Monthly Archives: November 2015

Election

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Election continues to be a point of discussion, and contention, among thinking Christians. In this short post I would like to offer a distinction between a classical understanding of election (held among classical Calvinists), and then an evangelical Calvinist understanding of election; the latter of which I hold to, of course! The evangelical Calvinist understanding, at least for me, is Karl Barth electionand Thomas Torrance inspired. This will be an off-the-top post where I simply try to explain things in an impromptu kind of way.

Classical

In eternity past God, by absolute decree, elected a select group of individuals throughout all of salvation history whom He would die for (in Christ), pay for by the blood of Christ, and ensure their eternal justification/sanctification/glorification by persevering grace.

In summary. The classical perspective believes that there are particularly elect individuals (and some in the classic camp believe that this applies to the reprobate as well; i.e. that God actively decreed that there would be reprobate individual people, in fact the majority of humanity [e.g. the ‘broad way’]) for whom Christ died, and that He did not die for all of humanity (so what is called limited atonement or definite atonement).

Evangelical

In eternity past God, by gracious interpenetrating love, elected to become human in the eternal Son (Deus incarnatus) assuming humanity for all of humanity. He chose an individual for eternal salvation in the elect humanity of the Son. In this assumption of humanity, in its execution in the incarnation (assumptio carnis), Jesus Christ by virtue of the ‘type’ of humanity He assumed–i.e. ‘fallen humanity’–became reprobate for us (cf. II Cor. 5.21; 8.9), the ‘One for the many.’ In His death, burial, and resurrection (cf. Romans 6.1-4; I Cor. 15.1-4), in His elect and exalted status, He is ‘elect humanity par excellence’ for all of humanity by virtue of the fact that He is not just fully man, but fully God.

Closing

The classic position focuses on individual people in its doctrine of election, and works primarily from a soteriological vantage point (prior to Christology). The evangelical position focuses on the individuality of Christ’s humanity in its doctrine of election, and works primarily from a Christological vantage point (prior to soteriology).

I am evangelical.

To Be ‘In Christ’ and the Bigger Picture of Salvation

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In Christ, this little phrase is ubiquitous throughout the writings of St. Paul. If you are a Bible reader this phrase, ‘in Christ,’ will be very familiar to you, and maybe also very encouraging to you, if not somewhat mysterious sounding. Indeed, there is mystery to it (think of John Calvin’s unio mystica), but not so much that we cannot press into it with very fruitful and edifying understanding imagodeitowards our own spiritual formational understanding of what it means to be children of God.

Karl Barth has a very insightful way of understanding what this phrase means, and it is related, of course!, to his unique doctrine of election; it is also related, more generally, to a doctrine of creation and theological-anthropology. Barth is concerned to highlight the reality that Jesus Christ himself is indeed the ‘first-fruits’ of God’s creation, in his vicarious humanity for us (see Col. 1.15ff); he is concerned to show that Jesus Christ is really what it looks like to be a human being, and not concerned in abstraction, but concerned in the concrete reality of His humanity serving as the ground of human life and the imago Dei who humans were originally created in as images of the image (and now recreated in, in the resurrection of Jesus Christ).

This makes Barth’s conception unique, not because his conception of Christ’s vicarious humanity is outside the bounds of historic Christian orthodox teaching, but unique instead because Barth worked within the Reformed tradition. For the Reformed tradition in general to be ‘in Christ’ relative to soteriological thinking has to do with declarative reality for the elect; it has to do with the elect’s positional relationship to God, as God declares them to be forensically justified in and through the penal substitutionary work of Christ. This is different from Barth’s emphasis. Barth (and TF Torrance et. al.), as I noted above, has more to do with ontological reality; that is, what reality, for Barth, stands as the ultimate ground of what it means to be human? Answering this question, for Barth, is to answer the question: what does it mean to be ‘in Christ?’ Barth’s response is this:

“In Christ” means that in him we are reconciled to God, in him we are elect from eternity, in him we are called, in him we are justified and sanctified, in him our sin is carried to the grave, in his resurrection our death is overcome, with him our life is hid with Christ in God, in him everything that has to be done for us has already been done, has previously been removed and put in its place, in him we are children in the Father’s house, just as he is by nature. All that has to be said about us can be said only by describing and explaining our existence in him; not by describing and explaining it as an existence we might have in and for itself…. For by Christ we will never be anything else than just what we are in Christ. And when the Holy Spirit draws and takes us right into the reality of revelation by doing what we cannot do, by opening our eyes and ears and hearts, he does not tell us anything except that we are in Christ by Christ.[1]

Barth’s concern is bigger than simply being concerned with a doctrine of salvation; he is more focused on the big picture of God’s good creation. Yes, sin entered the picture and humanity’s plight went wild in the wilderness of that sin, but sin was not a subversion of God’s plan nor its dictate. In other words, humanity always already had a ground and location apart from sin, and that ground and reality was, like we noted earlier, the humanity of Jesus Christ, whose image humanity was originally created in and recreated ‘in Christ.’

Barth’s conceiving, then, has more to do with ontology and humanity’s orientation relative to God in that ontology. Enclosed within that reality is where a doctrine of salvation and/or soteriology can be premised and built upon, not the other way around (as the Augustinian method has it, the method upon which Reformed-orthodox theology is built).

