Warfield on Ritschl, part 2

There was another thing I learned about myself and my theology from Warfield’s set of articles on Albrecht Ritschl (from Studies in Perfectionism) that is about the link between justification and sanctification.

Ritschl wants to preserve man’s will. This is not only because he is an Enlightment rationalist, but because he wants to believe the he is his own master. For Ritschl, then, sanctification starts when the will has changed upon learning that God does not hold anything against us. According to Warfield, Ritschl believes

…the ethical tast cannot be undertaken or accomplished save under the impulse derived from the religious attitude.

In other words, once we learn the correct religious attitude, we will begin to do right.

I don’t have a problem with discounting free-will and declaring God’s sovereignty. However I do believe that I have been making a similar mistake. I have been saying (throughout this blog) that gratitude leads to sanctification. Once we know how much we’ve been forgiven we will naturally want to do the right thing. In a sense, I have been saying, like Ritschl, that the will is the real problem and once we change our will we will begin to do the right thing.

While I still think that gratitude is a very powerful motivator (Romans 2.4), Warfield has shown me that this isn’t the only thing that motivates change (sanctification). As I talked about in part 1 of this entry, lack of satisfaction is a Biblical motive to change. We aren’t and shouldn’t be content with where we are in our spiritual walk and this should press us on toward the prize. This doesn’t mean we aren’t satisfied with God’s acceptance of us and we should press on for him to love us more- he loves us so much already because of Christ, it is insulting to say we can make God love us more.

The other fuel for our sanctification is our constant repentance- like the first of the 99 Theses says, “The Christian life is a life of continual repentance.” This doesn’t mean that we should walk around with our heads hung low at how bad we are, but constantly tapping into God’s grace as we see more and more of our sins. The more we see our sins, the more clear God’s grace becomes to us. When we are confronted with a sin we don’t react like Ritschl, “Oops, but I can’t let the guilt get me down.” We react like David in Psalm 51, “Against you, you only, have I sinned… Cleans me with hyssop, and I will be clean.”