Category Archives: Books

Who Is a True Christian? And AAR

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Dr. David Congdon has written a new book. Published by Cambridge University Press (2024), it is titled: Who Is a True Christian?: Contesting Religious Identity in American Culture. I have some history with ole’ Congdon, particularly from back in the good old days of the blogosphere. Anyway, his new book might sound provocative; but I don’t think it does, really. Congdon, these days, rejects the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ; the bodily return of Jesus Christ; a conscious afterlife (eschatological life), so on and so forth. With these identifiable positions, what in God’s green earth qualifies someone like Congdon to write a book on identifying ‘who a true Christian is?’ He has already walked away from any semblance of what the biblical identifier, “Christian,” had come to mean; particularly in the book of Acts. At best, Congdon’s tools for identifying who the true Christian is are going to be those provided for him through sociology. But then in what sort of meaningful way would this give him privy to be a self-proclaimed identifier of who the true Christian is? Being a Christian isn’t a sociological category; it is a revelational-apocalyptic category, indeed, a biblical category. Thusly, its contours and themes, as those might be successfully and intelligibly understood, are purely theological and biblical. As a good Bultmannian, Congdon would and should know all of this. And yet he remains in the mode of deconstruction that he has seemingly been in for years now; long before I came to know him (circa 2006).

Here is the blurb from Congdon’s book:

‘No true Christian could vote for Donald Trump.’ ‘Real Christians are pro-life.’ ‘You can’t be a Christian and support gay marriage.’ Assertive statements like these not only reflect growing religious polarization but also express the anxiety over religious identity that pervades modern American Christianity. To address this disquiet, conservative Christians have sought security and stability: whether by retrieving ‘historic Christian’ doctrines, reconceptualizing their faith as a distinct culture, or reinforcing a political vision of what it means to be a follower of God in a corrupt world. The result is a concerted effort ‘Make Christianity Great Again’: a religious project predating the corresponding political effort to ‘Make America Great Again.’ Part intellectual history, part nuanced argument for change, this timely book explores why the question of what defines Christianity has become, over the last century, so damagingly vexatious – and how believers might conceive of it differently in future.[1]

Call me skeptical. That isn’t to say that Congdon might not offer any good insights or critiques say of evangelical Christianity; or even, mainline Christianity (and yet, Job’s “friends” thought they had good insights on God too). But it is to say, that I find it extremely ironic for someone who is no longer a professing Christian (at best he is a pluralist, something like we find with the late John Hick), to uplift himself as someone who might have the capacity to construct a mechanism that might tell us “Who Is a True Christian.”

The American Academy of Religion (AAR) is having its national-international meeting in San Diego, CA this next Thanksgiving week; along with the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS), and the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL). At these types of theological conferences, they have breakout and panel sessions, devoted to various groups and fellowships within the AAR. There is going to be a panel engaging directly with Congdon’s book, and apparently the panel is made up of critics, at one level or the other. In my view, Congdon’s book doesn’t warrant a panel review and engagement. Now, the AAR is expansive, and as such, has latitude in regard to its membership and focuses. Even so, just because something is published, even if it has acuity and academic eloquence, for my money, this doesn’t in itself warrant a response. I say this because whenever something is responded to in academia it elevates the subject matter, and amplifies its ostensible credibility. I don’t see how Congdon’s book achieves this level of credibility for a theological organization. If anything, it maybe could be paneled at some academic sociological conference, or something; this would be much more fitting. But such has the AAR become.

I simply wanted to acknowledge that this is happening. Congdon still has some influence on various Christians out there, and not for the good. I used to point some of my readers, here at the blog, to some of Congdon’s work in the past. I regret that. And so, I feel like I have some responsibility for alerting folks to what Congdon is doing these days, if only to keep them from falling into the trap of his neo-Gnostic maneuverings within the broader frame of the ‘body of Christ.’

[1] See Congdon, Who Is a True Christian?

A Reformed Correction on the Post Reformed Doctrine of Grace

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The following is a book proposal I’ve been thinking about since March 2022. I’m still thinking about it.

 

Bobby Grow                                                                                                                                           03-17-2022

 

A Reformed Correction on the Post Reformed Doctrine of Grace

 

Introduction: On a doctrine of grace and its reality as triune personal agency versus a qualitative substance as understood within scholastic Reformed theology. A description of the debate, and programmatic entailment of the consequences of affirming grace as triune personal agency for 21st century Reformed theology.

