Penance, Purgatory, and the Assurance of Salvation

This transcript has been lightly edited from an automated transcription for clarity and readability. While we've worked to preserve each speaker's words faithfully, errors may remain.

1. 0:00

   Jordan Cooper

   I think the most significant difference in some ways is the quantification of grace. Because when you just hear language that— things like, well, I get these graces from this or graces from that, everything is always partial, right? You get some— there's a partial indulgence, there's a full indulgence, plenary indulgence. And it's a way of viewing grace that sees grace as something that can be kind of calculated and doled out in particular percentages related to particular sins. This is so wildly different from a perception, which is the Reformation view of grace, which says that grace essentially is Christ. Grace is the Son of God for us. And that means that he cannot be quantified. There are no pieces. You don't get just a little bit of grace here and a little bit of grace here. Where Christ is and where God's promises are is the fullness of grace. We get it all because it is all Christ, and he is all for us.

2. 1:14

   Jordan Cooper

   Hello, and welcome back to this last part of a series that I have been doing with Dr. Gavin Ortlund and Dr. Michael Horton on the Reformation. And so in this 6th part, we are going to be talking about the Christian life and approaches to the Christian life, talking about purgatory and penance and some other topics that we haven't yet covered. If you haven't seen the rest of the videos in this series, I'll post a link to them so you can watch all of them below. Well, thanks so much for coming back for this last part of our conversation.

3. 01:44

   Gavin Ortlund

   Yeah, looking forward to it.

4. 01:46

   Michael Horton

   It's great.

5. 01:48

   Gavin Ortlund

   We have to cover everything we haven't yet covered, so we got a lot before us.

6. 01:52

   Jordan Cooper

   Yeah, I know. It's kind of a lot. We're not going to get to everything, but we'll see how far we can get here. So we've talked a bit about justification, and there's even so much more to say on justification specifically. And when we talked about justification, though, we focused on things like what is the doctrine of justification, but there are all sorts of doctrines and ideas that kind of surround differences on justification that are very much related to that doctrine that I want to get into more specifically here. The first of those is the doctrine of penance. And so I'm going to ask Mike to start here and just give us an idea of what is the Roman Catholic perspective on penance, and then how does that differ from the views of the Reformation?

7. 02:40

   Michael Horton

   Sure. Well, first of all, in the ancient church, there was a practice of church discipline. If a person committed a grave sin, publicly known, really injured the unity of the church, then he or she would perform repentance. And, you know, metanoia means repentance, but it was understood as a disciplinary thing that you were required to go through in order to be received back into the membership of the church. So it had all kinds of Matthew 18 kinds of resonances. But then later, as you go along in the High Middle Ages, it becomes something called a tariff penance that the monasteries would perform or would oversee. And not going to go into depth on that, but by the 12th century, not even Gratian, his gigantic book of canon law, which kind of everybody drew on for centuries, doesn't even mention penance. But Peter Damian, around the same time, introduced it for the first time, said that it was a sacrament.

8. Michael Horton

   And the idea is that since your justification is incomplete in this life, forgiveness depends on sincerity of repentance. It also depends on certain signs of genuine repentance that you show that the church has determined correspond to that intensity. So for example, if it's a piccadillo, then the church assigns, you know, the proverbial number of Hail Marys. And if it's really serious, then actually the idea is if you commit Venial sins— say the bathtub is filled up with grace and baptism, but then you commit venial sins and there are little cracks, water leaks. But with a mortal sin, the bathtub just collapses and all the water comes out. This is what you have to do now after that. You have to do penance to rebuild the bathtub and get the water back in it. Because that's the way they viewed grace, as a sort of substance infused. That's a really very brief summary of how it happened, but justification actually was buried. The doctrine of justification, as much as it existed in the medieval church, was buried in the doctrine of penance by Peter Lombard.

9. 05:29

   Jordan Cooper

   Gavin, do you have anything you want to add to that?

10. 05:30

    Gavin Ortlund

    Well, just so to summarize for someone who's just first coming to this, we're talking about confession to a priest specifically of certain kinds of sin to receive absolution. And this is understood as a kind of second plank of salvation. This restores what has been lost through a mortal sin, for example.

