If you're so clear in your simplicity, Anthony, then,it seems to me you should have been able to post once. Why does it take a long thread of qualifying yourself?

The reason the Reformed confessions and thinkers have used the term salvation in a broad way is because Scripture uses the term in very broad ways.

It uses it of God's purpose in the Covenant of Redemption:
Speaks of it in reference to our calling and regeneration:
In our justification:
In our sanctification:
Of our glorification:
The term is even used of God's deliverance of men from calamity even more regularly. (perform a search for the term save and you'll be overwhelmed)

I fundamentally disagree that the believer's growth in wisdom is served by narrowing the use of a term that God Himself has ordained to be broad for a very good reason. With respect to the Elect, maintaining the broader definition of the term helps us to see salvation as beginning in the CoR and revealed to us in the CoG. Our justification is certainly, for us, the motiviation from which other saving graces proceed but to understand that we have been saved, are being saved, and will be saved because God is the author and finisher of salvation is of great importance.

Yes, we need to sometimes look at the individual leaves and consider them in parts but we don't gain anything if, in our goal to simplify a part, we lose track of a whole.

I state yet again that I don't find over-simplification helpful here and the fact that you have to keep explaining everything demonstrates the point. Reformed theology has a long pedigree of profound exegetes and systemeticians. I think you need to start picking up more of those older books as well.

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Rich
Okinawa, Japan
Deacon, Central Baptist Church, SBC

SoliDeoGloria.com - A Community for Reformed Thought and Discussion
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I did not say it was temporary. I said it was temporal (over time). Sanctification is a process. But all that we need for justification is faith - ergo our salvation is by faith alone.

I agree. But our justification does not depend on our sanctification.

That is sanctification.

But we have the perfect righteousness of Christ when we are justified. Our perfection does not save us.

So it depends on what sense of "salvation" you are using. Please read the quotes RB posted from Clark. If you mean by salvation our justification before the throne of God, that is occurs when we are regenerate and believe in Christ as our Savior. At the moment, we have the imputed righteousness of Christ, and our salvation is complete. Nothing more needs to be added.

However, if you mean by salvation, our ongoing deliverance from the bondage of sin through the work of the Holy Spirit in the process of sanctification, then indeed we are "being saved" every day.

But "salvation" can not mean both "justification" and "sanctification" at the same time.

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R. Anthony Coletti
Midway Presbyterian Church (PCA)
Jonesborough, TN
[i]et venite et arguite me dicit Dominus[/i]

This is flat out, unconfessional and un-Biblical. Salvation is our election, calling, regeneration, justification, sanctification, and glorification.

I'm sick of these kinds of re-definitions.

"For now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed." (Rom. 13:11)

In that context, the word salvation is not being used in reference to justification, therefore, salvation is more than justification.

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Daniel Ritchie
Saintfield, Northern Ireland - Queen's University, Belfast:History/Politics
Member of Dromara Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland (Covenanter)
http://reformedcovenanter.wordpress.com/
The Regulative Principle of Worship: Explained and Applied (Xulon Press)
A Conquered Kingdom: Biblical Civil Government (Reformed Worldview Books)

"In plain English, salvation is a broad term that includes regeneration, justification, adoption, sanctification, and glorification. The present study concerns sanctification" (Sanctification, Introduction, page 1).



Anthony, I don't know if were both reading Clark the same way.
Clark is simply enumerating different members classed together under the term 'salvation.'
By doing so, Clark is in complete agreement with the Westminster Standards and historical Reformed theology.
Clark's plain English understanding of the term here is denotative, even though he leaves out election in the above quote from page 1 of Sanctification. But no Calvinist, especially Gordon H. Clark, would argue that election is not part of the "Golden Chain of Salvation" (consider his book "Predestination"). The soteric doctrines listed by Clark are logically connected, they are each essential to the plain English understanding of the term "salvation," but each member classed under the term 'salvation' is different, and not to be confused.

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Monty L. Collier

Yes, I agree with you brother. I like Clark's works and lean more toward him than VanTil (that is another thread). Clark did (he is in glory now) hold consistently to the Westminster Standards and believed that sanctification is part of salvation that one logically flows from the other. Paul's ordo salutus in Romans 8:29-30 shows a logical progression from justification to glorification, which all involves salvation. Clark certainly affirmed this.

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Stephen
PCA Teaching Elder
Nova Scotia

I will agree when you provide one example of Scripture where the term salvation means "election, calling, regeneration, justification, sanctification, and glorification" at the same time. When you do that, you have proven I am being unconfessional.

Exactly. I agree completely.

My point is to show that salvation can not mean both justification and sanctification at the same time. In fact, there is not instance in Scripture where the term refers to both at the same time.

While the term salvation can refer to any of election, sanctification, justification, glorification, etc., in Scripture it never refers to all at the same time and in the same sense.

Justification is not sanctification.

Sanctification is not justification.

The salvation of justification is not the same salvation of sanctification.

They both are a kind of salvation, but in categorically different senses. The salvation of justification refers specifically to the being saved from spiritual death and separation from the Father, to eternal life, and comes from the external righteousness of Christ imputed to us forensically. It refers to an event when we are declared righteous when we are saved through faith alone.

The salvation of sanctification refers to being freed from the bondage of sin through the process of sanctification by an internal change over time to our nature, and infused rightousness by the Spirit. It begins when we are regenerate, but adds nothing at all to our justification.

Our salvation by justification is perfect and complete. And no part of our sanctification adds anything to our salvation by justification. No part of our righteousness by sanctification earns us eternal life with the Father or saves us from damnation.

While these ideas are logically interrelated, they are distinct and not to be confused. That is both confessional and biblical.

If it does not refer to justification, then you can not say salvation is "more than justification". The more reasonable conclusion is the salvation is other than justification. But that is not correct either. Better to say that salvation refers to something other than justification in this instance.

I mean that the term "salvation" - when we consider all of its Biblical usages - has a broader meaning that simply "justification", in the instance cited it refers to our ultimate salvation and glorification.

Here's are the anti-Christian implication of saying that salvation "is" justification and sanctification: It conflates two different kinds of "being saved". It implies we are saved by our sanctification in the same sense that we are saved by our justification. It contradicts "saved by faith alone" because it implies we are saved by sanctification and by faith. No one intends to imply we are saved by more than faith because this is contrary to our confession and is unbiblical. None-the-less, that is a the implication of saying that salvation is justification and sanctification at the same time. Salvation refers to both, but not both in the same sense. If we do not preserve those distinctions, we are not teaching the Gospel of the Bible and our confessions.

Then we agree. But the "broadness" of the term does not mean a particular instance of the term refers all types of salvation.

It does not refer to justification in this example. On that we agree.

It refers to our ultimate salvation and glorification. Again we agree.

Peter Lillback defined it as "salvation = justification + sanctification"

In what sense?

In the sense that the Scriptures teach. Bye Civbert.