[1] Karl Barth, CD I/2, 240 cited by George Hunsinger, Evangelical Catholic And Reformed: Doctrinal Essays on Barth and Related Themes (Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2015), Loc. 4577, 4583 Kindle.

Moving and Breathing in a Blog-like World with Appeal to the Analogia Barthei

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Living in a blog-like world can be dangerous, especially for those of us who keep reading and learning. When posting on blogs, Facebook, Twitter, or other social media the impression might be given that our ideas are concretized, stagnate, immutable even. This is the danger of expressing oneself via social media around theological ideas (and this is the danger, really, for anyone who publishes musicbarthor teaches in whatever venue). For some theologians the case may be that their work is relatively static, but I would venture to say that for most this is not the case. In other words, most of us are changing, moving and breathing theologically in ways that online publication might betray somewhat. Karl Barth, more than anyone attests to this reality in his own theological work; he changed, reified, constructed more than anyone if not more than anyone who has ever published Dogmatic theology like he has; and I count this to be a good thing!

In the 1930s Hugh Ross Mackintosh wrote this of Barth:

Impressive as Barth’s work has been, it is far from being beyond the reach of criticism. Some camp-followers of the movement have inclined to forget this, but the master himself leaves us in no doubt. He criticizes his own statements, often, by modifying them. “To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often,” it has been said; and one fact which makes comprehension of this thought so difficult is that in detail it changes constantly. He warns us vehemently against canonizing his results up to date. He offers clear principles, definite assumptions, but never a closed system. Theology on the wing, it has been called. His thought moves; it does not crystallize. Of him as of Dostoievsky [sic] we may say that he is not interested in tepid notions; there is a dash of the spirit of Heraclitus in him, everything is heat and motion, opposition and struggle. Fitly, therefore, he exhibits a most rare and excellent combination of humility and humour. “It is a real question,” he has suggested, “whether there is as much joy in heaven as there is on earth over the growth of the Barthian school.” Far from being an oracle, he is simply a servant of the Church, with no thought of forming a party. He would perhaps not object to my saying that if I succeed in giving a clear account of his thinking, that will prove that I have been successful after all. Life is not simple, hence theology cannot be simple either; and Barth’s thought is not, in any ordinary sense of the words, easy or transparent. [1]

I thought this not only provides a good word on how to read Barth, but by analogy it also points up the fact that to a degree we all are doing this; and if we are going to be doing this in healthy ways and in the mould of Barth we will be humble enough to be self-critical to the point that we can admit that when we got it wrong in the past that we indeed, got it wrong!

If the God we serve is lively, Triune, personal, relational, dynamic, and we are created in His image in Christ, then it follows, that as we are growing in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ, that we will constantly be moving and breathing with the Holy Spirit as He points us to the stereophonic, Jesus.

[1]Hugh Ross Mackintosh, Types Of Modern Theology: Schleiermacher To Barth (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1937), 264-65.

A REFLECTION ON THE SYRIAN CRISIS, ONE KINGDOM POSTURE, AND THE CHRISTIAN RESPONSE OF PRAYER

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*Here’s a repost that I originally wrote on August 28th, 2013. As you will probably pick up I wrote this right in that moment when we had our warships off the coast of Syria and were about to start bombing Assad directly for “crossing the red line” of using chemical weapons etc. These were the thoughts I had about that then, and within the body of the post I discuss how I think the State relates to the Church and vice versa. I conclude with the thought that Prayer for wisdom is what Christians need to be about, and then acting out of the wisdom that God has given us in Christ (this can now be applied to the Refugee crisis currently underway).

This whole Syria thing is really a big deal to me, as I am sure it is for many of you as well. It reflects a genuine ethical dilemma for the Christian. And for me, things, unfortunately, are not as clear as they seem to be for others. I cannot obamaunclesamhelp, for example, to get the genocide that happened in Rwanda out of my head. I remember watching the movie that depicted it, Hotel Rwanda, and how the United Nations really was unable to provide substantial protection for the women and children being slaughtered all around them by the sharp edge of the machete. There are plenty of people, and Christian people, decrying the usage of military force to intervene in the Syrian crisis (which has been ongoing for 2 years); they are advocating for peace, and non-violent solutions. This is noble, and I do believe it follows the ethic of Christ to advocate for peace. But I still wonder what in the world can be done in order to help these people in Syria, who are being slaughtered, in a genocidal fashion, by their oppressive government? I really don’t know! And I do wonder why Obama, and cronies, at this moment, are all of the sudden doing an about face, and seeking to intervene in Syria with military force (but only in a way, apparently, that is intended to punish Assad, but not actually take him out—this would be like taking part of a cancerous tumor out, but not the whole thing. There must be something more going on than concern for the Syrian people. I mean over 100,000 people have already died (and counting) in Syria; how they died (by what material means), seems unremarkable (i.e. in the sense that whether they died by chemicals or bullets really is not the issue, the issue is, is that they are dead and dying).