11. 05:57

    Michael Horton

    Which is actually a quote from the pagan Cicero. But anyway.

12. 06:00

    Gavin Ortlund

    Oh, really? Interesting.

13. 06:01

    Michael Horton

    Yeah, Aquinas took it from Cicero.

14. 06:02

    Gavin Ortlund

    Fascinating. Yeah, it is interesting to watch, as Dr. Horton was explaining, kind of the development. And there are these very rigorous practices of public repentance in the early church, and then it's developing as you go throughout church history. What I— one of the things I would love to be clear about is where we actually find differences between this and Protestants, because often it's framed as though Protestants don't believe in the role of the church in any way in cases of serious sin, which is not fair to us. We would say if a man who is baptized and a member of your church commits murder, then the church leadership has a responsibility amidst other parts of the process of repentance for the governing authorities to be involved.

15. 06:48

    Michael Horton

    We call it the 3rd mark of the church.

16. 06:49

    Gavin Ortlund

    Yeah. Historically, both Reformed and Lutheran traditions have had very rigorous practices of church discipline and very important understanding of that. The difference is this is a sacrament. It is necessarily done unto a priest. It is of a judicial nature such that the priestly absolution actually procures the forgiveness of the sinner. This is not just, you know, the declaration of what God has done. It is constitutive of that forgiveness, and it is typically done privately. I don't think it is strictly required that it be private, and there are some rare practices where you can find, like you know, a small group of people together with a priest or something like that.

17. Gavin Ortlund

    But typically it is done privately. And that, of course, would be the most— the point where we would probably say is most glaringly a point of evolution and development and different from the early church where it was typically done publicly. And that's acknowledged by even Roman Catholic scholars today. There's been tremendous change on that front. So those are the points that I think we will really want to press in on as points of distinction and difference. It is only to a priest. It procures forgiveness, and it is typically done privately.

18. 8:07

    Jordan Cooper

    This is a point where my Lutheran tradition is going to be a little bit different in how we respond to some of these things, because in our tradition, we did— the Augsburg Confession explicitly states that we retain the practice of private confession. And this is something that is retained in Lutheran churches. Generally, the trend has been in more recent years towards a bigger emphasis on a public absolution rather than a private absolution. But that's a whole Other rabbit trail, probably not worth going down. But I think, you know, one of the points that is really essential as we're talking about penance that we have to talk about is the distinction that Rome makes between these two different kinds of penalties that sin carries, right? So in a Roman Catholic conception of sin, there are these temporal penalties that are attached to every sin that somebody commits, whether it's a mortal or a venial sin. And there are these eternal penalties of mortal sin, which cut you off from a state of grace. You receive forgiveness for that through the absolution of the priest. However, there is also this kind of debt that is accrued through your sins that are these temporal penalties, that are things that you have to somehow take care of, either in this life or in purgatory. Penance, there is the absolution, but then there are some things that are told to the one who is penitent, the one who has received absolution, that they must do in order to pay some of these temporal penalties that they have accrued because of their sin. And so I think that's really essential to understand if we're talking about, like, the average Roman Catholic's relationship to their sin.

19. Jordan Cooper

    So it's quite different, say, if you're coming from a Lutheran context where we have private absolution, you go to your pastor and you receive absolution, that's it, right? There's nothing else to do because there's no strong distinction between these different kinds of sins. Maybe we should tease that out a little bit more because I think that's pretty central here.

20. 10:12

    Michael Horton

    Yeah, I think it is central here. And it also gets to the heart of what a sacrament is because here you have one of the most conditional practices you could ever imagine, depending— really focused on a calculus that I guess the church has just sort of figured the math on what penalties are required in order to erase that particular debt. Whereas for, I think we would say, all of our traditions here on the Reformation side, a sacrament is exclusively a means of grace. The whole point of a sacrament is to be an appendix to the word of the gospel to assure us that our sins are forgiven. And that's why in our practice also, We brought private confession and absolution into the public service every Lord's Day. And we also— it'll surprise some people— did retain private confession and absolution as a voluntary thing. Calvin said that it would be very salutary for a conscience disturbed by sin who thought the sermon was for everybody else there but not for him.

