Buchanan's Lectures 2 and 3

To trace the history of the doctrine of Justification in the Apostolic Age, examining the errors among Gentiles and Jews, how Christ and the Apostles dealt with them, and the controversies that arose in the early church.

1. Reliance on what they were, had done, or might do (self-righteousness). 2. Reliance on mere rites and ceremonies in formal observance of religious worship.

1. Overlooking the guilt of sin and its effect in subjecting the sinner to condemnation. 2. Overlooking the spirituality of the Law. 3. Overlooking or underrating the penal sentence of the Law. 4. Overlooking or proudly denying their inability to deliver themselves from sin.

The Promise was given to Abraham 430 years before the Law was added; therefore, the Law cannot disannul the Promise. If the inheritance is by Promise, it is by faith; if by Law, it would be by works.

The Law was added to convict of sin, showing its heinousness and the sinner's helplessness, thereby driving the sinner to Christ for justification by faith.

Self-righteousness: they were ignorant of God's righteousness and sought to establish their own righteousness, trusting in their works, ceremonies, and privileges rather than in God's grace.

They divided men into three classes: the righteous (good works preponderated), the wicked (evil works preponderated), and the neutral (works exactly balanced). This revealed their ignorance of the Law's spirituality, which holds that offending in one point makes one guilty of all.

Only by expiatory suffering (personal punishment or penance), not by free grace. Good works could not cancel sin, but sin could not cancel the merit of good works either; both had to be dealt with according to their deserts.

They held that circumcision had such sovereign virtue that no circumcised person could finally perish, as Abraham himself would secure their exemption from hell and admission to heaven.

1. The placability of God. 2. The efficacy of repentance. 3. The merit of personal rectitude.

It led to pride and self-sufficiency. Stoics represented virtue as independent of God; Epicureans denied God's providential and moral government; all lacked a definite doctrine of justification by grace.

He expounded the spiritual meaning of the Law, its requirement of heart obedience, its penal sentence extending to everlasting punishment, and the need for inward regeneration, to convict them of sin and their need for another method of justification.

They first applied the Law (whether of Nature or Revelation) for conviction of sin, proving that all were under sin and that by works of the Law no flesh could be justified. Then they proclaimed the righteousness of God by faith in Christ.

The objection was that Paul's doctrine nullified the Law. Paul responded, "Yea, we establish the law," showing he was speaking of the moral law, not merely the ceremonial.

The objection was that justification by grace alone would encourage sin. This reveals that Paul's justification was understood by both sides to be distinct from sanctification; otherwise, the objection would have no force.

The controversy over whether Gentile believers must be circumcised and keep the Law of Moses. It raised the fundamental question of whether faith in Christ alone is sufficient for justification without obedience to any law (ceremonial or moral) as the ground.

Timothy was circumcised because he was half-Jewish, to avoid offending Jews (a matter of expediency and not compromising doctrine). Titus, a Greek, was not circumcised because false brethren sought to compel it as necessary for salvation, which would compromise the truth of the Gospel.

"I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more." To the Jews he became as a Jew, to those under the law as under the law, to those without law as without law, not dissembling but adapting his conduct to win souls without compromising the Gospel.

They denied the reality of Christ's human body and thus His real sufferings and atoning death. This undermined the very foundation of justification, which rests on the shedding of His blood.

He wrote, "Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist."

First class: Gnostic, Ebionite, Arian—relating to Theology proper (Trinity, Incarnation, natures of Christ). Second class: Manichean, Pelagian, Semi-pelagian—relating to Anthropology (man's nature, free will, sin, grace).

Athanasius established the real incarnation and supreme divinity of Christ, securing the sufficiency of His atonement. Augustine established total depravity and the freeness and efficacy of divine grace, excluding human merit and exalting God's grace as the foundation of salvation.

Because Romanists have misused Augustine to support their doctrine. Augustine used "Merit" to mean "means of obtaining," not legal desert. He used "Justification" broadly to include sanctification, but he did not confound the two or make inherent righteousness the ground of acceptance.

1. Works done before faith are not good, but evil (splendida peccata). 2. Works done after faith, though good, are so imperfect they need to be sprinkled with the blood of Christ and accepted only through His merits.

Buchanan responds that this is historically false. He adduces testimonies from Fathers across every century (e.g., Clement, Ignatius, Irenaeus, Ambrose, Augustine, Anselm, Bernard) proving the doctrine was held by some witnesses in every age.

To prove a matter of fact—that the Protestant doctrine was not a novelty—not as authorities in matters of faith or as a complex rule of interpretation. They are witnesses, not judges.

Their inferiority is accounted for by the absence of inspiration. However, they still show a faith, love, hope, and new spiritual life rooted in the person and work of Christ, contrasting sharply with all contemporaneous pagan literature.

The lively expression of a faith so assured they would die for it; a zeal kindled by love; a hope sustaining in trial; peace and joy sweetening persecution; and a new spiritual life rooted in a Divine Redeemer.

Animal sacrifice continued universally among all nations, accompanied by confession, fasting, lustrations, and even human sacrifice. This shows that conscience everywhere pointed to the need for expiation, satisfaction, and vicarious means of securing pardon.

All false religions (Gentile, Jewish, Mohammedan, Pelagian, Popish, Socinian, etc.) share the same radical principle: self-righteousness or self-sufficiency, as opposed to dependence on God's grace.

A system that attempted to explain doctrine by the philosophy of Aristotle, substituting philosophy for tradition. Its radical error was substituting the inherent righteousness of man for the imputed righteousness of Christ as the ground of justification.

1. Justifying grace as a subjective, infused quality rather than God's free favour. 2. Good works as meritorious conditions of pardon. 3. The distinction between precepts and "Counsels of Perfection" leading to works of supererogation and the sale of indulgences.

Scholasticism contained the germs of Popery, and Popery was Scholasticism developed and full-blown. All corruptions coalesced in the sale of Indulgences.

It shows a thoroughly Protestant understanding of justification: placing all confidence in Christ's death alone, offering His merits for our own, and using Christ's death as the sole refuge between the sinner and God's judgment.

He meant that even the believer's best works are so imperfect and defiled by remaining sin that they cannot form any part of the ground of justification; we must flee to mercy alone.

With outward safety and worldly prosperity, the prospect of martyrdom was removed. Multitudes professed Christianity without genuine faith, leading to a declining sense of sin, indifference, formality, and vulnerability to heresies like Arianism.

1. Relying on national privileges. 2. Trusting in their connection with Abraham. 3. Boasting in the Law and circumcision as the badge of their special relation to God.

The seeds of error and corruption were present even in the apostolic age (e.g., Judaizers, Gnostics) and gradually spread and fermented over time, culminating in the predicted apostasy and the rise of the "Man of Sin."

self-righteousness; self-sufficiency

Promise; Law; Gospel

expiatory suffering; works

evil; blood

inherent; imputed

1. The promise of a Saviour. 2. The rite of sacrifice. 3. The distinction between clean and unclean animals.

1. The revealed promise of a Saviour (corrupted by tradition). 2. The practice of sacrificial worship. 3. The instinctive dictates of conscience. 4. God's dispensations in providence.

1. Reliance on national privileges as a covenant people. 2. Trust in their descent from Abraham. 3. Boasting in the Law and circumcision.

1. The placability of God. 2. The efficacy of repentance. 3. The merit of personal rectitude.

1. Justifying grace as an infused quality (subjective grace). 2. Good works as meritorious conditions of pardon. 3. Counsels of Perfection and works of supererogation.