union with Christ

http://www.isi.edu/~chiang/personal/union.pdf

also

"He continues:

In contrast to the Romish doctrine, Perkins wanted to be clear that, relative to acceptance with God, Christ’s righteousness is truly extra nos (outside us) but he himself does not remain so. Again, one hears Calvin saying: If Christ remains outside of us, he is of no benefit to us. By virtue of Sprit-wrought union with Christ, we become bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.

This ends up being a Cheshire cat conception of justification: Christ is within the believer, but His righteousness is not within the believer. When Christ comes into the believer, He leaves His righteousness outside the door of the believer’s soul. Of course this would entail that the Christ in the believer is unrighteous, or at least that His righteousness is external to Him as well, at least when and where He is in the believer. It would imply that the righteousness of the Christ within the believer is alien not only to the believer, but also to the Christ in the believer. The problematic character of these implications need no explanation."  comment 347 in part: http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/08/imputation-and-paradigms-a-reply-to-nicholas-batzig/#comment-38204  below the quote is also from this.

"This position presupposes the list paradigm of righteousness, according to which it is not the case that Christ is our supernatural Righteousness and we are made righteous by the gift of participation in Him, but that Christ’s righteousness is something that can be separated from Him, because it is a set of acts of obedience to the law by Christ in His human will. In the agape paradigm, by contrast, Christ in His human nature was righteous from conception because of sanctifying grace and infused agape, before [logically] in His human will He obeyed the Father. Implicit within the list paradigm is a rejection of the traditional distinction between nature and grace, and between the natural order and the supernatural order. Barrett shows as much in his discussion of the Reformed conception of the Covenant of Works, in his article “Pelagian Westminster?.”

Another difficulty for Clark’s position is that it has no means of coherently distinguishing between the sense in which Christ is uniquely in the believer, and the sense in which Christ is everywhere by His omnipresence. If Christ is truly united to us internally, then so is His righteousness, because He is nowhere unrighteous. If, on the other hand, Christ’s righteousness is not united to us internally, then Clark’s claim that Christ is in us is reduced to the equivalent of Christ’s omnipresence in bees, trees and rocks. “Vital union” is not an option for Clark, because ‘vital union’ does not cohere with the conjunction of (a) the rejection of participation in the divine nature and (b) affirming the Creator-creature distinction, as I explained in “Nature, Grace, and Man’s Supernatural End: Feingold, Kline, and Clark.” The problem Barrett explained with the notion that Adam and Eve’s pre-Fall fellowship with God in the cool of the day was by unaided human nature and not by infused grace, is the same problem with the notion that without infused grace (see comment #3 in the “Pelagian Westminster?” thread) believers can have “vital union” with Christ."

Catholic Encyclopedia, article Supernatural Gift(http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06553a.htm)

A supernatural gift may be defined as something conferred on nature that is above all the powers (vires) of created nature. When God created man, He was not content with bestowing upon him the essential endowments required by man’s nature. He raised him to a higher state, adding certain gifts to which his nature had no claim. They comprise qualities and perfections, forces and energies, dignities and rights, destination to final objects, of which the essential constitution of man is not the principle; which are not required for the attainment of the final perfection of the natural order of man; and which can only be communicated by the free operation of God’s goodness and power. Some of these are absolutely supernatural, i.e. beyond the reach of all created nature (even of the angels), and elevate the creature to a dignity and perfection natural to God alone; others are only relatively supernatural (preternatural), i.e. above human nature only and elevate human nature to that state of higher perfection which is natural to the angels. The original state of man comprised both of these, and when he fell he lost both. Christ has restored to us the absolutely supernatural gifts, but the preternatural gifts He has not restored. …

