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24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Covenantal Account of Justification and Union, October 1, 2007
This review is from: Covenant and Salvation: Union with Christ (Paperback)
Michael Horton, professor of apologetics and theology at Westminster Seminary California, is truly a "fresh voice" in theology today, as David Kelsey has said. Steeped in the wake of the Reformation and Reformed confessional theology, Horton's third volume (with the fourth on its way) is similar to the first two (" Covenant and Eschatology: The Divine Drama" and " Lord And Servant: A Covenant Christology"). Volume three, "Covenant and Salvation," is an exploration of soteriology broadly speaking and the ordo salutis narrowly speaking.
Horton argues well for "treating justification as the legal ground of mystical union" (p. 203). In the first part of the book, Horton deals with covenant theology, setting forth the historical Reformed understanding of the covenant of works and the covenant of grace. Horton also interacts exensively with the current controversies on justification, highlighting the biblical foundation of the confessional Reformed position. The New Perspective(s) on Paul is evaluated in amazing depth; Horton knows the ins and outs of the NPP and makes some compelling arguments against it. Several times, Horton even points out some stark inconsistencies within the movement.
The second part of the book is about the other "parts" of the ordo salutis, including adoption, sanctification, and glorification. Of course, union with Christ is also emphasized and related to justification and the rest of the ordo. This second part of the book was most exciting, as Horton works to move Reformed theology away from the medieval notion of infused habits (habitus), arguing for a covenantal ontology rather than a (neo)platonic scale of being. The Eastern Orthodox distinction of essence and energies is also utilized well, highlighting what Reformed theologians call the creator/creature distinction.
Overall, this book was hard to set down. Horton has done his research; this is not just another reformed systematics. He weaves in the themes of drama, covenant, law/gospel, speech-act, imputation, analogy, effectual calling, and so forth throughout the book.
The "goal" of volume three in Horton's words, is "to define justification and participation in the light of the interpretive framework of this four-volume project, and to relate these themes specifically to the loci commonly treated under the ordo salutis" (p. 309). In this reader's opinion, his goal has been accomplished.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent contribution, December 1, 2008
This review is from: Covenant and Salvation: Union with Christ (Paperback)
This book is separated into two parts. In Part One, Horton interacts with the New Perspective(s) on Paul, notably N. T. Wright, from within classical covenantal theology as it has been "too lightly dismissed without serious firsthand evaluation" (12). Horton then goes on to describe the two types of covenants in Scripture. He argues that they are characterized as the suzerainty treaty and royal grant commonly found in Ancient Near East societies as among the Hittites. He distinguishes these by arguing that the two covenants' forms as treaty and grant are underwritten accordingly by two different principles. Horton spends some time showing how the two are related to each other, which is one of the more substantial parts of the book. His subsection, "Relating Sinai and Zion", discusses the importance of understanding how the Mosaic covenant relates to the Abrahamic covenant. The issues at hand, he says, is "whether the principle of inheritance in question with any specific covenant is law (based on the personal performance of the servant), as in a suzerainty treaty, or promise, as in a royal grant" (20). "If one confuses the principle by which the national promises of land, temple, and kingdom are upheld (the people's obedience) with the principle by which the heavenly reality to which these types pointed was inherited (sheer promise, by virtue of the obedience of the covenant head), then salvation (whether corporate or individual) comes through 'the works of the law' (Sinai) rather than through 'the faith of Abraham.' In Christian preaching, this confusion often occurs when passages emphasizing the conditions of temporal blessing in the land are expounded, either literally or allegorically, as directly applicable to the question of personal salvation and right standing before God." (20-21). Horton's interaction with Jon Levenson is very insightful in to the thinking of practicing Judaism. Horton notes that Levenson recognizes the new covenant as an unconditional promise but he still concludes that it is simply a renewal of the Sinaitic covenant.
Horton shows how Judaism and Catholicism confuse the covenants of law and promise and thereby unwittingly lend their support for a covenantal nomism in light of exegetical ground that otherwise should steer them from it. (29) In chapter 3, "Covenantal Nomisim in Palestinian Judaism: Getting In and Staying In," he engages NPP proponents head on, including Wright and E. P. Sanders. In the end, he shows that the NPP thesis is flawed because of its conflation of distinct covenant types "into a single 'patter of religion' of gracious law . . . ." (39). Horton clearly shows that medieval Catholicism is paralleled today by the NPP.
