The Relevance of Buchanan’s Justification: Part Three

Theological

Undoubtedly, the most significant contribution of Buchanan’s Justification, is his theological clarity, finesse, and comprehensiveness. His arguments are as relevant today in light of the NPP as they were in the 19^th century. We saw above that the NPP has supplanted the forensic and judicial with the participationistic and transformative. Buchanan furnishes three arguments for why Scripture requires the forensic or judicial sense of the term justification and righteousness. He calls these the antithetic, correlative, and equivalent arguments (229-233).

What is more, Buchanan shows the inextricability of the doctrine of justification to the doctrine of God, his holiness and justice, the spirituality and inflexibility of the moral law, the grand and crucial doctrine of Christ’s satisfactory and propitiatory atonement, and the sovereignty of grace. Each one of these doctrines is worthy of careful treatment, and is connected to the others, and the doctrine of justification, so that if any falls, so do the others, especially, the doctrine of justification. Allow one quote from Buchanan to suffice:

If they [the Reformers] held that God’s justice requires the punishment of disobedience for the vindication of His law and the manifestation of His glory, — that men are universally chargeable with the guilt of original and actual sin, — that they are alike unwilling to be subject to God’s law, and unable to yield perfect obedience to it, — that for them and their salvation, the Son of God became incarnate, and acted as Mediator between God and man, — that He executed the office of a Priest in offering Himself up as a sacrifice for sin, –that His sufferings were strictly penal, and properly vicarious, — and that they were both appointed and accepted by God as sufficient to render it consistent with His justice to extend mercy to the guilt, and to grant a full and free remission of their sins, — then, holding these views, they could hardly fail to believe that Christ’s work is the meritorious procuring cause, and the only, but all-sufficient, ground of a sinner’s justification (164).

It is here that Buchanan shows the NPP for what it truly is. It requires a different view of God, a different view of the law, a different view of the atonement, and a different view of grace and faith. The interconnectedness of these Scriptural doctrines with the Reformed understanding of justification is so entire, that the smallest reformulation of justification entails a thoroughly altered view of religion.

The Relevance of Buchanan’s Justification: Part Two

Historical

Extremely illuminating is Buchanan’s treatment of the history of the doctrine of justification, specifically the corruption of the doctrine by Catholicism, Socinianism, Neo-nominianism, and other movements. Particularly since much of modern-day liberalism espouses a Socinianism Revivus, particularly on the person of Christ and the nature of his atonement, it is not surprising that the Socinian view of justification would prevail in our current setting. Buchanan defines the Socinian view of justification as “sinners obtain[ing] pardon and acceptance with God through His mere mercy, on the ground of their own repentance and reformation” (162). It is notable that the Socinians would maintain speech such as “justification by faith,” “by grace,” etc., while in the meantime redefining each to include man’s personal repentance and reformation.

Not only does Buchanan offer surveys of these views, but arguments against them as well. Therein lies a considerable portion of his current-day value. Since our age suffers from considerable historical amnesia, including and particularly in the area of theology, Buchanan’s treatment of the history of theological controversy is refreshing and illuminating.

The Relevance of Buchanan’s Justification: Part One

The next four post will be given by Dr. Bilkes from Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan. There at PRTS he is the one of the assisant Professor’s in Old and New Testament as well as one of the Academic Deans. His Ph.D. is from Princeton Theological Seminary, and his dissertation was done on the Ezra-Nehemiah corpus. These next few post will be a review of the book by James Buchanan titled, “The Doctrine of Justification.” These next four post will be broken down into sections in how Buchanan deals with Justification biblically, theologically, historically and experientially.

Biblical

Buchanan treats the biblical foundation for the doctrine of justification in two steps: first, as it is found in the Old Testament, and secondly, as it was formulated during the age of the Apostles in the controversy with the Judaizers. Buchanan offers a lucid treatment of the controversy, which is rather relevant given the current debates. He traces the connection between the Judaizing controversy and the doctrine of justification.

Buchanan shows how this controversy was understandable given the times and the shift from the old, ceremonial economy to the new, spiritual economy. This controversy raised the important point whether obedience of any kind, both to the ceremonial and the moral law, can be part and parcel of a sinner’s merit before God. It occasioned the apostles’ clear delineation of justification without works of any kind, whether ceremonial or moral. Buchanan shows how this is clear not only from the explicit teaching of the apostles, but also from the insinuations of their detractors. Their charge, “Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?” (Rom 6:1), shows, in the words of Buchanan, “that the Justification of which he [Paul] spoke was not understood on either side to be Sanctification, or to depend at all on Sanctification as its ground, — for there could be no room for the objection, if Paul was supposed to teach that men are justified by their infused or inherent righteousness” (74-75). This and many similar points show us the abiding value of Buchanan’s astute biblical analysis.