The absolutely supernatural gifts, which alone are the supernatural properly so called, are summed up in the divine adoption of man to be the son and heir of God. This expression, and the explanations given of it by the sacred writers, make it evident that the sonship is something far more than a relation founded upon the absence of sin; it is of a thoroughly intimate character, raising the creature from its naturally humble estate, and making it the object of a peculiar benevolence and complaisance on God’s part, admitting it to filial love, and enabling it to become God’s heir, i.e. a partaker of God’s own beatitude. …

Divine adoption is a new birth of the soul (John 1:12-13 and 3:5; 1 John 3:9; 5:1; 1 Peter 1:3 and 1:23; James 1:18; Titus 3:5, Ephesians 2:5). This regeneration implies the foundation of a higher state of being and life, resulting from a special Divine influence, and admitting us to the dignity of sons of God. “For whom he foreknew, he also predestinated to be made conformable to the image of his Son; that he might be the firstborn amongst many brethren” (Romans 8:29). cf. also 2 Corinthians 3:18; Galatians 3:26-27 and 4:19; Romans 13:14. As a consequence of this Divine adoption and new birth we are made “partakers of the divine nature” (theias koinonoi physeos, 2 Peter 1:4). The whole context of this passage and the passages already quoted show that this expression is to be taken as literally as possible not, indeed, as a generation from the substance of God, but as a communication of Divine life by the power of God, and a most intimate indwelling of His substance in the creature. Hence, too, the inheritance is not confined to natural goods. It embraces the possession and fruition of the good which is the natural inheritance of the Son of God, viz., the beatific vision.

"We are now the sons of God; and it hath not yet appeared what we shall be. We know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like to him because we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2). "We see now through a glass in a dark manner; but then [in the beatific vision] face to face" (1 Corinthians 13:12). The Fathers have not hesitated to callsupernatural union of the creature with God the deification of the creature. This is a favorite expression of St. Irenæus ("Adv. Haer.", III, xvii, xix; IV, xx, etc.), and is frequently used by St. Athanasius (see Newman, "St. Athanasius", II, 88). See alsoSt. Augustine (? Serm. cxci, "In Nat. Dom."), quoted by St. Thomas (III:1:3).

see also my link on Theosis:  http://nannykim-catholicconsiderations.blogspot.com/2012/10/theosis.html

from comment 34 here : http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/11/how-the-church-won-an-interview-with-jason-stellman/#comment-39945

 Salvation, then, consists in becoming a partaker of the divine nature. That means becoming by adoption what God is by nature; the Greek word for that is theosis, “divinization.” Since God is free, divinization does not override our freedom, but frees it from slavery to sin. Thus it is only when we have become partakers of the divine nature by baptism that we are free to follow the two great commandments of love–or not. That does not mean we earn grace by our own power of free choice; it means that our own power of free choice is enabled, by God’s unmerited communication of his own nature, to choose as God wills within us, and thus to partake of the divine nature. Being finally saved, therefore, does not displace our freedom but restores it–if we would but have it so. That is synergism, not monergism. Synergism is both biblical and patristic.

from comment 51 here: http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/11/how-the-church-won-an-interview-with-jason-stellman/#comment-39984

 Do Protestants really believe imputations means an external declaration and not an internal change?

 Many Protestants do, including the ones participating in this thread. Catholics believe that justification, which happens by God’s declaring us righteous, i>also initiates sanctification, and thus internal change. Thus God’s declaring us righteous makes us truly righteous, and does not merely cover over sin.

Just before that, you asked a series of questions:
The concept I am trying to understand, then, is if I become a partaker of the divine nature because I am in Christ, then am I not participating in “His” righteousness (a righteousness outside of myself that somehow becomes internal)? When Christ’s righteousness is united to us internally is this not “His” righteousness? As you stated, it is a “communication of His own nature”.Is the only difference, between this concept and imputation , the idea that one is external and the other is internal? How is the internal “my” righteousness? Do I become so united with Christ’s nature that our natures ……are one and the same so that it is now my righteousness ? 