21. Michael Horton

    To be able to come to the minister, and the one who proclaimed it publicly now proclaims it privately to him that he is forgiven. And that's just a great ministerial, a practical ministerial exercise of the word. But in a lot of Protestant and evangelical churches, you know, there isn't really that opportunity for a public confession of sin and a public absolution in the name of Christ, that your sins are forgiven. And so I think it's very easy for people during the week to fall back on themselves and their own resources and to fear, have I done enough? What kind of penance do I need? I told a friend of mine who was a pastor who was not in any kind of— well, in a different tradition, I'll just say. And I said, what are the similarities between revivalism and Roman Catholicism in terms of certain practices? He said, what are you talking about? I said, well, you have a thing called the altar call, and he was a friend, so I could say this. I said, "At least Rome has an altar call to a sacrament." This one is just sort of made up, but I know when I was growing up in it, I would raise my hand. I would pray the prayer every time I had an opportunity. Every time somebody pushed me, I would go forward multiple times at every summer camp.That was a form of penance. There was really no material difference, I think, between what I was experiencing there in trying to finally wipe my slate clean again and what an average medieval person would have gone through.

22. 13:44

    Gavin Ortlund

    Those are great comments and remind me, I mean, my— the most meaningful part of public worship for me is the confession of sin and declaration of pardon. And I think this is an area where we have a chance as contemporary Protestants to, again, as I feel like I say this constantly, but constantly be going back to our own traditions and noticing where we may have deviated from just standard Protestant practice. And this would be one of those areas where we've fallen away from any robust theology of confession of sin in some cases. And that's again why I'm trying to highlight the difference here is not that Protestants don't confess their sins and Roman Catholics do. That is not the difference. One of the ways you can see that is by looking at the difference between the Old Testament and then the New Covenant era. Because Roman Catholic theology is very clear that the sacrament of penance was instituted by Christ in John 20:23 and did not exist throughout the Old Covenant. And so when Nathan confronts David and then says, the Lord has taken away your sin, you shall not die, that was not a priestly absolution. And so something new is being introduced in the 1st century with respect to the way forgiveness really works in certain situations. I have a longer video where I'm teasing this out and trying to frame where the differences fall precisely and call Protestants back to our own tradition's emphasis upon the necessity of confession of sin. I mean, it's right there in James five, of course.

23. Gavin Ortlund

    But we just don't believe that it is— those three points of demarcation earlier are where the differences will often fall. And if people want a historical walkthrough, that's what I try to do in that video is just walking through how this is evolving throughout church history, I think the case can be very strongly made that the current Roman Catholic teaching on this matter doesn't go back authentically to the first century, but it is something that slowly develops and evolves.

24. 15:45

    Michael Horton

    Can I also throw out there another idea that undergirds all the stuff that we're talking about in this program today is the treasury of merits. The idea that basically Rome, the Vatican, is the World Bank. And to use a crude illustration, it— but not that crude, because this is kind of how Rome has spoken historically about its power. The church has the power over all souls to remit sins, based on a particular calculus, particular math to determine what the math is for what the offenses are. Besides Christ, many of the saints performed supererogatory merits. In other words, they not only got an A, they got a superior. They, they plus, plus, plus.

25. Michael Horton

    And so those surplus merits that they don't need because they got enough, they had enough merits, those surplus merits go into the bank and the church has the power to dish that out as it sees fit. And that, that doctrine, that idea is utterly blasphemous, but lies at the foundation of the rotting floor of the very thing that the Reformers were objecting to.

26. 17:26

    Jordan Cooper

    Well, I think the Treasury of Merit just points back to the same— what I think is the fundamental issue on all of these matters, and that is this notion of these temporal penalties. Because that's where you get the Treasury of Merits, that's where you get penance, that's where you have indulgences. I mean, so in many ways, I think the root of it is that distinction that's being made so that there is one way in which sins can be remitted and a different way in which sins can be remitted, so that, you know, the atonement really takes care of one kind of remission, but then there is this other kind of debt that's something totally different that has to be taken care of in all sorts of different ways. And of course, as the Reformers are going to argue, this essentially kind of buries the atonement.