 

PART I A CRITICAL HISTORY OF A DOCTRINE OF GRACE IN REFORMED THEOLOGY AND ITS PATRISTIC AND MEDIEVAL PAST: A SURVEY

  1. The Apostolic Fathers and Their Development
  2. The Medieval Importation of Aristotelian Categories through the Thomist Synthesis and its Failure to Secure a Genuinely Biblical Understanding of Grace
  3. The Habitus as Grace and its Attempted Reformed Correlation with Personal Agency
  4. The 20th Century Retrieval: Identification of the Problem of Grace as a Quality
  5. The After Barth Reformulation of Grace as Personal Divine Agency

 

PART II SEMPER REFORMANDA SECUNDUM VERBUM DEI: SCRIPTURE’S WORD ON GRACE

  1. The Pauline Corpus on Grace (With Special Reference to the Roman and Galatian Correspondence)
  2. The Dominical Doctrina on Grace (With Focused Attention on the Johannine Offering)

 

PART III A CORRECTION ON A DOCTRINE OF GRACE IN REFORMED THEOLOGY

  1. Towards a Doctrine of Grace that is Both catholic and Reformed

Epilogue: Resources for Further Development of a Doctrine

 

 

 

 

1/ Reviewing Bruce McCormack’s: The Humility of the Eternal Son

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I am going to attempt to write a series of blog posts that will be sections of what potentially could be turned into a review essay on chapter 7 (the final chapter) of Bruce McCormack’s book The Humility of the Eternal Son: Reformed Kenoticism and the Repair of Chalcedon. Chapter 7 is where McCormack presents his constructive proposal on what he considers to be the needed ‘repair’ of Chalcedonian Christology. As the reader will see, he doesn’t abandon Chalcedon, he constructively engages with it offering an interesting proposal that I believe might be a way forward for thinking the Divinity and humanity of the eternal Son together in the singular person of Jesus Christ. I plan on sharing what I take to be key passages from McCormack’s chapter 7 and engaging with his thinking from there. The first passage presents McCormack’s general proposal, which he develops throughout the rest of the chapter.

Karl Barth was right, I think, to translate two “natures” into understandings of the “divine” and the “human” that arise out of close attention to “the history of God in his mode of existence as the Son.” Both “divine” and “human” being are “defined” by this history, for this history constitutes the “essence” of each. And so, in the place of two discrete (substantially conceived) “natures” subsisting in one and the same “persons,” I am going to posit the existence of a single composite hypostasis, constituted in time by means of what I will call the “ontological receptivity” of the eternal Son to the “act of being” proper to the human Jesus as human. “Ontological receptivity,” it seems to me, is the most apt phrase describing the precise nature of the relation of the “Son” to Jesus of Nazareth as witnessed to in the biblical texts we treated.

I am going to argue further that it is the Son’s “ontological receptivity” that makes an eternal act of “identification” on the part of the Logos with the human Jesus to be constitutive of his identity as the second “person” of the Trinity even before the actual uniting occurs. This is what I believe to have been missing in Jüngel and Jenson. The “Son” has as “Son” an eternal determination for incarnation and, therefore, for uniting through “receptivity.” He is, in himself, “receptive.” To say any more than this at this point is impossible in the absence of a more thorough reconstruction of Chalcedon, so I will stop for the moment. Suffice it to say that “ontological receptivity” on the part of the Logos does all the heavy lifting that the genus tapeinoticum would have done (had the Reformed accepted it). And it does this without requiring acceptance of the classical metaphysics that made both the genus majesticum and the genus tapeinoticum to be (logical) possibilities. In any event, the reconstruction that follows will in no way violate the fundamental commitments of classical Reformed Christology. It will, in fact, extend essential commitments while breaking with non-essential commitments.

What is essential to any genuinely Reformed Christology is (again) the emphasis placed upon the integrity of the divine and human elements in their uniting. And I will secure that emphasis. The unimpaired integrity of the divine will be secured by means of the stress laid on a determination for incarnation that is essential to the eternal Son. The unimpaired integrity of the human will be secured by the Son’s receptivity that prevents instrumentalization of the human. What emerges will be in the spirit of Chalcedon even if it is not according to the letter.

