Westminster Larger Catechism

Moses in Moab, Grace, and Works

March 13, 2024 at 5:15 pm (Law, Mosaic Law, Westminster Confession, Westminster Larger Catechism)

posted by R. Fowler White

Introduction. Though Moses was a believer, his faith in the Lord as his surety (cf. Gen 15:6–21) did not qualify him for life in Canaan (Deut 34:1-5). Moses was appointed to die in Moab, and we know why: he broke faith with the Lord in the midst of the sons of Israel at the waters of Meribah-kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin, and he did not treat the Lord as holy in the midst of the sons of Israel (Deut 32:51). Let’s press the issue, however: since the Lord had justified Moses by faith, why did He bar him from entering Canaan? To sharpen the point even more, why was the exile of Moses in Moab later writ large in the exile of even believing Judahites (like Daniel) in Babylon? Why did justification by faith not irreversibly qualify Moses and other believers for life in Canaan? As I see it, justification by faith did not guarantee residency in the land because the law, which governed life in Canaan, was not of faith. In what follows I’ll elaborate on this response, taking the Scriptures as interpreted by the Westminster Standards as my frame of reference.

Heavenly homeland secured, earthly homeland denied. We may start our reflections by observing that, having examined himself in the light of the law, Moses came to understand that justification and life were due only to the law-keeper (which Moses was not), and that condemnation and death were due to every law-breaker (which Moses was). The law having exposed his need for a surety, Moses followed in the footsteps of Abraham’s faith and found his surety in the Lord himself (Gen 15:6; Rom 4:12; cf. WLC 71). Justified by faith, Moses was “not under the law as a covenant of works” (WCF 19.6). We are not to imagine, however, that his justification infused him with righteousness (WCF 11.1; WLC 77) so as to exempt him in this world from blame and reproof in God’s eyes (WCF 16.6). To the contrary, the law was “the rule of [his] obedience” (WLC 97; cf. WCF 19.2, 6), and it continued to instruct him in the character and conduct that pleased and displeased God, specifying the consequences of each. In this light, we can understand that God, viewing Moses as justified and not under the law as a covenant of works, secured for him the irrevocable heavenly benefits of His suretyship (cf. WLC 57-58; 65; 153). We can also appreciate that God, viewing Moses as justified and subject to the law as the rule of obedience, applied to him revocable earthly rewards and chastisements for his character and conduct (cf. WCF 14.2; 16.4, 6; WLC 28). These two divine perspectives lead us to conclude, then, that though Moses was assured of life in a heavenly homeland with Abraham (cf. Heb 11:13-16) on account of his surety’s righteousness credited to him, he was denied life in the earthly homeland of Canaan on account of his own unrighteousness.

Justified and liable. From the preceding comments on Moses and the law, it comes into view that, whether God administered the law as a covenant of works or as a rule of obedience, His message remained the same: the law was not of faith. That is, in God’s reckoning, it was to the law-keeper alone that Abraham’s blessings belonged. Only the law-keeping seed would qualify, by his own righteousness, to be the one true heir of God. Furthermore, only that seed would qualify to be the surety whom God provided for all others who would be heirs of God with Abraham (cf. Gen 22:18; 49:10; Gal 3:8, 16). Until that unique law-keeper arrived, the law disqualified everyone as the law-breakers they were. Yet, at the same time, no one needed to despair of ever being qualified. No, like Moses, they needed only to follow in the footsteps of Abraham (Rom 4:12b). As Abraham had done (Gen 15:6), they too, by faith, could receive and rest upon a righteousness better than their own in the Lord their surety. They too, by faith, could lay hold of an inheritance better than Canaan in a heavenly homeland (Heb 11:13-16). Indeed, they too, by faith, could be assured of all the eternal heavenly benefits of the Lord’s suretyship, including life in the eternal heavenly homeland. Again, however, we dare not say that the justification of these others by faith infused them with righteousness so that they were exempt in this life from blame or reproof in God’s sight. Quite the contrary. For them, as for Moses, the law was “the rule of their obedience” (WLC 97), rewarding and correcting them according to their character and conduct in this life. Therefore, even though justified by faith as Moses was, they too were liable to be disqualified for life in the earthly homeland on account of their unrighteousness.

