Adam and Christ versus the significance of Israel, I am again somewhat appreciative while somewhat ambivalent. For one thing, Wright has repeatedly said that Israel steps into Adam's role. The structure of his own view, I think, allows a certain "determinativeness" to Adam, while still demanding that Christ's work takes its particular shape of necessity by means of the matrix provided by Israel. And I think that is exactly right. Christ, after all, had to be a Jew, had to be son of Abraham and David, had to fulfill His particular vocation in a particular way. If all that mattered were Adam and Christ, the latter could have been born an Irishman, or an Inca. Now, I know Gaffin would acknowledge that isn't right, but I think it does reflect that he probably stretched a bit too far on this point.
There is some difficulty too in calling the Jew-Gentile issue an "ecclesioglogical epiphenomenon emerging from [a] soteriological core" (and I am not here referring primarily to matters of pronunciation). While I sympathize that the vertical relationship between God and man is always primary, yet. . . I'm frankly not sure who would deny that. But I think what Wright is (correctly) getting at is that it is somewhat unfortunate to place the Jew-Gentile issue outside of "soteriology." Remember that Isaiah's "gospel" is about an eschatological re-creation which is worldwide and even cosmological in its dimensions. I have to think that he views this as "soteriology." And yet an integral aspect of that soteriology is that God both blesses and judges the nations. If soteriology were coextensive with justification (taken strictly as acquittal/forgiveness of sins), one might say that Jew/Gentile matters are only "epiphenomenon." But as Gaffin himself recognizes, renovative issues are an aspect of soteriology. And once we recognize that renovation is not only individual, but also necessarily corporate (and cosmic), it is pretty hard neatly to divide out ecclesiology from soteriology.
One may say that is arguing about terms. Well, in a sense it is. But it is not an argument I started. (Grin.) More importantly, our use of terms frequently reflects what we consider to be of crucial significance. While I appreciate the fact that Gaffin explicitly stressed the key role of the Jew/Gentile issues for Paul, it nonetheless seems to me that here there is somewhat of a subtle marginalization occurring, a marginalization that becomes impossible when we integrate the Jew/Gentile issue with the matter of new creation, as Paul clearly does.
4. I found Gaffin's discussion of imputation rather muddy. He rightly notes that justification is rooted in union. Good start. Then he says that union does not blur the distinction between Christ and the believer. Still good. But then he concludes that Christ remains "in a real sense" outside the believer. I still don't know what that "real sense" is, or how it follows from the distinction between Christ and the believer, any more than saying that the Spirit "in a real sense" remains "outside of Christ" because the two are distinct. It looks rather like Gaffin is looking for a special imputative act, separate from union, which goes directly counter to what he has argued for all along.
But then there is a further problem. Gaffin sets us up with three options for possible "grounds" of justification. He then suggests that the "current readiness to deny imputation" thus takes one of his two rejected grounds as the ground of justification. This, however, simply will not work. I'm not sure what "the union itself as such" (option 2) really means, and I likewise am unaware of anyone who adopts such a nebulous idea as the ground of justification. Nor do I see anyone (other than Roman Catholics) adopting option 3 (righteousness produced by the Spirit). Does this mean that Gaffin's position "wins by default"? Well, yes and no. I frankly think that Wright's view just is option 1 - unless it is construed as a separate imputative act.
But Gaffin fails to note the fact that there are various ways one could construe option 1. While he implied that in Romans 5, "righteousness" is a moral rather than relational term, he surely knows that even if he is correct on that passage, righteousness elsewhere does denote a forensic (and relational) status: "one who is in the right." (This, by the way, is also why Gaffin's discussion of the meaning of righteousness was dissatisfying; he not only failed to note that there are more meanings than one, but that Wright's position on the term is that it is not only a covenantal, relational term, but also that it is judicial.)
There are at least three ways one could construe Gaffin's preferred option (Christ's own righteousness as ground of justification).
(1) Christ's own righteousness, as referring to His moral acts as a whole, are directly imputed to the believer. On this view, God as it were takes Christ's meritorious deeds and places them in the believer's account.
(2) Christ's own righteousness, as referring to His obedient self-offering in death, is directly imputed to the believer. In places, Gaffin sounds like this is his view, but elsewhere he clearly affirms the imputation of Christ's active obedience (which thus sounds like [1]), and on the other hand, elsewhere clearly affirms that justification is an aspect or fruit of union with Christ (which thus sounds like a denial that the imputation is direct, rather than indirect; see the next category).
(3) Christ's own righteousness, as referring to His judicial status which God has declared in His resurrection. This is Wright's view.
It should be noted that in both (2) and (3), Christ's "active obedience" does not simply fall off the map; rather, it is presupposed as underlying both. It is because Christ is the sinless one that His obedient self-offering is acceptable (2) and He receives the judicial status of righteous (3). Thus in both of these views, we may legitimately suggest that the ground of justification includes Christ's active obedience, albeit somewhat indirectly.
My point is that if Gaffin is correct that there are only the three categories that he has proposed, and that (1) is an imputation view, he has de facto judged Wright's view of justification to be imputative! (I later commented to Wright the same thing: according to Gaffin's definition, Wright believes in imputation, and thus his view should not be problematic. I don't think Wright had quite caught that. It would be interesting to see him review Gaffin's presentation and comment.)