So much by way of introduction.1

I have been reading Bruce for a long time. When I read his ‘repair’ or proposal it doesn’t fall on fresh ground. In other words, I have heard this from him, and some of his students, for decades now (one in particular, Darren Sumner; see his work Karl Barth and the Incarnation: Christology and the Humility of God). These first inklings of what McCormack is only bringing together now (in this book, and we can assume the following two forthcoming in this trilogy) I was first introduced to in McCormack’s essay/chapter in the Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, “Grace and Being: the role of God’s gracious election in Karl Barth’s theological ontology.” This chapter from McCormack represented, at that point, a type of watershed moment, which ended up being known quaintly as the “Companion controversy,” and/or the “Barth Wars.” Without getting into that, the controversial nature of what McCormack was proposing then in certain ways seems to be the seedlings of what is now blossoming in his ‘repair of Chalcedon.’

The critique has always been (by George Hunsinger, Paul Molnar et al.) that McCormack’s reading, and “revisionist” appropriation of Barth’s themes works against the grain of Barth’s textual theological offering. Be that as it may, that hatchet, for McCormack has been buried; he has moved on, and is developing here, not an intentionally “Barthian” account of things, instead, his is simply an offering of constructive Christological imagination. If the reader is familiar with modern theology, what the reader senses, if they do, and they’d be right, is a type of so-called postmetaphysical or post-Barthian analysis by McCormack. The reader might pick this up merely by reading the passage I offered from McCormack above. But if the reader had indeed read McCormack previous to this final chapter, they would have understood that McCormack is distancing himself from unqualified post-Barthian readings of the Christological history of ideas. He proffers what he along with his colleague Alexandra Pârvan identify as a ‘psychological ontology,’ which fits well with what he describes for us above as ‘ontological receptivity,’ to which we now turn.

When McCormack writes the following, “I am going to argue further that it is the Son’s ‘ontological receptivity’ that makes an eternal act of ‘identification’ on the part of the Logos with the human Jesus to be constitutive of his identity as the second ‘person’ of the Trinity even before the actual uniting occurs …,” one gets the type of ‘narratival’ feeling you might get when reading Robert Jenson’s own “Barth” inspired oeuvre. I would suggest that it is this thesis offered by McCormack that serves most controversial for his proposal, and yet I find it rather compelling in certain ways (which I will have to address in a later post). It is this theory, in regard to ontological receptivity, that has been inchoately present in McCormack’s thinking (at least in published form) since at least his ‘Companion’ piece. The controversial aspect of this comes back to the fear that McCormack is engaging, at the christological level, in some form of adoptionism or Ebionism. But McCormack attempts to elide this charge by emphasizing, as we see in the second paragraph above, the notion that the eternal Son has always already been Deus incarnandus (God to become flesh); which fits with McCormack’s understanding of Barth’s doctrine of election, to a point (McCormack does not think Barth’s doctrine of election goes far enough to allow McCormack to speak in the ways he now is with reference to “ontological receptivity,” which you can read about here).

For McCormack, thus far, he believes that Godself’s choice or election to be enfleshed in Christ, makes His reception in the man from Nazareth the most fitting and organic outcome that Godself eternally pre-destined for Himself as the fundamentum or foundation of the Divine identity. One could argue that this escapes adoptionism insofar that in this choice to be incarnate, God has always already been the eternal identity, or the inner-reality for which creation itself had been fitted in its own independently contingent and ordered way. As such, the Christological heresy of adoptionism has no air to breathe insofar that the type of abstract creation required for such a notion to exist never obtains; that is, the condition for an abstract notion of humanity apart from its predetermination to be what it is vis-á-vis God is a counterfactual with no factual basis in the economy of God as revealed in His history for the world in Jesus Christ. This might seem to lend itself towards a failure to secure a proper Creator/creature distinction in a God-world relation, thus resulting in some type of panentheism through a christological malaise. But McCormack will attempt to rebuff this error by appeal to a robust reposition on a Pneumatological-Christology forthcoming. If the Divine identity is contingent on God’s life for the world in Christ, the Spirit will need to do the type of “heavy-lifting” that McCormack is wont to stress as “ontological receptivity.”

Even as I write this, I am still processing whether I can co-sign with Bruce, and say amen. His reception and constructive engagement with Barth’s doctrine of election has always been intriguing to me. His Christological proposal in this book is no less intriguing; indeed, it seems to take his form of thinking, in regard to his constructive imagination with Barth, to another level. To be sure, his proposal here is not intended to be a “Barthian” proposal, per se; McCormack makes this clear throughout the book. His primary modern interlocutors are Karl Barth, Robert Jenson, Eberhard Jüngel, Sergius Bulgakov, and Hans Urs von Balthasar. He is not slavishly committed to any of his ‘teachers,’ but the reader can see bright pieces throughout, informing his ‘repair’ work as he attempts to harvest the best from them and imaginatively bring them into a concerto of his own rhythmic orchestration.