And so upon further reflection, as I have been hashing through this on Facebook the last couple of days, and just in my own thinking; I have to wonder what this whole move by Obama is really all about? I mean there is a real potential for this to spark World War 3—Russia, China, and Iran have said as much. And so why would Obama, knowing this, risk all of this (WW3), just to punish Assad? This is really a strange thing …

Having said all of the above, there remains a clear and resounding reality in all of this; genocide is immoral, and it cannot be overlooked. I find it extremely naïve to believe that the United Nations is the answer—Rwanda (among other things) won’t allow me to conclude this. Obama’s plan (to start WW3), to merely “punish” Assad with a few hours of bombs, will actually only exacerbate the problem (and genocide), and not squelch it. This is a dilemma, indeed! Come Jesus!

And so this begs the question (one that I have been wrestling with, as I have noted, as I am sure you have been, over the last few days); how ought the Christian to respond? How ought the Christian think of her and his relationship to the State (whatever State that is for you)? I do believe with my brethren and sistren, that the ethic of Christianity is ‘peace’, how peace comes about is where we have debate (in the penultimate details, not in the ultimate detail … we all agree the ultimate is the consummation of Christ’s coming kingdom). I do not believe Obama’s apparent strategy will create peace, but then neither do I think the UN will either; so a dilemma. This said, I think Christians have a ‘witness’ bearing (if not prophetic) role to play in relation to the State. I follow a constructively conceived Barthian understanding (surprise) of the relation of Church to State, and as such, I see both Church and State in the one kingdom of God in Christ (in the sphere and orientation of His life in Christ for us, all of us!). And as such, using the hypostatic union of Jesus as the analogy, I see the Church and State as still distinct, and yet inseparably related one to the other. And so this has impact upon the way I think the Church should act towards the State. In this specific instance, I wouldn’t expect the State to act like the Church, and I don’t expect the Church to act like the State; and thus, we ought to avoid conflating the two, as if we think the State should make its decisions as if it were the Church, in a special relation to God in Christ. That said, given the distinctiveness of the Church, and its ethic of shalom (peace), realized in Christ, I believe, as the Christian Church (His bride), that we ought to model the eschatological life of God in Christ, which is full of grace and truth. We should picture for them, the State, how we, the Church, are known by love (which is sacrificial, and self-given); we ought to be able to point to an alternative reality from the broken one the State lives out of. How this takes concrete form, though, is hard to say (i.e. through activism, through modeling it somehow in a transparent way, etc.). But I do believe this is how it ought to work. Here is how a former prof of mine from seminary, Paul Metzger, sketches this kind of constructive Barthian understanding of the relation between Church and State, and with this I close:

. . .Thus, as stated above, the church should resist any temptation to attempt to impose its will on the state. Now why is this? The reason is that when the church demands privileges and an audience in the secular sphere it forgets its own vocation and that of the state as well, thereby abandoning its freedom in the process. “Whenever the church has entered the political arena to fight for its claim to be given public recognition, it has always been a church which has failed to understand the special purpose of the state,an impenitent, spiritually unfree church.”

Now if the Church were to demand that the state accept its Word, would not the church in effect displace the state? If so, how could the church continue to serve God and the state in a nonpartisan way? Its word would then be bound, not free. Only as a church remains a spiritual institution will it have secular, political responsibilities, namely, those of exemplifying the ideals of the kingdom to the state and proclaiming God’s Word of the kingdom to the state. However, the reverse is not the case. If the church functions as a secular institution, it will forfeit its responsibilities in a sacred sphere. . . . The church must call on the state to listen to its Word, the Word of the kingdom, since the message of the kingdom concerns the state. But it must not demand that the state listen. The church must not use force, the instrument of the state, imposing its message on its hearers, but must seek to persuade its addressees of the need to receive its message through reasoned argument alone in the event of Christian proclamation, appealing to the state to take to heart its word rather than compelling the state to do so. The church must not demand but discuss, not presume upon but reason, appealing to the state to take its claims to heart, claims not about the centrality of the church, but about the centrality of the kingdom which both church and state are parts. Now if in God’s providential workings the state bestows on the church certain benefits and rights, even taking the church’s message to heart, the church must not come to expect such benefits, rights, and respect as irrevocable, permanent privileges, which must be preserved at all costs, but rather as gifts from God’s hand, gifts which may last but for a season. (Paul Louis Metzger, “The Word of Christ And The World of Culture: Toward a Synthesis Of the Sacred and Secular in the Theology of Karl Barth,”[dissertation form] 225-227 )

I obviously have an inner tension, and conflict going on within me about this whole thing. I am highly concerned for the people in Syria (and for that matter, anywhere were people are living under repressive despotic regimes), and yet there seems to be no real and viable answer; except to wait for Christ. But ‘how’ we wait remains the question. We pray, but as the Lord of hosts said to Joshua:  ‘…“Get up! Why do you lie thus on your face?”‘; so not only do we pray, but we act. But in this instance (of Syria), how, and what? That remains the question for me. Obama is obviously acting, but for some ulterior reason. What that is, I don’t really know; but it obviously is not out of concern for Syria, there is something else. The UN will act by way of its usual bluster, and hemming-and-hawing. There is really, at this moment, one act to be made for the Christian, we must pray for wisdom, and for the Divine intervention of Yahweh in Christ for, in this instance, the people in Syria. This is how we personally acted when I was faced with my cancer (for which there was no real treatment). We implored the LORD, and He acted in a way that only He could. And so I know He can do the same for the people of Syria, and I pray that He will!