27. Jordan Cooper

    This really becomes the central way that people are thinking about sin is dealing with these temporal penalties, because every time you commit a sin, you get this kind of temporal penalty. And so that it deviates your focus from Christ onto all of these other kind of things and systems that have been built, you know, on top of that idea of temporal penalties. So just quickly want to read something. As I was thinking about this issue, preparing for this, I was going back to revisit a work of St. John Chrysostom that is on repentance and almsgiving. This is a really great little book if you want to understand what the early church thought about these kinds of issues. And it's another example of you read this and he does not fit either reformation or Roman Catholic categories, and you have to recognize that when you read this. But these are on repentance, these homilies, and I just want to read this little section here. He says, okay, have you sinned? Come to church. Tell God, I have sinned. I do not demand anything else of you than this. Holy Scripture states, be the first one to tell of your transgressions so that you may be justified. Admit the sin to annul it. This requires neither labor nor a circuit of words, words, nor monetary expenditure, nor anything else whatsoever such as these. Say one word, think carefully about the sin, and say, I have sinned. You know, and so, and he goes on. I mean, this, this is repeated. Uh, it's just very blunt. He just says You've sinned, confess your sin, it's forgiven. And why I say he doesn't really fit Protestant categories is later he's got a sermon on almsgiving in here where he says that through almsgiving, your sins are forgiven. Well, okay, that sounds like an early form of penance. Well, if you read what he says, I mean, basically in these homilies, he's saying God forgives your sins in all of these different ways. So he says, if you give alms, every single sin of yours is forgiven too. You confess, all of your sins are forgiven. Right. So almost speaking sacramentally about almsgiving. But I just point that out to show that the Fathers are really not thinking in these later categories. I mean, they're not making these distinctions that you have to do this or this.

28. Jordan Cooper

    They're just like, you confess the sin, it's forgiven. And if I could read more quotes, he's very clear that there's nothing remaining after that. You know, there's no additional thing you've got to pay for.

29. Jordan Cooper

    This then is also the same idea here of these additional penalties is behind the notion of purgatory. So why don't we switch now to start talking a little bit about purgatory, how it is that purgatory develops, and then how it relates to some of these things in the question of assurance as well. Gavin, since I asked Mike to do the prior theme, give us a just general definition of what purgatory is.

30. 20:56

    Gavin Ortlund

    Sure. Purgatory is not hell. It is a place where Christians go who are not— and not necessarily every Christian, but those who are imperfectly purified, and they're basically not ready for heaven yet. It is not merely medicinal. It is punitive with respect to the temporal punishment of sin. And so sometimes people will try the— I think ideas of purgatory have changed a lot over church history, and today It's often cast in much more friendly categories, but I think there was a lot of dread terror of purgatory in the Middle Ages, and it was understood to be absolutely terrifying, terrible, and potentially very long, you know.

31. 21:34

    Michael Horton

    Not that different from hell.

32. 21:36

    Gavin Ortlund

    Yeah, and you think, I mean, there is a tremendous pastoral concern here for how this will play out, and we can get into that. So I have a long video where I'm trying to trace the development of this idea. One thing I'd emphasize is there is a lot of diversity in the patristic age about conceptions of what happens to a Christian when they die. We as Protestants, of course, will agree that there is purification prior to entrance to heaven. But the difference will be, for most Protestants, though some Protestants have something similar to purgatory in a very few cases, but most Protestants just believe that process of purification is relatively instantaneous. And so that, you know, you think of those who are alive at the Second Coming, and Paul speaks of in the twinkling of an eye, we shall all be changed. And so forth, we would understand something like this to be the case for a believer, even a very imperfectly purified believer, that consequent upon death, they will be welcomed into the gracious presence of God in heaven on account of the merits of Christ.

33. 22:40

    Michael Horton

    Yeah, in fact, the Catechism of the Catholic Church defines purgatory as a purification so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven. And it adds, this final purification of the elect is entirely different from the punishment of the damned. And I think that this is why the Reformers said this totally vitiates not just justification, this vitiates the merits of Christ and his atonement. This is basically undermining Christianity, the heart of the Christian gospel.

