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does in appropriating the grace of God, but on what God does in applying it. It is but natural
that Pelagians should object to this view.
The desire to simplify the ordo salutis often led to unwarranted limitations. Weizsaecker would
include in it only the operations of the Holy Spirit wrought in the heart of man, and holds that
neither calling nor justification can properly be included under this category.[Cf. McPherson,
Chr. Dogm., p. 368.] Kaftan, the most prominent Ritschlian dogmatician, is of the opinion that
the traditional ordo salutis does not constitute an inner unity and therefore ought to be
dissolved. He treats of calling under the Word as a means of grace; of regeneration,
justification, and the mystical union, under the redemptive work of Christ; and relegates
conversion and sanctification to the domain of Christian ethics. The result is that only faith is
left, and this constitutes the ordo salutis.[Dogm., p. 651.] According to him the ordo salutis
should include only what is required on the part of man unto salvation, and this is faith, faith
only, — a purely anthropological point of view, which probably finds its explanation in the
tremendous emphasis of Lutheran theology on active faith.
When we speak of an ordo salutis, we do not forget that the work of applying the grace of God
to the individual sinner is a unitary process, but simply stress the fact that various movements
can be distinguished in the process, that the work of the application of redemption proceeds in
a definite and reasonable order, and that God does not impart the fulness of His salvation to
the sinner in a single act. Had He done this, the work of redemption would not have come to
the consciousness of God’s children in all its aspects and in all its divine fulness. Neither do we
lose sight of the fact that we often use the terms employed to describe the various movements
in a more limited sense than the Bible does.
The question may be raised, whether the Bible ever indicates a definite ordo salutis. The
answer to that question is that, while it does not explicitly furnish us with a complete order of
salvation, it offers us a sufficient basis for such an order. The nearest approach found in
Scripture to anything like an ordo salutis, is the statement of Paul in Rom. 8:29,30. Some of the
Lutheran theologians based their enumeration of the various movements in the application of
redemption rather artificially on Acts 26:17,18. But while the Bible does not give us a clear-cut
ordo salutis, it does do two things which enable us to construe such an order. (1) It furnishes us
with a very full and rich enumeration of the operations of the Holy Spirit in applying the work of
Christ to individual sinners, and of the blessings of salvation imparted to them. In doing this, it
does not always use the very terms employed in Dogmatics, but frequently resorts to the use of
other names and to figures of speech. Moreover, it often employs terms which have now
acquired a very definite technical meaning in Dogmatics, in a far wider sense. Such words as
regeneration, calling, conversion, and renewal repeatedly serve to designate the whole change