What do you think?
Rate this book
Studies in Dogmatics
Studies in Dogmatics: Faith and Justification
In this series rooted in the normative significance of Scripture, noted Dutch theologian G. C. Berkouwer examines great doctrines of the Reformed faith, developing and defending Reformed theology through interaction with a wide range of theologies and theologians.
208 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1954
3 people are currently reading
47 people want to read
About the author
G.C. Berkouwer
35 books20 followersGerrit Cornelis Berkouwer was for years the leading theologian of the Gereformeerde Kerken in the Netherlands (GKN). He occupied the Chair in systematic theology of the Faculty of Theology, Free University (VU) in Amsterdam.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 29, 2024
THE THIRD VOLUME IN BERKOUWER’S 14-VOLUME “STUDIES IN DOGMATICS”
Gerrit Cornelis Berkouwer (1903-1996) taught systematic theology at the Free University in Amsterdam. The other volumes in this series are: The Providence of God,Faith and Sanctification,The Person of Christ,General Revelation,Faith and Perseverance,Divine Election,Man: The Image of God,The Work of Christ,The Sacraments,Sin,The Return of Christ,Holy Scriptures,The Church. He also wrote books such as The Second Vatican Council and the New Catholicism,Modern Uncertainty and Christian Faith,Recent Developments in Roman Catholic Thought,A Half Century of Theology: Movements and Motives, etc.
He wrote in the first chapter of this 1949 book, “Theological subjectivism did not err because it stressed too heavily the living relationship of divine truth to human faith. This relationship is so essential that theological reflection dare not for a moment turn it into an abstraction. If theological reflection loses sight of this vital relationship, it becomes sterilized, turns into an intellectual orthodoxism, and loses all contact with the people of God. The mistake of subjectivism was rather this, that it subjectivized the NORM of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ. It gave the human subject a determinative, creative function and made revelation dependent upon the subjective creation.” (Pg. 17)
He notes, “it is clear that the New Testament does not consider the way as a long struggle toward a certain goal, immortality in this instance, but, primarily, as Christ. And it pictures ‘walking on the way’ as the knowledge that one is in Christ who is the Way. This is the same way of salvation on which the Old Testament believers also walked… This simple and obvious presentation of the concept ‘way’ in Scripture is not open to the charge of Biblicism… The scriptural view of the ‘way’ on which God brings us must be determinative for all explication of the theological presentation of the way of salvation…. How often have not nomism and antinomianism abandoned this way, sometimes hardly noticed! Sometimes generations of Christians have lost the joy of the gospel by having gone amiss on the ‘way of salvation.’” (Pg. 35-36)
He acknowledges, “That there was some tension between Peter and Paul is clear enough from what Paul wrote in Galatians 2 about his withstanding Peter to the face… This was not a matter of fundamental difference between Peter and Paul. It was simply a case in which Peter lost the courage of his convictions and scrupled where the gospel demanded a holy unscrupulousness… Paul was deathly afraid of the influence that Peter’s actions would have on others and had already had in the case of Barnabas. All this, however, does not constitute a permanent opposition between the Petrine and the Pauline gospel…nowhere in the New Testament so we find anything that smacks of a permanent difference in the apostolic preaching of Paul and Peter.” (Pg. 74)
He observes, “the traditional understanding of Paul ever continues to bolster the spirit. It is not conditioned by fear of Arminianism, but it does provide the best counter-balance to this particular over-estimation of faith as a spiritual achievement. It is necessary to understand this if we are to understand Paul in his preaching of this correlation, of the human grasping which is really a being grasped, of this faith, which, in faith, knows only grace and not itself. We do not mean to say that the correlation between faith and justification has now become rationally transparent. On the contrary.” (Pg. 86-87)
He summarizes, “Thus, ‘sola fide’ and ‘sola gratia’ formed the central bulwark of the Reformation. What is more, they were never separated from a simple gasp of the gospel of God’s grace. Justification, so understood, was not one specific phase among many on the way of salvation. It was the sweet word of pardon, which was and remained of all-embracing significance for the wholeness of life. Justification may never become a station along the way, a harbor which, once passed through, may be forgotten. On the contrary, only in intimate connection with justification does talk of sanctification make any real sense. The Reformation, in its defense of the forensic, declarative justification that points us always to the free favor of God, has not endangered, but rescued the confession of true sanctification.” (Pg. 100)
He states, “It is the works of the law, not those of faith, which threaten ‘sola fide.’ We shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ, and there everything done in darkness shall be brought into the light… And in Him, as Judge, lies the perfect, finished concord between sola fide and the judgment according to works. The Church awaits in this Judge the same One who once before, for my sake, put Himself under God’s judgment and removed all condemnation from me. It is He whom we anticipate in the judgment---the just judgment according to works. And only this, in the message of Christ’s second coming, are we comforted and do we take heart, looking for that day with great expectations.” (Pg. 112)
