Justification and Union with Christ, Part 12

A. A. Hodge on the Ordo Salutis, Part 2

We have seen that Hodge argues for the causal priority of the forensic to the transformative, and that the imputation of Christ���s righteousness to the elect is the antecedent cause of regeneration. He offers three arguments in support:

First, justification ���by faith��� refers to subjective justification

The first argument is not so much a positive argument for his thesis, as it is a response to the exegetical argument appealing to the language that we are ���justified by faith.��� In this argument, Hodge essentially distinguishes between active/objective justification (aka imputation) and passive/subjective justification. Imputation is the cause of regeneration which is the cause of faith. Passive or subjective justification (not imputation) is what Paul has in view when he says we are justified by faith.

The biblical phrase, ���justified by faith,��� applies strictly, of course, to our relations to God as these are realized in the sphere of human consciousness. Faith is at once the act whereby we apprehend Christ, and the effect of our being antecedently apprehended of him. The act of faith is the one thing we do, but it is preceded in the order of causation by the impetration of salvation by Christ, and by the first stages of the work of the Holy Spirit in applying it. Faith is the organ whereby we recognize Christ as meriting our salvation, and the Father as reconciled for Christ���s sake; but, of course, the salvation was merited and the Father was reconciled, and both were long since engaged with the Holy Spirit in carrying on the work of the personal application of grace, or we could not recognize them as so doing. (p. 314)

Second, the analogy of the imputation of Adam���s sin

If the previous argument was more of a rebuttal, this is a positive argument for the thesis at hand. In my view, it is the decisive argument. The argument is, if we believe that Romans 5:12-21 teaches the immediate imputation of Adam���s sin, then by parity of reasoning we must also believe it teaches the immediate imputation of Christ���s righteousness. A transformative act (either of making us inherently corrupt and sinful, or of making us inherently righteous) does not intervene in either the imputation of Adam���s sin to all mankind or the imputation of Christ���s righteousness to the elect. Indeed, in both cases, the change of nature is the effect or result of the change of legal status.

The analogy of the imputation of Adam���s sin to us and of our sins to Christ must be borne in mind when reflecting on the conditions of the imputation of the righteousness of Christ to us. However much various schools of theologians may differ as to the grounds and nature of our union with Adam ��� the whole Church has always maintained that the depravity of moral nature innate in his posterity is the penal consequence of his first sin ���. The imputation of the guilt (just liability to punishment) of Adam���s apostatizing act to his whole race in common leads judicially to the spiritual desertion of each newborn soul in particular, and spiritual desertion involves inherent depravity as a necessary and universal consequence ���. The imputation of Christ���s righteous to us is the necessary precondition of the restoration to us of the influences of the Holy Ghost, and that restoration leads by necessary consequence to our regeneration and sanctification ���. If the imputation of guilt is the causal antecedent of inherent depravity, in like manner the imputation of righteousness must be the causal antecedent of regeneration and faith. (pp. 314-315 emphasis added)

Third, the case of those regenerated in infancy

As I argued in Part 9, another argument that enables us to see that imputation is the ultimate cause of faith rather than faith being a condition of imputation, is the case of those who are regenerated in infancy���whether elect infants dying in infancy, or elect covenant children who grow up to adult Christian faith without remembering a day when they did not believe.

This is obviously true in the case of a person regenerated in infancy, as must be true of all who dies in infancy, and of many others whose early regeneration is attested by their subsequent life. In their case the unquestionable order was as follows: The guilt of Adam was imputed at birth, and they at once lost original righteousness and became spiritually dead. Then the righteousness of Christ was imputed, and they were regenerated and in due course sanctified by the Holy Ghost. In the justification, therefore, of that majority of the elect which dies in infancy personal faith does not mediate. It cannot, therefore, ever mediate in the justification of any of the elect as an element absolutely necessary to the thing itself. In the case of the adult, faith is the first and invariable exercise of the regenerate and justified soul, whereby the righteousness of Christ imputed and the justification it effects are consciously received and appropriated, and the organ through which the Holy Spirit subsequently acts upon the soul, now spiritually alive, in, promoting its progressive sanctification. (pp. 315-316 emphasis added)

Here Hodge uses an analogy to make the point clear. He uses the analogy of the minor heir, whose possession of the inheritance goes through two phases:  phase one, from birth, he has a legal right to the inheritance; phase two, upon reaching maturity, he comes into actual possession of the inheritance with all the powers of ownership.

As long as [the new-born elect child] is under age the will secures the inchoate rights of the heir de jure. It provides for his education and maintenance at the expense of the estate in preparation for his inheritance. It determines the previous installments of his patrimony to be given him by his trustee. It predetermines the precise time and conditions of his being inducted into absolute possession. His title rests from first to last upon his father���s will. He possesses certain rights and enjoys certain benefits from the first. But he has absolute rights and powers of ownership only when he reaches the period and meets the conditions prescribed for that purpose by the will. The force of this analogy is not weakened, but rather augmented by the fact that the peculiarity in the case of the elect heir of Christ���s redemption is that all the conditions of full possession are themselves free gifts, equally with the possession secure by the will, and parts of the inheritance itself. Hence the satisfaction and merit of Christ are imputed to the elect man from his birth, so far as they form the basis of the gracious dealing provided for him in preparation for his full possession. When that time has come, they are imputed to him unconditionally to that end, the consequence being that the Spirit, who had previously striven with him, and finally convinced him of sin, now renews his will, and works in him to act faith, whereby he appropriates the offered righteousness of Christ, and actually and consciously is received into the number, and is openly recognized and treated as one entitled to all the privileges, of the children of God. To this consummating and self-prevailing act of God theologians have assigned the title ���Justification��� in its specific sense. It is a pronounced judgment of God, raising the subject into the realization of a new relation, yet one long purposed and prepared for. From the first, God had regarded and treated him as an heir of Christ���s righteousness. Now he regards and treats him as in the actual possession, and if an adult, he by the gift of faith brings him into conscious possession. The imputation to him as an heir and the imputation to him as in actual possession do not differ so much on God���s side as it differs in its effects and consequences in the actual relations and experiences of the subject. (pp. 317-318 emphasis added)

To summarize: Hodge argues that imputation is the cause of regeneration, regeneration is the cause of faith, and by that faith we come to the subjective appropriation of Christ���s righteousness already given in imputation. The main basis for this is Federal Theology, with all that involves: the pactum salutis, Paul���s two-Adams construct in which God deals with mankind through two federal heads, and the doctrine of immediate imputation. The case of those regenerated in infancy further solidifies the point that imputation cannot be conditioned upon conscious faith and that therefore imputation is the cause of regeneration and faith.