And then......

On the issue of God’s relation to time there are two main views. One is that God is timelessly eternal, existing in a state in which there is for him no before and after, who creates and sustains the universe by a timeless act of will. In what follows I shall refer to this as the eternalist view. On this view creation is usually taken to be cum tempore, as with Augustine, but there is no necessity to this.

The other is that God is purely sempiternal, existing for all times, backwardly and forwardly everlasting, who creates the universe at some instant of this temporal series and (on some accounts) in creating and sustaining an orderly universe brings about the metrication of time, which is (prior to the creation) otherwise temporally amorphous. I shall refer to this as the sempiternalist view.

In his numerous writings on God and time William Lane Craig endeavours to appropriate elements of each these views, combining them together. For example in various papers, such as 'The Tensed vs. Tenseless Theory of Time: A Watershed for the Conception of Divine Eternity' ; his books, Time and Eternity, and God, Time and Eternity , and Creatio ex Nihilo (with Paul Copan) ; and his contribution to Four Views on God and Time. In all these places Craig has argued that God is timeless sans creation and in time avec creation. God is timeless but not necessarily timeless. God was timeless but is so no longer. As far as I can see Craig's views are expressed in a consistent way throughout these various sources, though with varying emphases, and I shall assume that his view is presented consistently, and so I shall refer to these sources indifferently.

So he states

Suppose…. that God did not exist temporally prior to creation. In that case he exists timelessly sans creation. But once time begins at the moment of creation, God either becomes temporal in virtue of his real causal relation to time and the world or else he exists as timelessly with creation as he does sans creation. But this second alternative seems quite impossible. At the first moment of time, God stands in a new relation in which he did not stand before (since there was no before)…..Even if the beginning of the temporal world is the result of a timeless volition of God, the fact that the world is not sempiternal but began to exist out of nothing demonstrates that God acquires a new relation at the moment of creation. At the moment of creation, God comes into the relation of sustaining the universe or at the very least that of coexisting with the universe, a relation which he did not before have. As God successively sustains each subsequent moment or event in being a multiplicity of new relations result. So that even if God is timeless sans creation, his free decision to create a temporal world constitutes also a free decision on his part to enter into time and to experience the reality of tense and temporal becoming.

Elsewhere he writes of ‘two phases of God’s life, one timeless and one temporal’. So let’s call this the two phases view.

At least two philosophical positions motivate the central claim of the ‘two phases’, a view which Craig rather disarmingly calls 'curious', 'extremely bizarre', 'startling and not a little odd’. The first position is his adherence to the Kalam cosmological argument, with its commitment to an actual infinite universe, which requires that the first moment of time is also the first moment of the creation. This is inconsistent with the view of God’s life as sempiternal in the sense of being backwardly and forwardly everlasting, with the creation occurring in time. By itself, this adherence to the Kalam would be consistent with pure eternality, if pure eternality is consistent with the universe's first moment being the first moment of time, the Augustinian cum tempore, as it appears to be. So why does Craig not opt for the eternalist view? His answer identifies the second philosophical source that motivates the two-phases view: it is that pure eternality commits one to the B-series account of the temporal order of the creation which he thinks is philosophically weaker than the A-series account, and which he rejects. He may also have theological reasons for preferring the A-series account, but I shall not be considering what these views might be in this paper.

So Craig's argument is not simply an ingenious approach to the vexed question of God's relation to time, but an essential requirement of other important features of philosophical things that Craig believes.

In what follows I shall offer a set of critical reflections on Craig’s view. I approach his view in a spirit of curiosity rather than of hostility. Craig wants to have his cake and eat it too, and who can blame him for that? I shall conclude, nevertheless, that there are serious difficulties with what he claims about which he has said little or nothing. Finally, I try to show that the pure eternalist view, the view that God is necessarily timeless, the traditional timelessness view, the view which Craig significantly modifies, can be stated in a way that meets at least some of Craig’s problems with it.

Reactions to Craig

(a) The peremptory reaction

Craig’s view is sometimes peremptorily rejected as being straightforwardly incoherent. So Brian Leftow says (without referring explicitly to Craig, though perhaps with Craig in mind), that God cannot first be timeless, and then later be temporal. ‘For then God's timeless phase is earlier than His temporal phase, and whatever is earlier than something else is in time'. In an explicit reference to Craig, Daniel Hill similarly claims that 'The very word 'become' is a temporal word, and so we cannot truthfully say that an atemporal being can become anything.' And Paul Helm has accused Craig of holding the view that God is timeless before he created the universe and temporal afterwards.

Perhaps Craig would complain that such a reaction doesn't pay sufficient regard to his idea that the two phases of God's life, the timeless and the temporal, are not related to each other as earlier to later. Such a rejection of the two-phase view is based upon the belief that they are earlier and later phases of the divine life, and perhaps that it is Craig’s view that they must be earlier and later phases in the divine life. But Craig insists

Detractors of this position (viz. that God is simply timeless without creation and temporal subsequent to creation) simply assume that if God’s life lacks earlier and later parts, then it has no phases. But why could there not be two phases of God’s life, one timeless and one temporal, which are not related to each other as earlier and later? Critics have perhaps too quickly assumed that if any phase of God’s life is timeless, then the whole must be timeless.

I now have some sympathy with such a complaint about the critics’ accuracy, though sometimes it seems that Craig’s way of characterizing his position lends plausibility to the peremptory rejection, as when he writes ‘God acquires a new relation at the moment of creation’ and ‘Once time begins at the moment of creation…. God becomes temporal in virtue of his real causal relation to time’. Nevertheless I wonder whether the peremptory critics do sufficient justice to Craig's statement of his own view on the question of the relationship between the two phases of God's life. Craig might grant to the peremptory view that God’s being in time cannot be after his being timeless, but nevertheless his being in time can be subsequent to his being timeless. Perhaps the temporality of God is a logically subsequent phase, not temporally after. For Craig might say that the creation of the universe is (or logically entails) the abdication of divine timelessness.

On such a construction, there is a phase of God's life that is his timelessness, in this sense only, that had there been no creation then God would have been timeless. Had there been no creation God is timeless would have been almost the complete answer to the question of how God’s existence relates to issues of time. The reality would have been that God is timeless. Almost complete but not quite, for the complete answer, or a more complete answer, is: God is contingently timeless. Perhaps it would be less misleading than using the word 'phase' to say that Craig's view amounts to there being two modes of God's existence, a temporal mode which logically follows the will to create the universe, which ipso facto dissolves or terminates the timeless mode which logically preceded it.

This sort of thing, the loss of a modal property, is surely familiar enough to us. The change that Craig supposes occurs in the eternally timeless life of God upon creation is not a temporal change, but more like a change of status, as when a monarch, on abdicating his position, ipso facto loses the prerogatives of the monarch, such as immunity from prosecution. Or, employing the language of the theologians, we might say that what Craig proposes is a kind of divine kenosis, not as this applies particularly to the second person of the Trinity, but to the entire godhead. In virtue of creating, the timeless God necessarily foregoes his timelessness just as on some versions of kenoticism, in becoming incarnate the eternal Son loses his omniscience, perhaps even his impeccability. Yet the comparison with kenoticism is not perhaps perfectly apt. For on standard kenoticism, the self-abnegation is voluntary. On Craig’s view, construed kenotically, the creation is voluntary, the dissolution or abdication of timelessness follows as a logical consequence. In creating, God necessarily loses his timeless immutability.

I am not altogether certain whether this discussion and the analogies I have suggested convey Craig’s sense better than that which either Leftow or Hill (or an earlier phase of my own existence) held to be his position. Craig himself comes near to using the language of kenoticism, as when he says that the second phase is the result of ‘a free decision on his [God’s] part to enter into time and to experience the reality of tense and temporal becoming’. So I think that it does go some way to giving Craig’s sense, and I shall employ this understanding in what follows. Of course on such an understanding if God had of necessity to create some temporal universe or other then he could not have been timeless, though one might wonder whether sustaining such a world would entail change. In these circumstances there could be no fulfilable truth–conditions for the proposition God is timeless.

