The Rev. Chuck Collins: Is He Wright?

Matt Kennedy's comments... By starting with the solution (Jesus is Lord and Messiah) and going in search of the problem, Wright reduces sin to bad table manners, justification to name tags for covenant fellowship, and salvation to a hope for some vague future reward. Bishop Allison likens this to a gospel in which a drowning person needs no savior, just a swimming coach (25). What H. Richard Niebuhr said about liberal Protestantism is generally true of Wright’s theology on Paul: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministration of a Christ without the cross.”(26)

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[editorial note from Matt Kennedy: I have reinserted the Reverend Collins' footnotes since they did not carry over to Expression Engine. And I still need to go back and italicize the works referenced in the main body...but I do not have time at the moment. Any error of footnote reinsertion or italicization is my error and not in his original. Thank you]

Is it possible that such a kindly man, with impeccable academic credentials, and a history of upholding traditional Christianity with evangelical zeal could be the ringleader of a theological movement that opposes the catholic faith? N.T. Wright is the Anglican Bishop of Durham, England and formerly the Canon Theologian of Westminster Abbey. He is a prolific author on topics as diverse as The Resurrection of the Son of Man and The Last Word on the authority of the Bible, but he is known best for his work on St. Paul. He has written some scholarly and some popular books on this topic, and most recently an important commentary on Romans. Over the last thirty years he has become the key spokesman for what is called the “New Pauline Perspective.” With the success of his book, What Paul Really Said (1), he is single-handedly responsible for bringing the New Perspective out of the academy and into the pews. Although there is much to like about Bishop Wright, his views on St. Paul represent a serious departure from classical Protestantism and biblical orthodoxy.

There is not just one New Perspective on Paul, but a number of different notions and biblical theologians who rally around some NP ideas. James Dunn coined the term in a series of lectures in 1982, but all the NP proponents venerate E.P. Sanders as the guru of the movement, and his 1977 book, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (2), as the last word and the hermeneutical lens that finally (after 2000 years!) reveals what Paul really meant (3). Everyone agrees that Sanders, Dunn, Wright and others have brought new light to our understanding of biblical culture and Second Temple Judaism (Judaism at the time of Jesus) that helps us better understand the Scriptures, but they come dangerously close to claiming to be the only ones in history who have really understood the Apostle Paul.

The proponents of the NP have big differences among themselves, but they agree on this: classical Protestant teaching misreads and misunderstands St. Paul. Paul, was not really down on the Jews of his day for trying to “earn” salvation by their good works, they say, because first century Judaism was essentially a religion of grace. Instead, Paul was down on the Jews for excluding Gentile believers from covenant membership (4). According to the NP, Luther, Calvin and Cranmer misunderstand the basic problem of the Bible to be the plight of a sinful individual before a holy God, and therefore they also misunderstood the solution offered. The central concern of St. Paul, according the NP, is not sin-salvation (a human-divine problem), but Jew-Gentile, and specifically the inclusion of Gentiles in the covenant family of God (a human-human problem). The Protestant Church was, therefore, wrong in representing “justification” and “righteousness” as the solution to sin-salvation rather than as the answer to the Jew-Gentile problem. The NP accuses the reformers of superimposing on the Bible their own medieval worldviews, and reading it as a psychiatric manual to assuage their own guilt complexes (they are especially critical of that lunatic depressed Martin Luther!) (5).

The 16th century reformers, for their part, didn’t see themselves as original thinkers or innovators who wanted to start a new church; they wanted to reform the old one. The objective of the Reformation was to return the church to the teaching of Holy Scripture and to the catholic faith. They felt the late Medieval Catholic Church was viewing some primary biblical doctrines in its rearview mirror on its way out of town. Classical Protestantism teaches that the Jews of the first century were slaves to the Law, looking within themselves for a (self) righteousness that comes from obeying the Law. They saw Paul’s message (the Gospel message) as liberating people from bondage to the Law, which can’t justify anyway, and salvation as a free gift from God received by faith. They considered this true for both Jews and Gentiles because no one is righteous, not even Mr. Righteous himself, St. Paul (Philippians 3:4-8). Paul “based his case not on the impracticability of imposing Jewish practices on Gentiles, nor indeed on a charge of ethnocentricity brought against Jews who thought Gentiles ought to live as they did, but on the inability of the law to cope with human sin.”(6) The Reformation recovered the biblical doctrine of justification by faith alone (sola fide). For Luther, this was the key to understanding Jesus: “When this article stands, the Church stands; when it falls, the Church falls.”(7)

It is clear that the NP constitutes a dramatic turn from classical Protestant understanding. These are no little discrepancies but foundational differences in the very meaning of the Christian gospel.

