**I see Richard Sibbes, and his camp — The Spiritual Brethren — as very closely tied to their Scottish counterparts, also known as Evangelical Calvinist** — Let me just add, if you’re going to comment make sure it’s on point to this post; if you are going to say its wrong then show me how Perkins, for example is being misrepresented. Don’t give me these anecdotal assertions like: “well, that’s not what Federal Theology really teaches,” or whatever other red herrings you want to use. I’m dealing with the “history” of Federal Calvinism, not what you “think” it entails in your comfortable, insulated “Calvinist” environs.**

Richard Sibbes, English Puritan and pastor, according to Ron Frost, believed that the “law” was not the mechanism for determining if a person was one of the elect of God. This is contrary to the federal, or covenantal view forwarded by William Perkins and others. In fact, it was by keeping the law, by the Spirits’ enablement, according to Perkins, that a person ultimately would ‘realize’ their justification. Notice:

. . . In England John Bradford, Thomas Wilcox, and Richard Greenham all pointed to the law for the same purpose. Tipson links these men to Perkins’ theology in arguing that they all represented a model in which conversion is a process rather than a dramatic event. . . . (Ron Frost, “Richard Sibbes’ Theology of Grace and the Division of English Reformed Theology,” 28)

Of course none of these men, as good Protestants, would be asserting that any of these good works, or “law-keeping”, would be anything other than Christ’s good works flowing through them — albeit as they cooperate with the Holy Spirit or Grace.

This position has been labeled, “Nomist”, or in English, “Law-ist”, someone who places a high premium on the Mosaic law, and its function in the appropriation of salvation (of course this all needs to caveated with the fact that this “keeping of the Law,” is what defines Christ’s “active obedience,” but the real problem here is how the Federalist understands “union with Christ”). This emphasis, known as Federal theology, is being revivified today by some. Contrary to Perkins, Richard Sibbes forwarded an anti-nomist position which emphasized the immediacy and direct work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the elect — which both served as the means of salvation, which immediately resulted in “real” spiritual union with Christ.

Sibbes offered his more characteristic view of the law in The Hidden Life in which he argued that a persons’ affections are drawn to Christ in the regenerated life so that a Christian becomes functionally dead to the law. A person is not to look for salvation or even “comfort” from the use of the “moral law”. In his making the point that salvation is not found in keeping the moral, Sibbes was simply repeating an orthodoxy shared by the nomists. The context in which he placed the point is the distinctive element. He held that Christ’s communion with a believer is in some sense perceptible. Such experiences of communion, generally regarded as spontaneous increases of affection for Christ, transcend the law as a guide for behavior. As in marriage, the mutual commitment of love, rather than rule-driven behaviors, was seen to be the point of spiritual union. The Christian’s behavior is increasingly shaped by a devotion to Christ as accomplished by the Spirit. . . .

. . . While the nomist model emphasized the continuity of the law in the old and new Testaments, seeing it as God’s chief tool in producing sanctification, Sibbes came to view the law as obsolete in the presence of Christ’s self-revelation. Sibbes spelled out the fundamental discontinuity of the two Testaments in his aptly-titled sermon series, The Excellency of the Gospel Above the Law. It is this principle, that the Old Testament law is inferior to the Spirit’s work in the New, that most characterize the antinomists. Sibbes, it seems, was not so much influenced by the law-grace polarity of Luther (Sibbes, as all the early Reformers did, continued to honor the law as revealing something of God’s character), as much as he was shaped by a very literal exegesis of 2 Corinthians 3: 17-18. This was the crux interpretum for antinomists and the text on which the exposition of the Excellency of the Gospel rested. It released Sibbes from a primary orientation to Old Testament law in describing the life of faith. (Ron Frost, “Richard Sibbes’ Theology of Grace and the Division of English Reformed Theology,” 37-38)

Obviously Sibbes emphasized the immediate work of the Spirit, which resulted in a real union with Christ. This is contrary to Perkins, who believed in an ad hoc union with Christ; which one could only “really” realize as he or she persevered in good works (i.e. practical syllogism, to be discussed later). In other words, for Perkins, certainty of election was a mediated reality, determined by one’s behavior relative to their cooperation with grace. This framework, for people who followed Perkins (which was the majority of Puritan England), resulted in an inward/introspective spirituality; since this perspective was very individuated and obsessed with personal holiness — for all the wrong reasons. Perkins in many ways serves as a forerunner for the later developed, Pietism, which climaxed with Schleiermacher (fodder for another post).