What could this be, a ‘phase’ that is not earlier than the first moment of time, and with a temporal universe not later than that phase? Craig says little or nothing more than that the two phases are not related to each other as earlier and later (nor, presumably, as simultaneous, though he does not say this). This explanatory silence is a rare act of philosophical self-denial on the part of a philosopher who is not usually stumped for offering positive reasons in support of any philosophical position that he holds. God’s eternal phase is a state from which changes in time stem, but he brings these changes about not by being before, nor simultaneous with, the changes, nor do the changes occur temporally after what brings them about. One might think, perhaps, that a phase that is not earlier than another phase is ‘above’ it in some hierarchical sense. But if so then, we might ask, how could that more exalted phase be touched by time, how could it be sufficiently unstable to have to abdicate its superior hierarchical position by something that occurs in time, the occurrence of which is in no way temporally related to it? In any case, how does what occurs in time succeed in destabilizing the eternal in a way that produces the effect temporally after the cause? If the timelessly eternal phase is not earlier than the temporal phase, in what positive relation is the first phase to the second? I think that it is fair to say that Craig has difficulty in answering that question.

But let us try to answer it. If, in so doing, we take a closer look at Craig’s claim, then with respect to Craig’s two-phase proposal there appear to be three possibilities:

First, that it boils down to the view that God is eternally timeless. He eternally wills the creation, as Craig puts it, and is nothing other than eternally timeless. One might suggest, from things that Craig says, that if it is possible for God voluntarily and eternally to will some event, like the first created something or other, which Craig claims, then it is surely possible for him eternally and voluntarily to will a series of such things. On such a view there would be no abdication of eternality. This would be eternality of the Augustinian-Boethian variety. God’s will is an eternal cause, or causes, the efficacy of which does not require an intrinsic change in God. But Craig rules out such a view for various reasons, chiefly, as I’ve said, on account of his adherence to the A-series view of the temporal order.

Anyhow, I think we can rule out God’s being timelessly eternal avec creation, given Craig’s clear statements on the matter. He says that this view is ‘quite impossible’. This leaves two other possibilities.

A second possibility is that given that there is a creation, and therefore God having created, there is not a true pre-abdication phase in the life of God. And, I suggest, nor ever was there. It is possible for us to imagine such a phase, but there truly isn’t one or wasn’t one. I can imagine Mr Blobby, but it does not follow that there could be a Mr Blobby. However, it may be said, not only can one imagine a pre-abdication phase of the life of God, it is possible to conceive of such a phase, in rather the same way that one can conceive of the edge of the desk. But the edge of the desk is not a part of the desk, a spatial phase, like its lid or its inkwell, it is simply where the desk ends. So it is possible for us as creatures to conceive of a pre-creation phase of God’s life. But this phase does not exist, it is simply the limit of his temporal phase, in the way in which two o’clock is the later limit of the hour between one o’clock and two o’clock, not a non-temporal phase of that hour. So if there is no true pre-abdication phase then there’s no abdication; there could never have been. That is, if one presses the idea that there are two phases, not related as earlier and later, this now – by which I mean the ‘now’ during the ‘later’ phase of the divine life - entails that the ‘reality’ of the first phase is purely conceptual. And a purely conceptual phase is not a real phase at all, any more than two o’clock is a very short temporal phase.

The third possibility is provided for us by supposing that there is no creation. That is, God eternally and voluntarily refrains from creatio ex nihilo. In this case ex hypothesi there are not two phases, only one. So again, as with the second possibility, there is no true abdication. But in this situation the one atemporal phase, the ‘first’ phase of Craig’s way of thinking, is not merely conceptual, a creature of thought, but real. God is really timelessly eternal. So he’s really timelessly eternal if there is no creation, but not really timelessly eternal if there is a creation.

There is a kind of oddity to this, if these reasonings are sound. On Craig’s view if God creates then his eternal, timeless phase is only ideal, conceptual, based upon a mere distinction of the reason. He is no longer timeless because he never was timeless. However, if he refrains from creating then his eternity is not merely ideal, it is real. Paradoxically, it is not so much creating that has a real impact upon the being of God as refraining from creating. Refraining from creating would ensure that God is timelessly eternal. Our first and third possibilities preserve pure eternalism. On their accounts of the matter there is no true temporal phase, either because, in the case of the first, there is creation but no second phase and a fortiori no temporal phase, or because (as with the third possibility) the temporal phase is an unactualised possibility. Another way of putting this would be: on the third possibility God’s temporality is purely counterfactual. For if he had not created then he would have been timelessly eternal.

In correspondence with Craig he has suggested that there is another possibility which better captures what he wants to say. He provides the following illustration of God’s really being in a state of timelessness which ceases to obtain at the moment of creation. It’s like a world that consisted of nothing but mathematical objects. Somehow, one of these underwent a change, and time would automatically spring into being and a temporal state would obtain, but it would not occur chronologically after the tenseless state, but it may nevertheless have explanatory priority

The trouble I find with this suggestion is that it is perfectly possible to construct a narrative of an extraordinary kind, one in which timelessly eternal objects become temporal. But the fact it is possible to tell such a story does not mean that it represents a logical possibility, nor even the presumption of one, any more than the story of the Owl and the Pussycat does. Besides the narrative there has to be some reason given to think that this is how it could be. The state of divine timelessness can only be explanatorily prior to the state of divine temporality if there is such a state, and telling a story which says that it is is simply a petitio.

Reasons against the two-phases view - memory and God's unity

If it is as Craig suggests, that God's eternity dissolves or terminates as a logical consequence of the coming into being of a temporal order, what else happens to God when this happens? The answer is: Quite a lot, actually.

Although Craig tells us that in creating God becomes temporal he does not say whether or not all that is God becomes temporal. It follows from his account that timelessness is a contingent feature of God, because in creating God loses it. Losing it looks like it entails a certain kind of change in his knowledge and in his willing. He wills what is other than himself, and his knowledge becomes counterfactually charged and tensed. But perhaps there are other essential features of God that retain their atemporality, that are in some way immune from the abdication of timelessness with respect to knowing and willing.

Suppose we think of timelessness not as an attribute of God, but as a mode of possessing attributes. And suppose we think that God possesses a large number of properties expressible as one-place predicates. Such properties might be divisible into two sorts: those he has necessarily timelessly, and those he has which have a temporal phase avec creation. There are those that survive creation unscathed, and those that do not.

So perhaps what happens to God upon creation is something like this: in creating God abdicates his timeless knowledge and will, but (perhaps) his timeless goodness, or his timeless truthfulness are unruffled by the onset of time. Perhaps we could say that God is immutably good or truthful because these properties are had timelessly. It is not possible for him to abdicate these. However, his knowledge and his will change with his creating. And we might defend this division by noting that creatio ex nihilo is a pretty remarkable business. Upon creation there is something, however inferior, that is other than God. Little wonder if this unparalleled act has deep consequences for God.

So – we are supposing - God’s timelessness continues avec creation, albeit in a mutated, not to say mutilated form, in the form of a set of properties he possesses timelessly, and a set of properties that he possesses in a temporal mode. Or rather, (as Craig has suggested to me) God has essential properties, such as being necessary, being self-existence, being morally perfect etc. whether he is timeless or temporal. But maybe we just don’t know. Craig supposes that in becoming temporal God becomes a temporal being. But maybe not. It’s hardly a matter of stipulation. Perhaps in becoming temporal only some of God’s essential properties become temporal. Craig does not canvass such a possibility, but it is I think consistent with his overall outlook. But of course the character of God would then be much more complex, and it may be that attempting to work out the details of such complexity takes us in the direction of incoherence.