1. The 16th century Reformers and the Protestant Church misunderstood St. Paul because they failed to hear him in the context of first century Judaism.

“The Tradition of Pauline interpretation has manufactured a false Paul by manufacturing a false Judaism for him to oppose.”(8)

2. Second Temple Judaism was not a religion of self-righteousness or works-righteousness based on obedience to the Law, but a religion of grace based on God’s gracious election of Israel.

“We have misjudged early Judaism, especially Pharisaism, if we have thought of it as an early version of Pelagianism [works righteousness].”(9)

3. When Paul used words like “righteousness” and “justification” he was not concerned about how a person is saved (vertical relationship with God), but about who is in the covenant community of faith (horizontal relationship with brothers and sisters in Christ). His specific concern was to make sure Gentiles were included.

“Justification, in Galatians, is the doctrine which insists that all who share faith in Christ belong at the same table, no matter what their racial differences, as together they wait for the final creation.”(10)

4. “Justification” and “righteous” are terms that do not explain how to get in to the community of faith, but a description of who is in.

“What Paul means by justification, in this context, should therefore be clear. It is not ‘how you become a Christian,’ so much as ‘how you can tell who is a member of the covenant family.’” (11)

5. This view vindicates St. Paul from the charge of anti-Semitism and brings Catholics and Protestants together in a very similar understanding of the apostle.

“Once we relocate justification, moving it from the discussion of how people become Christians to the discussion of how we know that someone is a Christian, we have a powerful incentive to work together across denominational barriers.” (12)

“In a nutshell, the New Pauline Perspective suggests that the Judaism of Paul’s day was not a religion of self-righteousness that taught salvation by merit; that Paul’s argument with the Judaizers was not about works-righteousness (a works righteousness view of salvation over against the Christian view of salvation by grace); that Paul’s real concern was for the status of the Gentiles in the Church; that justification is not so much about our relationship with God as it is about our relationship to our brothers and sisters in the church (and in particular, it about the status of the Gentiles in the church and the unity of Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians in the church); thus, that justification is more about ecclesiology than soteriology, more about who is part of the covenant community, and what are its boundary markers, than it is about how a person stands before God.”(13)

Article XI of the Articles of Religion, one of the formularies that historically has defined what Anglicans believe, states, “We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ by Faith, and not for our own works or deservings. Wherefore, that we are justified by Faith only, is a most wholesome Doctrine, and very full of comfort, as more largely is expressed in the Homily of Justification.”(14) N.T. Wright, as far as I know, has not commented on this Article directly or on the Homily of Justification, but if he did he would say something like,

“This Article (written by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in the 16th century) can be squeezed in to fit the NP, but I would have said things differently. First, I’m a little nervous by the phrase “before God” because this could suggest that ‘justification’ is a matter of human/divine relationship or ‘spiritual conversion’, rather than a declaration of who is a part of the forgiven covenant community. Secondly, by using the term ‘accounted righteous’ in conjunction with “before God,” the Article imports an idea not found in the Bible – the idea of imputed or alien righteousness, which is a 16th century invention. (Granting that imputation is explicitly taught in the Homily on Justification and the Homily on Salvation). And lastly, the eleventh Article puts works (‘our own deservings’) and faith as two opposing means to salvation, when the Bible teaches that works are the means for proving and maintaining our membership in the church. Because of these problems, I’d be inclined to retire the Articles in the ‘historic documents’ section of the Prayer Book, and look for fresher ways to explain Pauline theology.”

If this is a fair representation of Wright’s position, it’s shocking how different it is from classical Anglican teaching.