When we become righteous, the life of God is lived within us and transforms us, so that our actions performed by his grace become his actions and vice-versa, by a cooperation of wills. That’s what it means to undergo the process of divinization. We do not become God by nature, but by participation.

from comment 169 found on this post: http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/06/reformed-imputation-and-the-lords-prayer/#comment-50610

 We are not physically in heaven, yet the inspired apostle says we are there now (Eph. 2:6);

Your interpretation of this verse makes both St. Paul and the Holy Spirit (who inspired him) to be speaking a falsehood. We on earth are not ourselves in heaven now. The meaning of the verse is that Christ took with Him human nature (which we share with Him), when He ascended (today’s feast!). And because we are joined with Him through baptism, therefore through the Church (which is His Mystical Body) we are already in heaven with Him through His being there and through our union with Him. But that is not the same as our being there directly. St. Paul is not speaking falsely.

from comment 347 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/08/imputation-and-paradigms-a-reply-to-nicholas-batzig/comment-page-7/#comment-38219

answering the first paragraph's statement:

He continues:

In contrast to the Romish doctrine, Perkins wanted to be clear that, relative to acceptance with God, Christ’s righteousness is truly extra nos (outside us) but he himself does not remain so. Again, one hears Calvin saying: If Christ remains outside of us, he is of no benefit to us. By virtue of Sprit-wrought union with Christ, we become bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.

This ends up being a Cheshire cat conception of justification: Christ is within the believer, but His righteousness is not within the believer. When Christ comes into the believer, He leaves His righteousness outside the door of the believer’s soul. Of course this would entail that the Christ in the believer is unrighteous, or at least that His righteousness is external to Him as well, at least when and where He is in the believer. It would imply that the righteousness of the Christ within the believer is alien not only to the believer, but also to the Christ in the believer. The problematic character of these implications need no explanation.

This position presupposes the list paradigm of righteousness, according to which it is not the case that Christ is our supernatural Righteousness and we are made righteous by the gift of participation in Him, but that Christ’s righteousness is something that can be separated from Him, because it is a set of acts of obedience to the law by Christ in His human will. In the agape paradigm, by contrast, Christ in His human nature was righteous from conception because of sanctifying grace and infused agape, before [logically] in His human will He obeyed the Father. Implicit within the list paradigm is a rejection of the traditional distinction between nature and grace, and between the natural order and the supernatural order. Barrett shows as much in his discussion of the Reformed conception of the Covenant of Works, in his article “Pelagian Westminster?.”

Another difficulty for Clark’s position is that it has no means of coherently distinguishing between the sense in which Christ is uniquely in the believer, and the sense in which Christ is everywhere by His omnipresence. If Christ is truly united to us internally, then so is His righteousness, because He is nowhere unrighteous. If, on the other hand, Christ’s righteousness is not united to us internally, then Clark’s claim that Christ is in us is reduced to the equivalent of Christ’s omnipresence in bees, trees and rocks. “Vital union” is not an option for Clark, because ‘vital union’ does not cohere with the conjunction of (a) the rejection of participation in the divine nature and (b) affirming the Creator-creature distinction, as I explained in “Nature, Grace, and Man’s Supernatural End: Feingold, Kline, and Clark.” The problem Barrett explained with the notion that Adam and Eve’s pre-Fall fellowship with God in the cool of the day was by unaided human nature and not by infused grace, is the same problem with the notion that without infused grace (see comment #3 in the “Pelagian Westminster?” thread) believers can have “vital union” with Christ.

from comment 45 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2011/07/habitual-sin-and-the-grace-of-the-sacraments/

If you don’t have time to answer, that’s fine. I still want to consider one claim you made. You wrote:

Participation is an essential element to the Reformed eschatology and soteriology. It is not the same as Rome, but Rome does not have an monopoly on what participation is.

