The first of Wenger’s arguments stemming from this passage is largely semantic. He proposes that it is significant that Calvin twice described sanctification as “secondary,” suggesting that Calvin thus understood justification as the “primary” of the “double graces.” This argument runs into the following problems: (1) it is not clear that Calvin intended to assign a relative worth to sanctification when he described it as “second” in order, as if justification were first in order of soteriological value and sanctification a rung lower in value; (2) Calvin did not describe justification and sanctification here as “double graces,” but as a “double grace (duplex gratia).” This is important to note because Calvin understood that the duplex gratia is received only by “partaking of him” in whom the benefits reside. When Christ is “grasped and possessed by us in faith,” we receive the duplex gratia of justification and sanctification; it is a two-fold grace, not two graces.
… Calvin’s
understanding of the relationship between justification and sanctification, as Wenger has it, is one of cause and effect: sanctification is impossible if not founded on justification.35
The primary evidence Wenger presents for these claims is Calvin’s refutation of Osiander in Book 3 of the Institutes. Having already warned his readers of the problem of “erratic readings” and “proof-texting,” I am a bit surprised that Wenger chose the dispute with Osiander to prove his point. As the texts that Wenger selected show quite clearly, Calvin’s problem with Osiander was that his understanding of justification destroyed the foundation for the believer’s assurance of salvation. By asserting that Christ is our righteousness according to his divine nature—in a “mixing of essences— Osiander construes justification as both forgiveness and renewal unto holiness.36 Osiander’s understanding of union with Christ resulted in a commingling of justification and sanctification which Calvin flatly rejected.37 Calvin’s concern with Osiander is not that he has inseparably bound together justification and sanctification;38 Calvin’s concern is that Osiander has included sanctification within justification and thus destroyed the foundation on which a believer’s assurance rests. The assurance of one’s reconciliation with God, the peace that quiets the soul, is grounded in justification, not in one’s inherent holiness (sanctification).39 Thus, Calvin’s point is not that sanctification must be grounded in justification, but that the assurance of salvation must be grounded in justification.
As Calvin stated repeatedly, justification and sanctification are benefits that are to be distinguished but never separated (distinctio sed non separatio). In this respect, the importance of 1 Cor 1:30 for Calvin could hardly be over- stressed as a paradigm for understanding the relationship between the two benefits.40
From this also, we infer, that we cannot be justified freely through faith alone without at the same time living holily. For these fruits of grace are connected together, as it were, by an indissoluble tie, so that he who attempts to sever them does in a manner tear Christ in pieces. Let therefore the man who seeks to be justified through Christ, by God’s unmerited goodness, consider that this cannot be attained without his taking him at the same time for sanctification or, in other words, being renewed to innocence and purity of life.41
The “indissoluble bond” by which justification and sanctification are connected is Christ himself. To sever these benefits is to “tear Christ in pieces.” Sanctification, as much as justification, proceeds from the person of Christ who is grasped in faith. Justification no more “grounds” sanctification than sanctification grounds justification: both are grounded in, and proceed from, the believer’s union with Christ:
Why, then, are we justified by faith? Because by faith we grasp Christ’s righteousness, by which alone we are reconciled to God. Yet you could not grasp this without at the same time grasping sanctification also. For he ‘is given unto us for righteousness, wisdom, sanctification, and redemption’ (I Cor.1:30). Therefore Christ justifies no one whom he does not sanctify. These benefits are
joined together by an everlasting and indissoluble bond, so that those whom he illumines by his wisdom, he redeems; those whom he redeems, he justifies; those whom he justifies, he sanctifies. . . . Although we may distinguish them, Christ contains both of them inseparably in himself. Do you wish, then, to attain righteousness in Christ? You must first possess Christ; but you cannot possess him without being made partaker in his sanctification, because he cannot be divided into pieces (I Cor.1:13). Since, therefore, it is solely by expending himself that the Lord gives us these benefits to enjoy. He bestows both of them at the same time, the one never without the other.42
Calvin’s consistent refrain, one that was evident in his debate with Osiander, was that justification and sanctification are distinct benefits that are never to be separated, any more than Christ himself can be separated.43 They are distinct only by reason of their soteriological function. As C. P. Venema has noted, the twofold benefit of union with Christ is distinct in conception: “Justification answers the question, how and on what basis are we acceptable to God? and regeneration (sanctification) answers the question, what positive fruit or effect does the Spirit accomplish in the lives of those who have trusted in Christ alone for their salvation?”44 Calvin emphasized the distinction between the two benefits only insofar as they served differing soteriological ends. It is the living Christ who contains the twofold benefit in himself and who is the living, effectual reality behind both justification and sanctification. They are not related in terms of cause and effect, or of ground and consequence, but in terms of their relation as a dual reality in the singular, redemptive person and work of Christ.
, that is quite an entrance to the PB! Welcome!