He observes, “god the just Judge shall present the crown of righteousness, but… the Judge would never present the crown had not the merciful Father given grace. How could God consider anyone worthy of reward ‘unless his infinite goodness had abolished all their demerit or punishment?’ Good works have a part in obtaining a reward only through ‘their acceptance by the divine mercy.’ He who concerns himself with the relation between works and reward must keep a steady bearing on God’s mercy. Otherwise he will lose himself in a maze of legalism and work-righteousness. Rewards do not enter as something new side by side with divine mercy. It is only through God’s mercy that rewards make any sense. In the promise of reward is set a goad toward confidence in God’s mercy.” (Pg. 128-129)
He suggests, “The argument that James contradicts Paul draws its most impressive support from James’s reference to the patriarch Abraham. Paul had used the figure of Abraham to say that a man is justified without works, through faith alone. James used him to show that ‘mere faith’ is insufficient. We have special reason to consider with care the message which James, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, has brought. To begin with, James does not make his reference to Abraham from the same portion of Genesis as did Paul. Paul, recall, cited Genesis 15:6: ‘Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him to him for righteousness.’ [Rom 4:3] James starts from Genesis 22, the reference being to Abraham’s willingness to offer his son Isaac… This difference in reference is essential to an understanding of James… James too… quotes the text from Genesis 15 which Paul had used. But James cites it in a special connection; Genesis 15 is FULFILLED in what occurs in Genesis 22. Faith and work---James sees their inter-woven congruency over the totality of life. The whole life of Abraham was LIVED in faith.” (Pg. 134-136)
He continues, “This faith was not something isolated, an abstract acceptance of something as true, but a truly experienced reality that dominated his entire existence…. The statement of Genesis 15:6 is seen as fulfilled, completed, incarnated in the concrete reality of Abraham’s obedience of Genesis 22… That they agreed is more than established when James says that Abraham’s faith expressed itself in cooperation with his works… He who still insists that James wishes to establish works as another element independent of and alongside of faith has simply not grasped the sense of his exhortation. It is striking that James does not say that works cooperate with faith, but faith with works. Here we encounter the principal homogeneity of faith and works.” (Pg. 136-137)
He points out, “We have yet to judge whether a scientific dogmatic opinion allows for the doctrine of eternal justification… does the doctrine of justification from eternity contain a truth which presents the mystery of the correlation between faith and justification more clearly and in a form more full of comfort and warning than does the doctrine of justification as it is expressed in the confessions?... The question is whether the admittedly valid religious motivation behind the doctrine comes satisfactorily to expression in the confessions. Our opinion is that it does. The confessions assign no creative function to faith in its correlation to justification. The whole matter is framed in God’s eternal grace… That which is intended by the doctrine of eternal justification … must always be the assumption of the correlation between faith and justification… The sovereignty of grace is honored only in faith, a faith that gives all honor to God. This is why salvation in the historical correlation of faith and justification is made dependent upon human decision.” (Pg. 158-159)
He summarizes, “All this gives us no occasion to gloss over one word of what Scripture teaches of the NECESSITY of faith. With this statement, we strike, for the last time, the central point of our study. We must not allow ourselves, in reaction to the doctrine of faith’s meritoriousness, to become too timid to speak of its necessity. This is a real hazard… Let it be written in capitals, put in italics that salvation is God’s salvation, coming to us in the miracle of redemption, God’s salvation which has been devised by no human mind and has risen from no human heart. None of this changes a letter of the fact that this sovereign grace MUST be accepted in faith. The way that Scripture speaks of faith permits us to ascribe value to faith.” (Pg. 185)
He observes, “Faith is always a divine gift, always a work of the Holy Spirit… Faith is not conceived by flesh and blood. The womb of our heart is barren. Our hearts, by nature, preferably prevent conception, and the history of heresy is evidence of how easily our treacherous hearts arise to the occasion… This divine gift is without strings. There is nothing in man that could possibly succeed as a condition. Nor is saving faith a particular form of general human faith.” (Pg. 190)
He concludes, “Sola gratia and sola fide, thus, remain the be all and end all of the relation between faith and justification. But we do not set up a technique; we are not concerned to defend a verbal talisman… It guarantees nothing by its incantation. There is no ‘a priori’ surety against the errors and confusion which menace and confine our understanding of divine salvation. Our formulation surely provides none. Furthermore, we are not justified through sound theology; faith alone saves us.” (Pg. 200-201)
For anyone interested in conservative Reformed theology, this entire series will be of great interest. The diversity of the theologians and sources with whom Berkouwer interacts make this series a very stimulating reading project.
