Saturday, February 17, 2024

Theodore Beza vs. naive view that all good works are "menstrual rags"

  

. . . the Father approves fully those works, however far removed they still are in themselves from the purity that the severity of divine law requires yet covered through the purity of His Son. And He crowns those who have legitimately struggled, as we have learned from the Word of God, since our justification and sanctification continually cling to each other in that nexus. (Theodore Beza, “A Defense of Justification through the Righteousness of Christ Alone, Freely Imputed, Obtained by Living Faith” (1592), in Justification by Faith Alone: Selected Writings from Theodore Beza (1519-1605), Amandus Polanus (1561-1610), and Francis Turretin (1623-1687) [trans. Casey Carmichael; Classic Reformed Theology 6; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Reformation Heritage Press, 2023], 13)

 

. . . neither faith nor good works are absolutely (απλως) excluded by us from justification. But then it is acknowledged by us that faith, as the sole instrument, was created within us by the Holy Spirit for seizing that righteousness. And we teach our good works, although they properly obtain no reason of cause, whether initial (προκαταρκιτκης) or efficient or material or even final in justification, are nevertheless required in the justified and before the tribunal of God are approved as certain of faith and therefore as a sure sign (τεκμηριον) of obtaining grace and are even crowned. (Ibid., 22)

 

On Sanctification

 

Thesis 1

 

By the grace of God, we were set free from the penalty owed for corruption and its fruits, not so that we may heap up sins on sins but, on the contrary, so that, truly converted to God, we may live an entirely new life in Him. (But this is so far removed—that we can answer to Him by ourselves, so that, on the contrary, we are set free from every sin by nature.) Therefore, by the same mercy of the Most High God, the one mercy, the other in the same Christ and through the same Christ seized by faith (not now so much as instrument but as source and root of all good works), we perceive the benefit likewise as merely free and must be taken as accepted with absolutely no preparation. Thereby it happens that, set free from the tyrant of the corruption of nature, we begin according to the measure of the grace of renewal to will and to do the things of God. That is what is indicated by the term sanctification. (Theodore Beza, “Thesis Written Out in Full with the Unanimous Consent of the Pastors of the Swiss Churches by the Authority of the Very Distinguished Senate of Bern in the General Synod on AD April 23, 1588,” in ibid., 113)

 

 

 

. . . I confess that the Fathers did not distinguish those two benefits as carefully as was necessary. That is to say, this question about righteousness from works was not treated in the church before the Pelagians. Moreover, just as the minds of godly bishops were occupied in the commendation of good works, so several of their successors, abusing their hyperbolic way of speaking, gradually gave way to meritorious righteousness, through which crack the very cunning Satan introduced the dogmas of consubstantiation and transubstantiation. (Theodore Beza, “Thesis Written Out in Full with the Unanimous Consent of the Pastors of the Swiss Churches by the Authority of the Very Distinguished Senate of Bern in the General Synod on AD April 23, 1588,” in Justification by Faith Alone: Selected Writings from Theodore Beza (1519-1605), Amandus Polanus (1561-1610), and Francis Turretin (1623-1687) [trans. Casey Carmichael; Classic Reformed Theology 6; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Reformation Heritage Press, 2023], 122)