But such a categorizing of divine powers may be too simplistic. For those in the timelessness column will be affected by those in the temporalist column. God’s truthfulness entails his being truthful, and his being truthful in a situation in which his knowledge is temporal would seem to require the adaptation of his truthfulness to temporality, its infection by temporality. And similarly with any power which involves intentional beliefs or propositional attitudes. Perhaps we could sort out this complexity carefully, but it looks as if the introduction of such complexity will create more problems, rather than provide us with help in coming to terms with the existing ones. In any event, as Craig says in becoming temporal God’s knowledge will switch from knowing truths tenselessly to knowing tensed truths: God in time literally foreknows whereas a timeless God does not.

Further, if the first act is a timelessly eternal act, as we have been supposing, then in that act God does not know what will happen, or what is presently, in a temporal sense, happening, only what happens in a sense that Craig may prefer to leave unspecified. In coming into time God necessarily acquires a memory, but he has no memory, nor any expectations, in his timelessly eternal phase. Having created, what would God know by memory? Presumably every detail of the unfolding temporal creation that he has brought into being. Would he also remember what it was like to be timelessly eternal? This seems more problematic. To remember anything, to least in the sense of remember that we are interested in here, what is remembered must necessarily be in the past. Was God's timeless eternity over when the temporal world first came into being? Did it have a temporal boundary coincident with that first moment of time? Or did it have a temporal boundary coincident with the sustaining of what was first (in a purely serial sense) created? Was the beginning of time the moment of the end of timeless eternity? If God's pre-creation phase was not before the creation then it is impossible to remember that phase. Is he nevertheless aware of it? If so, is he aware of something that never was the case?

Taking the Craigian story a step or two further, it must follow that God's capacities change on creating the universe and so coming to be in time. In certain respects he becomes incapacitated, in other respects he gains new capacities. Prior to the creation he had the direct awareness of timelessness, whatever that's like. After the first moment of the creation he lost that capacity to be directly aware timelessly or at least it became impossible for him to exercise that capacity even if we suppose that he retains it. And he gains other capacities, of course, or the ability to exercise other capacities, particularly the capacity of experiencing things one after the other, the use of temporal indexicals, and (at least on some accounts of propositions) he gains knowledge of the temporal order (that expressed by indexical propositions), and loses those items of knowledge that are only expressible timelessly.

So, teasing out Craig’s view, the disunity or disruption in God’s mind may become even deeper, because those properties he possesses in timeless mode may not be accessible to him while he is operating in temporal mode, avec creation.

More than that, let us presume that the direct awareness of timeless eternity is a unique kind of awareness. The truth that God is thus timelessly aware of may be representable propositionally, which those in time may share some understanding of, however partial that understanding is. But the sensibility, the phenomenal awareness that is unique to a state of timelessness is something unique to being timeless. Like the sensibility that comes from being weightless, it can be reported in propositions but only had by those who are in that state. In creating God loses whatever sensibility the awareness of timelessness is, or he loses the capacity to exercise it. Does he lose it for ever? Perhaps he does. But perhaps not.

Let's suppose what is logically possible, if creatio ex nihilo is possible, namely the total annihilation of the universe, not simply the change of the world as we know it into something else, but its ceasing to be in any form. Let's call it annihilatio . Given annihilatio there is no time subsequently. At that point presumably God ceases to be temporal. His memories vanish, he resumes timeless eternity. ‘If there were to be annihilatio then God would resume timelessness’. Is this counterfactual true? Or is it that once temporal, never not temporal? Do God’s memories carry over into his resumed state of timelessness? Does timeless eternity start again? Does temporality stop at the point of annihilatio? Is it necessarily the case that if time has a beginning it can have no end? Is contingent timelessness and a two-phase view of the divine life going to deliver a coherent doctrine of God?

I hope you agree that our attempt to provide some positive content to the two-phase view has not enjoyed much success. It seems to yield a sense of God’s eternality that is purely counterfactual. For it does not look as though any essential aspect or power of God can be timeless avec creation. How the metaphysical unity of God survives the transition from one mode to the other is not apparent. And what story we should tell on the supposition of annihilatio is not clear.

The remainder of this paper will appear in January 2008

Analysis 9 - 'Saving the Planet': What's the best bet?

But which side shall we take? Reason can decide nothing here
- Blaise Pascal

(Note. Much of this Analysis and the one to follow has been occasioned by reading Michael Northcott’s A Moral Climate: The Ethics of Global Warming, (London, Oxfam/Darton, Longman and Todd, 2007). Northcott is Professor of Ethics at the University of Edinburgh. It is in my view a pretty dreadful book, but the business of trying to get clear why it is so bad has nevertheless been quite stimulating. Page references in this Analysis and the next, ‘Saving the Planet’ – What’s the stake? are to this book.)


It is current political wisdom in the UK that the planet is getting warmer and that this is being caused by the excess emission of greenhouse gases. It is believed that this warming is so serious that, unless we take appropriate measures, there will be calamitous, irreversible damage to the ecosystem. Some say that it already be too late. So we’ve all had to become used to the ridiculous phrase ‘saving the planet’.

But not everyone agrees with the current orthodoxy. It is unclear how the evidence adduced is to be interpreted. Is it a case of CO2-induced changes, or of long term trends that occur irrespective of such emissions? In other words, is the warming part of a trend that not even Superman could affect? Some deny that there is global warming (GW). Still others say that GW is caused by sunspots, or by volcanoes, or that it is unclear what causes it. Others argue that greenhouse gases ought to be reduced anyhow. Still others believe the GW lobby is fuelled by a statist political agenda, reminding us of what H.L. Mencken said: ‘The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it’.

This confused debate is further confused by the plain fact that Europe is coming to depend on Russia for natural gas supplies. So maybe it’s in our own political interest no longer to rely upon fossils for power but instead to develop a new generation of nuclear power plants, or to make electricity from the wind and the waves. But that’s a separate political question, one to be kept apart from the issue of GW.

Scientists themselves differ sharply on these questions, often, sadly, reflecting the views of their paymasters or grant-awarders. This shows not so much the subjectivity of science as the bias of scientists, and therefore the limitations of science. (Often, minority views on the question of GW and what to do about it are suppressed. This shameful state of affairs is not our present concern, however.)

What follows is not addressed to those for who are already convinced of anthropogenic GW and of the possibility of anthropogenic policies to reduce or reverse it, or who are already convinced of the opposite.

For others, including Christians, who think that the evidence for an against is finely balanced, this is a time of some perplexity. It is a situation of radical uncertainty about an important, though not (of course) an all-important, matter. (Don’t you sometimes gain the impression that Christians who pick up the ‘one world’ emphasis of modern environmentalism find it very difficult to sustain the particularism that is intrinsic to the gospel?) Even though the evidence for and against GW may be finely balanced, or impossible to interpret, some action must be taken. But what action? One possibility is to opt out, to continue as before. But if our choices are ‘forced’, to opt out is in fact to make a choice. For to continue as before is in fact to choose to ignore the issue.


Critique

One way of addressing GW is by intellectual analysis. It is obvious enough that there are plenty of ways of criticising our modern world. The idea that happiness and human fulfilment are found in acquiring bits and pieces; the idea that moral and other kinds of progress can come from technology; the way in which the optimism of political liberalism has so quickly become a panicky pessimism.

On the other hand, the smugness and self-satisfaction of the ‘spirituality’ of the advocates of renewability is also fair game.

All these points are well taken. But criticising others and analysing ‘the problem’ does not prescribe what we should be doing. Such critique is no doubt necessary, and perhaps there is not enough of it, but it is essentially negative.


It is the aim of this Analysis, and the next one, to make some suggestions by way of an answer to the question, what action ought we to take in regard to GW?


