Systematic Theology -- Salvation

The Ordo Salutis

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Lesson: Government

Genre: Speech

Track: 01

Dictation Name: 01 The Ordo Salutis

Year: 1960’s – 1970’s

Father, we thank thee again for the privilege of setting the things {?}, thy word is truth, and thy word alone has the answer for the problems and the evils of our time. We pray for thine embattled saints wherever they are, that by thy grace, that thou would strengthen, encourage, and deliver them. Give them a mighty and resounding victory over the forces of {?}. Make thy church again, O Lord, a beacon light grace unto all the world, the end that the kingdoms of this world might become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. In Jesus name. Amen.

Our subject in our first session this evening is The Ordo Salutis. That’s a Latin term. Ordo, order. Salutis, The Order of Salvation. It’s an old term commonly used by theologians and ministers. Sometimes the whole discussion of the order of salvation has been run into the ground, but there is a point in it all the same. The ordo salutis, the order of salvation, describes the process by which the work of Christ is made manifest in the life of the redeemed man. Dr. Berkoff called it a process, and one which is subjectively realized, and he added, “It aims at describing in their logical order and also in their interrelations the various movements of the Holy Spirit in the application of the work of redemption. The emphasis is not on what man does in appropriating the grace of God, but on what God does in applying it.”

Now, there have been, over the generations, a considerable debate among Reformed theologians as to the specific order in the ordo salutis. Most Reformed theologians begin either with regeneration, or calling, then they go on to conversion, including in that category faith and repentance also. With faith, they discuss justification because faith, in a sense, mediates justification to man’s heart, and then adoption. Then, the perseverance of the saints, and finally, glorification.

Hoeksema gives a somewhat different ordo salutis, and his is calling, faith, conversion, justification, sanctification, preservation, and perseverance, and then, glorification. Hoeksema very wisely warns, “This order must not be understood in a purely temporal sense, as if the benefits of salvation were granted to a sinner in a definite order of time.” That’s a very important warning. Many theologians have gone astray, I believe, because they have been so insistent on establishing a fixed order in the ordo salutis, and saying, “First it has to be regeneration,” or “First it is calling,” and so on. Now, what they are trying to do is this. They establish a logical order in their mind, and then try to impose the logic of that order upon the mind of God, and that is not admissible{?}. The whole value of this concept of the order of salvation, the ordo salutis, is this. Now that it enables us to document precisely, step by step, how God saves man, but rather what it does is this. If affirms the sovereignty of God unto salvation. It declares that our salvation is the work of God.

Now, this is important, because Arminianism, while talking about salvation as though it were the work of God, really makes it dependent upon the work and the faith of man. It says salvation begins when man says “yes” to God, which transfers sovereignty from God to man. This is why the doctrine of the ordo salutis is important. In other words, it is an error if we try to become too precise on the order, because then we are saying that we can penetrate the mind of God and establish the logical order of things in the mind of God, and that’s presumptuous, but what we can affirm and must affirm is that scripture emphatically says it is God who saves us. The initiative therein is the Lord’s, not man’s.

When we say that it doesn’t matter whether we say regeneration or calling comes first, because we have affirmed the sovereignty of God.

Moreover, neither God nor his mind, nor his decree are subject to temporal process, and God is not a slave of time. Therefore, we cannot place too great an emphasis on the temporal order in which man receives salvation. What we must say is he receives it entirely from the Lord. Thus, the ordo salutis is a very important doctrinal tool if we do not use it to probe and to fathom the precise workings of God’s mind as though it were possible for us to do so, but rather to set further his sovereignty in salvation. Our salvation does not begin when we experience it, but it begins with the Lord, and with his dealings with us.