 

1 Bruce Lindley McCormack, The Humility of the Eternal Son: Reformed Kenoticism and the Repair of Chalcedon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 252-53.

 

The Historical Theology Texts That Stand Behind Me

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I thought I would share three texts that have served most foundational for me in my theological development. Each of these texts was assigned to me by my former Historical Theology and Ethics professor in seminary, Ron Frost. I was privileged to serve as his teaching fellow and, as a result, became mentored by him. I will say that without Ron Frost at the seminary, my time at seminary would not have been as great as it was (and that’s saying a lot because so many of my other seminary profs were excellent in their own right, and in their own ways). But the texts that remain formative for me are these:

J.N.D. Kelly’s Early Christian Doctrine: Revised Edition.

Steven Ozment’s The Age of Reform 1250-1550: An Intellectual and Relgious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe.

And as supplementary readings (although I read the whole thing):

Geoffrey Bromiley’s Historical Theology: An Introduction.

You will notice that these are all historical theology related. I continue to maintain, that without having a foundation in the classical sources (so a reified ad fontes or ‘back to the sources’), and without having a grasp of their general doctrinal frameworks and trajectories, that it will be nay impossible for genuinely Christian theological development to take place. I take this as a given just as we find this sort of sentiment implied by the Apostle Paul when he writes in Ephesians 4: “11 And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, 12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ,13 till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; 14 that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, 15 but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ ….” This is a basic or fundamentum reality for me as a Christian; I believe we stand on the shoulders of the giants who came before us, and we are given a theological imaginary to think from thence.

So, I commend these texts to you. They will open you up to the ‘sources’, and allow you to engage in constructive theological theology in ways, that outwith, will not be possible. We see the dangers of people who attempt to do theology without this requisite background; they end up engaging in thought that is unmoored from the foundations that Jesus himself has offered his church, with the intention of causing edification and growth into the grace and knowledge that he himself is.

Ironically, I am often thought of us as a “Barth blogger,” or a “Torrance blogger,” and I’m fine with that. But it should be known that this only reflects the tip of the ice-berg for me. Years ago, when I first started blogging (in 2005), I might have been known as a “Luther blogger, Calvin blogger, or Sibbes blogger,” respectively. Typically my blogging is driven by whatever I’m reading at the time (as so many of you know by now). But in general Barth and Torrance have come to dominate the types of posts I generate; pretty much, because I have adopted that ‘tradition’ (and it is a tradition, just as much as the Thomist or Bavinckian or Calvinian are interpretive traditions in their own right) as my interpretive tradition. But, again, all of that is chastened by the sources. I have not lost sight of those, nor have I become a progressive-modern-liberalesque theologian who sees the past as a naïve and a pre-critical time (even if it was pre-critical … which actually is where its value is); least not in the pejorative sense that these former theologians see it as. Ultimately I will follow the theologians who point me most to Jesus Christ, no matter what period I find them in. I might be critical of some of the metaphysics as they are received by many these days; the metaphysics of say the mediaeval periods etc. But I can also critically recognize that these theologians were doing the best they could with what they had materially and formally available to them. I can recognize that they had the same impulses I have, in the sense that they wanted to magnify Jesus for the church in the sort of edifying ways that Paul refers us to.

Pax Christi.

 

 

Die Evangelischen Theologen: Travis’ Barth Book Writing Contest

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My long time blogging friend, [W.] Travis McMaken, PhD Princeton, and the one who originally introduced (along with Halden Doerge–almost on the same day, it was ordained) me to Thomas Torrance, is having a westminsterkarlbarthwriting contest for his blog. The winner will get a  copy of The Westminster Handbook to Karl Barth. Here’s what Travis writes in the first half of his post alerting us to this contest:

That’s right, folks! This is your chance to win a free copy of the newly publishedWestminster Handbook to Karl Barth (WJK, 2013) edited by Richard Burnett. This looks like a very handy volume for folks starting out in Barth studies, or who are interested in a more thematic presentation of Barth’s thought.