Horton argues in chapter 4 that "Paul's polemics against 'works of the law' is more sweeping than the NPP suggests." Through the rest of Part One, chapters 5 and 6, Horton engages James D. G. Dunn to argue that the NPP offers too many false choices--between soteriology and ecclesiology. He dismantles the NPP's forced dichotomies and offers a fuller account of covenant that embraces the binaries presented by Dunn et al.
After establishing that justification is forensic and that it is the basis for all of the ordo salutis in Part One, Horton begins chapter 7, " Mystical Union in Reformed Soteriology," in Part Two with a discussion the essence of which is that the Christian's union with Christ is grounded in the covenant of redemption and executed in history by the covenant of grace. Relying on John Calvin for exploring and explaining the Christian's union with Christ, he labors the point that Reformed orthodoxy does not believe that union entails participation in the divine essence or that Christians receive any divine substance but instead the Spirit imparts to us Christ's life and all the blessings that he has received from the Father. (140) On page 142, Horton mentions Calvin's criticism of the medieval scholastic notion of preparation for grace, the notion of preparatory fear. I wonder if this is similar to the Puritans' notion of awakening. In any case, it is from this perspective that Horton engages Radical Orthodoxy's Neo-Platonism. "Calvin recognizes here that justification need not be confused with sanctification by means of an all-encompassing ontology of union in order to recognize the inseparability of both legal (forensic) and organic (effective) aspects of that union" (143). "Apart from sin, ontological distance required divine condescension by way of the covenant of creation, but now God has condescended still further, mediating ethical distance in a covenant of grace" (154). Horton sets this approach up against a Neo-Platonic ontology that turns salvation into "epistemology and ethics--realization and empowerment--with a corollary suspicion of the notion of divine rescue and intervention as a violent intrusion upon autonomy." Sin is a condition as well as specific acts of covenant breaking, which introduces a kind of otherness not founded in creational integrity. This otherness is relationally negative, a repudiation, "ethical enmity, a crisis of interpersonal communion" that undoes the participation man once had and that now is restored by the forensic word and work of the Trinity. (158-59) In his analysis of RO's account of participation, he contrasts the difference from a Reformed view simply at the Eucharist: "The suggestion seems to be that our eucharistic participation in Christ serves as an instance of a more general metaphysical truth--namely, the ontological participation of being in God, rather than as an event determined by its covenantal context and specific to the covenantal actions of proclaiming and sealing the gospel." Horton illustrates that one of the fundamental differences between RO and covenantal (read: Reformed) theology by arguing that RO theologians, John Milbank foremost among them, assume that creation is in an emanationistic relationship to the Creator, which stands in sharp contrast to creation ex nihilo. (163-64) These two schools of thought offer two different accounts of analogy of being. In the RO view, "the generic `en-gracing' of creation that is synonymous with ontological participation (metathexis) differs from salvific reconciliation only in degree. Grace is viewed as a substance rather than as God's favor shown to those who are at fault." Horton's approach to the question of the relationship between the world and Creator is especially laid out in volume two of this project, but here he picks up where he left off by giving a Reformed ontology of participation for creation and redemption that decidedly eschews Platonism for covenant as the place where believers meet a stranger, to use Horton's phrase. He argues that "the proper antithesis is therefore not between participation and covenant, but between different accounts of both. Just as there are different covenants, there are different kinds of participation (God's providential care of creation and God's redemptive acts). Obviously, the concept of covenant is inherently participatory, but covenantal participation (koinonia) is different from metathexis" (165). Horton locates RO's desire to "take Plato through the (quite un-Platonic) hermeneutical turn, emphasizing the linguisticality of being" principally in an "eros for a depth in being that can only be suspended in what exceeds it rather than a depth that belongs to it essentially by virtue of the fact that it is the product of the Trinity's effective Word" (165).