Pascal’s strategy

So, if we don’t opt out altogether, what’s the way forward?

It has been suggested (by Stephen Heller) that in this situation of great uncertainty over a great issue we should adopt Blaise Pascal’s strategy. (274) Pascal famously argued that in a situation in which it could not be proved either that God exists or that he does not exist the rational thing to do is to gamble on his existence. If we win the wager we shall escape judgment, and if we lose there won’t be a judgment to escape. Whereas if we gamble on his non-existence we shall suffer punishment if we are wrong and be obliterated if we are correct, and we have a 50-50 chance of being wrong.

‘Either God is, or He is not’ But which side shall we taken? Reason can decide nothing here; there is an infinite chaos between us. A game is on, at the other side of this infinite distance, and the coin will fall heads or tails. Which will you gamble on either; according to reason you cannot defend either choice….Yes, but you must bet. There is no option; you have embarked on the business. Which will you choose? Let us see. Since you must choose let us see which will profit you less. You have two things to lose: truth and good, and two things to stake: your reason and your will, your knowledge and our happiness. And your nature has two things to avoid: error and misery. Since you must necessarily choose, it is no more unreasonable to make one choice than the to her. That is one point cleared up. But your happiness? Let us weight the gain and loss in calling heads, that God exits. Let us estimate the two chances; if you win, you win everything; if you lose, you have nothing. Do not hesitate, then; gamble on His existence’. (Pensees, trans. Krailsheimer (Penguin) 157).

Pascal stressed that the outcome of his Wager is of infinite consequence. It is well frequently to remind ourselves that despite the rhetoric of some environmentalists, we are concerned with possible outcomes which are finite.

(Northcott quite misunderstands the Wager. He thinks that it has to do with action in situations of uncertainty. (274) But this is to miss Pascal’s point, which has to do with choices of momentous consequence about which we are equally uncertain. It is not that we have no ‘certain knowledge’ of the future, but that we have no knowledge at all (of whether or not God exists), according to Pascal. Making a Pascalian wager is not to be confused with the everyday business of balancing probabilities.)

Yet perhaps in a situation of radical uncertainty about finite consequences, coupled with the possibly dangerous consequences of inaction we should gamble, in Pascalian fashion, on the GW ‘scientific consensus’ being correct. If we were to do this, what would follow?

The trouble with Pascal’s Wager – as many critics have pointed out – is that there is not just one alternative, atheism or theism. There are many religions, gods many and lords many, as the Apostle Paul noted. So it’s not a case of a straight wager for or against ‘God’, for this raises the question ‘Which god ought I to wager on?’

And similarly with betting on GW. Suppose that we are inclined to gamble on the planet’s future by going with the ‘scientific consensus’. Then we need to get clear what such a bet implies. What does my wagering tell me that I should do and not do? The trouble is, those who warn against GW offer many prescriptions, some at the international and governmental level, some at the personal level. Some are sensible, some plain daft. Not all of them are consistent.

A simple bet that some disaster will happen unless….does not imply a similarly simple bet on the multitude of means that are proposed to avoid the catastrophe. So in wagering that GW is occurring, which prescription or prescriptions ought we to adopt? A number of competing and conflicting prescriptions are offered. These are usually based upon the reasons that people have for why greenhouse gases are reckoned to have ballooned, and what their effect on the globe will be.

Global capitalism

Perhaps we should blame global capitalism for GW , believing ‘neoliberalism’ to be the cause of the increase in greenhouse gases. If so, gambling on GW would mean doing our bit to achieve the dismantling or radical modification of capitalism. Perhaps we should support the imposition of taxes and tariffs, or restrict trade in other ways., Perhaps we should support the outlawing of the practice of growing food in poor Africa and flying it to rich Europe and the US, abandon oil exploration and exploitation, and henceforward forbid logging, or control it very strictly.

Global capitalism no doubt has its faults, but it is in the business of satisfying demand, the various demands of its customers. The consumer choices made by you and me, in other words. The more customers that Tesco (or Walmart) has, and the more choices made for Tesco’s products, then the better for Tesco. If we think of capitalism in this way, then if (say) there was a sudden and sustained demand for C. H. Spurgeon’s The Treasury of David in Scouse we can be sure that Tesco would stock that book and sell it at a discount, just as it presently finds a place on its shelves for cheese-and-onion-flavoured roasted almonds.

Tesco and its global capitalistic friends follow demand like trade used to follow the flag. If demand changes, then their way of meeting that demand will change too. Hardly a surprise. If we stop demanding cheap (or not so cheap) fresh French beans in February then Tesco will quickly cease offering them to us.

But don’t Tesco and the other multinationals create demand? Don’t they invent things for us to buy? They most certainly do. Don’t they impose these newly-invented products on us? Aren’t they part of a tyrannical conspiracy? Isn’t neocapitalism ‘unaccountable’? Isn’t an example of ‘moral perversion’? (37) Is there not ‘an intrinsic connection between global warming, modern imperialism (i.e. Tesco) and neoliberal global capitalism (Tesco again)? (43)

To which questions the answer is: most certainly not. Global capitalism is accountable to us. If we don’t want the newly-invented products of ‘neocapitalism’ then we don’t buy them. Then Tesco and their suppliers are left with unsold lines, which is not a happy prospect for them. Capitalism is not morally perverse, it’s morally neutral. Much more so than governments and international agencies. Perhaps Tesco satisfies demands that we ought not to have. But that’s a rather different issue. If it does, then who’s to blame? We shall briefly return to this.

The market

Perhaps it’s not tyrannical global providers but ‘mechanistic’ free markets that are to be blamed for global warming. Markets, of course, convey immeasurable benefits to us. They identify our demands and supply them, bringing inventor, manufacturer, seller and buyer together in a way in which no other humanly-devised scheme do. But maybe the market is also a harmful institution. Maybe ‘GW is the earth’s judgment on the global market economy’. (7)

There are some serious misunderstandings about the market. One important one is that the market panders to our selfishness. So maybe climate change is due to selfishness, pure and simple. We curb our selfishness by shutting down or ‘regulating’ the market which satisfies it. So this prescription involves curbing the market, bringing in rationing, banning certain products, and so on.

Certainly the market it is concerned with demand, but why is all demand selfish? A person might go into the market and then give away what he buys. ‘Selfishness’ suggests action which is by intention to deprive others of what is rightfully theirs. Is there any reason to think that a mother who buys bread or trainers for her children is being selfish?

But there’s another reason to protect the markets, and the freedom of new providers to enter markets, a freedom (incidentally) that is easily eroded, particularly by corrupt governments. It is this. But what those who blame the markets for ‘anthropogenic global warming’ fail to note that if we are to be rescued from global warming by our own efforts then it is the market that must come to our rescue. If we are to ‘save the planet’ by changing our behaviour then it is the market that will be the engine of that salvation.

What’s the solution to the growing oil consumption? Ought we to ban the private car, change motorways into bus lanes, and ‘ration’ car use by granting road licences only to special cases, to doctors and nurses and journalists and MPs and….(You can imagine, can’t you, the potential here for frustration and corruption?) Aren’t buses more efficient? Yes and no. They can carry 30 people from A to B using less fuel than thirty cars can. But if part of efficiency is convenience, then the answer is, in general, no.

So suppose we do nothing, keeping our gas-guzzling cars and leaving the house lights on. What’s the solution to this burgeoning, wasteful demand for oil and gas? It’s the solution that the market provides, one that is, alas for the gas-guzzling public, ruthlessly efficient.

Barring presently unforeseen political upheavals, either the supply of oil will roughly keep pace with the rising demand for it, or it will not. If it will, no problem: the gas guzzler may continue to guzzle, and houselights can stay on.

If it does keep pace with rising demand, this may well be because rising prices make some of the trillions of barrels of oil still in the ground worth extracting. A rise in the price of oil may well call forth an increase in supply.

