Are the “Calvinist” Critics of Piper Really Calvinists At All?

When I was a student at Westminster Seminary, I spent a number of months studying the Norman Shepherd controversy which racked that institution decades ago, listening to recordings, talking to some of the men involved, weighing the arguments for and against Shepherd. As I studied this issue, one particular concern emerged, a concern that reemerged within the past few weeks as I read the critiques and condemnations of a man who has fought, especially in recent years, to uphold and defend the Reformed doctrine of justification against those whose views endanger it.  And while I came down on the side of Shepherd’s critics, it seemed that a small number of them ended up defending a view of justification that was decidedly at odds with Calvin’s.

That’s the concern:  that many of the contemporary arguments used to defend a Reformed doctrine of justification don’t seem to be very Reformed at all. While I was working through the Shepherd debacle at Westminster, I began looking at what Calvin has to say about the relationship between faith and works, justification and sanctification, obedience and eternal reward. What I found surprised me and my concerns were only confirmed.

Unlike many “Reformed” theologians today who view conditional or instrumental language with respect to good works as unorthodox or legalistic or outside the bounds of Reformed orthodoxy, Calvin unashamedly uses such language. While I appreciate R. Scott Clark and Rachel Green Miller’s zeal to preserve the Reformed tradition, and while I’ve personally benefited from their writings throughout the years, I can’t help but wonder, as I read their critiques of Piper: What kind of “Reformed tradition” are they trying to defend? In their zeal to defend Calvinism, it seems to me that Clark and Green-Miller have actually departed from a Calvinist view of the subject rather than providing a sound defense of that view. As I hope to show, I just don’t think there is anything Piper has argued on this particular subject that Calvin hasn’t also argued, often using more explicit language. Here are just a few brief arguments Calvin makes in his discussion of these issues, arguments which I think will serve as a corrective to some of the uninformed and rhetorically bombastic comments being made by those who should know better. All quotations are from Calvin’s Institutes and those references without a citation are from the previously cited section.

First, Calvin notes that actual holiness of life cannot be separated from the free imputation of righteousness. We cannot enjoy one benefit without enjoying the other. We cannot be justified without also being sanctified: “When this topic is rightly understood it will better appear how man is justified by faith alone, and simple pardon; nevertheless actual holiness of life, so to speak, is not separated from free imputation of righteousness” (3.3.1).

Second, the reason for the indissoluble bond between the free imputation of righteousness and actual holiness of life lies in the nature of our union with Christ. Those united to Jesus Christ receive a double grace: justification and sanctification. Arguing against Osiander’s doctrine of essential righteousness as the ground of justification, Calvin argues that we are united to Christ in a solidaric bond by the power of the holy Spirit and therefore receive both the imputation and infusion of his righteousness (3.11.6). Jesus Christ cannot be torn in two, thus imputed righteousness and sanctification while distinct (contra Osiander), are nevertheless inseparable and simultaneously bestowed benefits enjoyed in mystical union with Him: “As Christ cannot be torn into parts, so these two which we perceive in him together and conjointly are inseparable- namely, righteousness and sanctification…Whomever, therefore, God receives into grace, on them he at the same time bestows the Spirit of adoption, by whose power he remakes them to his own image” (3.11.6, emphasis mine).

Third, repentance is not merely the fruit of forgiveness but is also, according to Calvin, the prior condition of forgiveness (3.3.20). Notice that Calvin distinguishes between repentance as a condition of pardon and repentance as the basis of pardon: “We must note that this condition is not so laid down as if our repentance were the basis of our deserving pardon, but rather, because the Lord has determined to have pity on men to the end that they may repent, he indicates in what direction men should proceed if they wish to obtain grace” (3.3.20). The true believer is displeased with his sin, hastens to God, and yearns for him in order that he, “having been engrafted into the life and death of Christ, might give attention to continual repentance. Those who hate sin cannot do otherwise than pursue righteousness.”

Fourth, Calvin speaks of holiness as the necessary bond of union with God (3.6.2). Holiness is not optional for the true believer and God will not dwell with those who are unclean: “From what foundation may righteousness better arise than from the Scriptural warning that we must be made holy because our God is holy?”

This does not mean that we, by our holiness, merit or earn the gift of union: “When we hear mention of our union with God, let us remember that holiness must be its bond; not because we come into communion with him by virtue of our holiness! Rather, we ought first to cleave unto him so that, infused with his holiness, may may follow whither he calls.” Those whose lives are not marked by holiness cannot enjoy such fellowship:

“Since it is especially characteristic of his glory that he have no fellowship with wickedness and uncleanness, Scripture accordingly teaches that this is the goal of our calling which we must ever look if we would answer God when he calls [Is. 35:8, etc].” God will not dwell with those who profane him with impurity. In order to dwell with the Lord and be reckoned as the people of God, we must be holy: “At the same time Scripture admonishes us that to be reckoned among the people of the Lord we must dwell in the holy city of Jerusalem [cf. Ps. 116:19; 122:2-9]. As he has consecrated this city to himself, it is unlawful to profane it with the impurity of its inhabitants…For it is highly unfitting that the sanctuary in which he dwells should like a stable be crammed with filth” (3.6.3).