Recently, I was talking with a man who only came to know the Lord in his fifties. Now, his life and his experiences up to that point have been remarkable. He has had a very distinguished career at home and abroad, and while he felt that those were wasted years, you see, what he must say to such people is this. Because, in the ordo salutis as scripture affirms it, salvation is entirely the work of God. It begins in eternity, and because it begins in eternity, God from all eternity decrees our salvation so that a man who is converted at twenty and a man who is converted at fifty is prepared by God for that conversion, so that all his experiences are a stepping stone to that point, to feed in to what he is to become. So, we are to look at all our yesterdays in terms of God’s purpose so that God calls us out of that past which he decreed, which he ordained, so we have to say the order of salvation began from the day of our birth, when God led us through these experiences that he might some day use them as we, having that background, can understand better the particular meaning of God’s salvation for us, and its implications and apply his grace and sovereignty to all the problems of our life.

You see, it is humanism to say that our salvation depends on our choice, but it is also humanism to force an order of human logic on the mind of God. The Bible never gives us a map of the order of salvation. It simply sets forth the fact that the Lord does it. We should not go beyond that.

But, the theological academic mind loves precisionism. Just a few days ago, I had a call from a very distressed seminary student, a very brilliant student, and what he was coming to realize was that the profession, in too many cases, were playing games, using the word of God, and he said, “Do you know what Dr. So and So, one of the best Old Testament scholars in the United States, said in class today? He said of the declaration in the first chapter of Genesis, ‘Let us make man in our image,’ that it could mean that God was talking to the angels, because there’s no exclusionary clause there.” Now, as he went on to describe some of the other things this professor was saying, it was obvious that he was taking words and exploring to see how far he could stretch the meaning. Not at all surprising that this same professor believes that the whole of God’s law is a great parenthesis, and that we have interim epics in the Bible. No permanent epics from God. Now, if you don’t have any command word from God, what are you going to do but play games with the very words of scripture and what will you then do but precisely what they are doing?

Another Old Testament scholar, and I’m talking about men who are professedly Reformed and orthodox, who loves to speculate on what changes took place in the ascension body of our Lord. What happens when theology goes in for this precisionism? When we want to have every jot and tittle of the whole world and of God’s plan, and of God’s dealings, so that we can classify them and say, this is the constitution of things, why we’ve become croners{?}, for performing deceptions and autopsies, as though the word of God were something to perform a deception and an autopsy on. That’s not our calling, is it? Our calling, as Christians, and our calling as teachers, and our calling whatever we are, is to believe the word of God and to apply it. That’s a very different thing than an autopsy. If we are pastors or teachers, we are to declare and proclaim the word of God.

One of the problems in the church today is that preaching has become overly precisionist. Just as the ordo salutis has become subjected to all kinds of precisionist, over-refinement, so a great deal of pulpiteering is very massive exegesis, as though the pastor were talking to a class in Greek or in Hebrew. Well, we don’t have that type of preaching as much as was common when I was younger. It certainly {?} dull. You get so much massive detail about every word and the history thereof that you forget when you go out, unless you look at the bulletin, what was the sermon about? On the other hand, we have a great deal of teaching that is mere entertainment.

Now, when I said that some of this overly precise preaching is wrong, I’m not saying that exegesis is bad. Exegesis belongs in the study. The pulpit is the place for proclamation. It rests on exegesis, but it doesn’t bring the study notes to the pulpit. It tells perishing men what the word of salvation is. It tells redeemed me what the orders of the Lord are. It gives faith to live by. Preaching is declaratory. On the day of Pentecost, Peter stood up and he did not say, “I’m going to give you a precise exegesis of this passage in Joel.” No. He declared the meeting. He hit them with it. It was declaratory from beginning to end. The same was true of Paul at Athens. Jeremiah 31:10 gives us a very good sentence about the essence of true preaching. “Hear the word of the Lord, O ye nations, and declare it to the isles a far off.” Declare it. It’s a proclamation.