If it fails to keep pace, if oil begins to run out, then what will happen? Its market price will rise, perhaps very sharply. And then what else will happen? Other forms of propulsion will become relatively cheaper, and the market will reward ingenious and inventive entrepreneurs who make petrol engines run more efficiently, or who invent and produce new types of fuel, and new forms of propulsion. Life will change, but travel will not stop; forms of travel will alter, and the cost of travel may increase relatively to other costs. The market will come to the aid of the traveller.

So, if we wager on GW occurring, what does such a gamble commit us to? What are the costs of wagering? We shall try to explore these questions further in the next Analysis.

Word and Spirit in Conversion

Whatever Christian conversion exactly is, essential to it is the idea of a moral change or renovation. This is so whether conversion is thought of, more narrowly, as the change effected at the inception of the Christian life, or as a life-long process of renovation, conversio in the sense used, among others, by John Calvin. Conversion, widely or narrowly thought of, is not simply a change in belief, not that nor primarily that, but a change in the status and character of the one converted. In the Reformed, evangelical understanding of conversion Word and Spirit cooperate in effecting this change in status and in conversio, in justification and sanctification, to give them their more conventional theological descriptions.

In this paper I should like to explore the moral side to conversion and to set out two models of this aspect of conversion which have been widely influential in the history of the Christian church but which, as I shall argue, are at fundamental odds with each other. I use the word 'model' deliberately: this paper is not a historical analysis, and though I shall make reference to some influential historical figures, I shall not attempt in any way to discern the impact of these two models on actual people and communities. So 'model' here is being used in the sense of 'ideal type'. These two models of moral renovation have (as I shall try to show) importantly different implications for reasoning about ethics, preaching, pastoral care, education, and so on.

To begin with, I shall endeavour to place the models in a wider theological framework, a framework about the understanding of personal justification or 'acceptance' before God. For not only do the two models have widely different consequences, they also have different premises or presuppositions, theological presuppositions, presuppositions about salvation, more precisely about justification. I shall argue that these two understandings give us two distinct and incompatible understandings of word and spirit in conversion. I freely grant that these understandings are often tacit, a set of unspoken assumptions, and I am aware that if these assumptions were made explicit and conscious this would not necessarily be in the terms that I shall use in what follows.

I shall therefore be striving to explore the connections between theology and the moral and renovatory aspects of the Christian life. But I shall not here be concerned with the content of that moral renovation, with Christian ethics, nor a fortiori, shall I say anything about the relationship between Christian ethics and secular ethics


Justification and Sanctification

The ground or basis of justification is whatever it is that secures a person's acceptance with God. In the thought of the Christian church there have, broadly, been two theories or accounts of what secures such acceptance. These are that acceptance is or essentially involves the infusion or acquisition of personal righteousness, involving a moral change in the one acccepted. I shall call this the moral or internalist sense of justification. The other is that acceptance is essentially a change in status, the declaring of the one justified to be pardoned and righteous. I shall call this the forensic or externalist sense of acceptance. It is sometimes claimed that these differences are merely semantic, that in the infusion sense of acceptance or justification, justification (in the forensic sense) and sanctification are rolled together, whereas on the other view they are kept separate and that once we understand the point we shall see that the Reformation conflict was nothing more than an argument about a word.

Unlike some such as C. Stephen Evans , and Richard Swinburne, I do not think that controversy over the meaning of justification that was integral to the Reformation conflict is now to be thought of as mere strife about a word, as logomachy. It is said or implied by such a suggestion that the classifications of the realities are different - one party conflates justification (forensic sense) and sanctification while the other does not - but that the realities themselves are one and the same. If these different uses of justification were merely different ways of saying the same thing, then to strive about which description is better might well be logomachy. If we argue about how many gallons are in the tank because you are measuring in American gallons and I in Imperial, this is a strife about words. But not if we differ about the actual amount of petrol.

It is true that there are semantic differences, differences over what 'justification' means, but they are not merely or wholly semantic. The realities cannot be changed by changing the meaning of the word. Each account of justification attempts to answer the question: what is it that secures a person's acquittal before God and his acceptance by God? And each gives two sharply different and indeed incompatible answers to that question, calling their different answers by the same name, 'justification'. So there is a substantive, normative issue between the two views. For if justification is what secures acceptance with God then the two accounts of justification offer two different answers of what acceptance consists in. And if what secures acceptance with God is an important matter, as presumably it is, then these real differences are also important differences.

(i) Justification as inherent righteousness

I shall take a little time sketching the theory of acceptance on the basis of infused or personally acquired righteousness. The basic idea is that a subjective moral change in a person is necessary for the acceptance of that person, so that this change is an essential part of what acceptance means, it is intrinsic to what acceptance is. So that no one is accepted who is not, as an intrinsic part of that justification, morally changed. Here are some representative statements of such a view, statements containing important differences but having the same essential outlook as far as their implications for conversion are concerned.

First, Chapter VIII of the Sixth Session of the Council of Trent

(T)he alone formal cause (of justification) is the justice of God, not that whereby he himself is just, but that whereby he maketh us just, that, to wit, with which we, being endowed by him, are renewed in the spirit of our mind, and we are not only reputed, but are truly called, and are just, receiving justice within us, each according to his own measure, which the Holy Ghost distributes to every one as he wills, and according to each one's proper disposition and cooperation.

By the formal cause of justification Trent refers to what it regards as the true basis of justification; that which is the form of justification, which forms it, that which causes it to be what it is. Trent says that the formal cause of justification is God's justice making us just, renewing us in the spirit of our mind, having justice within us distributed to us by the Holy Ghost according as we are disposed to receive it and to cooperate with him.

In much the same vein are these words of Jeremy Taylor's

Christ's righteousness is not imputed to us for justification directly and immediately; neither can we be justified by our own righteousness: but our faith and sincere endeavours are, through Christ, accepted instead of legal righteousness: that is we are justified through Christ, by imputation not of Christ's, nor of our own righteousness, but of our faith and endeavours of righteousness, as if they were perfect: and we are justified by non-imputation viz. of our past sins and present unavoidable imperfections.

For the whole Gospel is nothing else but that glad tidings which Christ brought to all mankind, that the covenant of works, or exact measures, should not now be exacted, but men should be saved by second thoughts, that is, by repentance and amendment of life, through faith in the Lord Jesus. That is, if we become disciples (for that is the condition of the covenant, we shall find mercy, our sins shall be blotted out, and we shall be saved if we obey heartily and diligently, though not exactly.

I do not claim that these quotations from Jeremy Taylor represent faithfully (or unfaithfully, for that matter) something called the theology of Jeremy Taylor. Nor do I claim that they mean exactly the same as the Council of Trent. But, like Trent, they clearly express a doctrine of justification by infused or personally acquired righteousness, by repentance and amendment of life, hearty and diligent obedience. A person is justified by having such righteousness. Justification consists in that repentance and amendment of life which comes through faith in the Lord Jesus.

And here is Richard Baxter

And that the Law of Grace being that which we are to be judged by, we shall at the last Judgement also be judged (and so justified) thus far by or according to our sincere Love, Obedience, or Evangelical Works, as the conditions of the Law or Covenant of free Grace, which justifieth and glorifieth freely all that are thus Evangelically qualified, by and for the Merits, perfect Righteousness and Sacrifice of Christ, which procured the Covenant or free Gift of Universal Conditional Justification and Adoption, before and without any Works or Conditions done by Man Whatsoever.....If this be Justification by Works, I am for it.

As is usual with Baxter, all is not clear, but what he seems to be saying is that the work of Christ procured salvation on 'easier terms' than previously obtained under the law and that these easier terms are or include our sincere love, obedience and evangelical works, deeds done out of love for Christ and in obedience to him. Not altogether dissimilar from the thought of Jeremy Taylor, you may think.