Westminster John Knox was kind enough to send DET a review copy of the book. Luckily for you, gentle readers, they did so about a week after I had received my pre-ordered copy. So now I’m giving you a chance to get a free book. Here’s how this is going to work…

To become eligible for the prize, you will need to send a short (500-750 word) “essay” (blog post, etc.) in response to the prompt:

Why and / or how (i.e., in what manner) should Karl Barth remain an important theological voice in 21st century theology? (click here for the rest of Travis word’s)

So if you are a budding Barth scholar in the making, or just want to know more about Karl Barth and his theology out of intrigue; then I challenge you to submit a short essay (I mean really, 500 words is a page of written script … so not much) to Travis, and his blog Die Evangelischen Theologen; you just might become the lucky winner of a brand new shiny copy of The Westminster Handbook to Karl Barth. Good luck, and godspeed!  Oh, and don’t shoot your eye out kid …

‘Click-Reading’: A Christian Reading Ethic

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In our online age there seems to be a ‘click’ approach to our Christian reading practices, and in ways, I see no problems with this at all. But, there is also potential for problems associated with this ‘click’ approach. If we are reading someone (like N.T. Wright et. al.) just to be considered part of the crowd or part of the cool kid’s group; we are missing the boat. I think we need to read where our interests genuinely lay. If we are interested in reading Augustine, or James Cone, or whomever; then we ought to. If we are reading things or certain people simply to impress other people, then let us be anathema! I think there is an ethic to reading (see Vanhoozer), and as Christians we ought to be genuine readers, for genuinely Christian reasons. Clearly, we might be spurred on to read someone (like Wright) to be part of the cool kids, and then as we are actually reading him switch over to genuine interest in what he or she is materially communicating; the Lord can transform and reverse all of our ill-conceived intentions.

Furthermore, if we all are click-readers, and are reading the same things; how are we supposed to minister to each other as the body of Christ? This is my biggest concern with ‘groupie-reading’. Not only is it not Christian by persuasion and mode, but it also creates gaps in the body of Christ. Maybe if we were more sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s leading, more in step with Him, we would sense His leading and direction into reading someone or something else; by so doing, we just might be surprised by what He has waiting for us, buried, as it were, in the dusty pages that the cool kids might not be reading.

Anyway, this is just another one of my rants & reflections. I have been feeling more and more convicted every day to be serious about what I am doing; to be intentional (I actually don’t like that little word, it is still so trendy, but it captures what I mean). Being an online participant has the effect of abstracting, at least, my life into a virtual mumbo-jumbo mode of abstraction that has no real touch-down in the concrete real life world I inhabit day in and out (in the home and at work in particular). It is time to stand up, once again, live boldly, read boldly, and actually participate in the vicarious humanity of Christ that grounds my life by the recreative power of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes I feel like chucking all my books and reading, but then I realize that that would be stupid. Reading good theological books is not the problem. Wanting to be a cool kid can be a problem (theology of glory). Reading good books (that are intended to explicate Scripture and the implications of God’s life in Christ) without prayer and passionate action is a problem. It is this reality, these problems, that motivated me to write this post on an ethic of reading as a Christian.

The Evangelical Calvinist is Reading Jacobus Arminius and Some Other Stuff

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I am just starting to read a brand new translation of Jacobus Arminius’ Declaration of Sentiments in W. Stephen Gunter’s Arminius and His Declaration of Sentiments: An Annotated Translation with Introduction and jacobus_arminiusTheological Commentary (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2012). I’ll let you know what I find out.

I am also reading another book I’ve been wanting to read for a bit now; Kenneth J. Stewart’s Ten Myths About Calvinism: Recovering the Breadth of the Reformed Tradition (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2011). You’ll be hearing some things about this one too, I’m sure.

And then I am revisiting a book that I read some essays from in the past, a book edited by Maarten Wisse, Marcel Sarot & Willemien Otten, entitled: Scholasticism Reformed: Essays in Honor of Willem J. van Asselt (Netherlands: Brill, 2010). I bet you can’t wait to hear from this one 😉 !

And finally, something that is directly in the realm of biblical studies; Francis Watson’s Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith (London • New York: T&T Clark International, 2004). I look forward to this one alongside the others! I hope I can make it through this one in the next 6 weeks (it is rather long, 500 pages). You should expect to hear from this one too.