Now, when we have a proclamation, something to say, something that is good news, we hit people with it. We don’t, when we have a baby born to us, call up and say, “After eleven hours and thirty-three and a half minutes of labor, during which my wife experienced certain pangs, and her pangs progressed from twenty minutes to ten, and then to seven and a half, and then to three,” and so on, we don’t give them that kind of a report. We say, “We had a baby boy,” or a baby girl. We come out with the news, good news. Now, when news is good news, we come out with it that way in the pulpit as well. In the classroom, wherever we are as Christians, it is good news. It is declaratory, and the essence of the ordo salutis is that Jesus saves. Jesus Christ, who is Lord, saves us. God saves us through our savior. He sets forth our wealth, our power, our security in Jesus Christ, so that the ordo salutis, and our salvation, is nothing for disputation but for exaltation. That should be the note of the Christian life and of {?}. As Paul says in 2 Timothy 1:12, “For I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I hath committed unto him against that day.” Paul speaks out of a background of suffering, of persecution, of imprisonment, of beatings, of shipwreck. Let his words sing out exaltation. The ordo salutis tells us that God is God, that we can rejoice in our salvation, and that no man can alter or abate it, because it is the work of God Almighty.

Are there any questions now? Yes?

[Audience] Considering the experience I’ve had sitting in the Sunday School classes and in church, and so forth, and I kind of think about this. Do you think that most of the haggling and arguments that arise is because of precisionism, and trying to get sidetracked in all this? It seems to me in some of the cases where I’ve seen arguments and so forth that {?} the case where we got sidetracked in too much precision {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. It’s not a fundamental thing between humanism in some form or another, and God’s sovereign grace, then it is precisionism. Now, we have to be precise up to a point in order to clearly understand and expound the word of God, but precisionism goes beyond that and begins to play games. It makes precision and end in itself, and that’s where it becomes evil. Yes?

[Audience] In other words, what you’re saying is, you know, you were very precise in the last Journal in drawing distinctions in law. That was Hegee{?} during the period of the Puritans, and Hegee{?} in a lot of this and, so over time, he’s worked with precision, but that’s an important {?} because that order, and it’s in the word of God, placed there by God, and you get it from the word of God, whereas you’re saying precision isn’t this. When we project and order from our own time onto the scriptures, to force the scriptures into a mold.

[Rushdoony] Very well put. Yes?

[Audience] I just had a thought. I was just wondering if this certain matter of precisionism, or that aspect of precision which leads to a person trying to, say, force a particular idea onto another individual, isn’t that in reality, taking the place of the work of the Holy Spirit in teaching that person how to apply the word of God to his life?

[Rushdoony] Yes. Precisionism makes itself irrelevant to the word because it goes beyond the word in trying to over-define, and over-redefine what God requires of us. In other words, to illustrate, some years ago, back in the fifties, there was a movement in this country which, for awhile, had a very extensive impact. I won’t go into it because it’s dead and it’s better to leave it buried and dead, but men were seeking a higher level of faithfulness and spirituality so that in all things, they were going to seek the guidance of the Spirit. They were going to pray about every decision in their lives. That sounds marvelous, and in this one case, the man’s chickens died because he was so busy praying about every little thing, including, “What should I do now, Lord? Should I go out there and take care of the garden, or feed the chickens, or does Brother So and So need me somewhere?” Do you follow what I am saying? It was an over-refinement, which overlooks plain duty in terms of somehow finding a higher level of spirituality. It went beyond the word of God. It presumed on God, because it discounted simple faith and obedience. He had a duty to do right there in his own home, which he didn’t do. He was too busy praying about all these things. His chickens literally died, this one particular man’s chickens, and his garden, too. Yes?

[Audience] How do you see, in relationship with what we’ve been talking about, a lot of people’s rejection of the cultural mandate, or the creation mandate, and {?} exhaustive knowledge before {?} relationship {?}