Commenting “Policy”

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Just a quick housekeeping note in regard to commenting here at The Evangelical Calvinist. I actually don’t get that many comments anymore (blogging has changed since I started 10 years ago), and typically anytime I do you all use great tone and are respectful even if you disagree with me on things. But I would like to be clear: This is my personal blog, it is where I think out loud, write to learn, and process various things. One thing that I won’t accept are comments that tell me, on my own blog, what I should or shouldn’t post and/or when I should or shouldn’t post on whatever topic we might be considering.

Somebody just told me via comment that I shouldn’t have posted that post that I did on Pray for Paris, Jean Cauvin. Apparently they thought it was in bad taste, or maybe opportunistic or whatever. I can assure you that that post was not that. That post, for one thing was, for me, a way to process the tragedy that happened on November 13th, and also a way to maybe put up something encouraging and edifying from John Calvin (who just happened to be French). I thought his words were apropos, and even timely in regard to underscoring what prayer is and what it can and should accomplish for those who do pray. My commentary on that post was intended to set up that quote (from Calvin) and nothing else. I don’t think that what I wrote in that post was distasteful or too quick.

Anyway, I am going to post whatever I feel led, at the time, to post. If you see a title to a post and you don’t think you will like its contents, then don’t read it, nobody is forcing you to. I am thankful to have the readers that I do, and thankful, typically, for the type of feedback that I get. But I just want to be clear about what I am doing with this blog, and to emphasize that this is my blog; nobody is forcing you to read it, but I am grateful that you all do.

Thanks. Pax.

PS. If I receive comments that I think are outside the bounds of what I find acceptable I will delete those comments; I won’t be censored on my own blog. I have rarely ever done that in my 10 years of blogging.

Hope for Today in the Apocalyptic of the Book of Revelation: Patristic Readings of Revelation

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Richard Bauckham’s two books on the book of Revelation, The Theology of the Book of Revelation and The Climax of Prophecy are both excellent (which is an understatement)! I just started a new book (which I will take some time getting through it as I can) called Apocalyptic Thought In Early Christianity (Holy Cross Studies in Patristic Theology and History) edited by Robert J. bannerpantocratorDaly, SJ. The first chapter I have encountered is entitled: “I Know Your Works”: Grace and Judgment in the Apocalypse and is written by Theodore Stylianopoulos. As is usual for me study of the book of Revelation, if done right, evokes excitement and wonder. Stylianopoulos’s chapter, even as we are just getting started, is getting off on the right foot!*

I think the theme of Revelation that challenges and excites me the most is the idea of the holiness of God, and that He is Pantokrator (Παντοκράτωρ), ‘Almighty.’ The idea that within that reality we are faced with two kingdoms (no, not of the sort that we get from the so called Escondido Theology), or to get more Augustinian (even though Stylianopoulos does not), with two cities: The City of God juxtaposed with The City of Man.

As Bauckham does so well in his books, he develops this theme found in the book of Revelation: i.e. the theme that God’s kingdom in Christ trumps the kingdoms of this world; and in the book of Revelation, in historical context, the Roman world and its kingdom. As Bauckham underscores, what the book of Revelation is doing, by its appeal to apocalyptic language and imagery, is showing these early Christians (and now us later ones too) through evocative and picturesque language that, indeed, Rome is not it. It is showing the Christians, that while their most immediate experience seems pressing, with all of its visceral and experienced realities, including martyrdom for Christ, that this is not the final reality, or even the total present reality. That standing above and over the City of Man is the City of God, where the King of kings and Lord of lords rules, and is coming from to vindicate the martyrs persecuted for His name. It is this type of apocalyptic reality that I have found hopeful (because God is God and He is Almighty even when it might not look like it), and it is this reality that Stylianopoulos’ further provides layering for as he writes about the choices that the Christian has in the Roman context of whether they are going to serve Caesar as lord, or the living Lord of apocalyptic reality as Lord. If the Christian follows the latter, according to Stylianopoulos, it will look decidedly different than what it looks like to follow Caesar as lord; and it might even eventuate in death. Stylianopoulos writes:

For the seer, there is no room for compromise. The choice is either between Rome and its works (Rev. 18:6) or Christ and his works (Rev. 2:26). The two ways are irreconcilable. Rome’s ways are marked by self-glorification (“goddess Roma”), wealth, luxury, and prosperity by which it deceives and corrupts the nations while concealing its abominations of violence, injustice, wantonness, lies, and slavery (Rev. 18:1–19). Not least, Rome is accountable to God for the blood of the saints who are killed for resisting its idolatrous practices. To follow Rome, as the “earth- dwellers” do, is to participate in its abominations of murder, sorcery, immorality, thefts, all motivated by the worship of demons (Rev. 9:20–21). Thus the saints are commanded: “Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues” (Rev. 18:4). This call, of course, is not for physical withdrawal but for a distinctly countercultural way of life in the midst of Greco-Roman society. In contrast, Christ’s way is the way of the slain Lamb bearing testimony to God’s truth and achieving victory through suffering and death. To follow the slain Lamb, as the saints do, is to participate in Jesus’ witness to God’s word and in Jesus’ suffering because of their own witness and suffering in active resistance to the prevailing culture. The assumption is that to live as a Christian is to live in the world and not apart from it. However, the choice provokes conflict and entails suffering, even the prospect of death (Rev. 13:9–10). The supreme ideal is symbolized by the 144,000 martyrs who stand victorious and sing praises before God’s throne. The recurrent calls for faithfulness to God and the Lamb, and the exhortations to patient endurance to the point of death, signify that for the author of the Apocalypse the greatest commendable work is martyrdom itself.[1]