I often check out books from my theo library that I don’t always have the time to totally finish. I am hoping that with this new crop that is different! I don’t even know why I am driven to study and read like this sometimes; all I can think is that the Lord has wired me this way, and thus it is my favorite way to think that I could potentially come to know him even better as I partake of the riches that he has bequeathed to his church through her teachers. The only missing piece to this is that I need someone to share this with, and since I don’t have a classroom of my own; well, you all are the ones I share with then.

Let me clarify something about my blogging, at least. I have recently receive an email from someone, and one of the reasons he mentioned that he does not blog is because for some reason he thinks it has to be of the upmost quality (writing), with the apparent precision and accessibility of a formal writing project or teaching session (or something). I don’t approach my blogging that way, you’ll have to forgive me. I use this place more than anything as a place to cycle through my raw thinking as I read things. I try to write in an interesting and provocative way, but that is not always the foremost impulse that shapes what comes out in my posts; my own understanding of the material under my consideration is what is mostly at stake. Just to be frank. I am thankful for all of you readers, but just so you know what drives my blogging, and then the subsequent stuff you end up reading here :-).

Book Review: Calvin’s Ladder: A Spiritual Theology Of Ascent And Ascension

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*Repost on John Calvin number seven. I have decided to selectively repost some of my John Calvin posts and not all of them. This book by Julie is awesome (and is on my re-read list). By the way, Julie Canlis also offers an excellent chapter in Myk’s and my book; her chapter therein is entitled: Living as God’s Children: Calvin’s Institutes as Primer for Spiritual Formation.

Calvin’s Ladder: A Spiritual Theology Of Ascent And Ascension by Julie Canlis (2010)

ISBN: 978-0-8028-6449-9 (286 pages)

Julie Canlis has offered Calvin studies, in particular, and the Christian Church, in general, a classic before its time (given its relative “newness”). She masterfully seeks to introduce a theme, a doctrinal milieu for Calvin that simply is original; yet not novel. Her book, “Calvin’s Ladder: A Spiritual Theology Of Ascent And Ascension,” depicts a Calvin who has his theology shaped, heavily, by a doctrine of participation and ascent. Her book is organized accordingly: She lays out the logistics of the body of the book in her Introduction, which involves (i) ‘partcipation and Christianity’, (ii) ‘participation as a valid Reformed category’, (iii) ‘participation and Irenaeus’, and (iv) Calvin and Irenaeus (pp. 1-21). She then begins to develop what she highlights in her introduction in Chapter 1, entitled — Ladders of Ascent: A Brief History; the breakdown of the chapter is as follows: (i) ‘Greek itineraries: Plato’s Ladder and Plotinus’s golden circle’, (ii) ‘Christian journeys: Origen, Augustine, Aquinas’, and (iii) ‘Calvin’s paradigm of ascent’ (pp. 25-42). Chapter 2, Creation: The Ground and Grammar of Ascent, is framed by two sections: (i) Eternal mediation of the Word’ and (ii)’The mediator and the garden’ (pp. 53-74). Moving into Chapter 3, Christ: The Ascending One, Canlis unveils the descent and ascent of Christ with the theatre having been set by ‘Creation’ in the previous chapter; this chapter progresses thusly: (i) ‘The bidirectional itinerary of God’, (ii) ‘The descent of Jesus: His earthly humanity’, and (iii) The ascent of Jesus: His continuing humanity (pp. 89-112). Prior to discussing Irenaeus as Calvin’s foil and discussion partner in chapter 5, Julie moves skillfully into Chapter 4, The Spirit: The Eucharistic Ascent where she discusses the centrality and natural place this takes through Calvin’s schema of ‘union with Christ’ and ‘participation’ as a central component of his theology; this chapter discusses: (i) ‘Discipleship’, (ii) ‘Adoption’, and (iii) ‘The eucharistic ascent’ (pp. 123-159). She changes gears as we enter into Chapter 5, The Ascending Vision of Irenaeus; who she has already noted, back in chapter 1, serves as a helpful voice when engaging Calvin’s ‘ascension theology’; since Irenaeus not only represents an ealry corollary and cooridinate voice to Calvin’s in this area, but as we will see in chapter 6 — somewhat of a corrective (by way of complement) to Calvin, in regards to Calvin’s sometimes binary and almost “Platonic” like dualistic language (esp. when it comes to the eucharist, but also relative to his “theological anthropology”). Chapter 5 unfolds: (i) ‘The ascending economy of Adam’, (ii) ‘The ascending economy of Christ’, and (iii) ‘The ascending economy of the Spirit’ (pp. 173-210). Finally (in a good and crescendo kind of way) we come to Chapter 6, Reforming Ascent: Irenaeus, Calvin, and Christian Spirituality; this was well worth the wait, herein, Canlis orchestrates in symphonic tempo the voices of both Calvin and Irenaeus. She presents Calvin as the star of the show, highlighting all of the previous points she had developed throughout the body of the book; but as the co-star, she uses Irenaeus tenor like voice to bring harmony to Calvin’s theology of ascent in ways that are both historically tuned, but more constructively balanced in way that both Calvin and Irenaeus are allowed to shine with their respective strengths and weaknesses given their proper air time. The chapter breaksdown: (i) ‘Backward and forward with descent and ascent’, (ii) ‘Recapitulating ascent in Calvin’, (iii) ‘Participation and its challenges, and (iv) ‘Ascent, Calvin, and contemporary spirituality’ (pp. 229-245). She closes out the work with a dense Bibliography (pp. 253-272) and helpful Index of Names, Subjects, and Calvin’s Works (273-283) — respectively.