[Rushdoony] Very good point, very good. When men want an exhaustive knowledge, they’re trying to play God. An exhaustive knowledge is an impossibility for man. So when man seeks exhaustive knowledge, he is, in effect saying, “I can penetrate into everything absolutely and totally, and I must do it before I can do anything.” Moreover, when men set aside the creation mandate, what do they leave themselves? Well, they leave themselves only this matter of setting something exhaustively, you see. You’ve barred action from the world, or else, from trying to live on a higher plane of spirituality, and you’ve had, of course, The Victorious Life, and Higher Plane type of thinking, Melchesowik{?} movement, and many, many other movements. So you have a whole chain of bypaths people take, simply because you’ve shut the door in their faces as far as the creation mandate is concerned, a simple obedience to the word of God. Now, consider the impact of that particular professor I mentioned, who says all of biblical law is a great parenthesis, and biblical morality is entirely an interim ethics. What is the world is the Christian going to do? What kind of Christian action is there? Well, he may ascent, I don’t know. He certainly doesn’t show much zeal, but I don’t think he would deny that you have the task of evangelism, but he certainly doesn’t make an emphasis of it, because all he’s left for anyone to do is to play games with the word of God, like what possible mean can “let us make man in our image” have? Well, that could mean God was talking to the angels, so he’s taking students through the Bible, teaching them in a seminary class to play games with the clear, plain word of God, but every other door is shut.

[Audience] Was this what was informing your thinking when you wrote your comments in the last Chalcedon letter?

[Rushdoony] What were they?

[Audience] {?} you were {?}

[Rushdoony] Critical analysis?

[Audience] Yes, critical analysis.

[Rushdoony] Yes. It is an interesting fact. It’s the second time I have written in the Chalcedon Report on critical analysis, and I haven’t gotten a kick-back yet from this one, but I know on the first occasion, it created quite a stir on some seminary campuses. The essence of critical analysis is, and it comes out of the humanistic philosophy that man can play God. He brings all things before the bar of his judgment, and he prepares himself to be the ultimate judge and lord of creation. The extent to which this is basic to our education is this. What happens when you go to college? Well, you will prepare for this earlier, but when you go to college and you take say, a course in poetry, what do you do? Do you go there to learn how to enjoy poetry? Well, that’s ridicules. You’re in that class to analyze and criticize the poetry, and to dissect it. When I went to Berkeley in the thirties, there was one elderly professor who had the notion that they all {?} faculty. He believed poetry was meant to be enjoyed, and so he had a course on the enjoyment of poetry. It was always crowded, and all the other faculty members would make fun of the old man. Why? Because they believed in critical analysis and that was the way to teach. Whereas all this man was doing was teaching students how to enjoy rather than to critique poetry, but this is the essence of the academic community today. You’re taught, no matter what kind of school it is, how to be a judge over what’s in front of you, and of course, critical analysis has been picked up by the seminaries. So, it’s very commonplace for people to say of seminary students that they had much more zeal, if not college, in their speaking and in their faith before they went to seminary, because what they learn is deception so that they can sit as judges in class after class.

Now a Christian analysis seeks to understand, not to deceive, and there is a difference. What we get in the philosophy of Van Til is Christian analysis, because at all times, we have to approach the word in simply, humble faith, but in critical analysis, you have to suspend faith as it were, and approach it in an ostensible, objective sense, as though you could be neutral and objective towards anything in scripture, and then dissect it, and somehow, by your dissection, you’re going to establish that it indeed is the word of God. So, you pass judgment on God.

Now, a classic example, of course, of this is Carnell. Carnell was a philosopher of religion who could make sometimes the most amazing and arrogant statements in class, passing judgment on the word of God, and yet professing to believe it from cover to cover. Somewhere, if I can locate it, I have a set of notes taken by a student some years ago in his classes at Fuller. Appalling. Of course, in one of his books, he makes his famous statement where he summons men to bring on their revelations to the bar of his reason, or man’s reason, to pass judgment on him. That was a mild statement to the kind of thing he made in class, but he was totally addicted, you see, to this faith in critical analyses, which is an indirect way of saying man is God. Man is the ultimate judge. So, critical analysis is destroying the church because critical analysis prevails in Christian colleges and seminaries.

[Audience] Gordon Clark’s famous words that a mystery or a paradox is a charley horse between the ears, comes to mind. There are no mysteries in the Bible.

[Rushdoony] That’s right. Well, of course, Gordon Clark logically believes there are no mysteries in the Bible because he believes that man can have an exhaustive knowledge of God. Well, then man would have to have a mind to equal to the mind of God.

Well, we’ll take a five-minute break now, and then continue with our second class.

End of tape