Conclusion

There are many directions we could take all of this, but let me close it this way. In light of the horrific events of November 13th in Paris it would be easy to reduce the evil that we saw on the streets there to the ISIS combatants that executed so many people. But when we consider what we find in the book of Revelation, in its theological implications, what becomes clear is that it isn’t just ISIS, but that it is the kingdoms of this world (including France, Europe in toto, USA, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, etc., etc.) that represent the City of Man in total; the ‘city’ or ‘kingdom’ that stands against the purposes of God and His kingdom in Christ. This does not mean that God does not providentially use (see Rev. 17) the kingdoms of this world to make sure that justice is wrought (Rom. 13). This does not mean that there aren’t clear and bright lines between evil and good (in a relative sense). But what it does mean is that even “good” intentions apart from participation in Christ’s goodness aren’t really good at all. It means that things are quite complicated, and that there is an undercurrent for prestige and power even among countries that appear to be ‘good.’ And as Christians if we desire to live and stand for righteousness in Jesus Christ, that ultimately this will place us at cross-purposes even with the ostensibly good countries in the world. In fact, as we bear witness to Christ it will expose the darkness that underwrites the power present in every human government.

But there is hope, and this is why I enjoy the book of Revelation so much! It shows that while the Beastly kingdoms have their ways, so too does the Kingdom of Christ. And even when things appear one way, as if the Beast, the kingdoms of this world are winning, that in reality they have already been crushed by the King of kings, by Jesus Christ!

[1] Theodore Stylianopoulos, “I Know Your Works”: Grace and Judgment in the Apocalypse in Robert J. Daly, SJ, ed., Apocalyptic Thought In Early Christianity (Holy Cross Studies in Patristic Theology and History) (Baker Publishing Group, 2009), 35 Scribd version.

*One critique I have of Stylianopoulos’s essay is that he presumes, in Protestant speak, an Arminian maintenance idea of salvation. In other words, he appears to hold that ‘works’ and ‘conquering’ in the book of Revelation indicate that even though we have been given a glorious gift in salvation through Christ, that it remains possible for the believer to lose this gift. Stylianopoulos is a Greek Orthodox, so rather than reading things through an Arminian lens, what really is bearing on his view in this regard is his Orthodoxy. This disagreement notwithstanding, his commentary on the idea of ‘works and judgment’ in the book of Revelation still bears some good fruit.

Paris Needs Prayer, Jean Cauvin

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What a terrible day in Paris! People in general, but the Parisian in particular, needs to know that they are safe even when they are pressed into the reality–as we all are!–of the circumstances of the day, that they really aren’t; at least not humanly speaking. As the events of November 13th, 2015 illustrated in an horrific and unimaginable way, the Parisian today needs to peacefrenchknow that even if such horrific types of events intersect with their lives and their psyches, that God in Jesus Christ is for them; that He loves them, and that He demonstrated this love for them at His cross (cf. Romans 8.6). The Parisian needs to know and rest in the evangelical reality that God in His providential care has them in His big hands, and that no-one can pluck them out of His hands, not even a terrorist with a Kalashnikov or hand grenade. The Parisian knows better, or as well as anyone else today, how fragile this life is, and how the circumstances of life can change in an instant and in a very violent way! In the face of this they need prayer; they need dialogue with the Triune God who loves them, He desires that the Parisian would cry out to Him, and seek their rest and security in Him and in His mighty care. French theologian, Jean Cauvin or John Calvin says this to his countrymen about their need for prayer, and what it will supply for them in this very trying time,

Words fail to explain how necessary prayer is, and in how many ways the exercise of prayer is profitable. Surely, with good reason the Heavenly Father affirms that the only stronghold of safety is in calling upon his name [cf. Joel 2:32]. By so doing we invoke the presence both of his providence, through which he watches over and guards our affairs, and of his power, through which he sustains us, weak as we are and well-nigh overcome, and of his goodness, through which he receives us, miserably burdened with sins unto grace; and, in short, it is by prayer that we call him to reveal himself as wholly present to us. Hence comes an extraordinary peace and repose to our consciences. For having disclosed to the Lord the necessity that was pressing upon us, we even rest fully in the thought that none of our ills is hid from him who, we are convinced, has both the will and the power to take the best care of us.[1]

I cannot think of a more timely word from Calvin for our French-Parisian compatriots. The reality is that things like this can continue to happen, in Paris and elsewhere; and they most likely will! Is the ultimate answer for individual people going to be live in fear and paranoia; is the answer going to be for more surveillance, or the boning up of weaponry, is that the answer? No, the answer as Calvin has so eloquently lain bare, is for the Parisian to talk with God; to pray. To commit themselves into His hands, and it will only be here where an ‘extraordinary peace’ and sense of security will take hold; as the petitioner to God finds this in the One who holds all things together in His big hands and by the word of His power.

I am praying for the Parisians today, please join me!  le Seigneur a pitié !