Heard differently, administered differently. Returning to our opening question, we reply that justifying faith did not qualify Moses or other believers for life in Canaan because the law, whether administered as a covenant of works or as a rule of obedience, was not of faith. Unexpectedly, this observation anticipates the chief concerns expressed in the two competing approaches to the administration of the law (especially though not exclusively as it was issued at Sinai). Some hold (with Meredith Kline) that God administered the law as a covenant of works, meaning that He was dealing with sinful man on the basis of the principle of works. Others maintain (with John Murray) that God administered the law as a rule of obedience, meaning that He was dealing with sinful man on the basis of the principle of grace. Which of these competing approaches are we to choose?[1] Let me suggest another question: are we required to choose between them? We can hardly consider all the factors relating to such questions here. For now, let’s focus on the fact that the Westminster Standards describe the law’s administration both as a covenant of works and as a rule of obedience. Why are there two descriptions of the law’s administration, and how do they differ? From their context in the Standards, the why and how of the difference between the two descriptions is reasonably clear. The law was administered differently depending on how its hearers examined themselves in its light—or better, how God examined them in its light. That is, the difference turns on whether the law was heard with or without faith in the Lord as their surety. The following comments may clarify the point being made.

Hearing the law without faith. When heard without faith in His suretyship, the Lord would administer the law in keeping with the works principle, and the hearers’ obedience (or lack thereof) would function as the ground of their recompense in this life and the life to come. To hear the law without faith would mean that the hearers deemed it a separate covenant—a covenant of works by which they would seek to establish their own righteousness—in contrast to the covenant of grace. Administered as a covenant of works, then, the law would leave the hearers without excuse and under its curse, continuing in the state and way of sin, neither awakened to flee the wrath to come nor driven to the Lord as their surety (cf. WLC 96).

Hearing the law with faith. When heard with faith in His suretyship, however, the Lord would administer the law in keeping with the grace principle (WCF 19.7), and the hearers’ obedience would function as the indispensable fruit of saving grace. To hear the law with faith would mean that the hearers had recognized it, in accord with its proper purpose, as an integral part of—“the rule of their obedience” in—the covenant of grace. Administered as a rule of obedience, then, the law would show the hearers how much they owed to the Divine Surety for revealing His righteousness and imputing it to them and for bearing the law’s curse in their place and for their good (cf. Gen 15:6-18). In addition, the law spurred them on to more gratitude expressed in greater care to conform themselves to the law as “the rule of their obedience” (cf. WLC 97). Strikingly, in this respect, those who heard the law with faith would again be following in Abraham’s footsteps, for he himself had recognized circumcision, not as a separate covenant, but as one of the commandments—a rule of obedience—for him and his seed to keep in the covenant of grace (cf. Gen 17:10; 18:19; 21:4; 22:18; 26:5).

Two principles with a common message for a mixed multitude. That the law was heard and administered according to both works and grace should not surprise or confuse us. The distinction fits the realities we see in Scripture. On the one hand, there is the reality that divine demands for human obedience appear both in covenants of works and in covenants of grace. On the other hand, there is the reality that the covenant people, to whom the law was given, were a mixed company of those without faith and those with faith (i.e., those who are of the law [Rom 4:14; cf. Gal 3:10] and those who are of faith [Gal 3:7, 9]). If in fact these were the realities in effect, then the two competing approaches mentioned above actually present us with a false choice. The spiritually mixed multitude to whom God administered the law required a twofold approach in keeping with both the works principle and the grace principle, rooted in their common message that the law was not of faith. Among the multitude who heard the law was the remnant of faith. Justified by faith, they were not under the law as a covenant of works, dealt with according to the works principle. They were, instead, subject to the law as the rule of their obedience, dealt with according to the grace principle. As such, the justified remnant was like Moses: qualified for life in the heavenly homeland of Abraham and his co-heirs on account of their surety’s righteousness, but on account of their own unrighteousness liable to be disqualified for life in the earthly homeland of Canaan.

[1] Perhaps an observation should be added about the approaches of Kline and Murray. From where I sit, each approach can be a help or a hindrance. Kline is a help when he argues that God administered the law as a covenant of works dealing with unbelieving sinners in Israel according to the works principle. Murray is a help when he argues that God administered the law as a rule of obedience dealing with believing sinners in Israel according to the grace principle. As I read Kline and Murray, however, they can both be a hindrance if their insight constrains us to lock our attention on to only unbelievers or only believers and on to only the law’s function (use) for one of the two groups. If, however, Israel was in reality a mixture of unbelievers and believers, and if God addressed that reality in the ways He administered the law, then affirming one insight does not require us to deny the other.

Samson as Covenant Child: Some Thoughts

March 5, 2024 at 1:01 pm (OT-Judges, Perseverance, Sanctification, Westminster Larger Catechism, Westminster Standards)

posted by R. Fowler White

Recently, while attending a Bible study on the Book of Judges, I was asked by the study’s teacher, a military chaplain friend, whether I had ever considered Samson as a covenant child. The question was more than a tap on the shoulder. It was a very good reality check to reflect on and to remember. I conceded that the thought had not occurred to me and that I’d been prone to look past that point when reading the Samson story (Judges 13-16). As I percolated on that good reminder, some thoughts began to congeal.