34. Michael Horton

    It's widely agreed that this idea really arose through Origen of Alexandria. He was very influential in this idea. Origen was a very extreme Neoplatonist on the verge of being a Gnostic, and he even denied the resurrection of the same body And I mean, there are all sorts of ways in which he just had some very strange ideas. And the very first people to talk about the idea of purgatory were the Gnostics. They had these apocryphal gospels in which this period of purifying from everything bodily and so forth was a part of the deal. Well, here, the question you have to ask, why isn't purgatory taught in the Bible? The reason purgatory isn't taught in the Bible— why do you have to believe in purgatory even if it's not in the Bible? Only if you do not believe in the sufficiency of Christ for salvation. Now, of course, we can nuance that, we can do whatever, but there's no finessing or nuancing that's going to counteract the seriousness of that error.

35. 24:42

    Jordan Cooper

    Yeah, I think when you're looking at— I think the history is very complicated when it comes to purgatory. And I know obviously Gavin's delved into— you said you've delved into some of this, but you get little pieces of perhaps something like purgatory. I mean, even in Plato to some degree. And you could probably say that even there are passages in Clement of Alexandria that sounds maybe a little bit like something like purgatory as well. It's essential to recognize, you know, as Gavin pointed out, that really strong kind of judicial element in purgatory, that kind of you're paying off particular penalties. I don't know that— and Gavin, maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong about this— but even in early conceptions of purgatory, I'm not aware that that theme is really there.

36. 25:28

    Michael Horton

    Not for Origen. It was educative, reformative.

37. 25:31

    Jordan Cooper

    That's my understanding.

38. 25:33

    Gavin Ortlund

    That is my sense as well. I mean, there's lots of language about purifying fire. There is also ambiguity in some cases about what exactly are we talking about here. People will be able to point back to very early language about that. There's also testimonies of expectation of immediate entrance into heaven for Christians that, that you find in the early church. I think that's very clear in Cyprian. I think that's clear in John Chrysostom. I've gone back and done back and forth with Catholic apologists on John Chrysostom on purgatory. I think he has the expectation — and that's how he's read by Catholic scholars today. The general expectation is the Christian dies, immediate entrance into heaven, and I pointed to that elsewhere as well. But I think this is a really key point that I think you brought up, Dr. Cooper, there. Where we find language about purifying fire for Christians' afterlife before entering into heaven, it's— you could say it's a precursor to purgatory or something like that, but it's not purgatory proper. Because it lacks what is then later required and taught with anathema at the Council of Trent. And it does have this judicial punitive element. And sometimes people don't realize that today.

39. 26:36

    Michael Horton

    Can we just also maybe address one of the passages that they often refer to and that many Christian writers in the ancient church referred to when they were thinking about a purifying fire? And that is 1 Corinthians 3, where Paul says that the ministries that have been built not on the foundation of Christ and the apostles, but have been constructed out of papier-mâché, will all go up in flames on the last day. So Paul's talking about ministries. He's talking about church ministries based on some foundation other than Christ and the apostles. And I'm not going to draw, you know, a snippy little connection there. But anyway, if you're— if, if it's not built completely on Christ and him crucified, it's going to go up in smoke on the last day. It'll be— it'll be seen. It'll be judged. There's nothing there about individuals getting in by the hair of their chinny chin chin, going into heaven a little scorched. There's nothing about that there.

40. 27:54

    Jordan Cooper

    It's clear in the context that it's a demonstrative fire, right? The point is that it reveals the nature of the thing. It is not a purging fire. And at least as far as I am aware, you know, I don't know of any serious New Testament scholar, Protestant or Roman Catholic, that really takes that strong purgatorial position on the passage. I mean, contextually, it's just not present.

41. 28:15

    Gavin Ortlund

    Yeah, that's a great point. And in addition to that, we can emphasize that So much pressure has to be put upon this one text because there aren't other testimonies in Scripture. But I would argue to the contrary, the expectation we are left with in Scripture is immediate entrance to heaven. When a believer dies, we are welcomed into God's presence in heaven. I think one great example of this would be the thief on the cross. Now, to try to steelman their view, they will say that, well, his suffering on the cross maybe is why He wouldn't have needed purgatory or something like this. But I would just say the thief on the cross is a great paradigm for us of how salvation works. He does nothing to earn his salvation, and he has lived a— by his own testimony, he deserved the fate that he had. We are getting what our sins deserve. And yet Jesus promises, today you will be with me in paradise. I would see that as consistent with the dominant emphasis of the New Testament, the And the expectation we are left with from reading the New Testament that to die as a believer is to go and be with the Lord.

