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DOES JUSTIFYING FAITH INCLUDE EVANGELICAL OBEDIENCE
IN JOHN CALVIN'S THEOLOGY?
By Sam Waldron
Thesis
Recent tensions, debates, and currents in evangelical theology have caused
saving faith and evangelical obedience to be more and more closely related in some
quarters. Scott Hafemann, for instance, in his The God of Promise and the Life of Faith
speaks not simply of "the inextricable unity of faith and obedience," but proceeds to
speak of "the unity of faith and obedience as the two aspects of our one response to
God."
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By the end of the chapter in which he makes these statements, he is speaking of
"faith-obedience."
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This stress on the unity and inseparability of saving faith and
evangelical obedience finds its mirror image and contrast in the complete severance of
faith and obedience in the so-called "Free Grace Movement" and its polemic against
"Lordship Salvation."
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This view denies that saving faith finds its necessary expression
or inevitable fruit and vindication in evangelical obedience. Thus, at one and the same
time there are tendencies in evangelicalism both to separate and to identify saving faith
and evangelical obedience.
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1
Scott Hafemann, The God of Promise and the Life of Faith (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books,
2001), 86.
2
Ibid., 103. In fairness to Hafemann it must be noted that he does seem to define faith as
trusting in God's promises (84, 87), but all of the emphasis is on the unity of faith and obedience and not on
their distinctive characteristics. My concern is that the distinction between faith and obedience is
disappearing. Cf. also the statements he makes on 216 and 217 where denying that the law and the gospel
are two different messages, he says that the obedience of faith (which is, as he says, faith expressing itself
in obedience) is both the means and the result of being saved. Hafemann seems to be following the lead of
Daniel B. Fuller, Gospel & Law: Contrast or Continuum? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980), 105-20. Note
the particularly troubling statements of Fuller on page 119.
3
Zane Hodges, The Gospel under Siege (Dallas: Redencion Viva, 1981), 11-12.