Gerrit Cornelis Berkouwer (1903-1996) taught systematic theology at the Free University in Amsterdam. The other volumes in this series are: The Providence of God,Faith and Sanctification,The Person of Christ,General Revelation,Faith and Perseverance,Divine Election,Man: The Image of God,The Work of Christ,The Sacraments,Sin,The Return of Christ,Holy Scriptures,The Church. He also wrote books such as The Second Vatican Council and the New Catholicism,Modern Uncertainty and Christian Faith,Recent Developments in Roman Catholic Thought,A Half Century of Theology: Movements and Motives, etc.
He wrote in the first chapter of this 1949 book, “Theological subjectivism did not err because it stressed too heavily the living relationship of divine truth to human faith. This relationship is so essential that theological reflection dare not for a moment turn it into an abstraction. If theological reflection loses sight of this vital relationship, it becomes sterilized, turns into an intellectual orthodoxism, and loses all contact with the people of God. The mistake of subjectivism was rather this, that it subjectivized the NORM of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ. It gave the human subject a determinative, creative function and made revelation dependent upon the subjective creation.” (Pg. 17)
He notes, “it is clear that the New Testament does not consider the way as a long struggle toward a certain goal, immortality in this instance, but, primarily, as Christ. And it pictures ‘walking on the way’ as the knowledge that one is in Christ who is the Way. This is the same way of salvation on which the Old Testament believers also walked… This simple and obvious presentation of the concept ‘way’ in Scripture is not open to the charge of Biblicism… The scriptural view of the ‘way’ on which God brings us must be determinative for all explication of the theological presentation of the way of salvation…. How often have not nomism and antinomianism abandoned this way, sometimes hardly noticed! Sometimes generations of Christians have lost the joy of the gospel by having gone amiss on the ‘way of salvation.’” (Pg. 35-36)
He acknowledges, “That there was some tension between Peter and Paul is clear enough from what Paul wrote in Galatians 2 about his withstanding Peter to the face… This was not a matter of fundamental difference between Peter and Paul. It was simply a case in which Peter lost the courage of his convictions and scrupled where the gospel demanded a holy unscrupulousness… Paul was deathly afraid of the influence that Peter’s actions would have on others and had already had in the case of Barnabas. All this, however, does not constitute a permanent opposition between the Petrine and the Pauline gospel…nowhere in the New Testament so we find anything that smacks of a permanent difference in the apostolic preaching of Paul and Peter.” (Pg. 74)
He observes, “the traditional understanding of Paul ever continues to bolster the spirit. It is not conditioned by fear of Arminianism, but it does provide the best counter-balance to this particular over-estimation of faith as a spiritual achievement. It is necessary to understand this if we are to understand Paul in his preaching of this correlation, of the human grasping which is really a being grasped, of this faith, which, in faith, knows only grace and not itself. We do not mean to say that the correlation between faith and justification has now become rationally transparent. On the contrary.” (Pg. 86-87)
He summarizes, “Thus, ‘sola fide’ and ‘sola gratia’ formed the central bulwark of the Reformation. What is more, they were never separated from a simple gasp of the gospel of God’s grace. Justification, so understood, was not one specific phase among many on the way of salvation. It was the sweet word of pardon, which was and remained of all-embracing significance for the wholeness of life. Justification may never become a station along the way, a harbor which, once passed through, may be forgotten. On the contrary, only in intimate connection with justification does talk of sanctification make any real sense. The Reformation, in its defense of the forensic, declarative justification that points us always to the free favor of God, has not endangered, but rescued the confession of true sanctification.” (Pg. 100)
He states, “It is the works of the law, not those of faith, which threaten ‘sola fide.’ We shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ, and there everything done in darkness shall be brought into the light… And in Him, as Judge, lies the perfect, finished concord between sola fide and the judgment according to works. The Church awaits in this Judge the same One who once before, for my sake, put Himself under God’s judgment and removed all condemnation from me. It is He whom we anticipate in the judgment---the just judgment according to works. And only this, in the message of Christ’s second coming, are we comforted and do we take heart, looking for that day with great expectations.” (Pg. 112)