42. 29:22

    Jordan Cooper

    Let's turn there to another issue that's related to everything we've been talking about here, and that is just general assurance, assurance that you are living in a state of salvation and that you are right with God, because that really gets at, I think, what the heart of a lot of the differences really are between Protestantism and the Roman Catholic tradition. So I don't know who wants to jump in here, but let's just start, I don't know, talking a little bit about the nature of assurance and what does Rome teach about that and how does that differ?

43. 29:52

    Michael Horton

    Well, at the Council of Trent, we read that "a rash presumptuousness in the matter of predestination is to be avoided. No one, as long as he is in this mortal life, Ought so far to presume as regards the secret mystery of divine predestination as to determine for certain that he is assuredly in the number of the elect, as if it were true that he that is justified either cannot sin anymore, or if he do sin, that he ought to promise himself an assured repentance. For except by special revelation, It cannot be known whom God hath chosen unto himself." So that means that unless in extraordinary circumstances, you are an extraordinary person, you've had an extraordinary experience, most Christians by and large would be presumptuous to say, I am assured of salvation, I am one of the elect.

44. 30:55

    Gavin Ortlund

    And just to add on to that, I never expected that assurance would be a big focus of my ministry. It's an interesting thing when your ministry pulls you into directions that you never anticipate simply because you're trying to feed the sheep who are right in front of you in that moment. And so I've been led to study Protestant views about assurance. And I would want to, first of all, encourage our viewers to consider that assurance is a biblical idea. You know, the definition of faith in Hebrews 11:1, the assurance of things hoped 1 John has a lot of verses about assurance, how we know that our sins are forgiven. We can even play a role. We reassure our hearts. This is in John's first epistle. We could point to many other scriptures as well.

45. 31:41

    Michael Horton

    Make your calling and election sure?

46. 31:42

    Gavin Ortlund

    Yes, exactly. Yeah, many passages we could point to. So what I would want to encourage people to consider though is from historic— I'll draw from my own Reformed tradition just a bit here. Assurance is not automatic. We can damage our assurance of salvation, and we often do. When we willfully sin, for example, we can disrupt our assurance. We have a stained conscience. So the idea here is not that assurance is going to automatically rumble on for every Christian.

47. Gavin Ortlund

    Nonetheless, we would want to say that assurance is possible. Two points of emphasis I would make that are kind of simple, but I find them helpful to draw out is, first, we want to put our hope in the promises of God. With respect to assurance. We are not looking inward. We are looking to what God has promised. And second, I believe there's a role of the Holy Spirit in assurance. And a key verse here will be Romans 8:16, which says that the Spirit, capital S, testifies with our spirit so that we know that we are children of God. I also have been reflecting a lot lately on Ephesians 1:13-14 and the sealing of the Holy Spirit, this sort of stamp upon us. But I would want to just encourage people that as we sincerely seek to obey Christ, as we confess our sins, and as we locate the object of our faith in the promises of God, we can experience testimony from the Holy Spirit saying, you are my child, you are my son, you are my daughter. And I believe that's biblical, and I think that's a hope we can offer out to people today. I think that's a pastoral need. There's tremendous anxiety in hearts right now. So I'm making some simple pastoral reflections, but I'd be curious how those land and if you guys want to steer this.

48. 33:18

    Michael Horton

    Go to church and hear another sinner appointed in the name of Christ to declare to you that for your sake, he lived and died and is coming again. For your sake, this, this, my body broken for you, my blood shed for you, as surely as you receive the bread and the wine, so surely are you feeding on the body and blood of Christ. That's objective. That's not finding an assurance within me. In the Heidelberg Catechism, it says that assurance is of the essence of faith. That doesn't mean that my— you know, how assured do I feel? Well, that determines whether I'm really assured. No, it's that if you believe in Christ, you are assured. Christ with all of his benefits, the degree of your experiencing that will fluctuate, but you are assured right now that you belong to Christ.