Without getting into the exegetical issues to which many books are dedicated, there are several things that concern me about Bishop Wright. First, even though Paul says the cross of Christ is everything to him (Galatians 5:14; 1 Corinthians 1:23, 2:2), there is little “cross” in Wright’s analysis of Paul. In fact, there is little need for the cross in his theological framework that defines “justification” as the answer to ethnic squabbles rather than a sin/salvation problem. For him, the problem is what divides Jews and Gentiles (and Protestants and Catholics), rather than sin as spiritual death for children of wrath (Ephesians 2). Wright’s high anthropology and low Christology changes the meaning of the cross from “Jesus died for my sins as a substitute for the punishment I deserved” to “Jesus is Lord and Messiah.” In a sermon on Maundy Thursday 2007, Wright spoke against the idea of an “an angry God…who demands blood and doesn’t much mind whose it is as long as it’s innocent.” He went on to say, “That’s why, when I sing that interesting recent song and we come to the line, ‘And on the cross, as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied’ (15), I believe it’s more deeply true to sing ‘the love of God was satisfied.’” Typical of post-Holocaust liberal theologians, Wright is clearly uncomfortable with God’s wrath and judgment of sin. “Though Wright doesn’t deny the importance of the work of Christ, he rarely, if ever, attempts to articulate clearly just what that work is and how it functions. In other words, the doctrine of the atonement is underdeveloped and underemphasized in Wright’s version of Pauline and New Testament theology.”(16)

Secondly, Wright’s diminution of the cross renders the Protestant understanding of “imputation” meaningless. The 16th Century Reformers believed that not only were our sins imputed to Christ, but that Christ’s righteousness was imputed to everyone who believes in him for salvation. It’s the Great Exchange! It’s the only way sinful human beings can hope to stand before a holy God: clothed with God’s own righteousness, righteousness from outside of us (alien righteousness) (17). Second Temple Judaism and pre-Reformation Catholicism taught that justification (right standing before God) was a process by which we actually become righteous. This, of course, means that there is little or no distinction between justification and sanctification. It means that we are sinners saved by becoming non-sinners, rather than sinners saved by grace. Traditional Protestants don’t accept this because it makes our current standing before God conditional on our actual state of righteousness; it gives humans partial credit with God for the salvation we enjoy. As Stephen Westerholm said, “Christians are not people without sin, but those against whom, because of their faith in Christ, God does not count their sin.”(18) Bishop Wright changes righteousness to mean, “covenant membership”(19) and he reduces salvation to a vague current hope for a vague future redemption. Faith as a “badge of covenant relationship” is manifestly weak in answering the oldest question: “Can mortal man be in the right before God? Can a man be pure before his Maker?” (Job 4:17).

Third, Wright says that first century Judaism was not Pelagian (works righteousness), but rather a religion of grace. And he is certainly right as far as it goes, except that the teaching of the Reformation never claimed that Palestinian Judaism or pre-Reformation Christianity was “Pelagian.” The NP reminds us that there is no such thing as pure Pelagianism, and that grace and election certainly played a role in the Old Testament story of God’s love for Israel, in first century Judaism, and in the pre-Reformation church. Luther and the Medieval Catholic Church both agreed that we are saved by faith; the difference is that Luther said it was by faith alone (sola fide). Theologian Paul Zahl wrote,

“Luther’s objection to the scholastic theology of the Roman Catholic Church was never to its Pelagianism. The Church was never Pelagian. It neither believed that salvation was according to works of the Law nor that the human being had to ‘work’ in order to gain the gracious favor of God. Medieval Catholicism was semi-Pelagian. This is to say, the Church taught that man and God were co-operators in salvation, that grace could complement and supplement human nature, and that ‘I can get by with a little help from my friends’ (The Beatles, ‘Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’).”(20)

We contribute nothing to our salvation except the sin from which we need to be redeemed (21). Paul seems quite clear that Christianity is a completely gracious religion from beginning to the end. This is what he writes the Ephesians, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one can boast” (2:8,9). The answer to Paul’s question, “What do you have that you did not receive?” (1 Corinthians 4:7) is clearly: Nothing!, “All this is from God…” (2 Corinthians 5:18).

