A caution when reading Richard Baxter

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A caution when reading Richard Baxter Dec 9, 2023 11:48:42 GMT -5

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Post by Admin on Dec 9, 2023 11:48:42 GMT -5

I had mentioned the need to be careful as he tends toward a legalism based on his understanding. here is a partial answer for that.

Richard Baxter on Faith and Justification
Many will know the name of the Puritan Richard Baxter from his influential book, The Reformed Pastor (1656), and his book of wisdom for pastoral counseling, The Christian Directory (1673). These practical books have been, and still are, relevant and useful to the church today. But there’s a reason his theological writings aren’t being reprinted. Specifically, his doctrine of justifying faith was deeply and dangerously flawed in ways akin to the Federal Vision.

To understand why Baxter’s view of faith was flawed, it’s important to see what the Reformed Orthodox taught. Reformed theology said that while faith is an act of obedience, faith only justifies as it rests in and receives Christ and his righteousness, which is why they called faith the instrument of justification. William Ames (1576–1633) wrote, “Faith justifies only by apprehending the righteousness by which we are justified.”2 They were answering the question: “If Jesus Christ completely obeyed the law of God, and if Christ’s obedience wholly satisfies God’s justice, then what can be justly required of human beings in justification?” Reformed theology understood that faith as obedience cannot be required in justification. That’s because Christ already obeyed perfectly for our justification. Thus, there is no room for our faith as obedience in point of justification. Herman Bavinck writes:

Faith does not justify by its own essence or act because it itself is righteousness, but by its content, because it is faith in Christ, who is our righteousness. If faith justified on account of itself, the object of that faith (that is, Christ) would totally lose its value. But the faith that justifies is precisely the faith that has Christ as its object and content (emphasis added).3

It is not sufficient to say, “Christ obeyed for the ground of our justification, but we have to obey for the instrument of our justification.” Renaming the obedience of faith the “instrument of justification” does not solve the theological problem, and it misunderstands the nature of faith as an instrument in justification. To require faith as obedience in justification implies that Christ’s obedience is insufficient in justification. Furthermore, a fallen man’s faith is imperfect and sin-tainted, which means such faith is disqualified to justify as obedience, and God would be unjust to accept such faith as obedience in point of justification because it is a non-just faith. Therefore, while faith is obedience, only faith as the appropriating organ, an empty hand or an open mouth, is rightly called the instrument of justification.4

The Apostle John says that the one who passively “looks” on Jesus is the one who “believes” unto eternal life (John 6:40). Faith justifies solely by virtue of its resting and receiving Christ’s righteousness. Scripture says faith justifies as it receives Christ and his righteousness alone for justification (Phil 3:9, Rom 4:5, etc.). In this way, as R.C. Sproul says, “justification by faith alone is really theological shorthand for justification by Christ alone.” Faith as a justifying instrument is the relinquishment of all one’s own obedience in point of justification.

Richard Baxter rejected the carefully considered Reformed doctrine of faith. Instead, he taught that faith justifies in all of its acts. He wrote:

It is not therefore any one single act of faith alone by which we are justified, but it is many physical acts conjunctly which constitute that faith which the gospel makes the condition of life. Those therefore that call any one act or two by the name of justifying faith, and all the rest by the name of works; and say that it is only the act of recumbency [leaning, resting, reclining] on Christ as Priest, or on Christ as dying for us, or only the act of apprehending or accepting his imputed righteousness, by which we are justified, and that our assent, or acceptance of Him as our Teacher and Lord, our desire of Him, our love to Him, our renouncing other Saviors and our own righteousness are the works Paul does exclude from our justification, and that it is Jewish to expect to be justified by these though but as conditions of justification; these persons do mistake Paul, and subvert the doctrine of faith and justification, and their doctrine tends to corrupt the very nature of Christianity itself.5

This quotation demonstrates that Baxter does not operate with the proper distinctions concerning how faith relates to justification. In the end, he collapses faith and works and makes them both necessary, not just for “final salvation,” but for justification as well. Thus, in Baxter’s Aphorisms of Justification, his seventy-eighth thesis reads:

Our full justification and our everlasting salvation have the same conditions on our part. But sincere obedience is without all doubt a condition of our salvation: therefore also of our justification.6

Quite explicitly, he states that a believer’s obedience is a necessary condition for final salvation and “also of our justification.” This is a flat rejection of the Reformed doctrine of justification.

