Category Archives: 5 Point Calvinism

‘Thingness of Godness’: Questioning the Adequacy of B.B. Warfield’s Trinitarianism

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My e-friend, Michael Jones has started a new Facebook page;Ā Reformed Theologians.Ā It looks as if Michael will be highlighting various quotes, pictures, and other things associated with the Reformed faith. He has a couple of warfielddrawingquotes up, currently, from Princeton theologian of yesteryear, B.B. Warfield. Michael offers this quote from Warfield on the Trinity:

The doctrine of the Trinity is “the doctrine that there is one only and true God, but in the unity of the Godhead there are three coeternal and coequal Persons, the same in substance but distinct in subsistence.”

-B. B. Warfield, “The Biblical Doctrine of the Trinity,” in Biblical and Theological Studies, p. 22.

I think this short quote offers an illustration of what sounds perfectly orthodox (and it is in many ways!), but it also illustrates something that I have been after for quite some time. For Warfield, as for Charles Hodge, the informing theology behind his thinking comes from Westminster Calvinism; and in particular, as for Hodge, and thus by way of influence, for Warfield, Francis Turretin’s Elenctic Theology (‘Polemic Ā Theology’) played an indubitle role in shaping his doctrine of God and the categories through which he thought.

All I want to highlight with this quote from Warfield on the Trinity, is that if the reader pays careful attention and reads slow enough; he or she will recognize the role that so called substance metaphysics or classical theism (the synthesis of Aristotelian categories with Christian Theology) is playing in giving expression to Warfield’s articulation of the Trinity. We have ‘unity of the Godhead’, that is good! We haveĀ ‘three coeternal and coequal Persons’,Ā also good!! Then we haveĀ ‘the same substance but distinct in subsistence’,Ā not good!!! What this substance language presupposes is the Aristotelian distinction between ‘essence’ and ‘accident’; the former is necessary attribution of a things constituent parts (like for Thomas Aquinas’ anthropology he believed that the intellect was the touchstone of what it means to be a human being created in the image of God), but the latter (i.e. accident) is not a necessary feature of what identifies someone as a human beingā€”so a person can’t be a person without an intellect, but a person can still be person without having red hair or being a tennis player (these are accidents of their person-hood). If we use this dualism, this binary-code, this distinction to describe God’s oneness and threenessā€“as Warfield hasā€“then we end up with a concept or thingness of Godness that stands behind the back or above the subsisting persons that flow from this thingness of Godness; one consequence of this is that there is no necessary relationship between being God (in unity) and the subsisting persons who hang arbitrarily below this essence or substance or thingness of Godness. The only thing correlating the oneness and threeness of God together in Warfield’s account is his piety and assertion; it is not his theology. [Let me add this clarification: What I am saying is that in Warfield’s account there is no necessary relationship between the person’s who subsist from the unity of God, and the unity of God. God could still be a unity without his subsistence, just as I could still be a human being without being a tennis player. Evangelical Calvinism, as construed by Myk, myself, and foremost, T. F. Torrance, offers a doctrine of the Trinity that works from what Torrance calls ‘onto-relations’. This emphasizes a subject-in-being distinction, but it is this distinction in perichoretic (interpenetrating relation) that defines the one subject of theĀ MonarchiaĀ or God-head; so God’s oneness defines his threeness and his threeness defines his oneness. There is nothing subsisting in this schema, Godself if anything is his own subsistence in onto-relation one with the other … there is no God[ness] then behind the back of Jesus, or for that matter, behind the Holy Spirit.]

This is one of the reasons why in classic Westminster Calvinism we end up with a God who is disjointed, ruptured from within, impersonal and a host of other things when considering the theology that stands behind the beautiful piety of their classic Reformed faith. And this is why Warfield and others need to be questioned in regard to the adequacy of their relative doctrine of God, and other subsequent doctrines that followā€”like theories of revelation, atonement, bibliology, salvation, etc.

Don’t Be a 5 Pointer, Be an Evangelical Calvinist Instead

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I think the primary reason you should avoid becoming a 5 point Calvinist is because it starts with a faulty doctrine of God. It starts with a doctrine of God that does not start where the Bible starts; it starts with a conception of God that is philosophical and not revelational. It only moves to the revelational after it has first conceived of God philosophically. Most 5 point Calvinists appeal to Aristotelian categories and Thomas Aquinas’ synthesis of 5pointAristotle’s categories to provide a grammar for speaking of God. The problem with doing this is that God is, when philosophically conceived first, emphasized as a singularity, a philosophical monad and thus this approach struggles with coming to terms with the fact that God is personal, relational, and Triune. If God is emphasized as a singularity, and a philosophical monad, then the way this kind of God, who must remain unmoved by his creation, comes to relate to his creation through static impersonal decrees and through secondary causation built into creation itself. Ultimately, we are presented with a God in this view, that is sub-personal, and relates to his creation in Law-like fashion.

It is true, 5 point Calvinists, many, in the history and contemporaneously, have sought to overcome this kind of impersonalness of God, so conceived, through a warm hearted piety; but that is not what is under consideration here. What is under consideration hereā€”by way of theologicalĀ taxisĀ (order)ā€”is whether or not the underlying doctrine of God that stands behind said warm hearted modes of 5 point Calvinism actually is able to fund this pietism in a way that is corollary with the background doctrine and procrustean bed it is built upon. I would assert that it is not corollary, and thus no matter how hard someone tries to be a pious 5 point Calvinist, there will always be this thread of a Law-like God woven through their piety that will eventually bleed through into their teaching, preaching, and practice. If this is the case, and I think it is, why not abandoned this kind of Calvinism for a version that starts where God starts, in his Son, as the Son of the Father through the communing life of the Holy Spirit. You could throw your hat in with usĀ Evangelical CalvinistsĀ … as a matter of fact, why don’t you?