No doubt Rome does not have a monopoly on what participation is. But surely English speakers do. I’m reminded of Humpty Dumpty’s dialogue with Alice:

There’s glory for you!’
‘I don’t know what you mean by “glory”,’ Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. ‘Of course you don’t — till I tell you. I meant “there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!”‘
‘But “glory” doesn’t mean “a nice knock-down argument”,’ Alice objected.
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.’

If you define ‘participation’ in such a way that even a mere forensic or covenantal relationship is a form of participation, and then claim that your position includes participation because there is a covenantal relationship between God and creature, your position would be no different [in substance] if you had denied that your position involved ‘participation,’ but involved only a forensic or covenantal relationship between God and man. So semantics is doing all the work here. The question is whether extrinsic relations are rightly called participation relations.

When we speak of participation, we often mean something much more [ontological] than a mere extrinsic relation. The organs of a body, for example, participate in the life of that organism; they are [parts of] that organism, not merely extrinsically related to it. To define ‘participation’ such that it refers not only to ontological relations but also to all extrinsic relations would reduce the meaning of the term ‘participation’ to the present meaning of the word ‘relation,’ and thus essentially eliminate the need for the term ‘participation,’ since [by the stipulated definition] there could not be any relations that were not participatory relations. As Incrediboy points out, when everything is super, then nothing is super. In other words, when every relation is by definition ‘participatory’ then the term ‘participatory’ does not add anything to the term ‘relation,’ and is thus evacuated of meaning. So in this way your semantic claim here stipulatively eliminates the distinction between participatory relationships and non-participatory relationships, and such an elimination is a methodological denial that there is such a thing as ontological participation. In that respect, it seems to me that your semantic claim begs the question, i.e. assumes precisely that the covenantal view of union is right, and that the ontological conception of [participatory] union is false.

I wonder what you think of Chapter 18 of Michael Horton’s recent book, The Christian Faith. The title of this chapter is “Union with Christ,” and in it, he defines union with Christ as covenantal, and rejects an ontological union (which he describes as ‘fusion’). But this ontological union is what we [Catholics] are talking about when we speak of receiving grace in the sacraments. We are not talking about the strengthening of a promise between God and man. Nor are we talking about a growth in knowledge of what God has done for us. Nor are we talking about an elimination of individual identity or claiming that in heaven Christians cease to be creatures. By no means. Rather, through the Catholic sacraments we are growing in our ontological participation in the divine nature, such that we, by divine condescension and gift, come more and more to have God’s nature as our second nature. This is why we are truly called sons of God by adoption. The adoption is not merely stipulative, but by the sacraments we truly are made to share in the divine nature, such that by His gracious gift, we become sons of God through ontological union with the Son of God. This is what the tradition means by ‘theosis’ and ‘deification.’ See my “Horton on Being Made One Flesh with Christ.” My point here is that if you think Horton is wrong (about the nature of union with Christ), then it seems to me that you are distancing yourself from the Reformed tradition. But if you think Horton is right, then it seems that you can’t rightly call your position ‘participatory,’ because even though God gives us gifts (on that view), we are not ontological sharers in the divine nature, and the relation between God and creatures remains extrinsic.

and from comment 81: 

I don’t deny that in the Reformed system the bread and wine represent Christ’s body and blood. But Zwingli said as much. When I ask you what sort of union you are talking about (when you say “we are united to Christ’s person”) you respond by saying that “What the Holy Spirit does is unite us to Christ through the Supper.” But the nature of that union is precisely what I am asking you to explain. So it does no good to explain “united to Christ’s person” by saying that the Holy Spirit unites us to Christ. It repeats the term in question (‘united’) with the same term (‘unite’).