Lastly, Bishop Wright doesn’t seem at all concerned about espousing a new theology that is not supported by Scripture interpretation over time. Thomas Oden calls this “the ancient consensual tradition of Spirit-guided discernment of scripture.”(22) This means that if in our study we come to a place where our interpretation of Scripture is different from the church’s understanding over time, we need to “back up and reapproach the passage with the humility to admit that the wisdom of the ages is almost certainly better than ours.”(23) A big caution flag should be attached to any teaching that amounts to such a departure from traditional Christian understanding (24). This doesn’t mean that there are no new truths to be learned from the Holy Spirit, but for such new truths to replace tried and tested understandings requires tremendous caution and humility that I do not see in N.T. Wright’s books. The church’s interpretation of Scripture over time is not to be abandoned easily!

Several years ago I was invited to a theology colloquy at a seminary in Chicago. When I got there, I was surrounded by serious theologians, including John Piper, Paul Zahl, Tim Keller and Don Carson. When they heard I was Anglican, their first question was, “So, what do you think of N.T. Wright?” At the time I had read several of his books, but nothing on St. Paul, and I didn’t even know what the New Perspective was. When I confessed that I liked Wright, I quickly realized that I was way over my head. Since then I have dived into a study of the New Perspective, and especially N.T. Wright and I have found him troubling. I’ve come to believe that his Pauline perspective is a departure from classical Protestant teaching and a gospel that cannot ultimately save. By starting with the solution (Jesus is Lord and Messiah) and going in search of the problem, Wright reduces sin to bad table manners, justification to name tags for covenant fellowship, and salvation to a hope for some vague future reward. Bishop Allison likens this to a gospel in which a drowning person needs no savior, just a swimming coach (25). What H. Richard Niebuhr said about liberal Protestantism is generally true of Wright’s theology on Paul: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministration of a Christ without the cross.”(26) Because Wright is likeable in so many other ways, coming in through the front door by upholding core theological doctrines against Marcus Borg and the Jesus Seminar kooks, and valiantly fighting for traditional concerns as a member of the Lambeth Commission contributing to the Windsor Report, his departure from classical Protestantism in his Pauline perspective is even more troubling and potentially very hurtful. “Error, indeed, is never set forth in its naked deformity, lest, being thus exposed, it would at once be detected. But it is craftily decked out in an attractive dress, so as, by its outward form, to make it appear to the inexperienced (ridiculous as the expression may seem) more true than truth itself.”(27) ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