Fifth, Calvin speaks of conformity to Christ as the condition of our adoption. While we cannot, by our conformity to Christ, merit our sonship, we cannot be adopted into God’s family without conforming to the image of Christ since we are adopted for precisely this purpose:

“[Scripture] not only enjoins us to refer our life to God, its author, to whom it is bound; but after it has taught that we have degenerated from the true origin and condition of our creation, it also adds that Christ, through whom we return into favor with God, has been set before us as an example, whose pattern we ought to express in our life. What more effective thing can you require than this one thing? Nay, what can you require beyond this one thing. For we have been adopted as sons by the Lord with this one condition: that our life express Christ, the bond of our adoption. Accordingly, unless we give and devote ourselves to righteousness, we not only revolt from our Creator with wicked perfidy but we also abjure our Savior himself” (3.6.3, emphasis mine).

Sixth, in light of the necessity of sanctification in the life of the believer, a life marked by the fruits of lifelong mortification and vivification, Calvin speaks of various texts which “call eternal life the reward of works” (3.18.1). One such text is Rom. 2:6 which does not undermine the reality that “[God] receives his own into life by his mercy alone.” When such important qualifications are made, however, the clear teaching of the text is that “He [God] leads them into possession of it [eternal life] through the race of good works in order to fulfill his own work in them according to the order that he has laid down.”

According to Calvin, Paul teaches that believers are “crowned according to their own works, by which they are doubtless prepared to receive the crown of immortality.” Good works are not in any way “opposed to grace.” Once believers are “by knowledge of the gospel and illumination of the holy Spirit, called into the fellowship of Christ, eternal life begins in them. Now that God has begun a good work in them, it must also be made perfect until the Day of the Lord Jesus (Phil. 1:6). It is, however, made perfect when, resembling their Heavenly Father in righteousness and holiness, they prove themselves sons true to their nature.”

Calvin is clear that we ought never to think of eternal reward as “a matter of merit.” Nevertheless, Scripture teaches us that this eternal reward is, in truth, “a compensation for their [believers’] miseries, tribulations, slanders, etc” (3.18.4). Consequently, Calvin argues, “nothing prevents us, with Scriptural precedent (cf. 2 Cor. 6:13; Heb. 10:35; 11:26], from calling eternal life a ‘recompense’ because in it the Lord receives his own people from toil into repose, from affliction into a prosperous and desirable state, from sorrow into joy, from poverty into affluence, from disgrace into glory.” Calvin concludes, “It will be nothing amiss if we regard holiness of life to be the way, not indeed that gives access to the glory of the heavenly kingdom, but by which those chosen by their God are led to its disclosure. For it is God’s good pleasure to glorify those whom he has sanctified” (3.18.4).

Observe in these quotes that Calvin refers to eternal life as the “reward of works”; that we possess eternal life “through the race of good works”; that believers will be “crowned according their own works”; that good works are the necessary means through which believers are led to their eternal reward; and that such works prepare them “to receive the crown of immortality.” Elsewhere Calvin argues that “the Lord does not trick or mock us when he says that he will reward works with what he had given free before works” (3.18.3) and that “the fruit of the promises is duly assigned to works” (3.18.3). Together with the aforementioned arguments that there can be no imputation of righteousness without actual holiness of life; that justification and sanctification are inseparable and simultaneously bestowed benefits given in union with Christ; that repentance is a condition of forgiveness; and that conformity to Christ is the condition of our adoption, I am baffled by those who argue against such language as heterox or outside the bounds of Reformed orthodoxy. What kind of Calvinism are they trying to defend? By contemporary standards, is Calvin himself a Calvinist or is he, like Piper, arguing “contrary to Scripture, to the Reformation, and to the Reformed confessions and catechisms” as Rachel Green Miller writes in her article?

The importance of Calvin’s arguments for the present debate over good works and their relationship to repentance, obedience, and the final judgment cannot be overestimated. Judged in light of Calvin’s words and the very same kind instrumental and conditional language he uses, I don’t find in Piper anything that Calvin himself didn’t argue, often using even more explicitly instrumental and conditional language. I can’t help but conclude that Calvin’s treatment of the subject effectively puts the nail in the coffin of all attempts to condemn the language of instrumentality, conditionality, and necessity as unorthodox aberrations outside the bounds of confessional Calvinism.

It seems to me that many modern “Reformed” treatments of justification have been influenced more by the noxious winds of evangelical antinomianism, by the kind of 19th and 20th century revivalism that has so indelibly shaped contemporary theological discourse, than by the theology of Calvin himself. Calvin and the “Calvinists” which followed him were zealously opposed to any theology of works righteousness which attributed to good works a meritorious character. And yet, as those who had been delivered from Roman legalism, they did not swing to the opposite extreme like many today and deny the necessity of good works for final salvation, or avoid speaking of them in terms of instrument or condition. The question I’m forced to ask as I read Calvin and his 17th century followers on this issue is: “Are Piper’s ‘Calvinist’ critics really Calvinists at all?” Because it seems to me that on this issue, their “Calvinism” isn’t the Calvinism of Calvin himself.