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| B. B. Warfield |
Echoing the anti-creational
orientation of the classical Gnostics, much of late nineteenth and twentieth-century Presbyterianism has fed off the assumption that the created order is
spiritually ineffectual, and consequently that secondary, mediating
causes are at best unnecessary and at worst deeply problematic,
especially when such mediating causes are embedded in materiality, as in
the sacraments.
This is the standpoint adopted by the great Calvinist
theologian B. B. Warfield. In his book, The Plan of Salvation, Warfield
asserted that “precisely what evangelical religion means is immediate
dependence of the soul on God and on God alone for salvation.” He is
critical of any theology that “separates the soul from direct contact
with and immediate dependence upon God the Holy Spirit. . . .”
One sees this antipathy to means
again in Warfield’s discussion of sacerdotalism, where Warfield happily
separates the work of instrumentalities with the work of God’s Spirit.
In their discussion of Warfield, Fred Zaspel and Sinclair Ferguson write
that the key question separating sacerdotalism and evangelicalism is
the question of divine grace comes to us "immediately or by means of
supernaturally endowed instrumentalities - the church and sacraments.”
(Fred G. Zaspel and Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Theology of B. B. Warfield: A Systematic Summary, p. 415)
What is puzzling is that these
authors fail to recognize that faith in the evangelical view is also an
instrumentality. (See my 'Questions about Sola Fide' where I expand on this important point.) Thus, Zaspel and Ferguson ask, “Does God save men by
immediate operations of his grace upon their souls, or does he act upon
them only through the medium of instrumentalities established for that
purpose?” Their answer to their own question is that evangelicalism
“sweeps away every intermediary between the soul and its God, and leaves
the soul dependent for its salvation on God alone, operating upon it by
his immediate grace.” In practice, this sweeping away of every
intermediary would include not only a rejection of
sacramentally-mediated grace, but also a rejection of parental and
ecclesial nurture as instruments of saving grace. As Zaspel and Ferguson
note, “The point at issue is the immediacy of God’s saving activity…The
evangelical directs the sinner, in need of salvation, to look to God
himself for grace rather than to any means of grace.”
The key word here is
“immediacy.” Taking the Zwinglian idea of immediacy to its logical extension, Zaspel
and Ferguson follow Warfield in arguing that if salvation is dependent
on the ministry of the church then it depends on man. However, we might
equally say that if salvation depends on faith then it is dependent on
man. If someone replies that this is not the case with faith because
faith is a gift, then one could certainly ask: is not the church and her
ministry also a gift? Moreover, while Zaspel and Ferguson write that
“This ‘evangelicalism’ is, simply, Protestantism”, their position can be
contrasted with that of Calvin who, for all his Gnostic leanings, did
put a premium on secondary means in a way that Zaspel and Ferguson,
following Warfield, oppose.
Further Reading.
Further Reading.
'Does God act “immediately”?', by Peter Leithart
'Is Charles Hodge Also Among the Gnostics?', by Robin Phillips
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