49. 34:23

    Gavin Ortlund

    Not to be too cheesy about this, but I just, I really think it's just a— to make a simple pastoral point, it is a wonderful thing to experience the love of God personally. And I think this is what we understand faith to be. We transition. It is the laying hold of the gospel of Christ personally. It's when you pass through the wonderful transition from believing theoretically Jesus died for sinners to believing he died for this sinner. And we want to encourage our viewers, you can experience that peace and assurance. That is part of the promise of the gospel.

50. 35:04

    Jordan Cooper

    Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

51. 35:05

    Michael Horton

    It's not you participating in the act of the church. You know, it's the church that believes through the mediation of Christ. If you believe, you are assured, and it is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

52. 35:21

    Gavin Ortlund

    Yes, amen. Now, what if someone says, but I'm just too much of a sinner? How do you pastor folks who feel unforgivable?

53. 35:27

    Jordan Cooper

    Man this conversation is a hard one to have with Calvinists without getting polemical, honestly. I'm sorry. I'm having a hard time here. Because this is, I mean, this is at the root of obviously Lutheran piety and practice is this notion of assurance. But where I would go is where Luther goes, which is to your baptism. I mean, I would say that in baptism, God has given you, he has given you a promise. He has given you a promise that you have the triune name. Scripture ties so many promises to baptism.You know, you are baptized into Christ, you've been buried and raised with him. That's something tangible. You know, that's something you can grab onto. That is particular, it's individual. And this is what we have in the sacraments is that they're personal, right? So it's not just that, you know, water is sprinkled on the congregation, which could have been the case. We've got examples of things like that in the Old Testament. But no, it's on you specifically. You have received the waters of baptism. I'll try not to get into baptismal modes here.

54. Jordan Cooper

    And same in a Lord's Supper, right? The promise is for you. You taste it. You receive it. You get it in your mouth. And this is a reason why, you know, in our tradition, and I know Mike said that Calvin did this too apparently with private, you know, absolution. It's not that by necessity, right, proclamation of the forgiveness of sins needs to be in a private setting, and as we talked about, you know, it's evident in the early church that wasn't generally the case, but there is something that is so assuring about hearing that very specifically, like if you confess your sins openly, you're open about your sin, just to hear from the outside another human voice who's heard your specific sins who's able to say, you are forgiven. Yes, you know, and even if that's just in the context of another believer giving you assurance, there's something to the personalizing of that that I think is really necessary.

55. 37:24

    Gavin Ortlund

    I think that's really good. And as a Calvinist, I love the emphasis upon baptism too, because that's in my video on penance. This is one of the main criticisms is you don't need a second plank because that actually dishonors the first plank because the first plank is so robust.

56. 37:39

    Michael Horton

    That was one of Calvin's big arguments against penance, that you're undermining baptism. This sacrament kills baptism.

57. 37:48

    Gavin Ortlund

    Yeah, exactly. No, I think that's a valid theological statement. And I would say, I'll just share though, kind of stemming from that, in my own personal life, one thing I've actually found helpful is to realize I actually am dishonoring the Lord if I think I'm too sinful to be forgiven when I am sincerely repentant. If I have the thought, well, God can forgive that other sinner over there, but I'm just a little bit too far out of his reach, then I actually am not doing sufficient honor to the power of the gospel. Because I'm saying, well, Jesus isn't mighty enough as Savior. And that actually helps me when I frame it in those categories of, well, I don't want to dishonor the Lord, so therefore I'm going to believe his forgiveness can apply to even me as I repent and seek to follow him. And so also for our viewers.

58. 38:37

    Jordan Cooper

    I think that is, that is so helpful. I actually, I heard that from R.C. Sproul back when I was in college. I remember listening to a talk of his and he was talking about a woman who was confessing. She's like, I don't feel forgiven. I keep confessing to God, right? I keep confessing, but I don't feel like I'm really forgiven. And he said, I want you to confess to God one more time. She's like, another time? He said, yes, I want you to confess to God your sin of not believing his promises. And, um, that's all. So that same thing, that's always stuck with me. And, uh, and I've carried that forth in my ministry.