1. What Paul Really Said: Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997). 2. Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1977). 3. Wright said that Sanders “dominates the landscape [of Pauline studies], and, until a major refutation of his central thesis is produced, honesty compels one to do business with him. I do not believe myself such a refutation can or will be offered…” What Paul Really Said, p. 20. 4. Bishop FitzSimons Allison mocked this understanding: “Paul’s conversion on the Damascus road was certainly not that he suddenly realized: Now I can eat with the Gentiles!” “The Foundational Term for Christian Salvation: Imputation,” By Faith Alone: Answering the Challenges to the Doctrine of Justification (Wheaton, IL: Crossways Books, 2006) p. 109. 5. “Luther, plagued by guilt, read Paul’s passages on ‘righteousness by faith’ as meaning that God reckoned a Christian righteous even though he or she was a sinner…Luther sought and found relief from guilt. But Luther’s problems were not Paul’s, and we misunderstand him if we see him through Luther’s eyes.” Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, p. 44, 49. 6. Stephen Westerholm, Perspectives Old and New on Paul: the “Lutheran” Paul and His Critics (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing, 2004) p. 441. 7. Quoted in “The Ecclesial Scope of Justification” by Geoffrey Wainwright, Justification: What’s at Stake in the Current Debates, ed. Mark Husbands and Daniel J. Treier (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004) p. 249. 8. “The Paul of History and the Apostle of Faith,” Tyndale Bulletin (1978), p. 78. 9. What Paul Really Said, p. 32. 10. Ibid., p. 122. 11. Ibid., p. 122. 12. Quoted in Ligon Duncan “The Attractions of the New Perspective(s) on Paul” transcript of a paper given in Jackson, MI and Glascow, Scotland (website of Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals) p. 16. 13. Ibid. 14. 1979 Book of Common Prayer, p. 870. 15. Sermon “The Word of the Cross,” Durham Cathedral, April 5, 2007. 16. Ligon Duncan “The Attractions of the New Perspective(s) on Paul,” p. 22. 17. Eg. Gen. 3:21; Zech. 3:3-4; Mt. 22:11-13; 2 Cor. 5:21; Rom. 5:12-21; 1 Cor. 1:30; Phil. 3:9. 18. Perspectives Old and New on Paul, p. 36. 19. Compare what the Bible says with N.T. Wright’s interpretation of Phil. 3:8,9: English Standard Version 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith. N.T. Wright “Paul is saying, in effect, “I, though possessing covenant membership according to the flesh, did not regard that covenant membership as something to exploit. I emptied myself, sharing the death of the Messiah, wherefore God has given me the membership that really counts in which I too will share the glory of Christ.” What Paul Really Said, p. 124. 20. Paul Zahl quoted in Ligon Duncan “The Attractions of the New Perspective(s) on Paul,” p. 19. 21. Attributed to William Temple by David F. Wells “Forward” By Faith Alone: Answering the Challenges to the Doctrine of Justification (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2006) p. 15. 22. The Rebirth of Orthodoxy (San Francisco, CA: Harper Collins, 2003) p. 31. 23. Chuck Collins, Cranmer’s Church: Introducing the Episcopal Church and Anglicanism in America (San Antonio, TX: The Watercress Press, 2005), p. 42. 24. Wright spoke of the night in 1976 that he “sat up in bed” realizing a new way of interpreting Galatians and Romans. A talk he gave 10th Edinburgh Dogmatics Conference August 2003: “New Perspectives on Paul.” 25. By Faith Along, p. 112. 26. Attributed to H. Richard Niebuhr, “Forward” David F. Wells By Faith Alone, p. 17 27. Irenaeus (2nd century church father) “Against Heresies” (Book 1, Preface, 2).

That would be this kind of discussion. I do not know much about Rev Collins, but I have read a lot of Bp Wright. His characterizazion concerning the great trilogy is right on target, so his criticisms have all the more bite, particularly as I have heard criticisms from other quarters on other books equally biting and for much the same reason.

For myself, I probably need to get Bp Wright’s book on Paul and read it myself. I have had serious problems lately with Joseph Martos for what end up being much the same reason: a reaction against judgment in times when human judgment has proven so fatally and cruelly false and unjust.

For the record, my own take on justification is that it is indeed imputed on account of the sacrifice made on our behalf by Christ on the cross and is thus the admission to grace that will strengthen, nourish and develop us for what we may hope is our final salvation.

I might note that in Fr. Hall’s Dogmatic Theology on the sacraments, he makes the general point that sanctification is the action of grace the sacraments afford. It is the work the Holy Spirit does within us as building us up. This is not justification nor is it final salvation. I cannot see that Catholic doctrine ever confused the three, and I think that Fr. Collins may here have done so.

The order of importance is always faith first, but works as evidence of humble acceptance of the necessary pilgrimage to perfection from there on. To the extent Bp Wright departs from this, I cannot say I agree with him.

You are absolutely right, and I had just come to the same conclusion as I was booting up this computer. Quite detached from whatever this priest has written about what he thinks +Wrght believes, here’s an Orthodox response to a sarcastic remark like:

“A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministration of a Christ without the cross.”

“God is good, dispassionate, and immutable. Now someone who thinks it reasonable and true to affirm that God does not change, may well ask how, in that case, it is possible to speak of God as rejoicing over those who are good and showing mercy to those who honor Him, and as turning away from the wicked and being angry with sinners. To this it must be answered that God neither rejoices nor grows angry, for to rejoice and to be offended are passions; nor is He won over by the gifts of those who honor Him, for that would mean He is swayed by pleasure. It is not right that the Divinity feel pleasure or displeasure from human conditions. He is good, and He only bestows blessings and never does harm, remaining always the same. We men, on the other hand, if we remain good through resembling God, are united to Him, but if we become evil through not resembling God, we are separated from Him. By living in holiness we cleave to God; but by becoming wicked we make Him our enemy. It is not that He grows angry with us in an arbitrary way, but it is our own sins that prevent God from shining within us and expose us to demons who torture us. And if through prayer and acts of compassion we gain release from our sins, this does not mean that we have won God over and made Him to change, but that through our actions and our turning to the Divinity, we have cured our wickedness and so once more have enjoyment of God’s goodness. Thus to say that God turns away from the wicked is like saying that the sun hides itself from the blind.” +Anthony the Great

