Gordon Clark: Justification is acquittal (pardon) and acceptance (active favor) before God

Gordon Clark explains that justification is more than pardon or acquittal; it involves acceptance or adoption by God, a declaration that we are not merely "innocent" but, indeed, "righteous" by the imputation of Christ's righteousness through faith:

It has been necessary to insist that justification is a judicial act of acquittal, for only so can salvation be by grace. However, the ordinary idea of acquittal does not exhaust the Biblical concept of justification. Section I also says that God pardons the sins of those who are justified and accepts their persons as righteous. Perhaps the idea of pardon needs no explanation, for its meaning is easily understood; but the idea of acceptance needs to be distinguished from both pardon and acquittal. The governor of a state may pardon a convicted official without restoring him to favor and to his previous office. Appointments to office, if honest, would depend on the future conduct of the pardoned man. But it is otherwise with Biblical justification; for if favor with God depended on our future conduct, eventual salvation would be based on our works—clearly contrary to Scripture—and we could never have an assurance of success. When our position depends on Christ’s merits instead of our own, we need have no fear. [Gordon Clark, What Do Presbyterians Believe? The Westminster Confession Yesterday and Today (Philadelphia, PA: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1965), 124-125; quoted by Brian Schwertley in his refutation of the Auburn Avenue theology]

Gordon Clark: Saving faith is understanding and assent

Gordon Clark explains that saving faith is understanding and assenting to propositions concerning the person and work of Christ, including His work of atonement:

The usual evangelical analysis of belief separates it into three parts: notitia, assensus, and fiducia-or understanding, assent, and trust. Perhaps even theologians who use this analysis might omit fiducia if they confined themselves to belief as such; for in a colloquial manner a person who believes that Columbus discovered America in 1492, or in 1374, is not taken as an example of trust. Yet is he not actually an example of confidence?

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We should not “rest in,” i.e. be satisfied with, the single proposition, “There is but one God.” This proposition even the devils accept [cf. James 2:19]. But for salvation men must not only accept the monotheistic proposition, but also other propositions relating to the Atonement.

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One slogan is, “No creed but Christ.” Another expression, with variations from person to person, is, “Faith is not belief in a proposition, but trust in a person.”

Though this may sound very pious, it is nonetheless destructive of Christianity. Back in the twenties, before the Methodist Church became totally apostate, a liberal in their General Conference opposed theological precision by some phrase centering on Christ, such as, Christ is all we need. A certain pastor, a remnant of the evangelical wing of the church, had the courage to take the floor and ask the pointed question, “which Christ?” ... A person can be identified only by a set of propositions.

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Thomas Manton was a Puritan of the seventeenth century, and when he speaks of “the former age,” he is not referring to apostate Romanism, but to the Reformers themselves. Hence he is a witness that they defined fait[h] has an assent to the promise of the Gospel.

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The former age never said that true believing, or false believing either, is an act of the understanding only. The former age, and much of the later ages too, specify assent in addition to understanding. They make this specification with the deliberate aim of not restricting belief to understanding alone. One can understand and lecture on the philosophy of Spinoza, but this does not mean that the lecturer assents to it. Belief is the act of assenting to something understood. But understanding alone is not belief in what is understood.

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The crux of the difficulty with the popular analysis of faith into notitia (understanding), assensus (assent), and fiducia (trust), is that fiducia comes from the same root as fides (faith). Hence this popular analysis reduces to the obviously absurd definition that faith consists of understanding, assent, and faith. Something better than this tautology must be found. (Gordon Clark, Saving Faith)

Gordon Clark: Saving faith is assent to the propositions of Scripture concerning Jesus Christ, our Savior

Gordon Clark explains the nature of saving faith as assent to the propositions of Scripture concerning the person and work of Jesus Christ, our Savior, who bore the sins of His people when He shed His blood and died on the cross, and whose righteousness is imputed to us when we believe by the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit:

In view of the clear and repeated assertions of the Gospel it is strange that anyone who considers himself conservative or even orthodox should minimize faith or belief and try to substitute for it some emotional or mystic experience.

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It is likely that Romanticism thrives on inborn tendencies plus an inability to think clearly, especially to think clearly about one’s own (I shall not say experience) mental life. These people do indeed have beliefs. Many of them believe that the Bible is the Word of God and that Christ’s death was a substitutionary sacrifice. But because they have studied so little, because their theology is limited to a few fundamentals, and because they assume the detailed and onerous duties of pastors and evangelists where their limited theology is inadequate, they conclude from the meagerness of their thinking that thinking and believing are inadequate. Combined with this is their failure to notice the effect of their few beliefs on their own conduct.

As a man thinks, so is he. Out of the heart - and as we shall see some pages farther on, heart means mind or intellect - are the issues of life. If a man says he has faith, but does not have works, we tend to conclude that he has no faith. Conduct, particularly habitual conduct, is the best criterion fallible men have for judging hypocrisy. What a man believes, really believes, even if he says the contrary, will show in his living. Therefore, these popular evangelists show by their conduct that they believe in some things. Their intellectual capital controls their actions so far as their capital reaches. But because they are undercapitalized, and because they have too little intellectual endowment to recognize how intellectual beliefs control them, they minimize theology and take refuge in Romanticism.

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There is no antithesis between believing Jesus as a person and believing what he says. ... In both cases [John 4:21 and 5:26] the object of belief is not a person without words, but definitely the words of the person.

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In literary usage one may say that one believes a person, but this means that one believes what the person says. The immediate and proper object of belief or faith is a truth (or falsehood), a meaning, the intellectual content of some words; and this intellectual content is in logic called a proposition.

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To believe a person means precisely to believe what he says.

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To be sure, a random intellectual belief of an unregenerate man will not save him. The difficulty lies, not in belief as such, but in the fact that an unregenerate man is incapable of believing the necessary propositions. ... It is regeneration to eternal life that causes the intellectual belief. Thus acceptance of the propositions is a mark of having been regenerated and of having eternal life.

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Be sure to note that the Apostle John never mentions a mystic experience. He never says that one must get behind the text to something other than the words or doctrine. He repeatedly says, if you believe, you are saved. Belief is the whole thing. Indeed John 20:31 asserts this very thing in stating the purpose for writing the Gospel: that you may believe the proposition that Jesus is the Messiah and that believing this proposition (and not in some other way) you may have life by his name.

The next question is, what does it mean to believe? This question is usually asked in Latin rather than in Greek, and so phrased the question becomes, What is faith? Various theologians have offered psychological analyses of faith. The most common Protestant analysis is that fides is a combination of notitia, assensus, and fiducia. If these last three Latin words can be explained, then one may compare fides and pistis or pisteuoo to see if they are synonymous. If these Latin terms cannot be clearly defined, then they do not constitute an analysis of faith....

What better conclusion can there be other than the express statements of the Bible? Permit just one outside of John. Romans 10:9-10 say, "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your mind that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved." There is no mystical getting behind, under, or above the text; the only consent there is, is belief in the propositions. Believe these, with understanding, and you shall be saved. Anyone who says otherwise contradicts the repeated rheemata [words or propositions] of Scripture. (Gordon Clark, What is Saving Faith)