It can hardly be doubted that when Samson’s parents are introduced in Judges 13, we’re expected to realize that, in some measure, they had been influenced by the worldliness of their own evil Israelite generation, not to mention by the presence of Philistine rulers in the land (13:1). But, as we read on, the chronicler drops hints that in discernible ways they grew as believing parents, not least through the two appearances of the Angel of the Lord to them. The impact of the Angel’s news that Samson’s barren mother would conceive and bear a child must have been dramatic. The dialogue between Samson’s parents and the Angel provides clues of sanctifying change in them, especially in father Manoah. Given the particulars provided by the Angel and the known history of Abraham and Sarah, the pregnancy of Samson’s mother placed her in the unique line of mothers like Sarah. By “unique” I mean to point out that her childbearing was like Sarah’s: it was nothing less than life from the dead (cf. Rom 4:19). As we know, both Abraham and Sarah had been procreatively dead, but God raised their seed Isaac from the dead. We’re constrained to conclude, then, that God was teaching Samson’s parents (and readers of Judges) the truth that He was the God of resurrection. That’s certainly what Isaac’s parents learned according to Heb 11:11, 17-19. It’s more than plausible, then, that Samson’s parents were reminded of that lesson, even if they were not mindful of it when the Angel first appeared.

Add to the preceding lesson that the Angel had commanded both parents (mother in 13:7; father in 13:12-14) to see to it that Samson was raised in keeping with his prenatal divine appointment to a Nazirite “manner of life” from the womb until his death (13:7, 12). Clearly, the Angel’s words told his parents that there was more to Samson’s appointment than the standard Nazirite vow in Numbers 6. Indeed, the words of 13:24-25 are more than a brief happy coda to the events reported in 13:1-23. No, against the backdrop of Israel’s overwhelming declension, a deliverer for the nation had been born and was growing up, and the Lord blessed him. And the Spirit of the Lord began to stir him. What is more, the exchange between Samson and his parents in 14:1-3 provides evidence that his parents, following the Angel’s instructions, had been faithful to have Samson circumcised according to the circumcision covenant of Gen 17:9-14. In fact, their efforts to raise Samson for a lifetime as a Nazirite must have included at least basic instruction in the significance of circumcision, else what could it have meant to Samson for them to have admonished him about marrying a daughter from the uncircumcised Philistines (14:3)? Taken together, these details give poignant depth to the highs and lows that would mark Samson’s subsequent life and death.

As I read the story of Samson, the mongrel mix of spiritual and carnal that characterized him paint a picture of a covenant child who went wayward, perhaps even prodigal, for significant intervals of time. After all, bearing the covenant sign, Samson bore in his body the truth of God’s pledge in which He committed to be God to believers and their seed both to justify those who believed as Abraham did and to judge those who would not. In other words, as covenant child and parents, Samson and his parents both knew the choice set before them by the Divine Guardian of His covenant people: circumcise your hearts as Abraham did — believe upon Him who justifies the ungodly — or be cut off. Many would agree that it wasn’t until his final days of suffering and death (16:20-31) that Samson, who so frequently appeared as a wayward covenant child in his earlier adult life, showed his divinely predetermined identity as a Nazirite of God.

To make greater sense of Samson’s story as a child of the covenant, I find instruction in the Westminster Larger Catechism and the Confession of Faith. I have in mind WLC 167, WCF 17.2-3, and WCF 18.4. With their help, my understanding of Samson, as he’s presented in Judges, would go something like this: he largely failed to improve his circumcision until his final days. Before those days, through the temptations of Satan and the world, the prevalence of corruption remaining in him, and the neglect of the means of his preservation, Samson fell at times into grievous sins and continued in them for a season. Having displeased God and grieved His Holy Spirit by his sins, Samson came to be deprived of some measure of his graces and comforts, had his heart hardened, and his conscience wounded. He also hurt and scandalized others (not least his parents), and brought temporal judgments upon himself. Yet, in all this, he never totally nor finally fell away from the state of grace but persevered therein to the end, God having worked in grace as He pleased through Samson, with all his failings, to begin to save Israel from the Philistines (13:5).

It’s simply astonishing to think how much more God worked as He pleased (and continues to do so) to save us through Christ, who with all His perfections is so much better than Samson, not only in His death but also in His life.