[1] John Calvin, Institutes II/2, 851.

T Torrance, The Grammatico-Historico Biblical Exegete: With Reference to John Webster

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What I want to continue to engage with in this post will be in reference to, Thomas Torrance’s hermeneutics; and this time instead of focusing simply on his revelational/ontic frame towards Scripture we will get further into what Torrance had to say about grammatical-historical-literary exegesis of the text. Sometimes the impression can be given that Torrance may have had no place glossbiblefor such consideration in his approach; the impression might be that he was so consumed with the Dogmatics of things that everything else is simply swallowed up, including thinking about the importance of actual concrete biblical exegesis and practice. John Webster writes this of Torrance:

For Torrance, questions about the nature and interpretation of Scripture are subordinate to questions about divine revelation; bibliology and hermeneutics are derivatives from principles about the active, intelligible presence of the triune God to his rational creatures. This way of ordering matters not only explains a certain reluctance on his part to spell out much by way of a doctrine of Holy Scripture (attempts to do so, he fears, risk isolating Scripture from its setting in the divine economy), but also sheds light on the fact that what he has to say about the nature and interpretation of the Bible is concerned only secondarily with Scripture as literary-historical text and primarily with Scripture as sign – that is, with Scripture’s ostensive functions rather than with its literary surface or the historical processes of its production. A theological account of the nature of Scripture and its interpretation takes its rise, not in observations of immanent religious and literary processes, as if the texts could be understood as self-articulations on the part of believing communities, but in the doctrine of the self-revealing triune God.[1]

The latter part of Webster’s thoughts is what we covered somewhat in this post; it is this reality, indeed, that I think sets Torrance’s approach apart from many other approaches to Holy Scripture. And yet, as Webster also notes, there does seem to be a ‘reluctance on his part to spell out much by way of a doctrine of Holy Scripture,’ and we might add his apparent commitment to see the literary-historical features present in most accounts of biblical hermeneutics as secondary to Scripture’s reality and/or ontology relative to its givenness within the economy of God’s life. I have had these concerns myself with Torrance’s apparent lack of engagement with concrete exegetical questions, and more pointedly with wonderment about how he actually interpreted Scripture itself (i.e. did he actually use literary-historical-grammatical-rhetorical tools, etc.). If you read his (TF Torrance’s) book Divine Meaning: Studies in Patristic Hermeneutics you might be pushed further into the impression that indeed Torrance really had no room for getting into the nitty-gritty details of literary driven biblical exegesis (Webster in another essay voices the same concern in regard to TF Torrance’s approach to things as presented in Divine Meaning). Of course, it would be too quick to conclude that Torrance really has nothing to say about such things; and too quick to conclude that Torrance does not engage in a type of “concrete” biblical exegesis in any of his works—with his posthumously published volumes Incarnation&Atonement (his Edinburgh, New College Lectures) we have a demonstration that this is not the case.

With all of the above noted, I was encouraged to come across some things he had to say about this in his 1981 published Payton lectures from Fuller under the title Reality and Evangelical Theology: A fresh and challenging approach to Christian revelation. While what he writes does not undercut Webster’s insights into his (TFT’s) secondary concern with literary-historical issues related to biblical exegesis; what it does do is show how Torrance actually does have a place for using these types of grammatico-historico-literary-rhetorico tools towards engaging with the text of Scripture. Of course as you will see he sees these as the necessary and instrumental supports, and natural-flowing realties present in the text, given its given nature by God in Christ. In other words, as you will see, he does not see this type of engagement with the text as an terminus in itself, but in service of the signum (or ‘sign’) function of the text; so he doesn’t see such engagement with the text as a foreclosing upon and/or harnessing of God’s Self-revelation (which funds the reality of the text), but instead in service of this Self-revelation and within the accommodating movement of God and embodiment of created media within the economy of His life of incarnation in Jesus Christ. Torrance writes:

In view of the way in which the primary reference of biblical statements to God relies upon the secondary reference of those statements to one another in coherent sequences, a great deal of attention must also be given to how the statements in biblical texts are to be read within their own syntactical or formal-logical structures and within the whole context in which they are found. This must be done if reasonable interpretation is to be offered and any rational account of the meaning to be assigned to them is to be given. In fact, only if we pay careful attention to the orderly connections built up by words, sentences, and continuous reports may we be in a position to discern how, through their objective reference, the Holy Scriptures may yield their own interpretation. Moreover, it is when we allow the biblical texts to declare their own syntactical meaning to us in this way that we are restrained from imposing upon them an objective meaning alien to what they actually say.

Determination of the coherent patterns of sense and meaning in biblical passages and documents is not so easy as it might at first appear on the syntactic and semantic surface. Much hard thought and work is required in exegetical and critical inquiry to lay bare what we call their inner rational sequence. The interpreter must seek to clarify rather more than the grammatico-syntactical sense of passages. He must probe into the reasonable ground underlying their linguistic signification, and that needs a comparative examination of their signifying components including the many images, analogies, figures, representations, and idioms that are employed, in order to determine as far as possible their exact sense and then to distill out of them and bring to consistent expression the basic conceptuality they carry. Analytical and synthetical work of this kind calls for a deep perception and judgment on the part of the interpreter in deciding what is finally irrelevant overtone and what is essential to the real meaning intended. It is only as the linguistic and conceptual forms are matched to one another that their inner rational sequence may be disclosed in an adequate and semantically helpful way.[2]

Closing

Much more could and should be said, but suffice it to say: Thomas F. Torrance, while always the consonant Christian Dogmatician, certainly had place in his approach and thinking for deploying the ‘regular’ and even historical exegetical tools of grammatico-historico analysis of the text of Scripture. While I am encouraged by this, what ought to be kept at the forefront, is that TF Torrance, while committed to regular exegetical practice, always saw such endeavor from a unitary theological vision starting with an order of God’s being leading to an order of knowing within the context of a Christ concentrated doctrine of creation. This is where he saw Scripture located within God’s economy, and this is the frame of reference within which the literary-grammatical-historical realties of the text of Scripture find their inner-logical/inner-theological-meaning from. If context determines meaning, for Torrance, then the context of Scripture is Jesus Christ!

[1] John Webster, The Domain Of The Word: Scripture and Theological Reason (London/New York: T&T Clark International, 2012), 89.

[2] T.F. Torrance, Reality and Evangelical Theology: A fresh and challenging approach to Christian revelation (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1982), 114-15.

A Lament on the Distance Between the Pew and the Desk Chairs of Seminarian’s: A Christian’s Grievance

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There continues to be a disconnect between pew and pulpit, pulpit and lectern; this is my concern. For the rest of this very brief post we will reflect on my concern.

Seventeenth century pews, Church of St Bridget, Chelvey

Seventeenth century pews, Church of St Bridget, Chelvey

My concern is this: I have been drinking deeply and regularly from the deep wells of Christian reality and teaching for many years now (both formally and informally). I have become accustomed to theological jargon, and traditional Christian lexical reality and the concepts they signify through habituation. As a result I have gained access to and depth understanding of realities about God as Triune and God Incarnate in Jesus Christ that otherwise I would have no access to nor understanding of.

I have been personally edified in so many ways that it seems a crime to keep it all to myself. But this is where the concern arises: When trying to share these deep born experiences I have had with God in Christ, as a result of drinking deeply from the aforementioned theological fountains, it becomes exceedingly difficult to do so; and this for multitudinous reasons. 1) Folks who do not have the formal theological and biblical training, but who are Christians, find it very difficult to dive in head first into the “deep end” so to speak. 2) Many Christians don’t even realize that there is a whole other universe just parallel to them provided for by Christ for His Church through His provision of teachers (through the centuries and millennia of the Church); as a result Christians when confronted with vocabulary and concepts from this other universe believe it to be an alien life form and thus not worthy of further pursuit. 3) Etc.

The consequence of all of this, as I see it, is that theologians simply give up, as do the laity, and each pushes deeper into their own comfort zones (whether that be academic theology or populace church theology). Personally, the impact this has on me is to feel like academic theology is really a form of Gnosticism which the ‘elect’ only have access to, this special and deep ‘knowledge’ of God while the laity simply must live on the bread-crumbs if that (and that is usually a willful choice on their part, but as I noted, based upon a false mis-perception of things which has often been fostered by academic theologians and their entrenchment in the specialized universe of theological lineage).

There appears to be a movement towards what is called the ‘pastor-theologian’, of which Kevin Vanhoozer is a big part, but even that, as you read Vanhoozer’s 51 theses on the trajectory, sounds out of touch in many ways. It just sounds like another academic move made for academics (whether that be comprised of professional theologians and/or pastors, or both). My concern though is more visceral than this; I am simply concerned about people missing out on what I have access to on a daily basis. And I am lamenting the fact that most people in the body of Christ today will never experience the depth dimension of Christian reality that is actually available to them and for them.

What I wouldn’t want anyone to conclude from what I just wrote is that I think Christian reality can be reduced to a brute type of intellectualism; that couldn’t be further from what I am attempting to sketch here—just the opposite in fact! My desire is that people, whether academic or not, would begin to partake of the riches available for them, and that they wouldn’t just say “oh, I’m not wired like that, I could never understand that.” My desire is that the Fundamentalism and correlating anti-intellectualism attendant to that, and the inherent laziness associated with that would be repented of to the point that evangelical Christians will throw off the hubris they have grown accustomed to in their sub-culture and realize that the reality of Holy Scripture (Jesus Christ!) is tied into a whole lineage and tradition provided for directly by Jesus Christ. That church history didn’t start in 1962 among the Jesus People, but that it started at Pentecost and continues to press forward full of the gifts and riches that Christ continues to provide for its edification through providing teachers and pastors, evangelists, and apostles with the goal of pressing us deeper into the ecumenical unity of the one faith delivered once and for all to the saints. Hopefully you can catch my heart here.

Further Reading

See this complementing type of post I once wrote and just stumbled upon as I wrote this one: Uncle Karl.

And this one: Wrestling With God.

The Centrality of the Vicarious Humanity of Christ in the Theology of Thomas F. Torrance

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This post will be a kind of an introduction to the theology of Thomas F. Torrance (Scottish theologian spanning from the 20th and 21st centuries). What I am going to share from him is a very succinct offering on how the nation of Israel functions as a centerpiece in mediating Christ to the world for Torrance. Further, this quote will highlight the role that the doctrine of the vicarious humanity of Christ plays in christcenteredTorrance’s theology; maybe you have never really thought about that particular doctrine. TFT has a very unique place for that doctrine (as does Karl Barth), and it plays such an important role for him that it can and should be seen as the touchstone of his broader hermeneutic. It is for this reason, really, that I want to share this with you, so that you can see how Torrance himself talks about the vicarious humanity of Christ.

So without further ado (since the quote is lengthy), let’s hear from TF Torrance:

By singling out Israel from among the nations for this vicarious service and subjecting it to its long ordeal in history, God adapted Israel to his purpose in such a way as to form within it a womb for the incarnation of his Word and a matrix appropriate forms of thought and speech for the reception of his revelation in a final and definitive form. And so in the fullness of time Jesus was born of Mary, out of the organic correlation of revelation and response in the life and language of man, to be the Word of God heard and expressed in the truth and grace of perfect human response to God the Father. In Jesus, God’s eternal Word graciously humbled himself to participate in finite being, submitting to its limitations and operating within its struggles and structures, thus fulfilling God’s revealing and redeeming purpose of his incarnate life as Man on earth and in history. Such was the life and mission of Jesus Christ the Word made flesh, who mediated between God and man, reconciling them in and through himself, and so established a correlation and correspondence between God’s self-giving and man’s receiving in man and a true  and faithful response could be yielded by man to God. Thus, in effecting his self-communication to man, the Word of God assimilated the hearing and speaking of man to himself as constitutive ingredients of divine revelation. In him God’s articulate self-utterance became speech to man, through the medium of human words, and speaks as man to man, for in him God assumed human speech into union with his own, effecting it as the human expression of the divine Word.

Jesus Christ himself, then, is in the hearing and speaking man included in the Word of God incarnate, and he is that in a final and definitive way. In him we do not have to do simply with the word of God and response of man, brought together in some kind of “Nestorian” dualism, but with the indivisible, all significant middle term, the divinely provided response in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. Once and for all he has become God’s exclusive language to man and he alone must be man’s language to God. Here there operates, as it were, a theological form of Fermat’s principle, in accordance with which the selection of one among other possible paths in the formulation of natural law sets the others aside as unentertainable and actually impossible. In himself God is transcendently free and able to create other possibilities, but the actual incarnation of his eternal Word once and for all in our contingent existence in Jesus Christ excludes every other way to the Father and stamps the vicarious humanity of Christ as the sole norm and law, as well as the sole ground of acceptable human response to the Father. Let us note also that in Jesus Christ word and deed, language and event, were inextricably interwoven in his revealing and redeeming activity. His words were done as well as spoken and his deeds spoke as much as his words, for in him God’s Word has become physical, historical event, while the very fact and existence of Jesus Christ was and is itself Word of God to mankind. Jesus Christ is the one place on earth and in history where full reciprocity between God and man and man and God has been established in such a way that God’s Word and Truth come to us within the undiminished realities of our spatiotemporal existence and we human beings may really hear his Word and meet him face to face. In fact the real text of God’s self-revelation to mankind has once and for all been provided in the humanity of Jesus Christ, the Word of God personally incarnate in the flesh.[1]

Cashing Out

As we read this we see that for Torrance, Jesus Christ is the mediator between God and man (sounds like the Apostle Paul as well, in I Tim. 2.5-6); that Jesus is both the Godward to manward movement, and the manward to Godward movement for all of humanity. That Jesus, the eternal Word of God (Jn. 1.1) is God’s perfect response for us, and He is this for us in an ontic sense; in other words, for Torrance, Jesus in His vicarious humanity is the only real human being, that He is the human par excellence, that He is the imago Dei ‘the image of God’ (Col. 1.15) whose image Adam and Eve were originally created in, and whose image fallen humanity (taken up by Christ in the incarnation) is re-created in, in His resurrection.

The implications of this are manifold; some of those are: 1) Jesus Christ in His vicarious humanity is the ground towards which original creation was always intended; 2) Jesus Christ in His vicarious humanity is God’s grace temporally expressed in objective and personal reality for us; 3) Jesus Christ in His vicarious humanity does for us what we cannot do, and yet He does it for us from within the broken, frail, and defective location that we find ourselves in within our fallen humanity; 4) Jesus Christ by the anointing of the Holy Spirit is ‘born again’ for us, He believes for us, He repents for us, He dies for us, He is buried for us, He resurrects for us, He ascends for us, He intercedes as Priest for us, He is coming again for us to take us to where He is for us currently at the right hand of the Father. There are many more implications we could discuss, but these are good starters. We could have a huge discussion about Torrance’s idea in regard to Jesus assuming our fallen humanity (but remaining without sin of course by the Holy Spirit), but we won’t right now.

Further Reading

Thomas F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ.

Thomas F. Torrance edited by Robert T. Walker, Incarnation (Volume One) & Atonement (Volume Two).

And for a critical (he does not have a favorable view of this doctrine in TFT’s theology) and constructive engagement of TFT’s thinking about the vicarious humanity of Christ:

Kevin Chiarot, The Unassumed is the Unhealed: The Humanity of Christ in the Theology of T.F. Torrance.

[1] T.F. Torrance, Reality and Evangelical Theology: A fresh and challenging approach to Christian revelation (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1982), 87-9.