Monthly Archives: March 2018

Holy Saturday: A Reflection on the In-Between Now and Not-Yet

Posted on by

Recycling a post that is probably around eleven years old now.

holysaturdayHoly Saturday is the time that the “Western Church,” Protestants included (well some), contemplate the moment between the death and resurrection of Jesus. It is the contemplation of the burial in 1 Corinthians 15:3, 4:

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4. that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, . . .

What a time to contemplate the time between the now and the not yet. This time between Christ’s cross and humiliation of unspeakable depths, and the glories’ of His coming resurrection and ascension; analogically represent the time we inhabit now. We currently wait to fully realize the glory that Jesus has shared with the Father before the world began. And like the Apostles, Disciples, and hopefuls who followed Jesus to the cross, during this time of Jesus’ silence we can despair, be full of fear, angst, anxiousness, etc. We often wonder is this it? We face circumstances that seem overwhelming, that seem to eclipse and overcome the life of Christ . . . that make it seem as if Christ stayed in the grave. As Christians in this big world, some-times like the disciples of Christ (during this time in history), we can cower behind locked doors, scratch our heads, and wonder, “what now?”

If only the disciples would have remembered, and put 2 + 2 together, what Jesus had said to them in the past (easy for me to say):

As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus instructed them, ‘Don’t tell anyone what you have seen, until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.’ ~ Matthew 17:9

maybe their despair, their bewilderment, would be turned to joy. Maybe their burden would have been light. Maybe they would have been grieving as ones with real hope. But they forgot, at that moment of time they became so gripped with fear they could not really function (at least some of them, His closest). Even though we know the story, because we can read about it at one sitting, don’t we live like Jesus’ end was the grave? We fall into caverns of unbelief that seem to eclipse and overshadow what we know to be true . . . if only we would remember the hope, the hope that Jesus spoke of in Matthew 17, and the hope that was realized in Matthew 28:1-10.

As we look forward to Sunday, lets not grow weary by the unanswered questions and grief of Saturday. Instead of forgetting what Jesus has said about the resurrection (i.e. His second advent), lets glory in advance, in anticipation of the glory that will be revealed in us, as we are hidden in Christ. While we live in Saturday, in anticipation, lets rest with Jesus, lets, with Jesus say: ” . . . Father, into your hands I commit my spirit (Lk 23:46).”

I think the best thing about this analogy, of “Holy Saturday,” is that it breaks down at a point. We don’t despair as if there is no resurrection, in fact as Christians we have been brought into the heavenly places with Christ (cf. Eph. 1), now; we have intimate union with Him now (cf. I Cor. 6:17); we have been given the Holy Spirit now (cf. Jn 14–16); and a whole array of distinguishing factors from those disciples of the first century. So take heart, don’t forget, this Holy Saturday, Jesus’ words of glory in humility:

. . . I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world. ~ John 16:33

 

‘He Descended to Hell’: How Historic Protestants Interpreted this Phrase in the Apostles’ Creed

Posted on by

I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit
and born of the virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
      he descended to hell.
The third day he rose again from the dead.
He ascended to heaven
and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty.
From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.

This Maundy Thursday I thought it would be fitting to press into the reality of what in fact took place not only on Good Friday, but Holy Saturday. In the Apostles’ Creed we have the (not uncontroversial) phrase ‘he descended into hell.’ For the remainder of this post we will look at how this phrase has been taken in and among the Protestant Reformed and Lutheran traditions; particularly as that developed in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Richard Muller in his book Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology (which I am currently working through) offers this definition on the Latin phrase descensus ad inferos (‘the descent into hell’),

viz., that portion of Christ’s work, in the text of the Apostles’ Creed, is mentioned immediately after the death and burial of Christ and immediately before the proclamation of the resurrection. The concept was a cause of debate between Lutherans and Reformed and subject to various interpretations on both sides. In general, the Reformed view the descensus as the final stage of Christ’s state of humiliation (status humiliationis, q.v.), while the Lutherans view it as the first stage of the status exaltationis (q.v.), or state of exaltation. Among the Reformed, Martin Bucer and Theodore Beza viewed the descensus as identical with the burial of Christ, while Calvin referred the descensus to the suffering of Christ’s soul coincident with the death and burial of the body. The Reformed scholastics tend to draw these themes together and argue that, loosely, the descensus refers to all the spiritual suffering of Christ’s passion and death and, strictly, to the bondage to death indicated by Christ’s three days in the tomb. The Reformed deny both the idea of a local descent of Christ’s soul into a place called hell or Hades and the teaching (based on 1 Peter 3:19) that he entered Hades to preach salvation to the patriarchs or to men from the age before Noah. Two sixteenth-century Lutheran theologians, Aepinus and Parsimonius, expressed doctrines similar to the Reformed. Aepinus clearly placed the descensus as the final stage of the status humiliationis and viewed it as the suffering of Christ’s soul in his conquest of death. Like the Reformed, Aepinus denied the relevance of 1 Peter 3:19. Parsimonious denied any physical or spatial descensus and similarly referred the descensus to Christ’s suffering. The Formula of Concord condemned speculative controversy on the descensus and argued that the descensus indicated Christ’s deliverance of believers from the “jaws of hell” in and through his victory over death, Satan, and hell. This positive, redemptive reading of the descensus carried over into Lutheran orthodoxy where the descensus ad inferos is interpreted as spiritual (i.e., neither physical nor local) descent to the domain of Satan to announce victory and triumph over the demonic powers. In this interpretation, 1 Peter 3:19 is not an evangelical preaching of salvation to the inhabitants of Hades but a legal preaching of the just damnation of the wicked. This is an act, not of the humiliated and suffering Christ, but of the exalted Christ. According to Lutheran dogmaticians, the descensus follows the quickening of Christ’s body and is the first stage of the status exaltationis.[1]

This provides insight into the ways that the primary traditions that developed out of the Protestant Reformation read the Apostles’ Creed and its phrase descensus ad inferos. No matter what emphasis we want to place on whichever theological syllable, what stands out is the wonder of the reality that God in Christ graciously humbled himself to the point of becoming man and was obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross; and this for us.

Beyond the mystery of it all there is a concrete physicality to it and existential grist that is felt in our lives as we participated with Christ, as he first participated with us, in the death, burial, and resurrection (cf. Rom. 6). The fact that he humbled himself also, as apiece, means that he exalted himself and this for us that we might be what he is, by adoption, and become flesh and blood children of the living God. The only thing I really know to say is: thank you, Lord.

[1] Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1985), 89-90.

Anonymous Christians and Knowing God

Posted on by

Karl Rahner’s idea of ‘anonymous Christians’ is quite the concept, but it is one that flows organically from his conception of knowledge of God as that is related to moments of existential transcendental experiences that human beings have qua human being. As Paul Molnar explains, this is why, for Rahner, all people, whether they know it or not, are anonymously Christian; because as they look inward and have a sense, a non-conceptual sense of the Divine, they are in fact experiencing or encountering the living God present to each person’s experience as that is extrapolated outward to a transcendental point of contact. Molnar writes this as he is contrasting Karl Barth’s Christ focused aapologetic knowledge of God with Molnar’s transcendental existential:

This is an enormously important point because it is false apologetics that separates the thinking of those who, like Karl Rahner, believe that they can and must begin their thinking about God with our self-transcending experiences. It is exactly for this reason that Rahner believes “we cannot begin with Jesus Christ as the absolute and final datum, but we must begin further back than that.” He thus chooses to begin with “a knowledge of God which is not mediated completely by an encounter with Jesus Christ.” He begins with our transcendental experience, which he claims mediates an “unthematic and anonymous . . . knowledge of God,” which, as seen in chapter one, both Barth and Torrance rightly rejected because such knowledge amounts only to a symbolic description of ourselves in place of the triune God. He thus claims that knowledge of God is always present unthematically to anyone reflecting on themselves, so that all talk about God “always only points to this transcendental experience as such, an experience in which he whom we call ‘God’ encounters man in silence . . . as the absolute and the incomprehensible, as the term of his transcendence.” This term of transcendence Rahner eventually calls a holy mystery because he believes that whenever this experience of transcendence is an experience of love, its term is the God of Christian revelation. It is just this thinking that leads to Rahner’s idea of “Searching Christology,” which, as seen above in chapter one, essentially refers to the fact that anyone who truly loves another, for instance, is already an “anonymous Christian” in that search. In that sense Rahner believer their activity and thinking is in line with what traditional Christology teaches. This approach to Christology presumes that we must find a basis for belief in Christ in a transcendental anthropology. This led Rahner to embrace the idea that we have an obedential potency for revelation and that our lives are marked by a “supernatural existential,” as seen in chapter one. Finally, it led him to the idea that self-acceptance is the same as accepting Christ and God himself. In this context I think one can see rather clearly that the crucial difference between Barth and Rahner is that Barth’s thinking begins and ends with the Holy Spirit as the awakening power of faith—not faith in ourselves (our transcendental dynamisms)—but in the Word of truth, namely, Jesus Christ. And that of course rules out the idea of anonymous Christianity as the projection of an idea that is at variance with what is actually revealed by Jesus himself as the Word incarnate and through his Holy Spirit as the risen and ascended Lord here and now. It also rules out any notion that we have any “potency” or capacity for the revelation of God; that we have an existential on the basis of which we can rely on ourselves in our experience of grace to speak accurately about God; and that we can look to anyone or anything other than Jesus Christ himself to know who God is and what he has done and does for us as the reconciler and redeemer.[1]

What this insight from Molnar helps us to see, beyond Rahner’s logic towards his ‘anonymous Christian,’ is how interrelated things are theologically. We see how theological anthropology is couched in a doctrine of creation, which itself is cradled in a doctrine of God; we see how all of these converge into a discussion about how creatures can have a knowledge of God.

For Rahner the ground of knowledge of God is not the Word of God, and not even the church (which is interesting given Rahner’s Catholic status), but instead it is the shared bond and the experience therein that human beings ostensibly share as they contemplate the deeper things of life. For Barth and Torrance, as Molnar ably develops in his book, if knowledge of God is detached from the concrete given of God’s life for us in Jesus Christ, then we will look elsewhere—if we look at all—for constructing a theory of knowledge of God.

It would not be a reach, I would contend, to extrapolate out from Rahner’s more ‘modern’ Schleiermacherean like turn to the subject theologizing, and ask if other, even more ‘classically’ construed theologies engage in the same type of abstract reasoning when it comes to developing a framework wherein a theory of knowledge of God is developed; I most immediately think of Thomas Aquinas’s analogia entis (‘analogy of being’). Is there a basis, a built in-capacity, or even God-given capacity (post-salvation/conversion) within humanity wherein they can establish a holy ground to think the living God from? It isn’t just Rahner who works things out this way, I would contend that any type of ‘analogy of being’ theologizing equally ends up positing a theological-anthropology vis-à-vis their doctrine of creation that leaves room for an abstractive knowledge of God wherein the human being can habituate in a process of discursive reasoning and reach a point of contact with God that itself is untethered from God’s concrete given in Jesus Christ, the living Word of God. This is not to suggest that Thomists, for example, might arrive at an unthematic non-conceptual knowledge of God, like Rahner’s position leads to, but it is my attempt to draw a point of convergence, thematically, between the types of theological-anthropology that both Thomists and Rahnerians might affirm in regard to the belief that an abstract notion of God can be connived of apart from God’s immediate yet mediate Self-explication of Himself for us in the eternal huios, Jesus Christ.

Are there anonymous Christians? Nein.

 

[1] Paul D. Molnar, Faith, Freedom and the Spirit: The Economic Trinity in Barth, Torrance and Contemporary Theology (Downer Groves, Illinois: IVP Academic, 2015), 102-04.

A Christologically Construed Account of Assurance of Salvation in Contrast to an Ecclesiocentric-Catholic Account

Posted on by

Just the other day I was listening to the local Catholic radio station, Mater Dei, and in particular a show they feature (that is a nationally syndicated show originating in San Diego) called Catholic Answers. On the show they had an apologist and public representative for Catholicism fielding call in questions. One of the questions came from a Protestant caller who wanted clarification on the basics of Roman salvation, and in particular, wondered if a Catholic could have assurance of salvation. The apologist’s answer was standard fare, in regard to explaining how Catholics think of salvation; and his response on assurance was that Catholics cannot have that. He noted that this was because salvation was contingent upon the level of cooperation a person has in their walk of salvation, as such coming to any sort of certitude in regard to their “metaphysical standing” (his words) before God is always a tenuous one, and not something any one individual can have in this life.

As a Protestant Reformed Christian, who is also an Evangelical Calvinist, this of course kicks against the goads of my own mind and theological development. I do believe that with a proper Christologically conditioned soteriology assurance of salvation is not an elusive thing; indeed, I think it is the essence of saving faith insofar as that saving faith is grounded in Jesus’ vicarious ‘yes’ for us. In my personal chapter for our most recent book Evangelical Calvinism: Volume 2: Dogmatics&Devotion I wrote a whole chapter on the doctrine of assurance of salvation. I thought I would share four concluding points on assurance of salvation that I presented towards the end of my chapter. It is because of these reasons, and more, that the Catholic response does not do justice to a Christologically conceived doctrine of salvation; not to mention it’s problems when measured against a sound exegesis of Holy Scripture. Here are those points:

  1. Calvin was onto something profound, and this is why we Evangelical Calvinists gravitate towards his belief that “assurance is of the essence of faith.” That notwithstanding, as we developed previously, Calvin’s lack of place for reprobation in his soteriology coupled with the idea of ‘temporary faith’ can be problematic. It has the potential to cause serious anxiety for anyone struggling with whether or not they are truly one of God’s elect. In this frame someone can look and sound like a Christian, but in the end might just be someone who has a “temporary” or “ineffectual faith.” The problem for Calvin, as with the tradition he is representing, is that the focus of election is not first on Jesus Christ, but instead it is upon individuals. Even though, as we have seen, Calvin does have some valuable things to say in regard to a theology of union with Christ, if we simply stayed with his doctrine of election and eternal decrees, we would always find assurance of salvation elusive.
  2. Despite what is lacking in Calvin’s superstructure he nevertheless was able to offer some brilliant trajectories for the development of a doctrine of assurance. Union with Christ and the duplex gratia in Calvin’s theology provide a focus on salvation that sees salvation extra nos (outside of us), and consequently as an objective reality that is not contingent upon us, but solely contingent on the person and achievements of Jesus Christ for us. This is where assurance can be developed from Calvin’s theology in a constructive manner. If salvation is not predicated upon my faith or by my works, but instead is a predicate of Jesus’ faith and faithfulness, then there is no longer space for anyone to look but to Christ. As we have already noted, Calvin did not necessarily press into the idea of Jesus’ faith for us, but that could be an implication in an inchoate way within Calvin’s thought. Calvin provides hope for weary and seeking souls because of his doctrines of union with Christ and the duplex gratia; primarily because what these doctrines say is that all aspects of salvation have been accomplished by Jesus Christ (namely here, justification and sanctification). Calvin’s theology, when we simply look at his theology of union with Christ and grace, leaves no space for seekers to look anywhere else but to Christ for assurance of salvation. And at this level Calvin can truly say that “assurance is the essence of faith.”
  3. As we moved from Calvin to Barth and Torrance what we have are the theological resources required for a robust doctrine of assurance. With Barth and Torrance we certainly have Calvin’s emphases on union with Christ and grace, as Christ is understood as the objective (and subjective) ground of salvation. But moving beyond this we have Calvin’s weaknesses corrected when it comes to a doctrine of election. Because Barth and Torrance see Jesus as both elect and reprobate simultaneously in his vicarious humanity for all of humanity, there is absolutely no space for anxiety in the life of the seeker of assurance. Since, for Barth and Torrance, there is no such thing as “temporary faith,” since faith, from their perspective, is the “faith of Christ” (pistis Christou) for all of humanity, there is no room for the elect to attempt to prove that they have a genuine saving faith, since the only saving faith is Christ’s “for us and our salvation.” Further, since there is no hidden or secret decree where the reprobate can be relegated, since God’s choice is on full display in Jesus Christ— with “no decree behind the back of Jesus”—the seeker of assurance does not have to wonder whether or not God is for them or not; the fact and act of the incarnation itself already says explicitly that God is for the elect and not against them.
  4. If there is no such thing as elect and reprobate individuals, if God in Christ gave his life for all of humanity in his own elect humanity, if there is no such thing as temporary faith, if Christ’s faith for us is representative of the only type of saving faith there is; then Christ is all consuming, as such he is God’s assurance of salvation for all of humanity. The moment someone starts to wonder if they are elect, properly understood, the only place that person can look is to Jesus. There is no abstract concept of salvation; Jesus Christ is salvation, and assurance of salvation and any lingering questions associated with that have no space other than to look at Jesus. The moment someone gets caught up in anxious thoughts and behavior associated with assurance, is the moment that person has ceased thinking about salvation in, by, and for Christ. Anxiety about salvation, about whether or not I am elect only comes from a faulty doctrine of election which, as we have seen, is in reality the result of a faulty Christology. We only have salvation with God in Christ because of what Jesus Christ did for us by the grace of God; as such our only hope is to be in union with Christ, and participate in what Calvin called the “double grace” of God’s life for us. It is this reality that quenches any fears about whether or not I am genuinely elect; because it places the total burden of that question on what God has done for us, including having faith for us in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ.[1]

The Roman Catholic, as well as the classical Arminian and Calvinist positions flounder against this type of theological or Christological backdrop. Can we have assurance of salvation? I don’t know, ask Jesus.

[1] Bobby Grow, “’Assurance is of the Essence of Saving Faith’ Calvin, Barth, Torrance, and the ‘Faith of Christ’,” in Myk Habets and Bobby Grow, eds., Evangelical Calvinism: Volume 2: Dogmatics&Devotion (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2017), 52-4.

Barth’s No to the Phenomenal

Posted on by

I am reading Paul Molnar’s book Faith, Freedom and the Spirit: The Economic Trinity in Barth, Torrance, and Contemporary Theology, for a review I’m writing for the journal Cultural Encounters. I’m dreadfully behind on not only finishing the book, but also in writing the review. Yet, I felt I must stop for a moment to write a quick post on a point that Molnar is making in regard to Barth’s rejection of phenomenological theology, and how that plays into his style of anti-natural-theology thinking.

Barth’s context, obviously, was in the German/Swiss world where ‘Liberal theology’ had become entrenched; indeed, his own training was under Hermann, a leading liberal theologian of the day. Immanuel Kant’s thought was very influential, and as such the role of the phenomenal had pride of place for theological developments during Barth’s day. Once Barth made his turn to the ‘strange new world of the Bible’ he developed his theology in such a way that it countered his own antecedents given to him in the voices of Kant, Schleiermacher, Hegel, et al. In the following quote Molnar is discussing how and why Barth rejected phenomenological theology. I found it insightful so I thought I’d share it with you, the reader.

Let us begin first by contrasting Barth’s statement noted above that faith is not a phenomenon that is generally known and can be explained to everyone. Why does he say this? The answer is simple. What is known in faith is that Jesus Christ who is the divine-human Mediator between us and the Father has reconciled us to God and now meets us as the risen Lord enabling our belief in him and in his actions of justification and sanctification for us; he is the one in whom our conversion to God has taken place and the one in whom we can live freely as those who are now God’s friends and not God’s enemies. Since Jesus’ divinity and humanity are not to be confused and since Barth consistently held that Jesus is not the revealer in his humanity as such, Barth concluded that no study of anthropology, of Jesus’ humanity or of the church’s visible structure could possibly disclose the true nature of Jesus as the revealer, the church as his earthly-historical form or the true meaning of faith. The truth of these historical realities can be known in their depth of meaning only by means of a miraculous action of the Holy Spirit enabling us to hear the Word of God active as the man Jesus reconciling us to God from both the divine and the human side. Simply put, no phenomenological analysis of human action, human belief or of any historical actions of church members—no analysis of general anthropology—can yield the truth recognized and acknowledged in faith, namely, that Jesus Christ is God’s Word acting for our benefit as the incarnate, crucified, risen, ascended and coming Lord. Faith is bound to its particular object who gives us a knowledge that simply cannot be gleaned from elsewhere or outside faith itself, because what we come to know in faith is something that transcends the world of experience that can be analyzed sociologically, psychologically, historically and therefore phenomenologically. That is why Barth rejected any notion that knowledge of revelation could be had via any a priori sort of reasoning. That is also why, as we shall shortly see, he opposed apologetic attempts to prepare for the gospel through any such analysis; such preparation is rendered unnecessary and indeed impossible by the fact that Jesus himself is the truth of God and cannot be bypassed in an attempt to know what God is doing now within history.[1]

The phenomenal can only be made known from the noumenal; to use Kant’s categories. But these categories don’t ultimately cut it for Barth, as Molnar underscores. The whole act of God in Christ is a miraculous event of the sort for which there is no analogy or phenomena in history. For Barth the event of creation and recreation in Christ are of such a primal sort that they are only accessible in and through contact with God; or, only God can reveal God. And when I say accessible, I mean that nature/creation itself has no meaning apart from its inner meaning given to it in the covenant life of God for us.

It is at this very point that Barth departs so radically from the tradition; on a doctrine of creation/revelation. He is driven to these lengths because he is attempting make Christ the centrum of all reality. Some would say that Barth hits the breaking point, while others would say he breaks the sound barrier.

[1] Paul D. Molnar, Faith, Freedom and the Spirit: The Economic Trinity in Barth, Torrance, and Contemporary Theology (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, 2015), 51-2.

Thinking Canonically Rather than Confessionally: God is ‘Your Father’

Posted on by

Do you ever get the sense that the theology we do, and the God we pray to are seemingly distinct from the other? Here’s what I mean: Doesn’t it seem that the technical language used to talk about God, theologically, like Simplicity, Immutability, Impassibility, Omni ________, is disjointed from the God we meet in the Bible, in Jesus Christ? Jesus says this to Mary just after he resurrected from the grave:

11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb. 12 And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. 13 They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” 14 Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15 Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?”Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher). 17 Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” 18 Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”—and that he had said these things to her. – John 20:11-18

And yet when we come across a pivotal Confession for the Protestant churches it says this about God:

There is but one only, living, and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions; immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute; working all things according to the counsel of His own immutable and most righteous will, for His own glory; most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him; and withal, most just, and terrible in His judgments, hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty.[1]

Don’t get me wrong, when we are attempting to think about God in a deep way we are bound to clumsily posit things about him, and ways to talk about him that seem ajar from how we encounter him in Scripture. But this has been my struggle for years. I am, by disposition, believe it or not, very traditional and conservative when it comes to Christian theology. But as I was exposed more and more to what stood behind the theology I only tacitly had been inculcated into as a young Christian person in my growing up years, I realized that the God I was being taught about in my theology classes sounded very little like the God I had been praying to, and then reading about in my Bible for all the years prior.

When I think of God, and the way I know him most intimately, it is as my Father. If I was introduced to Him through the God I encounter in the Confession above, I would actually be in some pretty dire torment; particularly when faced with all the various trials and tribulations that this life offers up on a daily basis. Do I want to know that God is a Rock, unchanging in His ways, as a reality that just has always been? Yes! Do I think in order to fortify this type of knowledge of God that I need to turn to the philosophers in order to supply me with the categories I need to think of God in these ways? No, I don’t. Andrew Purves and Mark Achtemeir write in this vein:

The center of the New Testament is the relationship between Jesus Christ and the One he addresses as Father. The communion between Jesus and his heavenly Fatherly is an utterly unique relationship, of which we can know nothing apart from Jesus’ own testimony. . . . God is thus Father not by comparison to human fathers, but only in the Trinitarian relation, as Father of the Son. Whenever Father is used of God it means “the One whom Jesus called Father.” The paradigm text is John 1:18: “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.” In Greek, the word for “made him known” is exegesato. Jesus “exegetes” or “interprets” the Father. The term does not denote a generic title for God outside of the Father and Son relationship. Father thus functions in Trinitarian language not as a descriptive metaphor but as a proper name, whose home is the relationship that exists from all eternity between the first and second Persons of the Trinity.[2]

Clearly, at some level, philosophical grammar will be involved in the doing of theological essaying. But at what level is this type of ‘grammarizing of God’ successful; and is there a better way to ‘evangelize the philosophers’ vis-à-vis other ways?

I think the best way forward is to go with Occam’s Razor, and be as minimalistic as possible when it comes to engaging with the philosophers. I think this is what the quote from Purves and Achtemeir is getting at, and indeed, is working from. To think of God as ‘my Father’ is to think of Him, conceptually, in much different ways and tones than to think of Him as ‘infinite in being and perfection,’ so on and so forth. And personally, I find this to be the fundamental flaw with so much of what counts as Christian theology today, and yesterday. It is the “Confessional” styled theology that is being retrieved by theologians in the evangelical and Reformed worlds today, but at what cost?

I’m not suggesting that within the history there is no good theology, even using and overly using some of the philosophical language. But what I am suggesting is that the lens through which the resourcement is being done is not expansive enough, and more importantly, is not sensitive enough to the reality of who Scripture discloses God to be in Christ. Jesus reveals God to the world as the Son of the Father in the bond of the Holy Spirit’s love. The Bible speaks of God as the ‘lover of our souls’, the Great Shepherd, the Lamb of God, the One who is, as the God with a name (e.g. Yahweh), as the Bridegroom, so on and so forth. I have not found these descriptors concordant with the God I have studied in the theologians (in the majority tradition of Post Reformation Reformed orthodoxy). There is a piety, and relational reality that gets lost in thinking of God through overly philosophical terms on a constant basis. And it is wrong to attempt to foreclose on who God is by overly privileging categories about God that themselves are not determined by God’s Self-Revelation in Jesus Christ as mediated through Holy Scripture.

This post is not an advertisement to be a Barthian, or Torrancean, or anything else in that mood. This is simply my reflection on why I have approached the things that I do, in the way that I do. My experience of God, as a result of various personal trauma, sometimes in ongoing ways, has driven me not to think of God as some of the Confessions would have me think of Him, but instead to come to Him as My loving Father, who cares for me like the Great Shepherd of Israel that He is. Some might say that I am making a type of disjunctive category mistake because I am drawing a line between how the ‘theologians’ must speak of God in their “craft,” and how the broken believer wants to speak of God because of the trauma and need of their daily life. But if this was the charge, I would suggest that the problem just might be with those who presume that we can make this type of artificial distinction between the Biblical language and the philosophical language ostensibly used to unpack the perceived implications of the Biblical God. Or obversely, the problem might be with those who too quickly equate the philosophical language with the Biblical God, categorically. Why not just allow the Biblical God and the Biblical categories to stand as the determinative categories that they are for thinking God, and teach the church how to resource the past from this vantage point? Why this compelling need, for many evangelicals, to “retrieve” the past in ways that really is more of an attempt to replicate the past for the present?

This will continue to be a rub for me, and maybe you can better see why. I need to rely upon God as my Father, and I can do that in a canonical rather “confessional” way. I think this is the best way to be evangelical in the 21st century, or in any century.

[1] Westminster Confession of Faith.

[2] Purves and Achtemeier, Union In Christ, 34–36.

‘Inheriting the Kingdom’: A Theological-Exegetical Consideration of Galatians 5:21b, Salvation Maintained, Lost, or Never Present

Posted on by

Recently I heard reference in a sermon to Galatians 5:19-21, this passage:

penance16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. 19 Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21 envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness,self-control; against such things there is no law. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. (ESV)

Since I don’t have the space to do an exegetical analysis of this whole pericope (or unit of thought), I will focus on the last clause of verse 21, since that, indeed, is what I want to discuss in regard to the sermon that I heard just last Sunday, and how this was appealed to and applied. The following will be a brief exegetical consideration, and then a theological engagement with the implications of taking this clause a particular way.

The appeal, almost in passing, that I heard made to this clause (v. 21b), “… I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God …,” was troubling. If I were to give the pastor the benefit of the doubt I might conclude that he just passed through this too quickly without giving the necessary context for what he actually meant when he appealed to it. But since he indeed did move too quickly with this passage, and this clause about not inheriting the kingdom if there is sin in our life, let me take it the way, by implication, that it could have been taken in the way it was communicated. In other words, let me tease out the negative conclusion one might draw if they were to internalize and take to heart what this pastor said about the relationship of sin, and the inheriting of the kingdom have with each other. To be clear, the pastor claimed that if a person has continual sin (of the kind listed in Galatians 5:18-21a) in their life, that they will not inherit salvation. Left to itself, this pronouncement could be very troubling for the thoughtful and internalizing among us. Left to itself here is what this sentiment could sound like: The Christian Thinker: I have sin in my life that I struggle with daily, in fact I am sure that I have sin in my life that I am not even aware of because I am a born sinner, and if I have continual sin in my life and person, according to what the pastor just communicated I am not going to inherit eternal life, I am not saved, nor will I be saved in the future if Jesus comes back or I die in a moment of sin. I am hopelessly lost then, even as a Christian; I mean I have continual sin in my life, and it is constant, it is as if I move from one sin to the next.*

There seems to be, underlying the premise this pastor is working from, a doctrine of ‘perfectionism.’ In other words, if we logically play this out and reduce it to its conclusion, the sentiment pronounced by this pastor seems to require a level of perfectionism achieved in the Christian’s life. Or at least there seems to be a requirement on behalf of the would-be Christian to stay in a posture of movement toward God, driven by their own ‘will-power’ which ultimately is rewarded with eternal life (i.e. ‘inheriting the kingdom’). In fact what this pastor communicated sounds eerily close to the medieval Roman Catholic conception of salvation articulated by theologians such as Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham, and Gregory Biel. Aquinas provides the traditional Roman Catholic conception of salvation; Steven Ozment gives a summary of Thomas’ view of salvation:

1. Gratuitous infusion of grace 2. Moral cooperation: doing the best one can with the aid of grace 3. Reward of eternal life as a just due[1]

And here is William of Ockham’s and Gregory Biel’s variation of the traditional “Thomist” Roman Catholic view of and order of salvation:

1. Moral effort: doing the best one can on the basis of natural ability 2. Infusion of grace as an appropriate reward

3. Moral cooperation: doing the best one can with the aid of grace 4. Reward of eternal life as a just due[2]

Left to itself, without further explanation, I think this pastor’s pronouncement on Galatians 5:21b sounds most closely related to Thomas Aquinas’ view on the order of salvation. Knowing the pastor I do not believe what he said would fit well with Ockham’s or Biel’s variation of Thomas’ order of salvation (Ockham and Biel would both be a full Pelagian understanding of salvation, while Thomas’ would just be semi-Pelagian). Nevertheless, there is a deep theological problem with this; it has to do with number 2, in particular, vis-à-vis Thomas’ view. The way this pastor articulated what he did, ‘sounds’ like the idea that the person must cooperate with God in maintaining their salvation; ultimately rewarded with ‘inheriting the kingdom’ or eternal life. But in what way can this actually be said to be biblical when tempered with the weightier reality of what we know of God’s grace (ironically we know of some of this from the epistle of Galatians itself!)? If we can cooperate with God in our salvation with the aid of grace, what does this say about our concept of grace (it makes it sound like a thing a ‘created thing’ that we can manipulate per our own desire to have eternal life)?

I am going to have to end this post here; I will follow it up later with a part two getting further into some theological consideration, and exegetical analysis. But I wanted to bookmark this topic as it is on my heart even now, since I believe this is a serious issue, and not something we ought to gloss over or throw the mystery card at (we have too much teaching for that, in both the history of interpretation and with straight exegesis).

*A caveat is usually made here, the caveat is: “I am just referring to someone who habitually remains in sin.” But I will contest that this caveat, left to itself is too easy, and in fact is a cop-out, at least without further explanation. If the person/pastor is going to make this caveat (and I am not just referring to the pastor in my post), then they need to flesh out what this habitual continuation in sin means. It is too subjective to make such an assertion without explaining if there are certain thresholds of habituation in sin that must be met before becoming disqualified for eternal life or what. There is also the question here of whether someone believes salvation can be ‘lost’, or would Paul be talking about someone who was never saved to begin with? Or is there another way to understand this list of the ‘flesh’ up against the list of the ‘fruit of the Spirit?’ I think there is, and I will attempt to show what that looks like exegetically in a following post.

[1] Steven Ozment, The Age of Reform 125-1550: An Intellectual And Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe (New Haven • London: Yale University Press, 1980), 233.

[2] Ibid., 234.

*repost

The Scholar Juxtaposed with the Worshiper: A Heart on Fire for the Glory of God in Christ

Posted on by

There are Christian scholars, and then there are those who study and research because they really just want to know God in deeper ways. Scholarship might become a necessary by-product of the latter, as far as the apparent characteristic of their lives, but that’s not what drives them; what drives them, ultimately, is a love for Christ; a realization that without God in Christ in their lives that they would be vanquished and swallowed up by the cares and worries of daily life. The Apostle Paul in II Corinthians 3 writes this: “4 Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. 5 Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, 6 who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” Christians who study, primarily because they realize that their sufficiency or adequacy is from Christ alone, I would suggest, are distinct from what we normally think of in terms of a “scholar,” even a Christian scholar. A Christian scholar, in a primary way, is characterized by a drive to achieve heights in whatever their chosen discipline might be. They will achieve this through getting good reviews from their peers, by offering theses to the scholarly world that are original to them and their names, and potentially be elevated to chairs or noted positions of influence in their professorial, editorial, or administrative roles. Jonathan Edwards, while achieving many of the marks of what counts toward being a recognized “scholar” and “academic,” ultimately was driven by the higher less self-possessed purpose of seeking the glory of God in everything that he did. His scholarship was a by-product of a greater focus wherein self-consumption was not the motivating factor. Oliver Crisp and Kyle Strobel write about Edwards in this vein,

Although he was a voracious and eclectic reader, drawing upon as wide a range of materials as he could in order to fashion his own works, it would be a mistake t think of Edwards as a scholar in the modern, secular sense of the word. No doubt he was a fine metaphysician and surprisingly well read for someone living so far from the centers of high society. But, contrary to the Miller thesis about the character of Edwards’s outputs, his work was all bent to a single purpose, namely, the glory of God. To this end, he read and studied the Bible more than any other work. At first glance, it is rather surprising that modern secondary scholarship on Edwards has not made more of this fact. After all, Edwards was a minister almost all of his professional life, spending hours a day in prayer, in Bible study, in the writing of minute notebooks on Scripture and typology, and in the construction of sermons and midweek lectures for his congregation. One of his major projected works, which remained unfinished at the time of his death, was a Harmony of the Old and New Testaments, for which he had been gathering notebook materials over a protracted period.[1]

There is a proportion in Edwards’ life between his Christian spirituality and his drive to know God which produced the massive ‘scholarly’ output he generated. His scholarship was the outcome of his love of God in Christ; as he sought Christ and His Kingdom first all these other things were added.

I think Edwards models what Christian scholarship actually should be. Not one where career is of the upmost, but to know God and make Him known; both personally and corporately. A life driven by doxology.

[1] Oliver D. Crisp and Kyle C. Strobel, Jonathan Edwards: An Introduction to His Thought (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2018), 25.

Avoiding the Sin of Acedia: Living the Christian Life in Step with the Spirit of Christ

Posted on by

We come into the Christian life, whenever we do, and start the walk. At first, at least in evangelical circles, we identify new converts, often times with such phrases as “they are on fire,” so on and so forth. But after time passes, trials and tribulations face us, and we
gain experience[s] in the church we might become jaded, or at the very least start to experience a sense of dullness towards all things spiritual. We begin to domesticate and normalize our faith to the point that we conflate our experiences with the object (and subject) of our faith, Jesus Christ. Once we take this step—usually subconsciously—a vacuum is created. This is where things become tenuous, and spiritually dangerous. We will attempt to fill this vacuum with all sorts of new experiences, experiences that are more akin to ‘sowing to the flesh’ rather than ‘to the Spirit.’ We start to engage in daily practices that ‘grieve’ and ‘quench’ the Holy Spirit in our lives, and this all out of the seeming mundanity of our spiritual lives; out of the idea that we have arrived as Christians, had all or most of the experiences one can have, and now are seeking fulfillment in life by other means. I remember, as someone who grew up in the church, having a conversation with friends (who had similar backgrounds) when we were just recently out of high school, we thought we were all ‘veterans’ of the faith; that we’d already seen it all. It wasn’t long after this that I started to slide in my walk with Christ, and what I have been describing thus far began to overtake me; leading to actions that did not magnify Christ, but instead magnified me.

In the ancient monastic church the ‘sin’ I’m referring to was called acedia. Cornelius van der Kooi offers a wonderful description of this as he is discussing participation in the Spirit of Christ in his development of a Spirit Christology; he writes:

. . .  We do not have the unique relationship with God that Christ enjoyed. We are God’s adopted children. Yet this status in itself is a great mystery: it is the triune God who dwells in us, who has poured out his Spirit in his church! At the same time, this indwelling is not a matter of peace but involves warfare. We are often stubborn and do not readily incline to the Spirit and his work. In fact, the Holy Spirit may be grieved and even snuffed out. The house may feel or even be empty. Before we know it, we may be overcome by what in the monastic tradition is called the demon of acedia. It is the feeling of emptiness, boredom, and discontentment, bordering on melancholy. It refers to those times when we live in our own little world, are asleep, are unguarded, and try to put our restlessness to death with nervous distractions. Here no therapy can help us but only healing. God’s Spirit must come in order to fill us and make us complete. Outside of that movement, we are lost.[1]

This sort of creep can even happen to us as we are seemingly and actively walking with Jesus; even in seasons when we think we are genuinely in step with the Spirit. It might not be as overt as the discussion I had with my friends years ago, it might be more subtle; we might be reading the Bible daily, reading theology texts, be involved in church ministries and activities, and yet acedia could still begin to grab a hold of our hearts and put us into a place of spiritual deadness; a spot where we are going through the motions. My sense is that acedia is alive and well in the Christian church, and is one that we need to recognize and repent of.

What this sin points up to me is that within the Christian life there is a vigilance that is required. It is reliance upon the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit, that will provide the kind of vigilance we need to avoid this particular ‘demon.’ It is so subtle and ‘creepy’ that we might not know it is even happening to us until we have engaged in some sort of egregious sin that then makes our whole lifestyle all too apparent. This is why reliance upon the Holy Spirit in Christ is so important for the Christian life. He will ‘put us to death over and over again, that the life of Christ might also be made manifest through the mortal members of our bodies’ (II Cor. 4.10). I would suggest that this is what is required if we are to avoid acedia; we must, as the Apostle said of himself, ‘have the sentence of death written upon us that we won’t trust in ourselves, but in the One who is able to raise the dead’ (II Cor. 1.7-9). We can pray for this type of lifestyle, and God will and has provided that for us in Christ. But this type of lifestyle—the one that avoids acedia—is not comfortable. In fact this type of non-acedia lifestyle can cause great anguish, dark nights of the soul, bouts of depression and anxiety, physical tumults, and a host of other means through which the Holy Spirit in God’s providence in Christ, will produce his death in our lives that his life will also be present for the world to see, and for us to experience. If you dare, ask the Lord to arrest any sort of acedia in your life and see what he won’t do. His grace is sufficient (I say with fear and trembling).

 

[1] Cornelius van der Kooi, This Incredibly Benevolent Force: The Holy Spirit in Reformed Theology and Spirituality (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2018), 104-05.

The Love of the Triune Life as the Reality of Salvation in the Theology of Hugh Binning

Posted on by

Here is young Scottish theologian (1627–1653), Hugh Binning. He died at a very young age, but in his short life he was able to communicate some beautiful things about God, and how the Triune life was involved in the reality of salvation. Here is a short snippet from him on a Trinitarian salvation,

our salvation is not the business of Christ alone but the whole Godhead is interested in it deeply, so deeply, that you cannot say, who loves it most, or likes it most. The Father is the very fountain of it, his love is the spring of all — “God so loved the world that he hath sent his Son”. Christ hath not purchased that eternal love to us, but it is rather the gift of eternal love . . . Whoever thou be that wouldst flee to God for mercy, do it in confidence. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, are ready to welcome thee, all of one mind to shut out none, to cast out none. But to speak properly, it is but one love, one will, one council, and purpose in the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, for these Three are One, and not only agree in One, they are One, and what one loves and purposes, all love and purpose.[1]

[1] Hugh Binning cited by Thomas F. Torrance, Scottish Theology, 79.