Discontinuity Between Calvin and the Calvinists on a Hermeneutic of Atonement

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I just read this essay Hermeneutical discontinuity between Calvin and later Calvinism by Kevin D. Kennedy from Southwestern Theological Seminary in Fort Worth Texas in the Scottish Journal of Theology Volume 64 (2011) – page 299. Unfortunately I didn’t have the chance to make a copy of it (I read this while I was at my alma mater’s theological library today — Multnomah University), but I would like to try and provide a synopsis of his thesis and argument (as I can recall).

Basically, Kennedy argues that John Calvin and the later Calvinists (post-Reformed orthodox) function with discontinuity relative to their hermeneutics on the extent of the atonement. For Calvin, as Kennedy convincingly argues, he held to a universal atonement, but not universal salvation; for the “Calvinists,” according to Kennedy, they hold to a limited (particular) atonement, and a particular salvation. As part of Kennedy’s “ground clearing work,” he notes Richard Muller’s work in this area; as well as the work of Paul Helm and Roger Nicole (their rejoinder to R.T. Kendall’s work on Calvin). He recognizes that said scholars need to be acknowledged for their work in the area of Calvin studies (especially Muller), but that in this particular area they all over-state things when it comes to Calvin’s view of the extent of the atonement. Kennedy demonstrates that Calvin’s hermeneutics, both in his commentaries (on the salient passages), and in his little book Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God consistently argues for a universal atonement (but not salvation). In particular, Kennedy looks at Matthew 20.28 which says:

[j]ust as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.

Kennedy demonstrates (by quoting Calvin’s commentary), that Calvin believes that the word ‘many’ is not referring to a limited class of people (the elect), or that it is excluding one group of people from the other (elect from the reprobate)—as, he notes, John Owen, along with the rest of the post-Reformed orthodox Tradition would argue—but that Jesus is providing dominical teaching by making a contrast between himself as the One over and against the Many for whom he died pro nobis (or would be dying, given the historical present in context). Kennedy goes on to look at other passages in Calvin’s commentaries that are pertinent to this topic; all illustrating this same point. For Calvin, when the word ‘many’ is used in these contexts it is not intended to exclude one class of people from the other; but instead, it is to contrast Christ’s death for us, over and against ‘us’ the many (or the point that Jesus wasn’t dying for himself, but for us). Kennedy, then, moves on and takes a look at the more universalist passages in Paul’s corpus (like I Tim. 2.4 etc.); he notes that Calvin, qualifies the word ‘all’ (like God desires that ‘all’ men be saved) in a way that speaks, not to his view of the extent of the atonement; but to Calvin’s view that not all will believe. So the limiting, for Calvin, according to Kennedy, has to do with appropriation of salvation and not the extent of the atonement as the post-Reformed orthodox interpret Calvin (so Muller, Helm, Nicole, et al).

Kennedy concludes that the post-Reformed have imposed their later developed hermeneutic of particularism onto Calvin’s hermeneutic of the atonement. He suggests that a more fruitful way forward, while noting that there are some continuities between Calvin and the Calvinists (per Muller’s exhaustive argument, like in his After Calvin), would be not to gloss over the genuine discontinuities that are present between Calvin and the Calvinists. In this instance the primary distinction is between Calvin’s view of the extent of the atonement (which is universal), and the particularist view of the atonement held by the Calvinists (the Reformed orthodox ones).

In closing, what is very enlightening with Kennedy’s essay, is that it helps to substantiate what we Evangelical Calvinists, Thomas Torrance amongst us, have been arguing in regard to Calvin’s view of the atonement. This helps substantiate Thomas Torrance’s reading of many of the Scottish theologians in his book “Scottish Theology;” which argues that there is a whole strain of development of Calvinism in Scotland that follows and develops this teaching on the atonement first articulated by Calvin. Again, it is important to note that Calvinism has a variegated currency; and much of this is because Calvin left the doors open for more than one trajectory. In other words, his method was not scholastic.

**A repost, I really liked this post, so here it is again.

RE: Train, The Gospel Coalition and The Canons of Dort

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Let me finish something I started at my blogspot ā€˜ECā€™ blog, it was that post that was discussing The Gospel Coalitionā€™s and Resurgenceā€™s grounding in 5 point Calvinist or classical Calvinist theology. I claimed in that post that TGC and Resurgence were intentionally avoiding the language that Calvinists normally use when they communicate what they believe about salvation. It is true TGC and Resurgence (a ministry of Mark Driscollā€™s ā€˜Mars Hill churchā€™ in Seattle) may simply be trying to paraphrase or use todayā€™s lingo to communicate some old truth, but either way, the way they are communicating is not explicitly identifying themselves with the interpretive tradition that they are a part of, and consciously so; classical or what I often reference as 5 point Calvinism (and I do this as short hand, there is no doubt that the theology behind what has become known as 5 point Calvinism in America today runs much deeperā€”beyond that, I also use 5 point Calvinism as a label because it is able to identify all parties associated with a particular strand of Calvinismā€”whether that be straight up Federal/Covenant theology, or Baptist Dispensational Calvinists [there are real and definite distinctions even amongst these 5 point Calvinists, but they would all agree on what is articulated by the 5 points, insofar as that goes]). So let me just try to highlight how one of the confessional points from TGCā€™s confessional statement is indeed communicating, materially, what historic classical Calvinists have always believed about predestination, election, and salvation in general. Here is the point in question:

The Plan of GodĀ We believe that from all eternity God determined in grace to save a great multitude of guilty sinners from every tribe and language and people and nation, and to this end foreknew them and chose them. We believe that God justifies and sanctifies those who by grace have faith in Jesus, and that he will one day glorify themā€”all to the praise of his glorious grace. In love God commands and implores all people to repent and believe, having set his saving love on those he has chosen and having ordained Christ to be their Redeemer. [taken fromĀ The Gospel Coalitionā€™sā€˜Confessional Statementā€™, point 5]

And then letā€™s compare this, at some length, with theĀ Canons of DortĀ (the theological statements that serve as the foundation for what came to be known as the TULIP or 5 points of Calvinism. The Canons of Dort were in response to theĀ Remonstrants or Arminian assertions about free will and Godā€™s election of people). Here are articles 6-9:

Article 6: Godā€™s Eternal Decision

The fact that some receive from God the gift of faith within time, and that others do not, stems from his eternal decision. For all his works are known to God from eternity (Acts 15:18; Eph. 1:11). In accordance with this decision he graciously softens the hearts, however hard, of his chosen ones and inclines them to believe, but by his just judgment he leaves in their wickedness and hardness of heart those who have not been chosen. And in this especially is disclosed to us his actā€”unfathomable, and as merciful as it is justā€”of distinguishing between people equally lost. This is the well-known decision of election and reprobation revealed in Godā€™s Word. This decision the wicked, impure, and unstable distort to their own ruin, but it provides holy and godly souls with comfort beyond words.

Article 7: Election

Election [or choosing] is Godā€™s unchangeable purpose by which he did the following:

Before the foundation of the world, by sheer grace, according to the free good pleasure of his will, he chose in Christ to salvation a definite number of particular people out of the entire human race, which had fallen by its own fault from its original innocence into sin and ruin. Those chosen were neither better nor more deserving than the others, but lay with them in the common misery. He did this in Christ, whom he also appointed from eternity to be the mediator, the head of all those chosen, and the foundation of their salvation. And so he decided to give the chosen ones to Christ to be saved, and to call and draw them effectively into Christā€™s fellowship through his Word and Spirit. In other words, he decided to grant them true faith in Christ, to justify them, to sanctify them, and finally, after powerfully preserving them in the fellowship of his Son, to glorify them.

God did all this in order to demonstrate his mercy, to the praise of the riches of his glorious grace.

As Scripture says, God chose us in Christ, before the foundation of the world, so that we should be holy and blameless before him with love; he predestined us whom he adopted as his children through Jesus Christ, in himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, by which he freely made us pleasing to himself in his beloved (Eph. 1:4-6). And elsewhere, Those whom he predestined, he also called; and those whom he called, he also justified; and those whom he justified, he also glorified (Rom. 8:30).

Article 8: A Single Decision of Election

This election is not of many kinds; it is one and the same election for all who were to be saved in the Old and the New Testament. For Scripture declares that there is a single good pleasure, purpose, and plan of Godā€™s will, by which he chose us from eternity both to grace and to glory, both to salvation and to the way of salvation, which he prepared in advance for us to walk in.

Article 9: Election Not Based on Foreseen Faith

This same election took place, not on the basis of foreseen faith, of the obedience of faith, of holiness, or of any other good quality and disposition, as though it were based on a prerequisite cause or condition in the person to be chosen, but rather for the purpose of faith, of the obedience of faith, of holiness, and so on. Accordingly, election is the source of each of the benefits of salvation. Faith, holiness, and the other saving gifts, and at last eternal life itself, flow forth from election as its fruits and effects. As the apostle says, He chose us (not because we were, but) so that we should be holy and blameless before him in love (Eph. 1:4). [taken fromĀ hereĀ ).

I wonā€™t do much commentary on this, it is pretty self evident how TGCā€™s confessional statement, and their point number 5 is a compressed and summarizing statement of something like we read in these articles provided in The Canons of Dort.

Maybe everyone who attends RE: Train, and all of those who frequent The Gospel Coalitionā€™s website and partakes of all of their pastoral and churchly resources is already well aware of both of these groups doctrinal commitments. If that is the case, then this post really is lost on you. But if you arenā€™t as clear on the theological heritage that Resurgence (RE: Train) and TGC draw from, then this post is for you.

It is no secret that I am not a fan of this kind of Calvinism, and my reasons are highly personal and thus theological. I find it highly naive to presume that doctrine can be disassociated from the personal. I also find it disingenuous when people might claim that because I have had personal (negative) experiences with classic Calvinism that I can no longer ā€œobjectivelyā€ critique this movement theologically. If we are going to be consistent with this line of thinking then we might as well chuck most of the orthodox Christian dogma that developed in the patristic period of the church; which stemmed from highly personal and polemic situations.

I have some more ā€œpositiveā€ stuff I will be covering, maybe tomorrow, on Athanasiusā€™s Trinitarian theology, and his views on the vicarious humanity of Christ ā€¦ some good stuff!

Ā§3. Matt Chandlerā€™s and John Piperā€™s ā€˜two-willed godā€™: There is a history!

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*To catch up read my first and second installments, 1) here and 2) here.

II

This is my second installment (well third really) on Matt Chandlerā€™s and John Piperā€™s ā€˜two-wills in God theologyā€™. My last post on this sought to introduce us to the way that John Piper, in particular, and Chandler otherwise, understand a concept that they both articulate as ā€˜The TwoWills of Godā€™. I registered my concern in that last post about where this approach leads, because of where it comes from; and because of what it implies about Godā€™s nature, and how he relates to his creation (us) in what has been called salvation history. This post will briefly sketch the aspect of where Ā two wills in God theology came from; my next and last post in this mini-series will detail what the implications are of this approach (for Christology, soteriology [study of salvation], etc.), and in this detailing I will offer what I think is a corrective—which of course is what we advocate for as Evangelical Calvinists.

