In “Born of Water and of the Spirit”: TheBiblical Evidence for Baptismal Regeneration, I discuss different “causes” and how water baptism is the instrumental but not the meritorious cause of justification, and how even in the Reformed tradition (e.g., WCF 11:2) there is a differentiation of different causes.
Even in the Genesis creation, there are
different “causes.” The following from a Trinitarian apologist:
When Paul speaks of
all things being created “in him” [Christ], he introduces an important idea.
When Paul speaks of believers being “in Christ” (2 Cor. 5:17), this phrase is
usually associated with their social identity with Christ their new federal
head. He uses the preposition of agency, namely dia (“through”), with
the genitive, as in 1 Corinthians 8:6, whenever he speaks of the role of
Christi n creation. Thus, the Son is always described as the agent through whom
God created all things, which we have already seen confirmed in several
passages (John 1:3; 1 Cor. 8:6; Heb. 1:2b). In other words, Paul presents the
Son as co-Creator with the Father. (Tony Costa, Early Christian Creeds and
Hymns—What the Earliest Christians Believed in Word and Song: An
Exegetical-Theological Setting [Peterborough, Ontario: H&E Academic,
2021], 178-79)
In the footnote to the above we read helps illustrate this further:
Paul also uses the
preposition of agency, dia, with the genitive, when he speaks of God’s
role in creation. For example, he states in his doxology in Romans 11:36
regarding God, “For from [ex] him and through [dia] him and to [eis]
him are all things. To him be glory forever, Amen.” The use of these prepositions
seek to identify God as the source, agent and goal of all
creation. Paul does not refer to Christ as the source of creation in Colossians
1:16, but only as the agent and goal of creation. Philo of Alexandria, a
contemporary of Paul, also used similar language of God when he spoke of
created things, “the rest have their existence both by [hupo] with him
and through [dia] him.” Philo, Leg. 1.41. When the Greek
preposition hypo is used with the genitive it carries the meaning of “by”
and functions in “indicating an agent or marker of agency or cause” (BDAG,
1035; Wallace, Basics of New Testament Syntax, 173). Philo also spoke of
God as the first cause, or source, of creation, “Because Go was the cause, not
the instrument; and what was born was created indeed through the agency of some
instrument, but was by all means called into existence by the great first cause
. . . Now he by whom a thing originates is the cause” (Philo, Cher.
1.125). Philo is using language similar to Aristotle who also wrote about the
first cause. (Ibid., 179 n. 20)