This was found here;https://thelondonlyceum.com/on-justification-doug-wilson.../

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A caution when reading Richard Baxter Dec 9, 2023 11:51:54 GMT -5

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Post by Admin on Dec 9, 2023 11:51:54 GMT -5

The Baptists’s Consistent Denunciation of Baxter
Because of Baxter’s voluminous writings, he had an extraordinary influence upon Christians of various denominations, including Baptists. This prompted a response from theologians and pastors across the Anglophone world. Below is a survey of some of their rhetoric on this point.

Benjamin Keach (1640–1704)
The venerable Baptist minister Benjamin Keach engaged heavily with Baxter, especially on the issue of justification, and wrote:

Justification is a free act of God’s grace, through that redemption which is in Christ, (who, as our head, was acquitted, justified, and discharged, and we in him, when he rose from the dead) and when applied to us, we in our own persons are actually justified, in being made and pronounced righteous, through the righteousness of Christ imputed to us; and all our sins, past, present, and to come, forever pardoned; which is received by faith alone. And that our sanctification, nor faith it self, is any part of our justification before God; it not being either the habit, or act of believing, or any act of evangelical obedience imputed to us, but Christ, and his active and passive obedience only, apprehended by faith: and that faith in no sense tends to make Christ’s merits more satisfactory unto God; but that he was as fully reconciled and satisfied for his elect in Christ by his death before faith as after; otherwise it would render God only reconcilable, (not reconciled) and make faith part of the payment or satisfaction unto God, and so lessen the merits of Christ, as if they were defective or insufficient. Yet we say, it is by faith that we receive the atonement, or by which means (as an instrument) we come to apprehend and receive him, and to have personal interest in him, and to have our free justification evidenced to our own consciences.9

Here we see that Keach denied that justification was by “the habit, or act of believing, or any act of evangelical obedience imputed to us.” Instead “it is by faith that we receive the atonement, or by which means (as an instrument) we come to apprehend and receive him.” It’s faith’s passive (or receptive) aspect that receives Christ’s righteousness for justification, not its active (or obedient) aspect. This is the Reformed doctrine of justification; this is the proper sense of sola fide.

John Gill (1697–1771)
Similarly, the great John Gill denied the Baxterian view and affirmed the historic Reformed doctrine of faith’s relationship to justification when he wrote:

What the eye is in the body, that faith is in the soul. The eye, by virtue of its visive faculty, beholds sensible objects, but does not produce them, and did they not previously exist, could not behold them. We see the sun shining in its brightness, but did it not exist before, it could not be visible to us. The same observation will hold good in ten thousand other instances. Faith is the hand which receives the blessing of justification from the Lord, and righteousness, by which the soul is justified from the God of its salvation.10

Just as the eye receives images (its “visive faculty”) but does not produce them, so faith receives Christ’s righteousness for justification but produces neither the righteousness nor the justification. Here also we see Gill affirming justifying faith as the receiving hand, not the obedient principle. Elsewhere, Gill elaborates at length:

Moreover, faith, as an act of ours, is a duty. For whatsoever we do in a religious way, we do but what is our duty to do. And, if it is a duty, it belongs to the law. For, as all the declarations and promises of grace belong to the gospel, so all duties belong to the law; and if faith belongs to the law, as a duty, it is a work of it, and therefore by it we can’t be justified, “for by the deeds of the law shall no flesh living be justified.11

Thus we read Gill’s affirmation of active, or obedient, faith, which accords with the law of God. This is part of Gill’s refutation of antinomianism. However, he says that faith “as an act of ours” is a work of the law and is therefore not justifying. He continues:

Besides, faith is imperfect. It has many deficiencies. Were it perfect, it is but a part of the law, though one of the weightier parts of it, and God, “whose judgment is according to truth,” will never reckon or account a partial conformity to the law a complete righteousness. Add to this that faith and righteousness are manifestly distinguished — “the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith” — it is “unto all, and upon all them that believe” (Romans 1:17; 3:22). Something else, and not faith, is represented as our justifying righteousness. Faith is not the blood, nor obedience, of Christ, and yet by these we are said to be justified, or made righteous (Romans 5:9, 19). We are, indeed, said to be “justified by faith,” but not by faith as an act of ours, for then we should be justified by works (Romans 5:1); nor by faith as a grace of the Spirit, for this would be to confound justification and sanctification; but we are justified by faith objectively, as it looks to, receives, apprehends, and embraces Christ’s righteousness for justification. And let it be observed, that though we are said to be justified by faith, yet faith is never said to justify us…. Are we said to be justified by faith, or by faith to receive the righteousness of Christ for justification?… In one word, it is God, and not faith, that justifies.12