Sibbes’ emphasis on the immediacy of the Spirit, instead of promoting an incipient Pietism, allows the person to be obsessed and consumed by the beauty and majesty of Christ. This approach emphasizes a Trinitarian approach to salvation, which has a high pneumatology, leading to an even higher Christology — as the person of Christ and his works are magnified in the bride/bridegroom relationship, between Christ and his Church. I think this is much more fruitful than the approach offered by Perkins, and anyone who might fit his soteriological paradigm.

**I wanted to post this because of some discussion in the previous post on ‘Irresistable Grace’, and the distinction between Federal and Evangelical Calvinism, respectively. I see Affective-Free Grace Calvinism commensurate, in many ways, with what we have been calling ‘Evangelical Calvinism’ here.** (This is a repost, I’ve modified it a little, but not my opening paragraph).**

The following is a lengthy quote highlighting the differences between Federal Calvinism and ‘Affective-Free Grace Calvinism’. William Perkins represents the Federal “Vision” side, while Richard Sibbes the “Free-Grace” perspective. The quote is taken from Ron Frost’s unpublished PhD dissertation on Richard Sibbes and English Puritanism. He is providing conclusion to a discussion he had previously undertaken where he had articulated, in detail (with bibliographic support), the disparate “covenantal approaches” reflected by Perkins and Sibbes. The primary disjunction between the two is how they framed the Adam-motif (i.e. first and second Adam theology, see Rom. 5, etc.); and the different trajectories this placed their soteriological outlooks upon. Perkins forwarded the “Federal” model, which assumes continuity between the “law-keeping” of the first Adam and second Adam (i.e. think “Covenant of Works”); while Sibbes forwarded the “Marital Mystical” construct, which assumes some discontinuity between the “two Adams;” viz. while Christ truly represents us before the Father (juridical–i.e. forensic or legal), He also takes us as His spouse, which is presupposed by a real union with Him. The main difference, then, between Perkins and Sibbes, according to Frost, is that Perkins framed salvation purely as legal and “juridical”, which did not assume a “real union” with Christ; while Sibbes framed his view, not just as legal, but beyond that, as a Marriage framework, which is presupposed by a “real union” with Christ.

A Brief Glossary of Terms: **Privative Sin = the privation or absence of God’s righteousness [negative definition of sin] — **Positive Sin = Self love vs. God’s love.
Enough said on my part, lets hear from Frost:

Some final observations may be made about the positive and privative views of sin. The two approaches differ fundamentally on the reason for sin; while man is identified as responsible for sin in both views, he tends to be portrayed more as a pliable innocent overcome by the serpent’s deceit in the privative model. It is Adam presented as inadequate, not because he was unable to fulfill the law, but, because, in his mutability as a creature, he was vulnerable to moral change. This the serpent exploited while God was willfully away. In scholastic terms, the formal cause of sin was twofold, given the double causality associated with God’s sovereignty. God, as the primary agent for all things, determined the outcome by his withdrawal. In this he was arbitrary but just. The second agent, Adam, failed to apply the grace he had available and thus was culpable for his own fall, albeit as something of a victim. In both considerations the issue of grace is pivotal in its absence. For the privative model, as seen in both Thomistic and Reformed theology, this leads to a greater emphasis on the acquisition and application of grace in hypostatized or commodity-like terms, and a tendency toward Aristotelian moralism — the establishing of one’s righteousness through righteous actions based on grace. To the degree that grace becomes an impersonal quality, the greater the impression one has that something worthy of appreciation, if not merit, is being accomplished.

