David does a book review: 04

The slogan of sola scriptura, solus Christus, sola fide, sola gratia, and soli Deo gloria, the “five solas,” has been a bulwark against the tide for faithful Christians, providing a firm foundation and place to stand in solidarity with the myriads of the redeemed throughout the ages.

Scripture establishes its own authority, and salvation is by the grace of God in Christ through faith. Sinclair Ferguson is a Scottish Reformed Presbyterian minister, Chancellor’s Professor of Systematic Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary and author of The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, & Gospel Assurance—Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters. In the 2016 volume, Ferguson focuses on a not-so-well-known battleground of Reformed theology in eighteen-century Scotland. And not for the sake of relishing in antiquity are the events dug up, but the relief of the “Marrow Controversy” continues to provide a much needed clarity to the centrality of Christ in the gospel of grace.

According to Ferguson, the importance of the matters erupting in the small Scottish village of Auchterarder in 1717 is that they emerge from the most fundamental question of all: “Who is the God whom we come to know in Jesus Christ? What is he really like—deep down, through and through?” For Presbyterian ministers like Thomas Boston and the group of “Marrow Men” taking a stand on the truths they uncovered, it was the very character of God that was on the line. And whatever sacrifice of reputation required was worth it.

The issue that first emerged in Auchterarder by ministers who all appealed to the doctrine laid out in the Westminster Confession of Faith involved the order of salvation. But what was actually unveiled “was the possibility of acknowledging the truth of each discrete chapter of the Confession of Faith without those truths being animated by a grasp of the grace of God in the gospel.”

And God’s grace was grasped anew as something unconditional in accordance to his gracious character. For an orthodox minister of Scottish Presbyterians, it was an easy enough doctrine to affirm and uphold, supported by Scripture and many of the great Reformers, including John Calvin and Scotland’s own, John Knox. And a logical conclusion is that repentance doesn’t precede faith. It can’t. Not only would such an order turn God’s grace into something conditional, but it is also impossible for a creature bound up by original sin to do apart from faith, which is given by a gracious Father.

Everything pertaining to salvation arises from God’s grace in the gospel proclamation, as Boston affirms: “In a word, gospel repentance doth not go before, but comes after remission of sin, in the order of nature.” However, the truth that there were no moral requirements to receive God’s grace in Christ struck a chord of dissonance with many who possessed a mere confessional orthodoxy.

Ironically, it was the charge of antinomianism that was leveled against Boston and the Marrow Brethren. One important insight Ferguson shares with his readers is that legalism and antinomianism are like “non-identical twins:” they “are not so much antithetical to each other as they both are antithetical to grace.” Both distort and diminish the generous love of God.

Legalism skews a right understanding of the character of our gracious God by separating the person from his law. Beginning with Eve who believed the lies rather than words of wisdom from the heavenly Father, law began to resemble the decrees of an overzealous policeman. “Within this matrix … is the manifestation of a restricted heart disposition toward God, viewing him through a lens of negative law that obscures the broader context” of the holy love of the Father.

In the book of Romans, Paul writes, “But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” And in same way for Scottish Presbyterians, it was an experiential knowledge of God’s redeeming grace that unchained the ministry of the proclamation of the free gift of God. Only then could the gospel of Jesus Christ abound in the lives of its hearers.

But to many orthodox Reformed ministers in eighteenth-century Scotland, the doctrine of free grace embraced by the Marrow Brethren sounded suspiciously like antinomianism.  Accordingly to Ferguson, “We are dealing here with a disposition whose roots go right down into the soil of the garden of Eden.” Not only is it a “matter of having a wrong view of the law. It is a matter, ultimately, of a wrong view of grace, revealed in both law and gospel—and behind that, a wrong view of God himself.”

The root is the “legalistic temperament” pervading the human race and can take the form of merit based observation of God’s law or rejection alike. “The full and free offer of Christ, the dissolution of the heart bondage that evidences itself in both legalism and antinomianism, this gracious obedience to God to which our union with Christ gives rise as the Spirit writes the law into our hearts—this is still the marrow of modern divinity.”

Contrary to the charge against them, the Marrow Brethren weren’t antinomians. “As a matter of historical record the Marrow Brethren held tenaciously to the teaching … that God’s law remains as a rule of life for the Christian believer.” In Reformed theology, the glory of God shows fourth in redemptive history through the restoration of man as the image of God.  We are able to glorify God through his gracious restoration of us in Christ. Obligation and duty become an outpouring of gratitude to the redeeming love of the Father.

As the title of The Whole Christ goes, Ferguson discusses assurance of salvation in relation to grace in Christ in light of both legalism and antinomianism. Real assurance produces true humility. “Christian assurance is not self-assurance and self-confidence. It is the reverse: confidence in our Father, trust in Christ as our Savior, our joy in the Spirit as the Spirit of sonship, seal of grace, and earnest of our inheritance as sons and daughters of God.”

When Christ is the marrow, the essence, the deepest part—when he can be seen in the lives of his people in private and corperate worship—the grace of God is on full display. “And that, surely, is one of the greatest needs of our times.”