Not ever having adopted the notions of Blessed Augustine on the depravity of man or original sin or those of +Anselm on atonement, a “god” whose wrath can only be satisfied by blood, specifically the blood of His Son, is not the “god” we worship. Sadly, to many of us Orthodox, it appears to be the “god” worshiped by many Western Christians which gives us pause when people start talking about “ecumenism”.

I hear your point and that of +Anthony. Hebrews appears quite clear that there is no covenant without blood to seal it but this does not then connote that God somehow has inordinate wrath against His own creation, which He unqualifiedly stated to be ‘good’ at its inception and which only became marred through our own fecklessness and vanity. Given that our Lord freely accepted the commission to redeem humanity, the offering of body and blood on the Cross would be an entirely voluntary oblation given in perfect love and received in perfect love. Such is the great Example laid before us who now intercedes for us as an eternal oblation in the house not made with hands, eternal in the heaven. Into this intercession we may enter, if we step forward to do so and it is always in relation to this that we have any justification or righteousness before the Throne of Grace.

Now, I have read +Wright to basically assert exactly this, in his work on The Resurrection of the Son of God, so I think we’re on the same page on this. He is also clear on the eternal perfection of God so that one only puts oneself forward as the point of view to suggest divine vengefulness, divine wrath or even divine compassion, as if any of these things occur. Such as God is, He always is and everything we have done, are doing or will do are already a part of His eternal knowledge. What is to change when He who knows need not adjust for what is already within His scope?

Still, this is not the only point upon which ecumenism flounders. Many people descending from historic Anglicanism espouse doctrines that are at best misguided and some which clearly and obtusely reject the ancient faith once universally assented to. Waywardness has many faces, some are female and presume to wear the chasuble, some are sexually froward or perverse and presume to assert Scriptural support. Some reject the reality of Christ’s mystical Body and the sacrament which expresses its unity, members to Head as being built up in love to the final offering to the Father. I see there being many fields needing much work. To those I put my hoe.

Here are 9 summary declarations with regard to the relationship of the theology to that of reformed theology as expressed in the subordinate Westminster confession:

1. The view that rejects the bi-covenantal structure of Scripture as represented in the Westminster Standards (i.e., views which do not merely take issue with the terminology, but the essence of the first/second covenant framework) is contrary to those Standards.

2. The view that an individual is “elect” by virtue of his membership in the visible church; and that this “election” includes justification, adoption and sanctification; but that this individual could lose his “election” if he forsakes the visible church, is contrary to the Westminster Standards.

3. The view that Christ does not stand as a representative head whose perfect obedience and satisfaction is imputed to individuals who believe in him is contrary to the Westminster Standards.

4. The view that strikes the language of “merit” from our theological vocabulary so that the claim is made that Christ’s merits are not imputed to his people is contrary to the Westminster Standards.

5. The view that “union with Christ” renders imputation redundant because it subsumes all of Christ’s benefits (including justification) under this doctrinal heading is contrary to the Westminster Standards.

6. The view that water baptism effects a “covenantal union” with Christ through which each baptized person receives the saving benefits of Christ’s mediation, including regeneration, justification, and sanctification, thus creating a parallel soteriological system to the decretal system of the Westminster Standards, is contrary to the 31 Westminster Standards.

7. The view that one can be “united to Christ” and not receive all the benefits of Christ’s mediation, including perseverance, in that effectual union is contrary to the Westminster Standards.

8. The view that some can receive saving benefits of Christ’s mediation, such as regeneration and justification, and yet not persevere in those benefits is contrary to the Westminster Standards.

9. The view that justification is in any way based on our works, or that the so-called “final verdict of justification” is based on anything other than the perfect obedience and satisfaction of Christ received through faith alone, is contrary to the Westminster Standards.

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