59. 39:06

    Michael Horton

    That's good. In contrast to everything that I think we're saying here, it's worth pointing out that if you have the treasury of merits, you have penance, you have the math, the church having power to use its own calculations to determine how you'll be saved, who will be saved. And by the way, popes— we're talking about the Reformation— Popes were using the treasury of merit and their plenitude of power. They were using it to excommunicate their enemies, using it to threaten people to do what they wanted, to give them what they wanted. They were really highway robbers, and there are plenty of Roman Catholic historians who would agree with that. But here today, still, there are indulgences. Pope Francis had people— a plenary indulgence for people who walked through a golden door in St. Peter's.

60. Michael Horton

    I don't know how a person can fail to see that as a completely contrived fiction. What kind of thing is that, where you just— if you make the pilgrimage and you walk through the golden door, I mean, that just— it sounds so strange, but here's what Catholic apologists said about indulgences. An indulgence— and it touches exactly on assurance. Now imagine hearing this growing up in this, not just in Luther's day, but today, a Catholic apologist saying this to you. An indulgence is plenary— that means complete— if it involves the removal of all the temporal consequences that can remain. In order to obtain a plenary indulgence, you need to do the action in question, like going on that pilgrimage. You also need to go to confession, receive the Eucharist, and pray for the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff. And then there's the 4th condition, which is the real trick. You're required to not have any attachment to sin, even venial sin. And that's the hard one to pull off, no doubt. But if you don't pull it off, you'll still get a partial indulgence that helps you with some of the temporal consequences. Like, who invents this? Where do they come up with this? It's so arbitrary.

61. 41:43

    Jordan Cooper

    Yeah, I mean, I've— and I've heard actually this exact statement before, but I've thought through this a bit with conversations I've had with Roman Catholic friends. And when we talk about certain issues, it's like we're so— it seems like we're so aligned on so many things. We talk even about the atonement, but then it gets to these things. And I see this total misalignment of like, how do you not see how this and this come into conflict? And I think where I'm at right now in terms of trying to discern, like, where is the exact difference? Because, yeah, we can debate the exact definition of the word justification, and that's important, obviously. But what I've come around to, I think, is understanding that I think the most significant difference in some ways is the quantification of grace. Because when you just hear language that things like, well, I get these graces from this or graces from that. Everything is always partial, right? You get some— there's a partial indulgence, there's a full indulgence, plenary indulgence. And it's a way of viewing grace that sees grace as something that can be kind of calculated and doled out in particular percentages related to particular sins. And this is so wildly different from a perception, which is the Reformation view of grace, which says that grace essentially is Christ. Like, grace is the Son of God for us. And that means that he cannot be quantified. There are no pieces. You don't get just a little bit of grace here and a little bit of grace here. Where Christ is and where God's promises are is the fullness of grace. We get it all because it is all Christ. And he is all for us.

62. 43:36

    Gavin Ortlund

    Just to press that into the hearts of viewers, for them to understand, if you are troubled by your sins, know you are not the first person in church history who has perhaps experienced those emotions and perhaps even despaired. Many have before you, and ultimately come to discover that the grace of God given in Jesus Christ is sufficient. Therefore, you need do nothing other than sincere repentance. That is the wonderful simplicity of the gospel. I mean, I'm not saying in your life at large, you don't need to, you know, go to church on Sunday, but to actually acquire the grace of God, it comes from faith and repentance in Christ. And we just want to encourage people, you can experience that as well as so many others have. And I just want to say thanks to both of you for the work that you're doing. As I've said in previous episodes, I look up to you both, learn so much from you, and it's a privilege to be able to partner to talk about, even where in our different traditions there are some points of difference, we have tremendous common ground, and it's wonderful to come and celebrate that.

63. 44:41

    Michael Horton

    Same here, Gavin and Jordan. Really appreciate your insights and the time you've spent with us.

64. 44:48

    Jordan Cooper

    Yeah, well, thanks so much to both of you as well. I've really enjoyed it, learned a lot from, from both of you, both here and elsewhere. And thank you so much, everybody who's watching. Just a reminder, I will post a link below to all of the videos so you can watch all six parts. God bless.