Gill, and Reformed authors generally, are concerned not “to confound justification and sanctification,” which is what Baxter and Wilson have done when they collapse the distinction between faith’s receptive aspect and faith’s active aspect. Instead, as Gill affirms, “we are justified by faith objectively, as it looks to, receives, apprehends, and embraces Christ’s righteousness for justification.”

Andrew Fuller (1754–1815)
The eminent pastor theologian, Andrew Fuller, who Charles Spurgeon considered “the greatest theologian of the century,” was once accused of adopting “some of the leading peculiarities of Mr. Richard Baxter.”13 He rejected the charge strenuously. To demonstrate his innocence, he took up the “irksome task” of reading all the works of Baxter he could before concluding that Baxter’s writing was “so circuitous, and full of artificial distinctions, and obscure terms, that I could not in many cases come at his meaning, nor could I have read them through without making myself ill.”14 He concluded:

I find but little satisfaction in Mr. Baxter’s disputations on justification. He says a great deal about it, distinguishing it into different stages, pleading for evangelical works as necessary to it, etc. etc…. Yet he disavows all works as being the causes or grounds on account of which we are justified; and professes to plead for them only as “concomitants;” just as we say repentance is necessary for forgiveness, and faith to justification, though these are not considerations moving God to bestow those blessings. In short, I find it much easier to express my own judgment on justification, than to say wherein I agree or differ with Mr. Baxter. I consider justification to be God’s graciously pardoning our sins, and accepting us to favour, exempting us from the curse of the law, and entitling us to the promises of the gospel; not on account or in consideration of any holiness in us, ceremonial or moral, before, in, or after believing, but purely in reward of the vicarious obedience and death of Christ, which, on our believing in him, is imputed to us, or reckoned as if it were ours. Nor do I consider any holiness in us to be necessary as a concomitant to justification, except what is necessarily included in the believing…. Nor could I feel a union of heart with those who are commonly considered in the present day as Baxterians, who hold with the gospel being a new remedial law, and represent sinners as contributing to their own conversion.15

Earlier, Fuller had written a Confession of Faith for his church, wherein he addressed this issue of faith’s relation to justification. He avowed, “The subject-matter of justification, I believe to be nothing of our own moral excellence, but the righteousness of Christ, alone, imputed to us, and received by faith.” A little later in the same document, he writes, “Although I disclaim personal holiness, as having any share in our justification, I consider it absolutely necessary to salvation; for without it ‘no man shall see the Lord.’” Here, Fuller makes the important distinction between faith’s receptive act for justification and faith’s obedient act for salvation. “Obedient faith” is a fruit or effect of justification, not its cause; and salvation is the reward of obedient faith.

Elsewhere, Fuller wrote:

Though believing in Christ is compliance with a duty, yet it is not as a duty, or by way of reward for a virtuous act, that we are said to be justified by it. It is true that God does reward the services of his people, as the Scriptures abundantly teach, but this follows upon justification. We must stand accepted in the Beloved, before our services can be acceptable or rewardable. Moreover, if we were justified by faith as a duty, justification by faith could not be, as it is, opposed to justification by works. “To him that worketh is the reward reckoned, not of grace, but of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.” (Romans 4:4–5)16

Here again, we find Fuller rejecting faith “as a duty” or as “a virtuous act” as necessary for justification. If this were admitted, such faith would become a condition for justification, which necessitates the idea of merit, and thus would be a form of “justification by works.”

While more examples could be included from theologians of other denominations,17 this sampling of some of the major writing theologians in the Baptist tradition demonstrates a decisive rejection of Baxterianism, especially with respect to justifying faith. It also shows how some of the most influential Baptists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries intentionally situated themselves in the broader Reformed stream of thought on this doctrine.

A caution when reading Richard Baxter

Post by Admin on Dec 9, 2023 11:48:42 GMT -5

Post by Admin on Dec 9, 2023 11:51:54 GMT -5

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