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John Murray on Lev 18:5

January 16, 2024 at 12:00 pm (Faith, Justification, Mosaic Law, OT-Deuteronomy, OT-Leviticus, Romans, Sanctification, Westminster Larger Catechism, Westminster Standards)

posted by R. Fowler White

In his understandably celebrated commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Professor John Murray wrote pointedly about Paul’s reference to Lev 18:5 in Rom 10:5 and then elaborated on the theology of that OT text in Appendix B of the commentary. Regarding Paul’s allusion to Lev 18:5, Murray wrote:

[Lev. 18:5] does not appear in a context that deals with legal righteousness as opposed to that of faith. Lev. 18:5 is in a context in which the claims of God upon his redeemed and covenant people are being asserted and urged upon Israel …. [It] refers not to the life accruing from doing in a legalistic framework but to the blessing attendant upon obedience in a redemptive and covenant relationship to God.

Apart from his commentary on Romans, it is also helpful to know that when Murray chaired the Orthodox Presbyterian Church Committee on Texts and Proof Texts (whose report was adopted by the denomination’s 1955 and 1956 general assemblies), the committee inserted Lev 18:5 as a proof text for WCF 19.6. Since the insertion supports the sentence in 19.6 pertaining to the promises of the law to “the regenerate,” it is clear that Murray and his committee took Lev 18:5 to be addressed to that group, otherwise identified in 19:6 as “true believers.” The committee’s insertion, then, sheds light on Murray’s statements about Lev 18:5 in his Romans commentary and in its Appendix B.

Understanding Murray’s reasoning. Reflecting on the details above, we notice first that Murray characterizes Israel’s relationship to God in Lev 18:5 in its redemptive-historical context: they are God’s redeemed and covenant people (emphasis added), and Lev 18:5 speaks of “the blessing attendant upon obedience in a redemptive and covenant relationship to God” (emphasis added). Clearly, Murray is focused on the grace of Israel’s redemption from Egypt and their consequent reconstitution as God’s covenant community. Furthermore, Murray takes the law-keeping mentioned in Lev 18:5 to be the fruit of saving and sanctifying grace, a point confirmed in his exposition of that text in Appendix B of his commentary (see further below). When therefore Murray asserts that Lev 18:5 “does not appear in a context that deals with legal righteousness as opposed to that of faith,” we understand him to mean that Lev 18:5 appears in a context where God deals with His people according to His grace, not in a context where God deals with them according to their works (two contexts otherwise known as “the covenant of grace” and “the covenant of works”).

We must go further, however, to understand Murray’s position. If the law-keeping required in Lev 18:5 is that of a people redeemed by God and bound to Him by covenant, Murray recognizes that a question arises: how could Paul properly appeal to that text as an illustration of works-righteousness when its original context is not about works-righteousness? Does Paul, in fact, misuse Lev 18:5? Murray’s answer is forthright: in the original context, the terms of Lev 18:5 properly expresses law-keeping, in his words, as “the way of sanctification” for believers, but those same terms in themselves also express law-keeping as “the way of justification” for the ungodly. To clarify his point, he reminds us that in justification law-keeping is done by Christ and is imputed to the believer’s account; in sanctification law-keeping is produced in the believer’s life. Murray sums up his view of Lev 18:5 in Appendix B to his commentary:

We must bear in mind that righteousness and life are never separable. Within the realm of justification by grace through faith there is not only acceptance with God as righteous in the righteousness of Christ but there is also the new life which the believer lives. The new life is one of righteousness in obedience to the commandments of God. … In the renovated realm of saving and sanctifying grace, we come back to the combination righteousness–approbation–life. The witness of Scripture to the necessity and actuality of this in the redeemed, covenant life of believers is pervasive. It is this principle that appears in Lev 18:5 ….

Assessing Murray’s reasoning. Murray’s view initially commends itself when he points out that law-keeping (i.e., righteousness, obedience) has a bearing on both justification and sanctification. But is he right about Lev 18:5 and its use in Rom 10:5? If, for our purposes, we set aside Murray’s curious inattention to the typological nature of Israel’s redemption and reconstitution and focus on God’s grace toward Israel, we can understand why he says that “Lev 18:5 is in a context in which the claims of God upon his redeemed and covenant people are being asserted and urged upon Israel.” We also appreciate his point that in the realm of grace, righteousness and life are inseparable. As far as it goes, Murray’s analysis of Lev 18:5 in its context is a plausible working hypothesis. Plausible as his proposal appears, there are holes discernible in it.