As you may have seen in my “Sinclair Ferguson comment,” in the Reformed system there is no middle position between fusion on the one hand, and mere covenantal union on the other. Hence, when you start talking about an “existential union,” you are saying something that, in the Reformed system, is either semantic gibberish, or is incompatible with the Reformed system, since there is no room in the Reformed system for grace as a “participation in the divine nature.” But there is no other way (I can see) to make sense of an existential union with Christ (where our very existence/being is His own) except by participation in the divine nature. In other words participation in the divine nature is the only option between covenantal [i.e. extrinsic] union on the one hand, and Creator-creature distinction-erasing fusion on the other hand.

from comment 92

You’re right that among the early Reformers the term “saving graces” was used. I noted as much incomment #3 of the “Pelagian Westminster?” thread, and in #87 above. But Clark has a good reason for wanting to use a different term for what the WLC refers to as “saving graces.” See Sinclair Ferguson’s statement in comment #54 of the “Nature, Grace, and Man’s Supernatural End” thread. Ferguson’s position is the contemporary Reformed (and Protestant) position. I see it over and over coming from Reformed leaders, not just Clark and Horton. Timothy George says something similar in his bookAmazing Grace. In fact, I can’t think of a single Reformed leader who would take issue with what Ferguson says there.

The reason Clark does not want to use the term ‘grace’ for what the early Reformers were referring to when they used terms like “saving graces” is that what they were referring to is entirely different from what in Catholic theology is meant by the terms ‘actual grace’ and ‘sanctifying grace.’ In Reformed theology these ‘saving graces’ are God working in us to repair our fallen nature. So we could more accurately describe them as divinely wrought repairs to our human nature. In Reformed theology nothing divine is actually “infused” into us; rather, God works in us to repair what is fallen to its original nature. That’s why it is misleading (given Reformed theology) to speak of graces being infused into the believer; it is like saying that a repair was infused into your car at the shop. Repairs are not the sort of things that are infused; repairs are made, effected or accomplished, not infused.

In Catholic doctrine, grace is ordered to our supernatural end, and human nature is not itself fallen, as I have described in “Nature, Grace, and Man’s Supernatural End: Feingold, Kline, and the Clark.” So in Catholic doctrine grace is rightly described as infused, because it is not a repair, but is a participation in the divine nature, not something we have by nature, or effected by repairing something we have by nature.

Of course Clark is not denying sanctification, and not denying that the Spirit effects sanctification through Word and sacraments. So he is not denying the selections from the WLC and the WSC to which you refer. He is trying to avoid semantic confusion between the Catholic understanding of grace as infused participation in the divine nature, and the Reformed notion of the Spirit working in us to repair our fallen human nature. See pages 575-579 of volume 3 of Bavink’s Reformed Dogmatics. Repairing our fallen nature does not entail that there is any ontological union with Christ, or any participation in the divine nature, i.e. theosis. So, I don’t see that the statements to which you are referring (in the WSC, WLC, etc.) falsify anything I said. No Reformed person I know would ever say that God doesn’t sanctify believers, and nothing I said, so far as I can tell, entails or implies that Reformed theology denies that God works in believers to sanctify them. So if sanctification is all that is meant by “infusion of graces,” then of course Reformed theology affirms that. But, at that point we’re meaning something so different by “infusion of grace” that we’re equivocating and possibly misleading, for the reasons I’ve just explained. And that’s what Clark is trying to avoid, it seems to me.

from comment 43 here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/12/rome-geneva-and-the-incarnations-native-soil/

I agree that participation includes and is ordered to fellowship, but there can be no fellowship with God without participation, because a creature cannot have fellowship with God without grace. (See “Pelagian Westminster?“) Fellowship with God is not merely loving Him as Creator, but loving Him as Father. And that involves loving Him with the Love by which He loves Himself. Our participation in that Love by which God Loves Himself is what is called agape. And as St. Thomas explains in Summa Theologica I-II Q.110 a.3, grace is not the same thing as agape, or faith or hope. Rather, faith, hope, and agape are said to be supernatural infused virtues (i.e. excellencies), that direct us to that supernatural end (of knowing and loving God as He knows and loves Himself). But they cannot be excellencies within us in relation to *our* human nature, because that would elide the Creator-creature distinction, which is the error of Pelagianism, as I have explained here. As St. Thomas explains, faith, hope, and agape can be excellencies for us only if by grace we are made sharers in the divine nature. Hence he writes:

But it is manifest that the virtues acquired by human acts of which we spoke above (55, seqq.) are dispositions, whereby a man is fittingly disposed with reference to the nature whereby he is a man; whereas infused virtues dispose man in a higher manner and towards a higher end, and consequently in relation to some higher nature, i.e. in relation to a participation of the Divine Nature, according to 2 Peter 1:4: “He hath given us most great and most precious promises; that by these you may be made partakers of the Divine Nature.” And it is in respect of receiving this nature that we are said to be born again sons of God.

And thus, even as the natural light of reason is something besides the acquired virtues, which are ordained to this natural light, so also the light of grace which is a participation of the Divine Nature is something besides the infused virtues which are derived from and are ordained to this light, hence the Apostle says (Ephesians 5:8): “For you were heretofore darkness, but now light in the Lord. Walk then as children of the light.” For as the acquired virtues enable a man to walk, in accordance with the natural light of reason, so do the infused virtues enable a man to walk as befits the light of grace.

So the infused virtues (i.e. faith, hope, and agape) dispose us to that supernatural end, but they do so as virtues in relation to a nature, one by which these are virtues, and to which these virtues are directed. In the case of natural virtues, we have our natural powers through our human nature, and our natural virtues are directed to the end or telos of human nature. But because of the Creator-creature distinction, our natural end is not God’s perfect divine life; we are not God. So in order to share in God’s perfect divine life, we need grace, by which we are made participants in the divine nature, such that we can enter into the divine life. This is why even Adam and Eve needed grace *before* the Fall in order to have fellowship with God. To deny this is to deny the Creator-creature distinction, and thus either fall into polytheism (i.e. by treating man’s given nature as equivalent to God’s) or atheism (i.e. by reducing God’s nature to that of a mere man).

from comment 54

The divine nature is eternal, but the participation itself is not, since the creature participating in the divine nature is not eternal. Yet, the object of the participation is God. So, the creature, by this participation, does ‘get’ something “in God,” namely, he participates in the divine nature, as St. Peter says in 2 Peter 1:4.

Participation in God is not the same as God; otherwise, there would be no Creator-creature distinction. Participation is created; God is uncreated. Hence participation can be lost (through mortal sin) by that which is participating. Hence though the Love by which through grace we love Him is a participation in God’s Love for Himself, we can lose this Love through mortal sin, precisely because this Love in us is a participation.

also here a comment on participation and philosophy: comment 61 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/12/rome-geneva-and-the-incarnations-native-soil/

 I just want to say that this idea of that Augustine introduced a legacy of ontology significantly determined by Neoplatonic sensibilities has been essentially dismissed by modern scholarship (see Lewis Ayres and Michel Rene Barnes among Catholic scholars and Maarten Wisse among Reformed scholars). The same (i.e., that the doctrine of participation was Biblical and not fundamentally Neoplatonic) has been abundantly clear among scholars of the Eastern Fathers for many years. So if your critique is based on such dated and inaccurate characterizations, it is hard to take seriously. In any case, it is extremely clear that the pro-Nicene account that supported conciliar Christianity was based on exactly this concept of participation, articulated in terms of the person/nature distinction. Therefore, your argument would prove too much, in that it would tar the entire history of Christianity with the Neoplatonic brush.

Unlike animals, human beings have certain capacities for instance, to learn languages or a capacity for generosity. These capacities are realized in action when particular human beings speak languages or perform generous actions. But between capacity and action there is an intermediate state possible. when we say that a man can speak french, we mean neither that he is actually speaking french, nor that speaking french is a mere logical possibly, States such as knowing french are dispositions. A disposition is halfway between a capacity and an action, between pure potentiality and actuality.For Aquinas regeneration is an infused habit or disposition that is somewhere between a mere logical possibility and a realized action: prevenient, but not actual grace.Auqinas writes” infuses the gift of justifying grace in such a way that, at the same time, he also moves the free choice to accept the gift of grace” the forgiveness of sins”. The case of infant baptism is paradigmatic for this process from infused justification to forgiveness of sins. Regeneration replaces imputation: God works in us is the basis of forgiveness.