He observes, “god the just Judge shall present the crown of righteousness, but… the Judge would never present the crown had not the merciful Father given grace. How could God consider anyone worthy of reward ‘unless his infinite goodness had abolished all their demerit or punishment?’ Good works have a part in obtaining a reward only through ‘their acceptance by the divine mercy.’ He who concerns himself with the relation between works and reward must keep a steady bearing on God’s mercy. Otherwise he will lose himself in a maze of legalism and work-righteousness. Rewards do not enter as something new side by side with divine mercy. It is only through God’s mercy that rewards make any sense. In the promise of reward is set a goad toward confidence in God’s mercy.” (Pg. 128-129)
He suggests, “The argument that James contradicts Paul draws its most impressive support from James’s reference to the patriarch Abraham. Paul had used the figure of Abraham to say that a man is justified without works, through faith alone. James used him to show that ‘mere faith’ is insufficient. We have special reason to consider with care the message which James, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, has brought. To begin with, James does not make his reference to Abraham from the same portion of Genesis as did Paul. Paul, recall, cited Genesis 15:6: ‘Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him to him for righteousness.’ [Rom 4:3] James starts from Genesis 22, the reference being to Abraham’s willingness to offer his son Isaac… This difference in reference is essential to an understanding of James… James too… quotes the text from Genesis 15 which Paul had used. But James cites it in a special connection; Genesis 15 is FULFILLED in what occurs in Genesis 22. Faith and work---James sees their inter-woven congruency over the totality of life. The whole life of Abraham was LIVED in faith.” (Pg. 134-136)
He continues, “This faith was not something isolated, an abstract acceptance of something as true, but a truly experienced reality that dominated his entire existence…. The statement of Genesis 15:6 is seen as fulfilled, completed, incarnated in the concrete reality of Abraham’s obedience of Genesis 22… That they agreed is more than established when James says that Abraham’s faith expressed itself in cooperation with his works… He who still insists that James wishes to establish works as another element independent of and alongside of faith has simply not grasped the sense of his exhortation. It is striking that James does not say that works cooperate with faith, but faith with works. Here we encounter the principal homogeneity of faith and works.” (Pg. 136-137)
He points out, “We have yet to judge whether a scientific dogmatic opinion allows for the doctrine of eternal justification… does the doctrine of justification from eternity contain a truth which presents the mystery of the correlation between faith and justification more clearly and in a form more full of comfort and warning than does the doctrine of justification as it is expressed in the confessions?... The question is whether the admittedly valid religious motivation behind the doctrine comes satisfactorily to expression in the confessions. Our opinion is that it does. The confessions assign no creative function to faith in its correlation to justification. The whole matter is framed in God’s eternal grace… That which is intended by the doctrine of eternal justification … must always be the assumption of the correlation between faith and justification… The sovereignty of grace is honored only in faith, a faith that gives all honor to God. This is why salvation in the historical correlation of faith and justification is made dependent upon human decision.” (Pg. 158-159)
He summarizes, “All this gives us no occasion to gloss over one word of what Scripture teaches of the NECESSITY of faith. With this statement, we strike, for the last time, the central point of our study. We must not allow ourselves, in reaction to the doctrine of faith’s meritoriousness, to become too timid to speak of its necessity. This is a real hazard… Let it be written in capitals, put in italics that salvation is God’s salvation, coming to us in the miracle of redemption, God’s salvation which has been devised by no human mind and has risen from no human heart. None of this changes a letter of the fact that this sovereign grace MUST be accepted in faith. The way that Scripture speaks of faith permits us to ascribe value to faith.” (Pg. 185)
He observes, “Faith is always a divine gift, always a work of the Holy Spirit… Faith is not conceived by flesh and blood. The womb of our heart is barren. Our hearts, by nature, preferably prevent conception, and the history of heresy is evidence of how easily our treacherous hearts arise to the occasion… This divine gift is without strings. There is nothing in man that could possibly succeed as a condition. Nor is saving faith a particular form of general human faith.” (Pg. 190)
He concludes, “Sola gratia and sola fide, thus, remain the be all and end all of the relation between faith and justification. But we do not set up a technique; we are not concerned to defend a verbal talisman… It guarantees nothing by its incantation. There is no ‘a priori’ surety against the errors and confusion which menace and confine our understanding of divine salvation. Our formulation surely provides none. Furthermore, we are not justified through sound theology; faith alone saves us.” (Pg. 200-201)
For anyone interested in conservative Reformed theology, this entire series will be of great interest. The diversity of the theologians and sources with whom Berkouwer interacts make this series a very stimulating reading project.
Displaying 1 of 1 review