Last week the Presbyterian College in Sydney had Mark Jones speaking at a lunch time lecture. At the time, I was about to leave on my way back to Brisbane, but made the most of the opportunity to be present.
“Reformed Theology’s Unwelcome Guest”
A few years ago I read Mark Jones’ book Antinomianism, with the subtitle: Reformed Theology’s Unwelcome Guest. It was like a breath of fresh air. And a much needed corrective.
Why so?
Over the last 50 years there have been “swings and roundabouts”.
While we affirm that: “The Scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man” for some time some felt that there was too much talk on “what duty God requires of man” (i.e. the imperatives of the gospel), and not enough on “what man is to believe concerning God” – in particular, what God accomplished through Christ on the cross (i.e. the indicatives of the gospel).
Now, it would seem, the pendulum has swung the other way and the prevailing emphasis is on what God has done on the cross, and little on what duty God requires of man.
Some even maintain that the gospel is just about the indicatives of what God has done, and not at all about the imperatives of how God requires us to respond to the gospel.
This has resulted in little or no instruction in the work of sanctification for the believer – apart from telling the believer that, even in sanctification, “God has done/ does it all; now, just accept it.”
Such a truncated view of “grace” ends up obliterating the necessity for human effort in the life of the believer – I don’t mean in justification (in which our works count for nothing), but in sanctification (in which we are required to co-operate).
That effort is only possible because of grace; but it is still required of us. See Ephesians 2:8-10, Philippians 2:12-13, 1 Timothy 4:7-8, Titus 2:11-14, James 2:18-20 etc.
But that narrower focus hides the wonder of greater grace.
It hides from view “the whole Christ”.
Sometimes this narrow focus is referred to today as “hypergrace”.
The classical term is “antinomianism”.
Unfortunately, wherever you get a resurgence in Calvinism, you also get the emergence of hypercalvinism, which emphasises the grace of God, to the point of excluding the responsibility of man. This in turn, leads to the emergence of antinomianism.
Today, the emergence of the New Calvinism has inevitably been followed by the New Antinomianism.
This does not lead immediately to a grossly immoral lifestyle. It begins as “theoretical antinomianism”.
Nonetheless, as Richard Alderson (No Holiness, No Heaven) has pointed out: “It is a sheer fact of history that theoretical antinomianism tends in time to become practical.”
The fall from grace of Tullian Tchividjian (the champion of hypergrace) is a case in point.
Don’t be misled by etymology. While the term “antinomian” comes from anti nomos, meaning “against law”, it is misleading to think it only refers to an outright rejection of God’s Law. Antinomianism is far more subtle – and hence far more pervasive.
While antinomianism may reject the so-called “Third Use of the Law”, i.e. that it obliges Christians in how to live a holy life, Mark Jones notes:
“There is no short and easy way to define antinomianism, unless one regards the phenomenon as a rejection of the third use of the law. But that definition tends to miss the more subtle ways in which antinomians expressed themselves in the past and still do today.” (p.128)
Mark Jones suggests (ch.9) that antinomianism emerges where the following are denied:
- “The law is [the Christian’s] friend because God and Christ are his friends—that is, the law and the gospel ‘sweetly comply’.”
- “Imitating Christ as our pattern of holiness is essential to the Christian life.”
- “The goodness of God toward his people is evident in the way in which He rewards our good works.”
- “It is not only legitimate but necessary to look also to Christ’s work in his people as a ground for assurance.”
Also, where it is maintained that:
- “God does not love us any more or any less on the basis of our obedience or lack thereof.” (i.e. “love” here refers to God’s delight in his children in their sanctification.)
Jones also notes that antinomianism usually comes out in sins of omission which are less obvious, and thus harder to identify, than our sins of commission.
One such “omission” is when the gospel preached focuses only on the indicatives of justification, omitting the imperatives of sanctification. This is contrary to Jesus’ own definition of the gospel we are to preach in Matthew 28:18-20.
It also affects preaching. Jones:
“It is not enough simply to mention grace or even Christ often in a sermon. Some of the most boring sermons mention them frequently. And that is precisely one of the dangers of antinomian preaching: it becomes boring. The same repetitive mantras are preached week after week, to the point that if you have heard one sermon, you have heard them all.”
The solution?
“The antinomian error is one of failing to do justice to the totality of Christ’s person and work…” (p.109)
“The solution to antinomianism must be to understand and love the person and work of Christ.” (p.128)
The solution is to preach “the whole Christ.”
“The Whole Christ”
Another who has tackled this issue in recent years is Sinclair Ferguson, in his book The Whole Christ, with another interesting subtitle: Legalism, antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance— Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters.
In this book Ferguson seeks to address both legalism and antinomianism.
There is a lot of good material here.
I love how he shows “Christ is because of the Father’s love”, not (as often seems to come across in preaching today) “the Father loves us because of Christ”:
“The subtle danger here should be obvious: If we speak of the cross of Christ as the cause of the love of the Father, we imply that behind the cross and apart from it he may not actually love us at all. He needs to be “paid” a ransom price in order to love us. But if it has required the death of Christ to persuade him to love us (“ Father, if I die, will you begin to love them?”), how can we ever be sure the Father himself loves us—“deep down” with an everlasting love?” (p.66)
Ferguson dissects in detail the dangers and subtleties of legalism.
Then he turns his attention to antinomianism. Ferguson makes own position clear on this issue: “Grace always gives rise to obligation, duty, and law.” (p.168).
But I think his most significant observation is that those who flee legalism easily drift towards antinomianism – something I have observed again and again:
“This is an observation of major significance, for some of the most influential antinomians in church history acknowledged they were on a flight from the discovery of their own legalism…” (p.156)
His chapter on the “Causes and Cures” of antinomianism is brilliant.