Exactly, and orthodox Christianity formulates that distinction in terms of nature (capacity) versus person (exercise). So long as the capacity is supernatural, its exercise cannot possibly be the work of the person. But this does not imply that the person does not actualize it, i.e., that God does not work through the person. So Aquinas’s distinction is well-grounded in the categories historically articulated by conciliar Christianity.

For Calvin we by contrast say” that justification consists in the remission of sins and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. If we make regeneration to be the basis of the non imputation of sin, as Tomas had it, there remains no reason to distinguish between the two. Regeneration, after all, is sanctification viewed from the angle of an initiating moment rather than a larger process. Hence, Calvin insists on the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, in this development the decisive role was played for the reformed by Calvin’s response to challenge of a one-time Lutheran ny the name of Osiander. Byan salvation is ethical and juridicial as opposed to ontological and mystical. Calvin held that the righteousness of Christ is not a substance but his active obedience in fulfillment of the law and passive obedience on the cross. Calvin made a significant contribution in the distinction between essential righteousness and acquired righteousness, not only to the reformed but also to Protetantism in general. ”

I agree with you that Calvin’s position was an innovation that he himself introduced. And that innovation would rightly be characterized as a contradiction or a corruption of the nature/person distinction, rather than a development. As we saw above with your characterization of Aquinas, you have essentially collapsed the nature/person distinction that is fundamental to understanding Aquinas’s position. This collapse of the nature/person distinction was characteristic of the late medieval nominalism in which Calvin was steeped, so he had to invent a completely new category to account for it, which was this idea of ethical/juridical/covenantal salvation. Unfortunately, that category is itself contradictory of the metaphysical account of participation (nature and person) on which conciliar Christianity was built. So while you claim not to be introducing philosophical concepts, you are in fact relying on a philosophy (late medieval nominalism) that cannot be reconciled with Christianity.

By contrast, history has shown that conciliar Christianity used the categories of nature and person *without* relying on the underlying Neoplatonic philosophy; it legitimately transformed the philosophical categories to fit the Biblical categories. In fact, the heretics like Arius, Eunomius, and Nestorius were the ones who relied on philosophical categories to negate Biblical teaching, so the orthodox Fathers were actually the ones opposing the misuse of philosophy. This is the same method that Paul used in the Areopagus, and indeed, one of the most influential Christian saints was actually believed to be the same Dionysius the Areopagite mentioned in the Bible. Ironically, you are setting Calvin’s philosophical invention (the concept of free-standing juridical/legal salvation) against the dogmas taught by the very people who opposed the Neoplatonizing of the Gospel, the orthodox Fathers of the Church. Nor does Biblical scholarship support this idea of justification as juridical/legal salvation being separate from sanctification, as numerous Catholic Biblical scholars have pointed out. This isn’t to say that juridical/legal salvation plays no role, but it is grounded in the fundamental categories of the Incarnation, nature and person.

Absent that artificial separation, one would not read Bible verses as you do. For example, one would not view Peter’s communion with the divine nature as a purely covenantal category, even though that is clearly an aspect of the communion described therein. Likewise, one would understand the sense of “perfection” in Hebrews in terms of participation rather than a purely legal category, so those who are saved are legitimately perfected when they are baptized, even though that perfection can still be lost. Rather than reading the Bible through the philosophical categories of Calvin, which you admit that he invented, I would encourage you to put the late medieval nominalism aside and instead read the Bible through the categories of the Fathers who fought against the philosophers and defended the Biblical teaching.