In the midst of a battle for the very soul of American Christianity, Charles Hodge of Princeton was a defender of Reformed Orthodoxy over and against even Calvin, where necessary. In response to a subjectivism which emphasised the inner life, he pushed the elements of federalism to the extreme, especially by emphasising the extrinsic elements of the system. In speaking of original sin, for example, Hodge sought to make the federal union – that representative relationship – independent of hereditary considerations. Adam’s posterity is sinful by dint of his federal headship in which they are united, rather than the natural union of physical descent. The key notion is ‘imputation’, which for Hodge does not indicate either personal identity with nor mutual participation in. It is an extrinsic and legal issue.
In soteriology, Hodge is keen to affirm the central place that union with Christ has. Through union with Christ by faith the benefits of Christ are received by the Christian enture. This union is firstly a ‘federal union’ which has its basis in the pretemporal covenant of redemption between the first and second persons of the Godhead. This union is must be realised in the lives of the covenant people. For Hodge, then, ‘there is a federal union rooted in the eternal covenant of redemption, and the legal benefits promised by this covenant and merited by the work of Christ are imputed through faith to the believer in an extrinsic relationship. Any source or locus of legal of legal merit, such as the humanity of Christ, remains utterly outside the Christian. There is a vital or spiritual union, in which the believer receives the Holy Spirit as a representative of Christ, a Christ who is most certainly absent with respect to his humanity’ (Evans, p. 208).
As far as the ordo salutis goes, Hodge posits a temporal as well as a logical order in redemption. Regeneration gives rise to faith, which is then the legal instrument of a legal union with Christ (hence justification). Following this, the Holy Spirit is imparted which makes for the spiritual union with Christ experienced in sanctification. Justification is a single moment in time – whereas sanctification is a progressive work. Here is Hodge:
As soon, however, as it exercises faith, it receives the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, God’s justice is thereby satisfied, and the Spirit comes and takes up his dwelling in the believer as the source of all holy living. There can therefore be no holiness until there is reconciliation with God, and no reconciliation with God except through the righteousness imputed to us and received by faith alone. Then follow the indwelling of the Spirit, progressive sanctification, and all the fruits of holy living. (Systematic Theology, III:172)
7 comments:
Thanks Michael,
Interesting post. Having never really read Hodge, I would value your opinion on the justification precedes union question that this, and your previous post, raised.
Does the imputation of Christ's active righteousness form the basis for justification for Hodge? If so, that would have seemed to me to imply union prior to justification. If not, what does form the basis of forensic justification?
hi there, v. interested in this.
Do all these guys talk about union with adam in a same/similar way?
this post reminded me of blocher's reading of Rom 5:12ff in his NSBT on original sin.
chris
Very interesting comment Chris, how so? Doesn't Blocher go for a best of both worlds approach: natural descent making possible a federal imputation? (Which has echoes of Bavnick. [sp])
@Michael: Who would be a lucid modern proponent of a fairly strict Ordo Salutis?
I could be wrong but I thought Blocher's "best of both worlds" was regarding how we are *counted* sinners. Are we counted sinners simply because of Adam's sin which is imputed to us (Augustine, Murray, Lloyd-Jones etc) or simply because Adam influenced us in such a way as we all sin ourselves (Cranfield, Dunn etc)? Blocher's reading of Rom 5:12-14 says we are counted sinners because (1) Adam introduced sin into the world and therefore (by some mechanism unstated) we all sin ourselves AND (2) by sinning against an explicit law Adam made possible (by some mechanism unstated) the penal imputation of our own sins to ourselves even for those who haven't had an explicit law to sin against like he did.
I think he said the mechanism of connection is mysterious for (1) (the bible using different metaphors for sinfulness like hereditary taint, sickness, imitation of others, sin as a power at work in the world) and is probably "federal headship" for (2) but that it's obviously only implicit.
Hodges misunderstanding of Union with Christ is most clearly seen in his doctrine of the Lord's Supper. Hodge believes we partake in the benefits of Christ, but not Christ himself. I doubt Hodge has a category of present, personal Union.
Michael, great post. What do you think of the imputation of Adam's sin? I suspect that Scripture has been pushed a bit far here. I'm sure I remember Broughton Knox writing something similar, i.e. the sinner's relationship with Adam is more realistic than legal.
I find the following remarks on Romans 6, by Bob Gundry, convincing:
…sin is portrayed throughout 6:12-23 as a slavemaster, so that death is not the wages you get paid for sinning; rather, death is the wages you get paid by sin. Whatever other parts of the Bible may say about a relationship of cause and effect between sin and death, here sin is the paymaster of death, not its cause, just as God is the giver of eternal life, not its cause. Which fact brings us back to 5:12-14, where sin entered the world and death entered the world “through sin,” not “because of sin.” The entry of sin and death to take dominion exhibits the language of personified power, not of imputation, so that the sinning and dying of people between Adam and Moses were the effects of sin and death as forces, not sinning as transgression and dying as a penalty for transgression. (Robert H. Gundry, Why I Didn’t Endorse The Gospel of Jesus Christ: An Evangelical Celebration)
Regards Nick Mackison
Like the baptist Andrew Fuller and the New England theology which followed Edwards, Blocher denies that guilt itself can be transferred.
I notice how intransigent people can be when it comes to saying not only that salvation is conditional on the sinner, but also in denying that we can talk about the imputation of the GUILT of the elect to Christ.
Volf, Free of Charge, p147, “ I cannot assume his moral liability, as I can assume a loan he might be unable to pay. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. It is uniquely his. Moral liability cannot be transferred. (See Kant, Religion within the Boundaries of Reason, p88).”
And then comes quickly the desired conclusion. I mean that “desired”. To be a politically correct member of the faculty at Yale, to be “wide-angled” in the way that “liberals” can approve, you cannot afford to believe in legal imputation. (Perhaps you could have it as a “shelf-doctrine”, like Richard Mouw has “definite atonement”, so that you can say that you are still a Calvinist, but with a wide angle that has shoved imputation of guilt off into the narrow margins.)
Volf of course has a system of cultural engagement which is attempting to do now what neither Adam nor Christ got done. But in Volf’s case, he is not simply domesticating the idea of individual salvation (keeping it on the shelf). Volf is against a legal transfer of guilt. He doesn’t want there to be such a transfer.
Kant and Volf deny that a transfer can happen. They say that the man Christ Jesus cannot bear another person’s guilt, and that God does not make Christ to be a sinner by imputation. Possibly Christ can be made to bear the punishment of sins in general.
And of course academics can always be relied on to pick the same old battle against individualism. To change lives, they think, we need to change the culture, and to do that, we need to water the infants and take up our vocation to be the elites with influence. Anglicanism is from the top-down.
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