And his treatment of the doctrine of Assurance (the last three chapters) is thorough.
“A Veggie Tale for Ministers”
My main concern with Ferguson’s book is that he buttresses his arguments by drawing heavily upon another book: The Marrow of Modern Divinity by Edward Fisher, published in 1645 at the time of the Westminster Assembly.
This book (he notes) “sounds unnervingly like a ‘Veggie Tale for Ministers’”; but it had far reaching consequences in a controversy in the Scottish church the following century.
I first came across The Marrow more than forty years ago, when I wrote Christ Freely Offered – a defence of the free offer of the gospel. At the time I was alerted to it as I had heard The Marrow also defended the free offer.
But the more I went into it, the more it seemed Fisher’s argument was based on the error of “hypothetical universalism” (i.e. that Christ died for literally everyone). This seems to have been confirmed by more recent research. Jones notes: “Many scholars try with all their might to avoid the implications of this thought, but I simply cannot see how we can deny that the Marrow teaches HU”.
A further concern is Fisher’s antinomianism. This is also vigorously denied by his defenders; but again research into this matter would seem to bear out the truth.
Chad Van Dixhoorn, a leading researcher of the Westminster Assembly and of that period, states that Edward Fisher was “well connected to the antinomian underground” and “appears to have tailored his work to avoid [the] censure” of the Assembly’s committee dedicated to finding and questioning suspected antinomians.
All of which confirms John Trapp’s opinion at the time that Fisher was a “sly antinomian”.
The Marrow figured prominently in a controversy in Scotland in 18th C.
The spark that first lit the powder keg was a simple question put to a ministerial candidate by one of the presbyteries, viz:
Do you agree that it is not sound and orthodox to teach that we forsake sin in order to our coming to Christ, and instating us in covenant with God?
At first this seems like a no-brainer: obviously we are to forsake sin in coming to Christ.
The call to “repent” everywhere accompanies the call to “believe”.
- Jesus taught this (Mark 1:14-15)
- Peter taught it (Acts 2:38)
- Paul taught it (Acts 20:18-20)
- John taught it (1 John 3:5-6)
But (and here was the problem), it was a trick question.
The “right” answer the presbytery was looking for was that “it is not sound and orthodox to teach that we [have the ability, in ourselves, without the Spirit, to] forsake sin in order to our coming to Christ.”
The candidate at first agreed; then disagreed (with the plain meaning); then was disbarred.
The Assembly of the Church of Scotland took up his case and condemned the presbytery.
Lines were drawn.
Sides were taken.
The fight was on.
Those opposed to the Assembly accused that body of legalism, since (it seemed to them) the Church was teaching a form of salvation by works (i.e. the “work” of repentance).
The Assembly in turn accused their opponents of antinomianism, since (it seemed to them) they denied the necessity of repentance.
The opponents then brought out Fisher’s Marrow of Modern Divinity, which they produced as proof against the place of any works in salvation; but which the Church saw as further proof of their antinomianism and placed it on its own index of banned books.
Naturally many then went out and bought it.
In the end, some of the “Marrow Men” (as they were termed) separated (though over a different issue: that of patronage), and formed the Associate Presbytery.
“The Enemy of My Enemy…”
Traditionally, evangelicals have sided with the Marrow Men. This, for two reasons:
1) The Church of Scotland at the time had lost a lot of the evangelical fervour it had demonstrated in the previous century.
Moderatism was beginning to appear.
At the same time, a professor charged with heresy was let off lightly.
All this does not sit well with evangelicals.
2) On the other hand, the Marrow Men were obviously sincere and zealous for the gospel of Christ – men like Thomas Boston, and Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine.
Our sympathies are with them.
But we need to be careful.
It is sometimes said: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” This may have led the Marrow Men to be too quick to resort to The Marrow.
The Marrow Men were mostly orthodox in their beliefs.
Far from embracing antinomianism, Thomas Boston insisted on the necessity of good works (p.158).
Ralph Erskine sums up beautifully how the law and the gospel are friends:
To run, to work, the law commands,
The gospel gives me feet and hands.
The one requires that I obey,
The other does the power convey.
The Marrow Men held neither to hypothetical universalism, nor antinomianism.
But sometimes they seem to protest too much in the defence of The Marrow, defending the indefensible.
This is easy to do; we are all prone to look for support wherever we can when involved in controversy.
And sometimes the Marrow Men themselves resorted to ambiguous language that was misleading (see eg. Berkhof’s comment, Systematic Theology p.398).
I admire Sinclair Ferguson; I have often benefited from what he has written.
I don’t doubt his orthodoxy.
But I wish he had written what he did without drawing (virtually uncritically) on The Marrow – which I believe leads him at times to interpret what is written there in ways that seem forced.
Also, though Ferguson sets out to address both legalism and antinomianism, yet by his own admission, the “concern with legalism is in fact the ultimate ‘backstory’ of The Marrow of Modern Divinity.” (p.131) For Ferguson, legalism “is a primary, if not the ultimate, pastoral problem.” (p.80)
This doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate Ferguson’s many valuable insights into both legalism and antinomianism.
But I suspect that his focus on The Marrow means his work is more attuned to the subtleties of legalism, than the subtleties of modern day antinomianism.
Perhaps, also, the fact that the book, though written in recent years, is based on lectures from almost 40 years ago, means there are more recent issues that are not addressed. I personally would love to see Ferguson address these.
But having said that I highly recommend both books:
- Antinomianism by Mark Jones
- The Whole Christ by Sinclair Ferguson.
I believe both books, taken together, do a wonderful job of helping us to embrace, and present, “the whole Christ”.