The history of two-wills in God theology can be seen given definition through the thought processes of a medieval theologian named William of Ockham. He believed, in a nutshell, that God was one way in eternity (Godā€™s so called ā€˜absolute willā€™), and another way in time-space salvation history (Godā€™s so called ā€˜ordained willā€™). What this does is introduce a wedge between the God of eternity and the God of spacio-temporal time; meaning that the God we see revealed in Jesus Christ could potentially be different than the God behind Jesus back up in eternity (understand that I am speaking in oversimplified ways and rather crudely)—or, there is no necessary link between how God acts in eternity, and how God acts in time. The result of this is to place a rupture into the very being of God. Here is how Steven Ozment summarizes Ockhamā€™s view (and he also quotes a bit of Ockham for us); we will quote this at some length:

Ockhamā€™s reputation as a revolutionary theological thinker has resulted from the extremes to which he went to establish the contingent character of churches, priests, sacraments, and habits of grace. He drew on two traditional sources. The first was Augustineā€™s teaching that the church on earth was permixta, that is, that some who appear to be saints may not be, and some who appear not to be saints may in fact be so, for what is primary and crucial in salvation is never present grace and righteousness, but the gift of perseverance, which God gives only the elect known to him. Ockhamā€™s second source was the distinction between the absolute and ordained powers of God, the most basic of Ockhamā€™s theological tools. Ockham understood this critical distinction as follows:

Sometimes we mean by Godā€™s power those things which he does according to laws he himself has ordained and instituted. These things he is said to do by ordained power [de potential ordinata]. But sometimes Godā€™s power is taken to mean his ability to do anything that does not involve a contradiction, regardless of whether or not he has ordained that he would do it. For God can do many things that he does not choose to do. . . . The things he is said to be able to do by his absolute power [de potential absoluta]. [Quodlibeta VI, q. 1, cited by Dettloff, Die Entwicklung der Akzeptations- unde Verdienstlehre, p. 282, and Courtenay, ā€œNominalism and Late Medieval Religion,ā€ p. 40.]

Ockham seemed to delight in demonstrating the contingency of Godā€™s ordained powerā€”what God had actually chosen to do in timeā€”by contrasting it with his absolute power, the infinite possibilities open to him in eternity. According to his absolute power, God could have chosen to save people in ways that seem absurd and even blasphemous. For example, he could have incarnated himself in a stone or an ass rather than in a man, or could have required that he be hated rather than loved as the condition of salvation. . . .[1]

In order to keep this brief enough I will not elaborate too much, but let me give some reasons why I think this is important to know; and also for whom I am presenting this in the main:

1)Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  I am introducing this for folks who have never had a Reformation Theology class in seminary, for example. So this is intended to provide exposure for all of those who have been unexposed heretofore.

2)Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  My hope is that because of said exposure, the reader will understand that there is something more going on when they hear Piper and Chandler articulate two wills in God theology. In other words, the way that both Piper and Chandler present this, to the uninformed; the parishioner will walk away thinking that what Chandler just said about two wills in God is simply Gospel biblical truth without reservation or anyway to critically consider this. So my goal is rather minimal by reproducing Ozmentā€™s thought for you; my goal is simply to alert the attentive reader and thinker that there is something more than ā€˜biblical truthā€™ going on in the in-formation of Piperā€™s and Chandlerā€™s view on this particular topic.

3)Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  I want the read to understand that there is a particular problem associated with thinking in these kind of Nominalist ways (which is what the philosophy is called that Ockham articulates) about the nature of God. As I noted earlier, it creates a potential schism (indeed necessary) between the God of eternity and the God of time revealed in Jesus Christ; so as my favorite theologian says (along with Barth before him), we end up ā€˜with a god behind the back of Jesusā€™ who is not necessarily the same God we see revealed in Jesus (so when Jesus says in John 14 that ā€˜when you see me you see the Fatherā€™, that may or may not be true according to the implications and logic associated with a two-wills in God theology).

Conclusion

My next and final post in this series will expand on the problems associated with this approach; elaborating upon my parenthetical point in point three in the aforementioned. I will notice how this approach, which is purported by both Piper and Chandler to resolve some apparent tensions in scripture; instead exacerbate things in scripture by undercutting the most important point and touchstone we work from as Christians—that is what has been called a Theology Proper or Doctrine of God. If we get this point wrong—e.g. who God is—then the rest of our theological thinking and biblical interpreting will be found to be built on sandy beaches and not the rocky jetty that will stand under the most tumultuous theological storm waves one could fathom.

[1] Steven Ozment, The Age of Reform 1250-1550: An Intellectual And Religious History Of Late Medieval And Reformation Europe, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1980), 18.

Ā§2. Matt Chandler’s and John Piper’s ‘two-willed god’: There is a problem!

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I had intended on writing something on Matt Chandlerā€™s conception of God with two wills. My primary means for interacting with Chandlerā€™s view was through two sermons he preached in the past on this topic. As recent as two weeks ago, I had almost finished listening through those sermons, once again; I just tried to find them again, today, so I could finish them up, but instead found this note at Chandlerā€™s ministry website:

Last year we removed all sermons prior to January 2006. Our Lead Pastor, Teaching, Matt Chandler made this request because, in growing in his understanding of the Scriptures, he believed there were some inconsistencies in our past teachings. We pray that the Spirit ministers deeply to you through the teachings now available. (here)

Unfortunately, then, I am unable to finish, and/or then transcribe any of Mattā€™s own wording on his view. So, I am doing the next best thing; I am appealing to a mentor of Mattā€™s (the guy who turned Matt on to Five Point Calvinism to begin with), John Piper. I know, for a fact, that Piper has significant influence with Chandler, and that Mattā€™s views on the ā€˜two wills in Godā€™ would have originally come from Piper anyway; so maybe it is fortuitous that those sermons from Chandler are no longer available—we are now pointed to Chandlerā€™s source, by looking at John Piper.

I donā€™t intend, of course, to do an exhaustive piece on this issue; but I do intend to do at least a few things with this short article. 1) I will introduce us to the Piper/Chandler definition and rationale for holding to ā€˜two wills in Godā€™. 2) I will sketch some historical background to what gave rise to the theological furniture that both Piper and Chandler have arranged in their pastoral living rooms in the way that they have; I will do this by briefly looking at famedĀ  Nominalist theologian William of Ockhamā€™s articulation of a ā€˜two willed Godā€™. 3) And finally, I will conclude this mini-essay with my critique of the Piper/Chandler and Occamist doctrines of God, respectively; in the process, I will articulate what I think is a better way forward—and appeal to an Evangelical Calvinist thesis, that Myk and I have written for the book. Let me just assert, here; that the primary problem with the Piper/Chandler view is that ‘it gives us a god behind the back of Jesus’.Ā  I will attempt to articulate all of this at a level that is accessible, and primarily aimed at the non-specialist and lay Christian—but you are going to have to work with me.

I

John Piper, and by relationship (teacher/student), Matt Chandler, as classic Calvinists (in contrast to ā€˜Evangelical Calvinismā€™) attempt to interpret scripture with the supposition that God must have two wills; they are forced to this conclusion because of what appears to them as necessary contradictory teachings in scripture if in fact God is truly ā€˜sovereignā€™ in the ways that these two understand sovereignty (i.e. that God is for God, and Godā€™s holiness and justice determine how he must relate to his creation as Creator—that is as a God of power and law, untouched by creation itself). For example, if God is ultimately sovereign over creation, then wouldnā€™t this demand that what God desires, God gets? And yet Piper and Chandler must deal with passages like this:

4 who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. I Timothy 2:4 (ESV)

Based on a passage like this, coupled with the kind of sovereignty of God that Piper and Chandler operate with; the obvious conclusion would beā€”if God always gets what he desiresā€”that since he ā€˜desires all people to be savedā€™, that, indeed, all people will be saved! But this cannot work, based on Pā€™s & Cā€™s prior commitment to the Unconditional election in the TULIP. So they have a delimiting mechanism already built into their understanding of the way that God works; one that would seemingly be at odds with a straightforward passage like I Timothy 2:4ā€”the apparent conclusion would be that they have a contradiction between the way that they think about God theologically versus the way that God seems to be acting according to a passage like the one in Timothy. Here is how Piper gets around this apparent contradiction in his view of God:

Affirming the will of God to save all, while also affirming the unconditional election of some, implies that there are at least “two wills” in God, or two ways of willing. It implies that God decrees one state of affairs while also willing and teaching that a different state of affairs should come to pass. This distinction in the way God wills has been expressed in various ways throughout the centuries. It is not a new contrivance. For example, theologians have spoken of sovereign will and moral will, efficient will and permissive will, secret will and revealed will, will of decree and will of command, decretive will and preceptive will, voluntas signi (will of sign) and voluntas beneplaciti (will of good pleasure), etc. (full argument here)

Here we have the work around that Piper provides for getting out of this apparent dilemma between his commitment to his version of Godā€™s sovereignty, and what scripture ā€˜apparentlyā€™ seems to teach if read in a straightforward fashion. So, for Piper and Chandler; God gives with one hand, and has already taken it away with the other hand. In this scenario, we have a God in eternity acting and willing one way; and then we have an ā€˜ordainedā€™ way that God has chosen to work in time. So we essentially have a God who is in competition with the other; i.e. the God of eternity versus the way God has chosen to work in time.

I think this will have to do, for now. I will break this series of posts up into three posts; this, of course, being the first installment and section which is to introduce us to a basic view of ā€˜two wills in God theologyā€™ as understood by John Piper, in particular, and his student, Matt Chandler (and others), in general. The next post will show how Piperā€™s view did not come out of a vacuum (as he himself notes in the quote I provided from him), and how, in fact, it comes directly from a medieval context (via William of Ockham). Stay tuned for section II, in the days to come.

The Young, Restless, & Reformed—Matt Chandler, Mark Driscoll, Kevin DeYoung, Justin Taylor—Getting to Know Their Calvinist History and Present

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In light of my last post, and to help set up some of my next posts (which will be to review an interview that John Piper did with Matt Chandler on Chandlerā€™s appropriation of 5 Point Calvinism, and how he now preaches it in every sermon he gives) I want to provide some clarification on where Calvinism came from. I have blown this trumpet for years, and this has become common fare in the theological literature (in other words this is not news to the theologian); but I donā€™t think I can sound this alarm enough, nor do I intend on necessarily speaking to the theologian. I want to speak to folk who donā€™t have exposure to this kind of stuff on a daily basis; I want you, the lay or even pastoral Christian to get a better grasp on the history of Christian ideas, as it has bequeathed what we know as Calvinism and Arminianism today.

My personal chapter for mine and Myk Habetā€™s forthcoming edited book has to do with an aspect that involves the particular issue that I am addressing in this post. The issue is what has been called classical theism. Classical theism is basically what happened when Thomas Aquinas (medieval theologian par excellence) synthesized Aristotleā€™s philosophical categories with Christian doctrine. This, in general, is what has given shape to most of Western Christianity in the centuries following; and what has given us the ongoing battle between Calvinism and Arminianism (which is an interesting battle because they are just two different sides of the same doctrinal coin). To help clarify and establish what classical theism is; and my assertion to what effect classical theism has had on ā€˜yourā€™ Christianity today, I am going to appeal to Kevin Vanhoozerā€™s comments on the same subject. Vanhoozer writes:

ā€œEvangelical theologians live in the house that Thomas built.ā€ While this is too simplistic, it is true that most evangelical theologians embrace some form of classical theism of which Thomas Aquinas was the leading medieval exponent. Classical theism began when Christian apologists of the second century somewhat necessarily used then dominant concepts of Greek philosophy to commend the faith, and the Scriptures, to the cultured despisers of religion. Theists define God as being of infinite perfection.: all-holy, all-powerful, all-knowing, and everywhere present.

Classical theism refers to what has long been presumed as a synthesis worked out in the ancient and medieval church between biblical Christianity and Greek philosophy, and in particular between ā€œGodā€ and Aristotleā€™s notion of the ā€œUnmoved Moverā€ (or Uncaused Cause). The Unmoved Mover is a perfect being: self-sufficient, eternal, and pure actuality (actus purus). From the latter — that God has no unrealized potential — Aristotle deduced that the Unmoved Mover must be immutable, because any change would be either for better or worse, and a perfect being is already as good as it can, and will for ever, be. God must not therefore have a body, because all bodies can be moved, so God is not material but immaterial. So: God sets the world into motion yet nothing moves God.

Thomas Aquians did not appropriate Aristotleā€™s Unmoved Mover wholesale. He realized that philosophy (a.k.a. ā€œnatural theologyā€) takes us only so far. Reason yields knowledge concerning the world of nature and, by extension, its Creator, but only revelation gives knowledge of the realm of grace and hence of the Son and Spirit. Nevertheless, by employing Aristotelian categories (e.g. substance, form, essence) and by conceding some knowledge of God to reason alone, the die of classical theism was arguably cast.

The first part of Aquinasā€™s Summa discusses the ā€œone God (de Deo Uno) and treats themes accessible to natural reason — doctrines that would be held in common by Christians, Jews, and Arabs alike. Here we find discussions of Godā€™s existence, unity, nature, and attributes. Aquinas treats the ā€œthree personsā€ (de Deo Trino) second, when he turns to the truths of revelation. He consequently presents the divine attributes before he even begins referring to the Incarnation and passion of the Son; in brief, he has been read as thinking about God apart from the gospel.

Seven hundred years later Charles Hodge would define theism in a way that seems to recall Aquinas: God is the ens perfectissimum (ā€œmost perfect beingā€) and theism is ā€œthe doctrine of an extra-mundane, personal God, the creator, preserver, and governor of the world.ā€ Hodge also cites the Westminster Catechism, which gives what is ā€œ[p]robably the best definition of God ever penned by manā€: ā€œGod is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.ā€ (Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The triune God of the Gospel, in The Cambridge Companion To Evangelical Theology, edited by Timothy Larsen and Daniel J. Treier, p. 19-20)

My personal chapter for our book, interestingly, develops some of what Vanhoozer here sketches in his own chapter (I hadnā€™t read this until after I had already submitted my chapter, I probably wouldā€™ve at least footnoted Vanhoozer here). Anyway, What I would like you to see is that there is a history; and there is also a linkage between Thomas Aquinas, and then through a post-Reformation theologian named Francis Turretin, and then to Charles Hodge who translated Turretinā€™s Latin ā€˜Elenctic Theologyā€™ which became what he taught from, and the ground for most Reformed and Evangelical theologies following through even into the present. Classical Theismā€™s reach is deep and wide, and whether you know it or not; you most likely have been and/or are being affected by its reach right now.

There is no doubt that the so called Young, Restless, & Reformed like Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler, Kevin DeYoung, Justin Taylor and their mentors like Tim Keller, John Piper, D. A. Carson, Al Mohler, Mark Dever, et al. have all been heavily influenced by—in fact are steeped in it—by classical theism. This is the philosophical basis that has been given both academic and popular expression in what we know as Calvinism and Arminianism today. It will not be until someone grasps this, that there will be the ability present for pastors, theologians, and lay folk alike to disentangle the actual gospel from the captivity the Gospel has been in, in the clutches of classical theism.

Stay tuned for a brief engagement with Matt Chandlerā€™s Calvinism as we watch a video interview of him with Piper on his appropriation of Calvinism; in the days to come. Not only will I use what we just described here as classical theism to understand what informs Chandlerā€™s (et al.) Calvinism, but I will also expand the discussion out to critique something else that Chandler just barely mentions (Iā€™ve heard him give a whole sermon on it in the past); that is, what he believes are ā€˜the two wills of Godā€™—something Chandler feels he must have to deal with what he perceives as two mutually exclusive movements of God that cannot be reconciled without appealing to two wills. I will show how this comes from not only classical theism, but from an even more focused perspective; how it flows from the nominalist understanding of Godā€™s ā€˜absolute powerā€™ V. his ā€˜ordained powerā€™. It would be great if Chandler and other guys in his movement would read along, but I doubt that! I hope youā€™ll read it though!!

Discontinuity Between Calvin and the Calvinists on the Hermeneutics of Atonement

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I just read this essay Hermeneutical discontinuity between Calvin and later Calvinism by Kevin D. Kennedy from Southwestern Theological Seminary in Fort Worth Texas in the Scottish Journal of Theology Volume 64 (2011) – page 299. Unfortunately I didn’t have the chance to make a copy of it (I read this while I was at my alma mater’s theological library today — Multnomah University), but I would like to try and provide a synopsis of his thesis and argument (as I can recall).

Basically, Kennedy argues that John Calvin and the later Calvinists (post-Reformed orthodox) function with discontinuity relative to their hermeneutics on the extent of the atonement. For Calvin, as Kennedy convincingly argues, he held to a universal atonement, but not universal salvation; for the “Calvinists,” according to Kennedy, they hold to a limited (particular) atonement, and a particular salvation. As part of Kennedy’s “ground clearing work,” he notes Richard Muller’s work in this area; as well as the work of Paul Helm and Roger Nicole (their rejoinder to R.T. Kendall’s work on Calvin). He recognizes that said scholars need to be acknowledged for their work in the area of Calvin studies (especially Muller), but that in this particular area they all over-state things when it comes to Calvin’s view of the extent of the atonement. Kennedy demonstrates that Calvin’s hermeneutics, both in his commentaries (on the salient passages), and in his little book Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God consistently argues for a universal atonement (but not salvation). In particular, Kennedy looks at Matthew 20.28 which says:

[j]ust as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.

Kennedy demonstrates (by quoting Calvin’s commentary), that Calvin believes that the word ‘many’ is not referring to a limited class of people (the elect), or that it is excluding one group of people from the other (elect from the reprobate)—as, he notes, John Owen, along with the rest of the post-Reformed orthodox Tradition would argue—but that Jesus is providing dominical teaching by making a contrast between himself as the One over and against the Many for whom he died pro nobis (or would be dying, given the historical present in context). Kennedy goes on to look at other passages in Calvin’s commentaries that are pertinent to this topic; all illustrating this same point. For Calvin, when the word ‘many’ is used in these contexts it is not intended to exclude one class of people from the other; but instead, it is to contrast Christ’s death for us, over and against ‘us’ the many (or the point that Jesus wasn’t dying for himself, but for us). Kennedy, then, moves on and takes a look at the more universalist passages in Paul’s corpus (like I Tim. 2.4 etc.); he notes that Calvin, qualifies the word ‘all’ (like God desires that ‘all’ men be saved) in a way that speaks, not to his view of the extent of the atonement; but to Calvin’s view that not all will believe. So the limiting, for Calvin, according to Kennedy, has to do with appropriation of salvation and not the extent of the atonement as the post-Reformed orthodox interpret Calvin (so Muller, Helm, Nicole, et al).

Kennedy concludes that the post-Reformed have imposed their later developed hermeneutic of particularism onto Calvin’s hermeneutic of the atonement. He suggests that a more fruitful way forward, while noting that there are some continuities between Calvin and the Calvinists (per Muller’s exhaustive argument, like in his After Calvin), would be not to gloss over the genuine discontinuities that are present between Calvin and the Calvinists. In this instance the primary distinction is between Calvin’s view of the extent of the atonement (which is universal), and the particularist view of the atonement held by the Calvinists (the Reformed orthodox ones).

In closing, what is very enlightening with Kennedy’s essay, is that it helps to substantiate what we Evangelical Calvinists, Thomas Torrance amongst us, have been arguing in regard to Calvin’s view of the atonement. This helps substantiate Thomas Torrance’s reading of many of the Scottish theologians in his book “Scottish Theology;” which argues that there is a whole strain of development of Calvinism in Scotland that follows and develops this teaching on the atonement first articulated by Calvin. Again, it is important to note that Calvinism has a variegated currency; and much of this is because Calvin left the doors open for more than one trajectory. In other words, his method was not scholastic.

**A repost, I really liked this post, so here it is again.

Evangelical Calvinism Re-iterated

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Here is something taken from my EC Themes that I wanted to reiterate. I am planning on blogging through a central book for Evangelical Calvinism (in fact it is where the language of Evangelical Calvinism comes from); that is Thomas F. Torrance’s Scottish Theology. And the quote in this post from Torrance comes from said book. I have taken some heat from fellow Calvinists for trying to draw a hard and fast distinction between Calvinisms like I do in this post (following TFT’s lead). That is because many Calvinists have bought into Richard Muller’s thesis, in toto, that Calvinism in its finished form comes to fruition in the Westminster Standards. I do not follow Muller on this reading of things (that’s not to say I don’t think Muller has nothing good to say, I do … to a degree). Here is the body of the post:

Here is a quote from T. F. Torrance, from the preface of his book Scottish Theology. This really captures the distinction and nuance that I am trying to make through this blog for the uninitiated (thus far). That indeed there is a rift between what has been called Federal Calvinism (or what I’ve been calling “Classic”), and Evangelical Calvinism (or “Scottish Theology”). TFT is introducing his book, and giving some of the rationale for writing it.