One hole in Murray’s analysis is that he does not reckon with the two types of congregants to whom Moses knew that he was speaking. Moses knew that his hearers included those with circumcised hearts of faith and also those with uncircumcised hearts of unbelief, those who heard him with humility and also those who heard him with pride (Deut 1:32; 9:6-7, 12-13, 16, 23-24, 27; 10:16; 29:4; 30:6; cf. Jer 4:4; Ps 106:24; Acts 7:51; Jude 5). In the same vein, Murray does not take into account the two types of hearers mentioned in WCF 16.6-7 and 19.5-6: those who heard the law were not only believers (i.e., regenerate), but also others (i.e., unbelievers, unregenerate). Overall, then, Murray does not consider the reality that Moses himself faced: the redemption and covenant that he mediated was able only to expose but not to change their make-up as a spiritually mixed multitude. There is no doubt that this reality determined how Israel would examine themselves in the light of Lev 18:5.

Over and over again, Moses urged Israel to be careful to hear God’s claims on them with the humility of faith and not with their historically demonstrated pride of unbelief (see especially Deut 1-11). He reminded them as those who would be heirs with Abraham that they, like their father, must trust in God’s oath of suretyship, since it was His suretyship that was the gracious basis of all that they would inherit (Gen 15:6-18; Deut 1:35; 4:20, 32-40; 7:6-11; 9:1-6; 10:14-16; 11:9). To those, then, who heard Lev 18:5 with faith in the Lord as their surety, the words of WCF 19.6 would apply: “the promises of [the law] … [showed] them God’s approbation of obedience, and what blessings they may expect upon the performance thereof; although not as due to them by the law as a covenant of works.” Presumably, this is what Murray and his committee had in mind when they inserted Lev 18:5 as a proof text for WCF 19.6. Yet we observe this: the blessing promised in Lev 18:5 was not due to the regenerate by the law. On what basis was it due to them? We would all agree that the basis of blessing would be the righteousness of their surety, and we have no doubt whatsoever that Murray confesses that truth. Our concern here, however, is that that truth does not figure into his exegesis of Lev 18:5. To appreciate better how it should figure into the exegesis of Lev 18:5, it seems fitting and necessary to reflect on how believers and others examined themselves in its light.

What might we justifiably infer about those of faith when they examined themselves in light of Lev 18:5? Would they see themselves as law-keepers to whom justification and life were due by the law? We know better. No, they would humbly see themselves as law-breakers to whom condemnation and death were due by the law. They would also see how much they owed to the Divine Surety for fulfilling the law’s righteousness and for bearing its curse in their place and for their good (cf. WLC Q97a). And, yes, further, they would be spurred to more gratitude, expressing that gratitude in greater care to conform themselves to the law as the rule of their obedience (cf. WLC Q97b).

Now let us ask about the others who heard Moses, particularly those others among the covenant people. What might we justifiably infer about them when they examined themselves in light of Lev 18:5? Should it not have caused them to see their standing as law-breakers and awakened them to flee God’s wrath (cf. WLC Q96a)? Should it not have caused them to see their need of the Divine Surety and the perfection of His righteousness and driven them to Him (cf. WLC Q95-96)? To be sure. Nonetheless, we know, as Moses knew, that those without faith would seek to establish their own righteousness as law-keepers to whom justification and life would be due by the law (cf. Rom 9:31-32; 10:3). Indeed, we know, as Moses knew, that many in Israel’s mixed multitude persisted in the pride of unbelief and self-righteousness, and that the law left them without excuse and under its curse (cf. WLC Q96). Thus, Lev 18:5 in its context does refer to the truth that justification and life were due only to the law-keeper and that any law-breaker who would seek to establish his own righteousness as a law-keeper was condemned. The law-breaker’s only hope was to repent and heed the witness that the law itself bore to the Divine Surety and the perfection of His righteousness.

The preceding considerations lead us to a second hole in Murray’s exegesis of Lev 18:5 (cf. Deut 27:26). Despite Paul’s two citations of Moses in Rom 10:5-8, Murray does not appear to give enough attention to how Paul’s appeal to Moses in Rom 10:5 correlates with his appeal to Moses in Rom 10:6-8. In Rom 10:5 Paul shows that in Lev 18:5 (as in Deut 27:26) Moses taught the righteousness of the law according to which justification and life would belong only to the seed who fulfilled it. By contrast, in Rom 10:6-8 Paul shows that in Deut 30:11-14 Moses also taught the righteousness of faith according to which the justification and life promised by the law were available to every law-breaker who believes in the Surety, to whom alone justification and life belonged according to the perfection of His own righteousness (Rom 10:4-13; 1 Tim 3:16 [KJV, ASV, NKJV]; Rom 3:21-22; cf. Gen 15:6-18; 12:3; 22:17b-18). In keeping with his heart’s desire and prayer for Israel (Rom 10:1), Paul’s overall message, especially to his Jewish readers, was that they should do as he did: follow Moses, who taught not only the righteousness of the law but the righteousness of faith also. So, yes, Moses taught both contrasting principles in the one Sinai covenant, and he could do so because those two principles were made compatible by the Surety who fulfilled God’s word (Rom 10:4, 6-9; 9:32b-33). Evidently, as Paul understood it, it was with a view to faith in that Surety that Moses discipled Israel in the contrasting but compatible principles of the righteousness of (i.e., required by) the law and the righteousness of (i.e., received by) faith.