And here, from a rather different stable, is Immanuel Kant

Man may then hope to become acceptable to God (and so be saved) through a practical faith in this Son of God (so far as He is represented as having taken upon Himself man's nature). In other words, he, and he alone, is entitled to look upon himself as an object not unworthy of divine approval who is conscious of such a moral disposition as enables him to have a well-grounded confidence in himself and to believe that, under like temptations and afflictions......he would be loyal unswervingly to the archetype of humanity and, by faithful imitation, remain true to his exemplar.

This is perhaps not altogether clear, in that Kant here has in mind not merely acceptance but the assurance of acceptance. But the ground of such assurance is confidence in oneself and one's own abilities to maintain loyalty and fidelity to Christ our great exemplar. And it is clear that for Kant such abilities are acquired rather than infused.

And finally, from the 20th century, Richard Swinburne.

What is needed for salvation (in addition) to beliefs is a basically good character, that is, a mind full of good purposes, set to bring about good results as opportunity arises, to guide the beliefs on which one acts.

At least, this puts Swinburne in the internalist camp if by 'salvation' he means 'acceptance'.

What all these positions hold in common, despite their undoubted differences, is the idea that justification, acceptance with God, depends in part or in whole on either a person's character (as in infused righteousness) or on a person's conduct, as in Baxter's reference to sincere love, obedience and evangelical works, or Kant's reference to a person's confidence in himself and his abilities to loyally follow the Master.

From a bare, spare logical point of view, this cluster of theological positions has one thing in common, the idea of conditional acceptance. Acceptance with God - however we fill in the theological details of this - depends upon something the one who is accepted has done or has to do, even if the power to do what he has to do is infused by God's power, as in Augustinianism. Not until what has to be done has been done is acceptance with God assured and complete. And if what has to be done is never complete then (presumably) assurance of acceptance is never complete either.

We could state the essence of this position as follows. Justification, acceptance with God, is or involves a process of moral growth. A person can thus be more or less justified, her justification or acceptance can grow and increase, she can be more justified tomorrow than today as her obedience and loyalty to Christ grow. And what seems equally possible, and of some importance, she may be less justified tomorrow than today, according as her sincere obedience, her fidelity to the example of the Master, grows or diminishes. Whether, having begun on the path of justification, she can so falter as to make herself no longer justified, looks as if it might be a tricky matter to discover, but one which (happily) we need not get ourselves involved in here.

Some Consequences

If justification is the end of a process to which an individual contributes in acquiring virtue, (even though the infused grace of God may enable him to make the contribution) it is presumably an attainable end. How then is it to be attained? The answer must be: by whatever methods are appropriate to make the inherent righteousness that is needed for justification actually inhere. What are these methods? Presumably, whatever methods are judged appropriate to secure obedience. Among these will be exhortations (from preachers and others) to lead a holy life, denunciations of personal evil and shortcoming, the portrayal of moral evil as something to be avoided, and moral good as something to be aimed at, together with motivations to penitence and to renewed resolve in the light of any failure, on penalty of not being accepted with God. Also of importance will be the attention given to examples of those who by their moral endeavours have through God's goodness finally triumphed, and of those who by their lack of moral endeavour have failed. Preaching, on such a view of justification, and religious and spiritual education more generally, will have inspirational and minatory aims.

In these endeavours, at least in a Christian context, the moral examples of biblical heroes, of such as Abraham, Moses, Samson and David, and supremely the moral example of Jesus Christ, will have a central place. 'Jesus was good: be like Jesus' will epitomise the approach. So emphasis falls, in the Christological focus of such views, on the teaching and example of Jesus Christ. In those theologies in which virtue must be personally acquired in order for justification it seems natural for such views to go along with exclusively exemplarist views of the atonement. In those theologies in which justifying grace is infused, Christ may be seen as the one who has meritoriously procured and donated such grace.

On the moral view the chief purpose of the word in conversion is to provide a resource for drawing out morals for the Christian life, and it sees things this way because acceptance, justification, is a moral matter. Or it is seen as a vehicle which together with the infused grace of God, promotes growth in virtue. Acceptance is through moral effort, even though (as In Augustinian versions of the model) this moral effort may be solely the product of divine grace.

So the moral structure of the Christian life, on the internalist view of justification, is simple. It has a purposive, means-end character: obedience is the means to the end of justification, acceptance with God. So justification, acceptance, requires a change of character, a process in which a person is morally renewed. Justification is what a person comes to have more of as he or she acquires more virtue. And so the place of moral renewal in justification is easy to specify, since justification is moral renewal, or at least moral renewal is essential and intrinsic to it.

In his Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle famously claimed that 'we become just by doing just acts, prudent by doing prudent acts, brave by doing brave acts.' And a large part of a person's ethical requirement, according to Aristotle, is to mould his desires by imitation and habit. So that as moral agents we should be concerned to acquire and to foster the correct, virtuous dispositions. This required Aristotle to give an account of human nature, its telos, and of those dispositions which provide the best means to the achieving of that telos, in the achieving of which true happiness, fulfilment, success, consist. The appropriate virtues, for Aristotle, are prudence, courage, temperance and justice.

Here I am not concerned with the Aristotelian virtues as such, but with the Aristotelian idea of acquiring a virtue, or a disposition, a habit of the mind. On this view, what is latent in the human character has to be made patent. The stress is on continuity. Adapted to the Christian view of conversion, the moral change in conversion is a makeover, like giving the living room a new coat of paint. The room is converted as more and more of the paint is applied, until all the walls are adequately covered. If we say that moral renewal, conversion, consists in acquiring the appropriate virtues, then Aristotle's view requires human beings to have the power to acquire such virtues, to have the appropriate dispositions, though there are significant obstacles in the way of exercising these dispositions, notably weakness of will.

It is easy to see how this idea of acquiring a virtue, or acquiring virtue, is to be mapped on to the idea of word and spirit in conversion that we have just been considering. Perhaps in something like the following way. The seeds of virtuous habit are either innate (as in more Pelagian versions of this model) or (as in sacramental views of grace, and more Augustinian versions) they are infused into us by God at baptism and renewed and reinvigorated in the Holy Communion and through preaching. If innate, the virtuous dispositions become the subject of life-long moral development, and Christian justification is seen as that development prompted by and energised by the word of the gospel. If the spark of virtuous activity is infused at baptism and is supernatural, but similarly latent, the virtues are to be fanned into flame, and kept burning, by the sacramental and moral provision of the church.

No doubt there are many reasons for thinking of justification as consisting in lifelong moral renovation, but one reason that seems to recur is a fear of antinomianism, a fear of disorder if justification before God is external, simply consisting in forgiveness and in the imputation of Christ's righteousness. If justification is by faith alone then should not the answer to the Apostle's question, 'Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?' be 'Of course!' We shall have this fear of disorder in mind in what follows.


(ii) Forensic Justification

The forensic (or external) understanding of justification came into prominence at the Reformation and subsequently, though the extent to which justification was understood in this fashion in earlier times, is a matter of scholarly debate. Our explorations of this externalist understanding of justification will have two aspects. In the first of these I shall attempt to reflect upon the relation between conversion and justification so as to see how the proponents of forensic justification answer the charge of antinomianism that is brought against such views, a charge that is highly relevant in this context. The supposed antinomian effects of forensic justification are memorably lampooned in James Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824), though it cannot be said that that work is marked by great theological accuracy any more than it is by sympathy for the position of the justified sinner. It is Hogg's aim to show that a person who is justified in the forensic sense may as a consequence live immorally with perfect consistency. Consider this conversation between Rev. Wringham and Lady Dalcastle

Evil, madam, may be either operative, or passive. To them it is an evil, but to us none. We have no more to do with the sins of the wicked and unconverted here, than with those of an infidel Turk; for all earthly bonds and fellowships are absorbed and swallowed up in the community of the Reformed Church. However, if it is your wish, I shall take him (Lady Dalcastle's husband) to task, and reprimand and humble him in such a manner, that he shall be ashamed of his doings, and renounce such deeds for ever, out of mere self-respect, though all unsanctified the heart, as well as the deed, he may be. To the wicked, all things are wicked; but to the just, all things are just and right'

'Ah, that is a sweet and comfortable saying, Mr Wringham! How delightful to think that a justified person can do no wrong! Who would not envy the liberty wherewith we are made free?'