In Chapter One on John Knox and the Scottish Reformation, I have offered a general account of the deep doctrinal change that took place, but in the succeeding chapters I have tried to focus on the main issues that arose as a result of the adherence of the Church of Scotland to the Westminster Confession of Faith. Following upon the teaching of the great Reformers there developed what is known as ‘federal theology’, in which the place John Calvin gave to the biblical conception of the covenant was radically altered through being schematised to a framework of law and grace governed by a severely contractual notion of covenant, with a stress upon a primitive ‘covenant of works’, resulting in a change in the Reformed understanding of ‘covenant of grace’. This was what Protestant scholastics called ‘a two-winged’, and not ‘a one-winged’ covenant, which my brother James has called a bilateral and a unilateral conception of the Covenant. The former carries with it legal stipulations which have to be fulfilled in order for it to take effect, while the latter derives from the infinite love of God, and is freely proclaimed to all mankind in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. It was the imposition of a rigidly logicalised federal system of thought upon Reformed theology that gave rise to many of the problems which have afflicted Scottish theology, and thereby made central doctrines of predestination, the limited or unlimited range of the atoning death of Christ, the problem of assurance, and the nature of what was called ‘the Gospel-offer’ to sinners. This meant that relatively little attention after the middle of the seventeenth century was given to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and to a trinitarian understanding of redemption and worship. Basic to this change was the conception of the nature and character of God. It is in relation to that issue that one must understand the divisions which have kept troubling the Kirk [church] after its hard-line commitment to the so-called ‘orthodox Calvinism’ of the Westminster Standards, and the damaging effect that had upon the understanding of the World of God and the message of the Gospel. . . . (Thomas F. Torrance, “Scottish Theology,” x-xi)

This encapsulates the motivation for the blog here; my desire is to alert folks to the reality that TF is speaking to. Here TFT highlights the development of a tradition of Calvinism that is particular to Scotland; but, also want to note that this phenomenon was not unique to the Scots. This kind of development was also, contemporaneously, at play in England as well; Janice Knight has identified this branch of development within Calvinism, as The Spiritual Brethren (as opposed to The Intellectual Fathers — the Westminster Divines).

Calvinists of today, need to know, that they aren’t the only Calvinist ‘orthodoxy’ around; that history is not on their side, per se. Even more importantly, beyond history, I really do not believe that scripture is on their side — by and large.

Anyway, I hope this quote gives you more insight on where many of my cues have been and are coming from. I also hope that if you are into ‘federal theology’ that this will at least make you pause.

Discontinuity Between Calvin’s Hermeneutic on the Atonement from the Calvinists

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I just read this essay Hermeneutical discontinuity between Calvin and later Calvinism by Kevin D. Kennedy from Southwestern Theological Seminary in Fort Worth Texas in the Scottish Journal of Theology Volume 64 (2011) – page 299. Unfortunately I didn’t have the chance to make a copy of it (I read this while I was at my alma mater’s theological library today — Multnomah University), but I would like to try and provide a synopsis of his thesis and argument (as I can recall).

Basically, Kennedy argues that John Calvin and the later Calvinists (post-Reformed orthodox) function with discontinuity relative to their hermeneutics on the extent of the atonement. For Calvin, as Kennedy convincingly argues, he held to a universal atonement, but not universal salvation; for the “Calvinists,” according to Kennedy, they hold to a limited (particular) atonement, and a particular salvation. As part of Kennedy’s “ground clearing work,” he notes Richard Muller’s work in this area; as well as the work of Paul Helm and Roger Nicole (their rejoinder to R.T. Kendall’s work on Calvin). He recognizes that said scholars need to be acknowledged for their work in the area of Calvin studies (especially Muller), but that in this particular area they all over-state things when it comes to Calvin’s view of the extent of the atonement. Kennedy demonstrates that Calvin’s hermeneutics, both in his commentaries (on the salient passages), and in his little book Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God consistently argues for a universal atonement (but not salvation). In particular, Kennedy looks at Matthew 20.28 which says:

[j]ust as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.

Kennedy demonstrates (by quoting Calvin’s commentary), that Calvin believes that the word ‘many’ is not referring to a limited class of people (the elect), or that it is excluding one group of people from the other (elect from the reprobate)—as, he notes, John Owen, along with the rest of the post-Reformed orthodox Tradition would argue—but that Jesus is providing dominical teaching by making a contrast between himself as the One over and against the Many for whom he died pro nobis (or would be dying, given the historical present in context). Kennedy goes on to look at other passages in Calvin’s commentaries that are pertinent to this topic; all illustrating this same point. For Calvin, when the word ‘many’ is used in these contexts it is not intended to exclude one class of people from the other; but instead, it is to contrast Christ’s death for us, over and against ‘us’ the many (or the point that Jesus wasn’t dying for himself, but for us). Kennedy, then, moves on and takes a look at the more universalist passages in Paul’s corpus (like I Tim. 2.4 etc.); he notes that Calvin, qualifies the word ‘all’ (like God desires that ‘all’ men be saved) in a way that speaks, not to his view of the extent of the atonement; but to Calvin’s view that not all will believe. So the limiting, for Calvin, according to Kennedy, has to do with appropriation of salvation and not the extent of the atonement as the post-Reformed orthodox interpret Calvin (so Muller, Helm, Nicole, et al).

Kennedy concludes that the post-Reformed have imposed their later developed hermeneutic of particularism onto Calvin’s hermeneutic of the atonement. He suggests that a more fruitful way forward, while noting that there are some continuities between Calvin and the Calvinists (per Muller’s exhaustive argument, like in his After Calvin), would be not to gloss over the genuine discontinuities that are present between Calvin and the Calvinists. In this instance the primary distinction is between Calvin’s view of the extent of the atonement (which is universal), and the particularist view of the atonement held by the Calvinists (the Reformed orthodox ones).

In closing, what is very enlightening with Kennedy’s essay, is that it helps to substantiate what we Evangelical Calvinists, Thomas Torrance amongst us, have been arguing in regard to Calvin’s view of the atonement. This helps substantiate Thomas Torrance’s reading of many of the Scottish theologians in his book “Scottish Theology;” which argues that there is a whole strain of development of Calvinism in Scotland that follows and develops this teaching on the atonement first articulated by Calvin. Again, it is important to note that Calvinism has a variegated currency; and much of this is because Calvin left the doors open for more than one trajectory. In other words, his method was not scholastic.