“Union with Christ is finally getting its just place as a central
dogma in organizing the Reformed view of how we are saved.” “Charles
Hodge, among others, placed the forensic (especially justification) at
the center, rather than union.” “Reformed paradigm: justification and
sanctification have their source in union; Lutheran paradigm: minor role
for union, if anything, and sanctification has its source in
justification.”
These statements illustrate a type of exaggeration that I’d like to
unpack very briefly, in part because there different nuances in this
discussion that have pretty significant implications. Since my focus
here is the historical claim about defining the Reformed consensus on
this point, rather than exegesis.
Union with Christ at the center
Hunting down central dogmas that distinguish one tradition or school
from others was a hallmark of 19th-century historians. Yet a host of
specialists in Calvin and Reformed orthodoxy have shown conclusively
that this is a wrong approach. It imposes our own constructs on
historical views and, furthermore, there is no central dogma in Calvin,
much less in Reformed theology. A central dogma is not just an
important truth; it functions as a theory from which everything else is
deduced.
For Calvin and the whole Reformed tradition, Christ’s person is the
source of everything and his work is inseparable from Christ himself.
Christ himself, not any one of his gifts, is the center and object of
our faith. (That’s Lutheran, too, by the way.) However, there’s a big
difference between something being important—even in tying together
other important doctrines—and something being a central dogma. Many are
discovering union with Christ, and that’s great, but it has been there
in our Reformed bloodstream all along. It is not something that was
somehow buried after Calvin and then just uncovered recently in a
particular school or circle of contemporary Reformed thought. Continue at White Horse Inn
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