As we now look at the externalist position I shall aim to show that the proponents of this view of justification have an answer to the charge of antinominism or disorder where this is understood as a claim about the logical consequences of the forensic or externalist view of justification.

Conversion and Justification

If by justification we mean acceptance by God, then the forensic view of acceptance is that acceptance consists in God's acquittal, his pardon, and his reckoning of the accepted person as righteous. A person who is justified enjoys a change of status; he was in a state of condemnation, now he is acquitted. Justification is not a matter of more or less, but of all or nothing. Here is a sample of statements of it drawn from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries:

We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by faith, and not for our own works or deservings.

The righteousness where in we must be found, if we will be justified, is not our own; therefore we cannot be justified by any inherent quality. Christ has merited righteousness for as many as are found in him....although in ourselves we be altogether sinful and unrighteous, yet even the man which in himself is impious, full of iniquity, full of sin, him being found in Christ through faith, and having his sin in hatred through repentance, him God beholdeth with a gracious eye, putteth away his sin by not imputing it, taketh quite away the punishment due thereunto, by pardoning it; and accepteth him in Jesus Christ, as perfectly righteous, as if he had fulfilled all that is commanded him in the law.

The righteousness of Christ (as in his obedience and suffering for us) imputed unto believers, as they are united unto him by his Spirit, is that righteousness whereon they are justified before God, on the account whereof their sins are pardoned, and a right is granted them unto the heavenly inheritance.

So on this account justification, acceptance, is a change of status, it is external to the moral character of the one justified, and justification consists in being pardoned by God and granted Christ's immaculate righteousness, with whatever change in status such a grant implies. However, in the case of this view of acceptance, the relation between justification and moral renewal, the relation between justification and conversion, is not so easy to discern.

It is sometimes said that this external view of justification attributes self-deception to God. 'How can God see us as righteous if we are still just as rotten inside, but wearing Christ's robe of righteousness?' But when God sees a person to be righteous the righteousness which he sees has been reckoned to that person. It is what that person would have had had he possessed Christ's moral worth for himself. In justification, on this view, God reckons the justified as righteous, he counts them as righteous by imputation. They have the same legal status as if they had Christ's righteous character, for they are united to Christ and his righteousness is reckoned to them as part of that union. This relationship of union with Christ is of course without parallel in our legal systems. But there are analogies. If someone pays a guilty person's fine in order to have that person released from prison, and this payment is accepted, then the judicial authorities reckon it to be the payment of the guilty party, but they do not literally see the guilty party pay, nor see him being willing to pay, for there is nothing to see 'in' the person, for (as far as the law is concerned) he has not changed, except in his status.

A second difficulty which John Hare (in The Moral Gap) finds in the external view is that it devalues the human response and makes problematic the necessity of faith for salvation. It is one aspect of this problem that I wish now to address.

The forensic view consists of two claims: the first is that a person is justified by entering in a new relation, not by developing a new constitution. And the second is that for this justification to be enjoyed whatever it is that justifies must be personally appropriated by faith; faith is essential to the change of status being effected or enjoyed. To use (once more) the frequently-used legal analogy, it is as if the acquittal of a guilty person depended on that person recognising and appropriating that acquittal for there to be the acquittal. In our legal system, the acquittal and pardon of a dead person makes perfect sense, and so acquittal does not have to be personally appropriated for it to be a bona fide case of such. But there is no parallel sense in the case of justification, since justification is by faith alone. (I do not here go into the question of the justification of those who die in infancy). So the tension between the objective and the subjective aspects of justification is that raised by the need for a personal appropriation of a change which is otherwise wholly external. Suppose there were no need for a personal appropriation of justification as (I here hesitatingly suggest) is the case in some modern accounts of justification, as in Bultmann's perhaps, and Barth's, and Tillich's there is no need), then there would be no tension. And suppose that justification consists in inward renewal, or includes inward renewal, as in the internalist view considered earlier; again, there would be no tension. But there is a tension, or at least a prima facie tension, between justification considered as a forensic change, and the need personally to appropriate that change sola fide. It is this tension that I wish to explore a bit further.

The tension arises because the faith that appropriates justification by trusting Christ for it, is itself the fruit of God's grace, union with Christ; indeed, using the conventional terminology, one might say that faith is a first element (at least in terms of conscious awareness) in subjective renewal, in sanctification. Faith is a virtue. The first element in this tension might be surmounted by making a distinction between senses of 'justification', between justification as an objective fact, secured by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and justification as the personal appropriation of that fact. But the second element in the tension is harder to surmount.

Francis Turretin has an interesting discussion of the issue in his Institutes of Elenctic Theology. The eighth question (and answer) of the sixteenth topic is, 'Does faith alone justify? We affirm against the Romanists'. The question, he says, is not whether declarative justification requires works. For it does. The question is not, either, whether faith alone justifies 'to the exclusion of the grace of God or the righteousness of Christ or the word and sacraments....but only to the exclusion of every other virtue and habit on our part.

But note here the appearing of the tension we mentioned earlier. Faith, Turretin says, is a virtue and habit. The tension is heightened by his next statement, that the faith which justifies, in order to be true and living faith, cannot be separated from other virtues. And it is at this point that his discussion becomes especially interesting. I quote in extenso

The question is not whether solitary faith (i.e., separated from the other virtues) justifies (which we grant could not easily be the case, since it is not even true and living faith); but whether it "alone" (sola) concurs to the act of justification (which we assert); as the eye alone sees, but not when torn out of the body. Thus the particle "alone" (sola) does not determine the subject, but the predicate (i.e., "faith only does not justify" (sola fides non justificat), but "faith justifies alone' (fides justificat sola). The coexistence of love in him who is justified is not denied; but its coefficiency or cooperation in justification is denied. The question is not whether the faith "which justifies" (quae justifiat) works by love (for otherwise it would not be living but dead); but rather the question is whether faith "by which it justifies" (qua justificat) or in the act itself of justification, is to be considered under such a relation (schesei) (which we deny).

That is, Turretin is maintaining that the sentence 'Faith alone justifies' is ambiguous, or even perhaps downright misleading. For it may be thought to entail the proposition that faith justifies in virtue of its being alone; that it is in the solitariness of faith that its capacity to appropriate justification consists. But this would be false and misleading, according to Turretin, for it would sever the connection between faith and other virtues such as love. Rather the sentence should be taken to entail that it is faith which only justifies, in the sense that it and no other virtue justifies. So the 'only' or 'alone' must be taken not to modify 'faith' (the subject) but rather 'justifies', the predicate.

He explains the point in more familiar terms and at greater length in VIII. 14.