With Murray we ought to affirm that Paul did not misuse Lev 18:5 in Rom 10:5. We ought also to agree with him that Lev 18:5 appears in a context in which the claims of God upon His covenant people, redeemed from Egypt, are being asserted and urged upon Israel. Still, there is reason to conclude that Murray’s exegesis of Lev 18:5 has holes in it. Addressing Israel as a mixed multitude, in Lev 18:5 Moses taught that justification and life were due only to the law-keeper and, conversely, that condemnation and death were due to all law-breakers. Yet Moses also taught in Deut 30:11-14 that the law-breaker’s only hope of blessing lay in the Surety whom Abraham trusted and to whom the law of Moses itself bore witness. All who refused to submit to God’s righteousness through faith and sought instead to establish their own righteousness would be without excuse and under the law’s curse. Having severed themselves from the Divine Surety in the pride of their unbelief and self-righteousness, they turned the Sinai covenant into just another covenant without a surety and consigned themselves as law-breakers to condemnation and death (Gal 5:4; 2 Cor 3:7, 9).

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“He Descended into Hell”

May 31, 2022 at 10:00 am (1 Peter, Apostles' Creed, Christology, Ephesians, Westminster Larger Catechism)

posted by R. Fowler White

It’s an understatement to say that the last phrase of Article 4 of the Apostles’ Creed—He descended into hell—has generated a lot of controversy. Because its appearance in the Creed came later than its other articles and because its meaning is open to question, some advocate for removing it from the Creed’s publication or, at the very least, for excluding it from the Creed’s public recitation. Those opinions deserve our attention, but they are not conclusive. For our purposes here we’ll take our point of departure from J. A. MacCulloch’s work, The Harrowing of Hell (1930). He provides a fair and reasonable basis for the article’s acceptance for the church’s continued consideration and recitation as follows: “Although the confessional use of the Descent doctrine was only sporadic and occasional before the eighth century, on the other hand the doctrine itself was mentioned repeatedly by the Fathers and in the religious literature of the early centuries.” So it remains appropriate for us to look more closely at the interpretation of the Creed’s words He descended into hell.

Even with repeated mention of the Descent, there remains no consensus on its interpretation. Early on, the received text of the Creed’s Descent clause was typically taken as a simple declaration that Christ, having humbled Himself to be crucified, dead, and buried, had also been consigned to the common ignominious place of the dead, namely, the grave (as distinguished from the place of suffering-beyond-the-grave, namely, hell). As time moved on, however, various other views of the Descent arose. Some believed that after His death Christ’s disembodied soul went to hell in order to complete what was lacking in His suffering on the cross. Others affirmed that His soul went to the place of waiting for disembodied souls (aka limbus patrum) in order to facilitate the transport of the souls of pre-Christ saints to heaven. Still others believed that Christ’s soul went to hell in order to achieve and announce His victory over it.

Strikingly, despite their variety, common to these views is the belief that between His death and His resurrection Christ’s disembodied soul relocated to a place other than and in addition to the heavenly paradise of God to which He referred on the cross (Luke 23:43, 46; cf. Matt 27:50). Furthermore, as we look into the attempts to justify this belief, we realize that basically they involve imposing dubious interpretations of Eph 4:8-10 and 1 Pet 3:18-20 onto the supposed chronology and theology of events related to Christ’s soul between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Suffice it to say here that neither Eph 4:8-10 nor 1 Pet 3:18-20 refers to a relocation of Christ’s soul to hell. To the contrary, the Ephesians text affirms His descent from heaven to earth for His incarnation, while the First Peter passage contemplates His ascension (not His descent), in which was proclaimed His victories over sin, death, and all the fallen angelic host. In short, Scripture itself provides no witness to the relocation of Christ’s soul after His death to any place other than the paradise of God in heaven. In fact, the Creed itself seems to point the way to a better understanding of its Descent clause. That clue appears when we notice the likeness between the second article and the words dealing with Christ’s suffering. The second article presents distinguishable perspectives on Christ’s person in the two phrases His only Son and our Lord. Likewise, the words about His suffering present distinguishable perspectives in the two phrases was crucified, dead, and buried and He descended into hell. We can elaborate briefly by looking first to Scripture and then to the Westminster and Heidelberg catechisms.

Turning to the Prophets and Apostles, we find that they vividly narrate the incarnate Son’s suffering in both soul and body from Gethsemane to the grave. For example, Isaiah, cited by Peter (1 Pet 2:22-25), prophesied expressly about the anguish of soul and body that would arise in the Lord’s Servant as He bore our griefs and carried our sorrows (Isa 53:4), was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities (53:5), endured our chastisement (53:5), and bore the iniquities and sin of many (53:11-12). Isaiah saw that, despite His innocence, the Servant would be stricken for the transgression of the Lord’s people, enduring even the degradation of being cut off from the land of the living (53:8) and swallowed up into the belly of the grave (53:9). Indeed, the Prophet discerned that deepest misery would be His because it was the will of the Lord to crush Him and cause Him to suffer, and because the Lord imputed to Him the iniquity of us all (53:6). Isaiah thus envisioned the Lord’s righteous Servant voluntarily subjecting Himself to be for His many seed their guilt offering, their sin-bearing substitute, their surety (53:10-12). Fittingly, we find Matthew reporting Jesus’ words to His disciples in Gethsemane: “My soul is very sorrowful even to death.” And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” Climactically, Matthew records Jesus’ dying words as those from David’s prophetic psalm about God’s royal Son who had put Himself in harm’s way for His people: About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt 27:46; Ps 22:1; cf. Heb 5:7).

Reading such words, we have to ask ourselves: what is Jesus’ lament if not the incarnate Son’s disclosure of the otherwise indiscernible truth that, on the tree (Deut 21:23), He had become a curse for us (Gal 3:13), that for our sake God had made Him to be sin who knew no sin (2 Cor 5:21)? Is His lament something other than His testimony to the gravest torment of a soul subjected to divine judgment, a torment compounding the sheer agony in a body brutalized by human hands? Are those words anything but His witness to the hellish suffering that He underwent in accord with divine foreordination and prophecy, while drinking the cup of God’s holy wrath against us sinners (Matt 26:39, 42) and bearing and feeling the crushing weight of God’s just anger against our iniquities imputed to Him? Reading this sampling of what the Prophets and Apostles tells us about Christ’s suffering, we realize that it is not the case that between His death and His resurrection His soul relocated to hell. Rather it is the case that, in God’s reckoning, when He laid our iniquities on His incarnate Son, He effectively relocated hell onto Christ Himself such that from Gethsemane to the grave His humiliation for sinners reached its nadir in both soul and body.

Compelled by Scripture texts like those above, we appreciate the help offered for our understanding of the Descent clause in the Reformed catechisms of Heidelberg and Westminster. Heidelberg instructs us why the Creed adds the clause He descended into hell in these words: “To assure me during attacks of deepest dread and temptation that Christ my Lord, by suffering unspeakable anguish, pain, and terror of soul, on the cross but also earlier, has delivered me from hellish anguish and torment” (Q & A 44). In a complementary fashion, Westminster takes us back to the earliest interpretation of the Creed’s most contested clause. After expounding Christ’s humiliation in His death in the Larger Catechism Q & A 49, we read in Q & A 50 that His “humiliation after his death consisted in his being buried, and continuing in the state of the dead, and under the power of death till the third day; which hath been otherwise expressed in these words, He descended into hell.” Taken together, these catechisms assist us to see in the Descent clause what Ursinus suggested in his Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism (p. 232): “the descent into hell in the Creed follows the burial of Christ, not because it was accomplished after his burial; but because it is an explanation of what precedes concerning his passion, death, and burial, lest something should be detracted from these.” In that light, many will find good reason to include and recite the words of the Descent clause. In them we confess that the benefits of Christ’s suffering for us sinners extend from the visible to the invisible, even from the least extreme to the most extreme torments, pains, anguish, and ignominy of both soul and body. Certainly, we recognize too with Olevianus (see his A Firm Foundation, p. 71) that “the further Christ humbled Himself for us in all His anguish, and the more dearly He paid for our salvation, the more firm our trust in the love of God and in the satisfaction of Jesus Christ becomes.”

We reflect on Article 5 of the Creed here.

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Why are we here?

