The Primacy of Legalism

"Satan is a legalist."

Those words come from Sinclair Ferguson during one of his lectures on the "Marrow Controversy" at a pastors' conference many years ago (available here). Ferguson's three lectures - on the free offer of the gospel, the nature of legalism, and the nature of antinomianism - have had a seminal impact on my thinking since I first heard them about 8 years ago, shortly after I started work as a pastor.

One of the many insights Ferguson shares (one also shared by the Marrow Men and their followers) is that an aspect of the essence of sin is legalism. The argument runs like this: God created us for union and communion with him by faith, which is trust in God's goodness. At the heart of sin, therefore, is unbelief in God's goodness: believing that he cannot be trusted to love and take care of me, keep his promises, etc. This is the dynamic driving the first temptation and sin in Genesis 3 and all subsequent sin.

Ferguson argues that this unbelief in God's goodness drives all of us into a legalistic stance with God (and/or the false gods which we inevitably choose to serve in his place) where we seek to leverage the divine with our rules and rituals in order to get what we fear God isn't good enough to give us. Since we don't trust God to provide for us, we have to take care of ourselves through manipulating him.

This legalism rooted in unbelief is the basic posture of the human heart in sin. Ferguson goes on to point out that many theologians accept this account up to a point but then posit that the sinner eventually throws off his legalism and rebels against the divine, rejecting all religious rule-keeping and ritual, in order to pursue an autonomous antinomianism. Certainly this dialectic between legalistic religion and non-legalistic irreligion is what appears to happen. But, Ferguson says, the fundamental posture of the heart towards God has not really changed in antinomianism: the primal distrust of God is still there and the "legal frame" continues to serve as the lens through which the sinner sees God. In antinomian license the sinner is merely expressing the same unbelief in a different way, choosing another strategy to try to get what he wants. The antinomian is a frustrated legalist, still desperately trying to escape the bondage of his distorted view of God.

Thus, Satan, the ultimate antinomian, is at heart a legalist.

Much like Keller does with the concept of idolatry, Ferguson shows that the legal heart bound in unbelief drives both religion and irreligion, pursuits of righteousness and rebellion, legalism and license.

All sin is a form of legalism.

Tim Keller's - and the CCEF crowd's - work on idolatry, mentioned above, fits in with this account by Ferguson. They point out that all sin is idolatry; and that's true. Maybe we could say it this way: all sin is idolatrous legalism (or legalistic idolatry!) driven by a heart that no longer believes in God's goodness. Satan is a legalistic idol-broker to a deluded human race. (Jack Miller, Richard Lovelace, Ferguson, and Keller have all done wonderful work preaching, teaching and applying these truths in books, articles, sermons, their ministries, etc).

I bring up this "sin as legalism" idea for a couple reasons.

One has to do with the fine posts over at Sean Lucas' blog on "Cheese, Fundamentalism, and Antithesis." Sean is interacting with some of the Reformation 21 folks about how the "antithesis" theme in Reformed theology influences our Christ/culture theory and our evaluations of movements within fundamentalism, broader evangelicalism, and the Reformed world (something I'd like to post on soon). Part of the follow-up discussion occurs between ex-fundamentalists (in the socio-cultural sense), some who appreciate aspects of their fundamentalist experience and others who see it as deeply destructive. But I wonder if part of the "balanced" evaluation of both the positives and negatives of fundamentalism is rooted in a tendency to see legalism and license as equal, opposite errors; for if Ferguson's (and Keller's, et al) account is right, they're not. We should, like Jesus in Luke 15, understand legalism as the primary problem and license as just one of its expressions. Thus, I side with the more critical evaluations of fundamentalist institutions with a history of legalism because of Ferguson's account above: legalism, especially in its orthodox Christian form, is one of the primary evils in our world, which literally wrecks people and the church. Those of us in the pastorate know how long its effects can linger in the consciences and hearts of its victims; we know how many "younger brothers" are driven secretly by a legal frame. Thus, legalism can't be described as one error among many, it must be seen (along with idolatry and pride) as a primary enemy of the gospel and the church and given no quarter.

Ferguson's account of legalism also has ramifications for the whole "new perspective on Paul" debate. There are several weaknesses in the new perspective that have been pointed out by many: weak historical-theological scholarship, a neglect of detailed discussion of the ordo salutis, etc. But my main problem with the new perspective is it's apparent lack of pastoral and biblical attention to the nature of sin generally, and legalism specifically. Of course, these scholars are at pains to correct the long-standing popular charicature of 1st century Judaism as filled with blatant soteriological Pelagians; point taken. But legalism, at least among theologians and scholars of Scripture, is rarely that obvious; and that's true whether we're talking about the 1st century or the 21st. In fact, what the Marrow Controversy and its lessons teach us is that one's creedal theology may be entirely biblical in its understanding of grace - and, at the very same time, our hearts still be dominated by legalism. For legalism is not a historical-theological error that comes and goes, but the repetition of the oldest lie there is: the fundamental lie about God's goodness that comes as naturally to us as breathing and that never fully leaves us, despite the substantial freedom we have from it in the gospel. It's this legalism that Jesus and Paul, Luther and Calvin, were dealing with in their day and that we must deal with ruthlessly in ours.