As it does not follow, the hand alone writes and the eye alone sees - therefore as much when torn from the head and the other members of the body; the sole force of respiration is in the lungs - therefore the lungs can respire torn out from the liver and other viscera as well as when connected with them (which everyone sees to be absurd). There are hundreds of things of this kind which have a certain proper efficacy and effect which still, when separated from their adjuncts, lose all their power. Natural potencies are connected as to existence, but disjoined as to operation. Light and heat in the sun are most closely connected together, but still the light alone illuminates, the heat alone warms. Therefore, although the other virtues do not justify with faith, still faith cannot justify in their absence, much less the opposite vices being present. For faith cannot be true except in connection with the virtues (which if they do not contribute to justification, still contribute to the existence and life of faith, which the presence of vices would destroy)

What is the force of these counterexamples? It is to claim that whatever is a necessary accompaniment or condition of some power or virtue is not therefore an essential or intrinsic feature of that power or virtue. The argument that Turretin is addressing might be expressed as an attempt to effect a reductio ad absurdam of the idea of justification by faith alone as follows

1. Suppose faith justifies alone

2. But it is agreed on all hands that love is a necessary accompaniment or condition of justifying faith

3. Therefore faith cannot justify alone

To which Turretin counterargues:

1. Suppose faith justifies alone

2. Love is a necessary accompaniment or condition of justifying faith

3. Whatever is a necessary accompaniment of some power or virtue is not an essential or intrinsic feature of that power or virtue, as the following counter-examples testify.....

4. Therefore it is possible that faith justifies alone.

So maybe the great Reformation rallying cry of 'By faith alone' should be modified to 'Only by faith'. It certainly should be understood in this way according to Turretin.

Faith does not contribute causally to justification, any more than does obedience. Faith is essentially, receptive, an acknowledgement, a recognition of what God in Christ has done, and in that sense the faith is the instrumental cause of justification, but being a cause in this sense can hardly be said to be equivalent to faith making a causal contribution to justification, as one of its grounds or its only ground. So whether or not faith is considered as a theological virtue, it is not because it is a habit or virtue that it justifies. It is in this way that Turretin (successfully to my mind) wards off the threat or charge of antinomianism or disorder raised against the externalist view of justification.


Reflections: Word and Spirit in Conversion

We are now in a position to consider some consequences of the forensic view of justification for the moral aspects of conversion and for our understanding of the place of word and Spirit in conversion. Let us now consider some consequences of the forensic view for the moral aspects of conversion

First, the connection between doctrine and ethics: If a Christian is someone who has already been pardoned, and who has received, by imputation, the righteousness of Christ, then his moral activity primarily relates to what has happened, and hence the primary motivation for this moral activity relates essentially to what has happened, expressed in his belief that he has been justified, and not on something as yet future, on being moral in order to be justified. So on this view a theology of the Cross, as an account of what God has done fully and finally to secure justification, is essential. The fundamental structure of human motivation is gratitude and love to God on account of what has happened, and (as a consequence) devotion (in obedience) to the one who has accomplished it.

In this understanding of word and spirit in conversion the 'word' is the preaching of Christ as the sole provider of forgiveness and of imputed righteousness. So there is a strong and obvious connection between theology and ethics, and the theology is shot through with trinitarianism. The divine Son is the gift of the divine Father, given as an atonement for many. The 'Spirit' is the Spirit's bringing of that person to faith in Christ. By contrast, on the first view of justification that we considered, the motivation for moral renovation and growth is that through it justification, acceptance, will be caused or completed or it is to strengthen those forces that will make justification happen. On the second view, motivation for moral renovation is because something has happened, once for all, acceptance with God has been achieved. In a word, the motivation for the one is fear and apprehension, for the other it is love and gratitude.

Second, the relation between sin and consciousness. What about moral failure? According to the first view, moral failure is something that we must inevitably be conscious of, for it is the awareness of such failure which puts justification in peril, and such awareness of it triggers, or should trigger, renewed effort to reinstate those virtuous states on which it depends. A person in this position may justifiably reason 'If I do not live appropriately, I will not be accepted'. Failure sets the process of acceptance back, it makes it that much harder to attain. This is why, ultimately, the fact of Christ is of only contingent importance to conversion if Christ is merely an exemplar of virtue. This is presumably why S.T. Coleridge said of Jeremy Taylor's theology that 'Socinianism is as inevitable a deduction from Taylor's scheme as Deism or Atheism is from Socinianism'. Since there is no need for Christ's atonement, the divinity of Christ is accidental to the scheme of things. Human sin and need is understood in terms of the elimination of conscious transgression. Allied with this, there is usually confidence in a person's ability to act in fulfilment of duty in a way which secures acceptance. Forgiveness, or acceptance, is therefore conditional. Where a person has deep concerns about divine acceptance, the moralistic view is harsh; where such concerns are less deep or are absent, on such a view the Christian religion becomes a more or less easy moralism, continuous at most points with a secular moral outlook and with secular moral endeavours.

We might put the point in this way. On the first, moralistic view, ethics is primarily an ethics of self-control, even of repression. Religion achieves its aim if our conscious motives and our manners are reformed. This is understandable, if what sin is is primarily a conscious breach of the divine law.

On the second view, no transgression can put actual acceptance in peril because awareness of failure triggers penitence and a renewal of faith in Christ and obedience to him. For when he fails, the transgressor seeks pardon from his Father, being thus reminded of his status. In addition, this view may recognise that there is more to sin or moral failure than conscious failure. Sin is something deeper, it is alienation, it reaches beyond what we are aware of, even beyond what we can be aware of, situations of omission and transgression, to secret inner drives and motives. Moral failure is a deeper, more mysterious, more sinister thing than what can be consciously identified as moral failure It involves ignorance of our motives and a recognition of our capacity systematically to deceive ourselves. Chief among the ravages of in, on this view, is the break-up of the self, of its wholeness, its wholesomeness, and with that break-up arises the unconscious suppression of parts of the inner life, as is evidenced in the mismatch between what we want and what we want to want, and by the capacity for self-deception which is ever renewing itself. 'We have deceived ourselves, and the truth is not in us'. 'Cleanse thou me from secret faults.' What if sin produces expertise in fashioning idols of the mind? Then efforts at self-control, however much they may draw their inspiration from the example of Christ, are likely to be repressive.

So, on the evangelical view, the role of the word in conversion is not primarily to provide moral inspiration to overcome conscious failure, but it is a call to change, to metanoia, the recognition of God's love and forgiveness in Christ as a motive to obedience. And moral failure, whether it has its roots in conscious disobedience, or in a set of unconscious drives, may be recognised and the fact that such failure is already forgiven may be recognised as well.

So, I argue, there are important logical and psychological differences in an understanding of conversion arising from different theologies of justification. The logical difference is simply that between what is conditional and what is unconditional. On the classic evangelical view, both acceptance and moral renovation are a consequence of union with Christ, the one is not a condition of the other, and certainly moral renewal is not a condition of acceptance. The psychological difference is that the first view of acceptance operates only at the level of conscious failure, and its legalistic and moralistic implications are potentially repressive. The stance of someone who loves God much because she has been forgiven much, is very different from that of someone who loves in order to be accepted. And so the 'spiritual theology' arising from these two sorts of cases is likely to be very different as well.

Conclusion

A widespread current view is that the Reformation conflicts over the nature of justification are now chiefly of historical interest. So Alister McGrath:

On the basis of the above analysis, it will be clear that there exist real differences between Protestants and Roman Catholics over the matter of justification. The question remains, however, as to the significance of these differences. How important, for example, is the distinction between an alien and an intrinsic justifying righteousness? In recent years, there appears to be an increasing sympathy for the view that these differences, although important at the Reformation period, no longer possess the significance they once had.

I happen to think that this view is profoundly wrong. and that, as someone has said, justification is 'the main hinge on which religion turns'. Important differences about important matters should not be labelled 'insignificant' and then moved off stage. There are still mountains between Geneva and Rome, or rather between the view of justification by an intrinsic righteousness, whether Roman Catholic or Protestant, and justification by an alien righteousness. These mountains continue to impede the achieving of a common mind on the fundamentals of the Christian gospel. But even if you do not share this conviction of mine, but rather agree with Alister McGrath, you may nonetheless be persuaded, by what we have discussed, that although such differences may no longer be of much theological significance, they are nevertheless of considerable ethical importance, and that one feature of this importance is that they profoundly influence views of the place and the character of word and spirit in conversion.*

*Thanks are due to Tony Lane without whose help the paper would have been much less clear.