September 9, 2017 at 2:07 pm (Westminster Larger Catechism, Westminster Standards)

I am starting a catechism class for the young people in our church, and I am using the Larger Catechism to do so. So here are some of the notes I have gleaned from the three commentaries on the Larger Catechism (Ridgeley, Vos, and Morecraft), as well as the commentaries on the Shorter Catechism that I own (Whyte, Watson, Whitecross, Williamson, Vincent, Fisher, Flavel, and Boston). Page numbers are to the most recent editions of these works. Question 1 of the WLC addresses the question, “Why are we here?” That is not all it says, of course, as the quotes below will well illustrate. Hopefully I will be able to keep on posting my findings as I go along.

The whole question: Ridgeley says that the first part is the means that leads us to the second part. Morecraft says that this is the most important question we can ever ask ourselves (115). He says “Happiness is a by-product, not a goal” (116). To begin with this question puts us on the highest possible plane (116). If we begin with “how do we become saved,” then we are in danger of believing that God exists for our benefit (116). Morecraft notices that this question presupposes the revelation of the Bible (118), since only God can reveal to us our ultimate purpose in life. Morecraft also says that “Our ultimate purpose with reference to God is to glorify Him. Our ultimate purpose with reference to ourselves is to enjoy God” (130). Vos notes that no evolutionist could possibly agree with this question (3). Evolution results in there being no meaning in life whatsoever, except what we make for ourselves. Whyte notes that if there is a chief end, then there are subordinate ends (14). Of course, all the lesser ends should serve the great end. Vincent says “And when God shall be most fully enjoyed by the saints in heaven, he will be most highly glorified” (15). Flavel asks the question, “what then is to be thought of those men, who being wholly intent upon inferior things, forget and neglect their principal end? A. they are dead whilst they live” (141). Boston says much the same: “There is an inseparable connexion betwixt the two, as between the end and the means; so that no person who does not glorify God here, shall ever enjoy him hereafter” (15).

The first part of the answer: Ridgeley says, “That there is a great difference between God’s glorifying himself and our glorifying him” (4). The difference is expressed: “God glorifies himself by furnishing us with matter for praise; we glorify him when we offer praise, or give unto him the glory due to him name” (4). Ridgeley also notes that we glorify God when we confess our sins, when we believe and trust in him, when we have a fervent zeal for his honor, when we improve our talents, when we walk humbly, thankfully, and cheerfully before God, when we are heavenly-minded, and when we submit fully to His will (5). We cannot always think about the glory of God in every second. Ridgeley notices this, and has a great analogy: “As every step the traveller takes is towards his journey’s end, though this may not be every moment in his thoughts, so the less important actions of life should be subservient to those which are of greater consequence, and in which the honour of God and religion is most intimately concerned” (6). Flavel says, “[I]t is the duty and wisdom of every Christian to renounce, deny, and forsake all inferior interests and enjoyments, when they come in competition with the glory of God, and our enjoyment of him” (142). Morecraft adds witnessing to the list of how we specifically honor God (121). He says, “When we truly honor God, we receive the greatest happiness from God a human being can experience: we are honored and glorified by God himself” (121). Watson adds to the list “by standing up for his truths” (15); “suffering for God” (16). Charles Spurgeon once said, “God can honour you, even though nobody else sees that he does it, in such a way that you will be more contented with that honor than if your name and fame were blazoned forth before the whole world” (Morecraft, 123). An illustration: “Lady Glenorchy, in her diary, relates how she was seized with a fever which threatened her life, ‘during the course of which,’ she says, ‘the first question of the Assembly’s Catechism was brought to my mind—“What is the chief end of man?” as if some one had asked it. When I considered the answer to it—“To glorify God, and to enjoy Him for ever”—I was struck with shame and confusion. I found I had never sought to glorify God in my life, nor had I any idea of what was meant by enjoying him for ever. Death and judgment were set before me; my past sins came to my remembrance; I saw no way to escape the punishment due unto them, nor had I the least glimmering hope of obtaining the pardon of them through the righteousness of another.’ From this unhappy state she was shortly after delivered, by believing on the Lord Jesus as the only Saviour of guilty” (Whitecross, p. 7).

Why must we glorify God? Watson answers: 1. God gave us our being; 2. God made all things for his own glory (Proverbs 16:4); 3. The glory of God has intrinsic value and excellence; 4. Creatures below us give glory to God, “and do we think to sit rent free”? (9); 5. all our hopes hang upon him.

The second part of the answer: Ridgeley notes that in order to enjoy him, we must belong to him in covenant (6). It is imperfect in this life, perfect in heaven (6-7). However, a world of comfort is in that word “forever.” Some people, however, think of God as the great cosmic kill-joy, bent on preventing us from having any fun. God invented fun. The enjoyment consists in union and communion with God (Boston, 14).

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