Horton explores the "potential for a covenantal ontology in relation to the ordo salutis" in a constructive manner in chapter 9. In introducing his goal in this chapter, he immediately recognizes two challenges. First is the relation between metaphysics and theology, methodologically speaking. Second, he says that his account will fall short of philosophical satisfaction. He's right on both counts, but deftly and boldly offers a solid Reformed account of koinonia as covenantal participation. Participation revolves around koinonia. The Spirit is who guarantees and effects our participation and sharing in Christ both now and in the "realities of the age to come." "There is a close connection in the New Testament between faith, baptism, the Spirit, and union with Christ." "However elevated their realistic language concerning the mystical union, the Reformers and Protestant orthodoxy still regarded imputation as the judicial basis of the entire ordo salutis, refusing to collapse imputation into an essential union. It is true that one can find references in Luther and Calvin to justification through union with Christ; this was only to affirm that all of our righteousness before God is in Christ and not in us" (198).
Chapter 10 is certainly one of the most constructive, if not the most, of the entire book. I contend, against another reviewer, that Michael Horton is carrying forward the theological work of the giants of the past in the Reformation tradition. "While the Reformers' doctrine of justification ran against the grain of medieval ontology, placing the whole ordo salutis on an entirely different ontological map redrawn by forensic justification remains an unfinished task even beyond the superb refinements of the Reformation and post-Reformation era" (198). Horton offers a terrific critique of medieval ontology with respect to infused habits and their place within Reformed systems. One of the characteristics of Horton's book is that he writes this portion from here on in an understated tone yet it is apparent that he spent a great deal of time reading and thinking deeply.
Horton, unwittingly it seems, is taking to task Schweitzer's declaration that "those who subsequently made Paul's doctrine of justification by faith the center of Christian belief, have had the tragic experience of finding that they were dealing with a conception of redemption, from...
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9 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thoughtful, erudite, and masterful., January 26, 2008
This review is from: Covenant and Salvation: Union with Christ (Paperback)
This is one of the most aware and hopeful accounts of Reformation Theology that the reader will ever see. It is incredibly relevant to the current world of theology. Horton begins with the presupposition not only that "the Reformation tradition" contains a huge amount of "unexploited potential" for engaging this current world, but that this potential is found within the framework of Covenant Theology.
Horton traces the two covenants, "the covenant of Law," given to (and broken by) both Adam and Israel, and the "covenant of Promise," given to Noah, Abraham, David, and ultimately fulfilled in Christ. He distinguishes these two covenants, based on research done not only by Reformed biblical scholarship, but also "from Jewish and Roman Catholic traditions" (including the work of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) that has found two ancient kinds of covenants: a "suzerainty" treat, often given from a stronger king to a weaker king in the form, "do this and you will live," and a covenant of Promise, given in the form of "a royal grant," which took the form of "an outright gift of a king to a subject."
"The covenant at Sinai certainly bears the marks of a suzerainty treaty. In fact, the exact form is followed in Exodus 19 and 20 as well as in Deuteronomy 5: Yahweh identifies himself as the suzerain (preamble), with a brief historical prologue citing his deliverance of the people from Egypt, followed by the Ten Commandments (stipulations), with clear warnings (sanctions) about violating the treaty to which they have sworn their allegiance." (pg 13.)
The covenant with Noah, Abraham and David is given in "a completely different form," a "one-sided promise on God's part with no conditions attached (see Genesis 9). "The point is this: the deepest distinction in Scripture is not between the Old and New Testaments, but between the covenants of law and the covenants of promise that run through both" (pg 17).
From this point, Horton engages all of the many theologies that are being presented today, beginning with the "New Perspective on Paul," (the "covenant nomism" of which takes into account the covenant of Law, but not the covenant of Promise,) but along the way, he engages not only Sanders, Dunn and Wright, but also Rahner and Von Balthasar, Barth and Hunsigner, Milbank and Ward, Tillich, Moltmann, and a host of others. Along the way, Horton brings home with power and dignity the genius of the Reformers, and he shows how the genius of the Reformers is not only relevant in today's thought climate, but ideal.
This is a thoughtful, erudite, and masterful work.
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