Theopedia

J. Todd Billings

Overview

J. Todd Billings (born 1973) is an American Reformed theologian, the Gordon H. Girod Research Professor of Reformed Theology at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan.1 He is best known for a participatory, Calvin-rooted account of union with Christ that treats justification and sanctification as two benefits of one union rather than a purely forensic transaction.23

Life and Ministry

Billings earned a B.A. in philosophy and English from Wheaton College in 1995, an M.Div. from Fuller Theological Seminary in 1999, and a Th.D. from Harvard University Divinity School in 2005.1 He joined the faculty of Western Theological Seminary in 2005 and was ordained a minister in the Reformed Church in America in 2007.1 In 2009 he and his wife served as missionaries to Ethiopia; he has also been involved in homeless-care and community-development ministry in Uganda.1 He was later diagnosed with an incurable cancer, an experience he wrote about in Rejoicing in Lament: Wrestling with Cancer and Life in Christ (2015).4

Theological Contribution

Union with Christ as participation, not mere transaction

Billings’ first book, Calvin, Participation, and the Gift: The Activity of Believers in Union with Christ (2007), argues that for Calvin, obedience to the law and participation in Christ are not two separate Christian acts. Carol Man Fen Chen’s dissertation on covenant theology quotes him directly: “Calvin’s vision of the Christian as participating in Christ through obeying the law of love takes on a new cast. Obedience to the law is a participation in God’s accommodating covenant consummated in Christ. Obedience to the law involves nothing less than a participation in Christ, the mediator who reveals the true content of the law and acts as the substance of the law.”2

In Union with Christ: Reframing Theology and Ministry for the Church (2011), Billings extends this to the relationship between divine and human agency in salvation generally, resisting any account that divides the two: “any partitive attempts to divide salvation between God and human beings are destined to fail. Rather, God’s action by the Spirit in the human does not threaten the human’s own agency but actually enables it. When humans are empowered by the Spirit to live in Christ — when they act ‘in Christ’ rather than ‘in themselves’ — they are being restored as the children of God they were created to be.”5 He makes the same point about Calvin’s own theology specifically in a 2009 journal article, arguing that “Calvin refused to see divinity as a polar opposite to humanity, but saw union with Christ as the restoration of primal communion and differentiated union with God.”6

On justification specifically, Billings writes: “Christ’s righteousness is imputed onto us: righteousness is credited to our case before God because of Jesus Christ. This may seem to be an impersonal notion, but it occurs amidst our union and closeness with Christ.”3 Samuel G. Parkison’s dissertation on the beatific vision groups Billings with J. V. Fesko, Michael Horton, Geerhardus Vos, and Louis Berkhof as holding union with Christ as the common root from which both justification and sanctification flow, distinguishing this group from theologians who use union with Christ to loosen justification’s forensic character.7

Scripture’s authority as an act of divine accommodation

In The Word of God for the People of God: An Entryway to the Theological Interpretation of Scripture (2010), Billings locates Scripture’s authority within the same accommodation framework that shapes his account of union with Christ: God graciously accommodates himself to human capacity in both his covenant dealings with his people and his self-revelation in the biblical text. John Thomas English III’s dissertation on the Trinitarian authority of Scripture cites Billings’ formulation repeatedly in its survey of evangelical accounts of biblical authority, situating him within the broader evangelical consensus on accommodation rather than against it.8

Related Doctrines

References

  1. “J. Todd Billings,” Wikipedia, accessed September 2026; the Theopedia Library holds no dedicated biographical source for Billings, and Western Theological Seminary’s own faculty page was unreachable from this session. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  2. J. Todd Billings, Calvin, Participation, and the Gift: The Activity of Believers in Union with Christ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 163, quoted in Carol Man Fen Chen, “A Historical, Biblical, and Theological Interpretation of Covenants: Unconditionality and Conditionality in Relation to Justification and Sanctification” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2019), 102. ↩ ↩2

  3. Billings, Union with Christ, 27, quoted in Samuel G. Parkison, “Irresistible Beauty: Beholding Triune Glory in the Face of Jesus Christ” (PhD diss., Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2021), chap. 4, “Soteriological Foundations,” 195n48. ↩ ↩2

  4. J. Todd Billings, Rejoicing in Lament: Wrestling with Cancer and Life in Christ (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2015). ↩

  5. J. Todd Billings, Union with Christ: Reframing Theology and Ministry for the Church (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), 60-61, quoted in Chen, “A Historical, Biblical, and Theological Interpretation of Covenants,” 317. ↩

  6. J. Todd Billings, “John Calvin’s Soteriology: On the Multifaceted ‘Sum’ of the Gospel,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 11, no. 4 (2009): 442, quoted in Chen, “A Historical, Biblical, and Theological Interpretation of Covenants,” 317. ↩

  7. Parkison, “Irresistible Beauty,” chap. 4, 195n55. ↩

  8. J. Todd Billings, The Word of God for the People of God: An Entryway to the Theological Interpretation of Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 91, cited in John Thomas English III, “Thus Says the Lord: A Trinitarian Account of the Authority of Scripture” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2014), 16-17n57. ↩