Downplaying Justification by Faith Alone?

"We must counter the dismissal--or at least downplaying--of justification by faith among many so-called evangelicals with a clear preaching of a reformational understanding of such doctrines as sin, justification, imputation, and sanctification."

 

 

In a review of Carl Trueman's book, John Owen: Reformed Catholic, Renaissance Man, Great Theologian (Aldershot, Hampshire, England, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007), Nathan A. Finn said:

 

Also like other Reformed Orthodox theologians Owen strongly defended the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Against Roman Catholics, Socinians, Arminians, and even some Amyraldians like Richard Baxter, Owen contended for the importance of Christ's active and passive obedience to God's law and the imputation of His righteousness to all those who are in union with Christ. Against the emerging High Calvinism of thinkers like Tobias Crisp, Owen argued against eternal justification by claiming that Christ's atonement for the elect is federal (representative) and covenantal, actualized at the moment of justification rather than at the time of Christ's death.

There is much contemporary evangelicals can learn from Owen's theology. Like Owen, in our doctrinal articulations we must cling tightly to sola scriptura and reformational hermeneutics without discounting the (fallible) insights of tradition, particularly the great creeds of the church. In our own preaching and polemics we must guard against modern versions of the same errors with which Owen contended. We must reject the crypto-Unitarianism of so many evangelicals and articulate a robust Trinitarian theology. We must repudiate the anthropocentric understandings of salvation associated with Arminianism, or more often, semi-Pelagianism masquerading as Arminianism or revivalism, and defend God's sovereign prerogatives in the salvation of sinners. We must counter the dismissal--or at least downplaying--of justification by faith among many so-called evangelicals with a clear preaching of a reformational understanding of such doctrines as sin, justification, imputation, and sanctification.

 

From:  The Founders Journal.

 

 

 Glory be to the Father, and to the Son : and to the Holy Ghost;
    Answer. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be : world without end. Amen.

 

http://www.eskimo.com/~lhowell/bcp1662/

 

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