The doctrine of positive sin, on the other hand, rejects any tendency to see man as a victim; Adam is always the culprit in that he willfully replaced the Creator with the creature as the object of absolute devotion. It also recognizes human mutability as a fact which allows the fall, but rejects it as a meaningful explanation. The fall, in positive sin, remains an impenetrable mystery; Adam is not portrayed as deceived and God is not portrayed as withholding grace. In the positive model sin is always a competition: Adam seeks to usurp God’s role while God confounds Adam’s autonomy.
Thus, the most important difference between the two models is found in the way God is portrayed. In the privative view, as Aquinas and Perkins have it, he remains a supplier of grace — withholding what is needed for salvation except to the elect. He even remains parsimonious to the elect but, as their efforts prevail, is increasingly generous. In the positive view, on the other hand, he is an enemy until conversion which comes by the Spirit’s direct intervention. He invites the elect to see God as he really is: righteous, strong, and loving. Conversion, in fact, is a litmus for the two views: the privative model generally adopts a catechetical process which culminates in an affirmation of faith. The positive model, while recognizing that the Spirit uses prevenient stirrings, expects a more distinct Paul-light conversion which displays the moment in which selfish autonomy melts before God’s self disclosure. For the one, nature remains very much in view; for the other, God, once unveiled by grace, dominates the scene.

The importance of the affections for Sibbes and the nomists differed in profound ways. For Sibbes the affections were both the avenue by which sin entered the world and the avenue by which God, through the Spirit, restores the fallen soul. Slavery of the will was seen to be an enslavement by one’s own desires, something broken only by transforming vision of God as more desirable than anything human autonomy offers. Perkins and the nomists, on the other hand, saw the affections as a subordinate element of the will; they also provided a suitable theology for the prominent will by adopting the Thomist privation-enablement model of sin and grace.

Perkins and the nomists thus established human responsibility as the center-theme of salvation; the moral law became the locus of the soul in the process of sanctification. The belief that the covenant of grace is essentially a legal contract shaped all spirituality into a restorative stance: life is seen as an effort to regain and sustain Adam’s original obedience through the Spirit-enabled will. This generated a Christology which emphasized the juridical work of Christ to the point that, for pastoral ministry, the purpose of restored communion was easily reduced into the preaching of moralist endeavor.

Against this view, Sibbes, in line with Augustine, emphasized the place of Christ as much more than the source of justification, but primarily as one to be loved. The promise of the indwelling Spirit, whose ministry in Christ’s life is now allocated to the Christian, gives promise of a greater hope than the nomists offered: full and eternal intimacy of the Godhead through a true, although mystical, union with Christ. The feet of the soul are the affections and the affections are meant for communion with God. (Ron Frost, “Richard Sibbes’ Theology of Grace and the Division of English Reformed Theology,” [unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, 1996 University of London Kings College], 94-96)

What is of note, in regards to a discussion on “Grace” and “Sin;” is that if Frost’s argument is true (and I’m convinced that it is), then you can be a Federal Calvinist, and still be as “Semi-Pelagian” as Roman Catholics. That’s why I would want to avoid the TULIP’s understanding of “Irresistable Grace,” and at least understand it in the ‘re-framed’-Trinitarian ways provided by someone like Richard Sibbes.

Here is an account and testimony given by a fellow, from the 17th century, who had been living under the legalistic constraints that Federal-Westminster Calvinism had burdened him with (his account represents the type of sentiment felt by many in Puritan England who actually internalized and understood the implications of the ‘Calvinism’ they were living under). It wasn’t until this ‘brother’ was exposed to the ‘Free Grace of Christ’ through the preaching and teaching of Richard Sibbes that he finally understood what it meant to be a ‘slave set free’: