A Riposte: With Reference to Mike Riccardi’s Errant Doctrine of Election and Trinity

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The following is a quick on-the-fly response I just gave with reference to a clip the G3 Conference presented of Dr. Mike Riccardi discussing the relationship of God’s triune life to election. I have some history with Riccardi from years and years ago, online (not good history). Even so, getting past personal matters, the response below has to do with the errant theological understanding Riccardi et al. suffers from. Watch the following clip by clicking here (hopefully you can watch it, it is on Twitter/X). The below is what I offered in response to Riccardi’s clip on Twitter/X.

Mike Riccardi, just doesn’t understand theology. He suffers from what TF Torrance calls the Latin heresy (NeoPlatonic dualism). By separating the work from the person of the Son he does exactly what he is asserting universal atonementers do. Weird and not serious stuff. Riccardi suffers from a case of using theological jargon, and not understanding its referents contextually/theologically. If the Son comes under the dictates of a prior decretrum absolutum (i.e., predestination), then the Son is now a predicate of those dictates rather than the Trinity. That is to say: if Christ is not both the subject and object of election/reprobation, he becomes its instrument/organ; such that, his work of salvation is no longer contingent on His person (consubstantiality) as the Son, but upon meeting the conditions of a decree. And the decree is predicated on the created order, and individual people in that order, rather than the eternally triune life of God. God’s triune life and the absolute decree are not coterminous realities in classical Reformed theology. Riccardi doesn’t know. This is the problem that Augustine gives the world: i.e., offering a soteriological rather than Christological/Triune approach to theological explication.

Here is how Barth might respond to Riccardi, as he responds to Calvin’s failure of offering a genuine doctrine of assurance of salvation:

How can we have assurance in respect of our own election except by the Word of God? And how can even the Word of God give us assurance on this point if this Word, if this Jesus Christ, is not really the electing God, not the election itself, not our election, but only an elected means whereby the electing God—electing elsewhere and in some other way—executes that which he has decreed concerning those whom He has—elsewhere and in some other way—elected? The fact that Calvin in particular not only did not answer but did not even perceive this question is the decisive objection which we have to bring against his whole doctrine of predestination. The electing God of Calvin is a Deus nudus absconditus.[1]

And Barth again:

The doctrine of election is the sum of the Gospel because of all words that can be said or heard it is the best: that God elects man; that God is for man too the One who loves in freedom. It is grounded in the knowledge of Jesus Christ because He is both the electing God and the elected man in One. It is part of the doctrine of God because originally God’s election of man is a predestination not merely of man but of Himself. Its function is to bear basic testimony to eternal, free and unchanging grace as the beginning of all the ways and works of God.[2]

The problem with folks like Riccardi is that they are so slavishly committed to simply receiving the tradition they have ostensibly signed onto, ecclesially, that they fail to read said tradition critically. As such they fall prey to theological errors that jack up things very badly for those sitting under their respective teaching on such matters. There are real life consequences, spiritually and concretely speaking, related to teaching bad theology. If we follow the tradition Riccardi is promoting vis-à-vis a doctrine of God and election, we will end up with a nomist or law-like spirituality wherein we focus on our performance rather than on God’s for us in Jesus Christ.

[1] Karl Barth, “CDII/2,” 111 cited by Oliver D. Crisp, “I Do Teach It, but I Also Do Not Teach It: The Universalism of Karl Barth (1886-1968),” in ed. Gregory MacDonald, All Shall Be Well: Explorations in Universalism and Christian Theology, from Origen to Moltmann (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2011), 355.

[2] Karl Barth, CD II/2 §32.

2 thoughts on “A Riposte: With Reference to Mike Riccardi’s Errant Doctrine of Election and Trinity”

  1. While I do recognize the need for critical scholastic theology, simply put, “bad theology” is any understanding of God funded by any source apart from that by which God himself has made himself known as he is in himself in faithfulness to his own character and nature of being… that is, “theology” must be given through God’s own testimony of himself—the Word of God—and most particularly, that very Word made incarnate in Jesus Christ, who is the true analogy of faith.

    (Scholastic theology seems to me much like playing football as both a defensive and offensive lineman through the entire game only to find that at the end of the fourth quarter the score is tied and the game goes to overtime… an analogy of perseverance.)

    “While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and behold, a voice from the cloud said, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him!’”

  2. @Richard, yes, I agree. We can only know God from God for us. Scholastic theology, by negative definition and method, contradicts this.

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