Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 50:2 (Jun 2007)
Article: The New Perspective On Calvin: Responding To Recent Calvin Interpretations
Author: Thomas L. Wenger

JETS 50:2 (June 2007) p. 311

The New Perspective On Calvin: Responding To Recent Calvin Interpretations

Thomas L. Wenger

Thomas Wenger resides at 625 Lion’s Gate Lane, Odenton, MD 21113.

Within the last decade a noticeable shift has occurred in certain strains of Reformation scholarship that has challenged the traditional understanding of Calvin’s theology in significant areas. One challenge that has recurred in several forms is the attempt to establish something of a realigning of Calvin’s doctrines of justification and sanctification, asserting that the tradition has portrayed them too disparately. The alternative proposed by recent scholarship is the claim that rather than employing a distinct priority of justification to sanctification akin to that of the Reformed Scholastics, Calvin subsumed all his soteriology (and for some indeed his entire theology) under the rubric of union with Christ.1 Thus, in the words of Richard Gaffin,

Calvin destroys Rome’s charge [of antinomianism] by showing that faith, in its Protestant understanding, entails a disposition to holiness without particular reference to justification, a concern for Godliness that is not to be understood only as a consequence of justification. Calvin proceeds as he does, and is free to do so, because for him the relative “ordo” or priority of justification and sanctification is indifferent theologically. Rather, what has controlling soteriological importance is the priority to both of (spiritual, “existential,” faith-) to union with Christ.2

In calling this recent brand of Calvin interpretation the “New Perspective on Calvin” (hereafter NPC), I do not intend to infer illegitimate relations with NT studies, nor even with Mannermaa and the new Finnish school of Luther

JETS 50:2 (June 2007) p. 312

interpretation.3 While parallels may exist, there is no agenda here of establishing guilt by association.4 In addition, I do not suggest even for a moment that there is a conscious mentality among the scholars here mentioned to establish a “new school” of Calvin interpretation, or that they are in concert with one another on all the issues involved. My grouping of them stems from their academic association with one another, their reliance on each other’s scholarship, and through their similar arguments in favor of a reinterpretation of Calvin’s notion of the relationship of justification and sanctification.5 While these scholars highlight aspects of Ca...