General Impressions

Julie Canlis’ book will rock your Calvin and Calvinistic world (if you have one). She offers a Calvin who is Pneumotologically shaped, and who really sounds less like the “Calvinism” that followed him; than ever before. The Calvin presented by Julie certainly fits the ‘Confessional Calvin’ that Charles Partee introduced us to in his (2008) ‘The Theology of John Calvin’ offering. She presses the ‘centrality’ that union with Christ & Participation with Christ played in shaping Calvin’s overall project; and she does this in a way that is not polemic, nor does it overtly engage the pictures of Calvin painted by folks like: Richard Muller, Carl Trueman, and David Steinmetz respectively; all of these scholars have sought to place Calvin in his “context” which does away with notions of Calvin that might portend a ‘centraldogma’. Interestingly, while Julie avoids this rather polemically charged venue of discourse; what she ends up doing is demonstrating that in fact Calvin does have a “core” (or center) that drives his overall theology, viz. his ‘theology of ascent’ (which is simply grounded in his “union with Christ” and “participation” with Christ theology).

Beyond all of this, what I found most refreshing was the koinonial-relational (Trinitarian) shape that Canlis develops relative to Calvin’s theology. She demonstrates, that while certain categories of Platonism (like ascent) were present (linguistically) in Calvin’s theology; that in the end, Calvin out-paces such things precisely because of his commitment to biblical and Trinitarian and Christian concepts that slight the metaphysics provided by Platonism. This is where Irenaeus becomes a very helpful interlocuter to Calvin; Canlis fruitfully notices and develops that one of the points of contact between both Calvin and Irenaeus is their overt and explicit Biblicism. This allows both men to escape the tendencies to slip back into the kind of Platonic metaphysicalism that folks like Osiander fell into in the attempt to talk about Christ’s divinity and humanity.

I would highly recommend this book, I give it 5 out of 5 stars; it will change your life (not an overstatement).

PS. This book is her PhD dissertation which she did under Alan Torrance at the University of St. Andrews (2005). While it is clearly a critical and academic work, the style is both pastoral and even devotional. I think any engaged Christian — layman, pastor, or scholar — will benefit immensely from this book!

What’s Bobby Reading? Cornelius Van Til, Andrew Louth, J. Louis Martyn, and Thomas Torrance (the man)

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  • Barth’s Christology by Cornelius Van Til (actually, this one is read, it’s only a quick 29 pages)

Here’s the last paragraph of the essay (booklet):

[T]hus the Christ who symbolizes this idea of man’s virtual omniscience and a God who knows not himself is the projection of would be autonomous human experience: It is the belief in this sort of Christ that leads men to think that they have done justice to God and Christ while in fact they are still under their condemnation and wrath. The Christ of Barth’s theology is a false Christ, a meaningless mirage, and devoid of ability to give sinners any help. But it is the only Christ that men can find if they will not submit their thinking to the obedience of Christ as he speaks in the Scriptures. (p. 29)

  • Christianity And Barthianism by Cornelius Van Til

Here’s Van Til in the preface:

[T]he present writer is of the opinion that, for all its verbal similarity to historic Protestantism, Barth’s theology is, in effect, a denial of it. There is,  he believes, in Barth’s view no “transition from wrath to grace” in history. This was the writer’s opinion in 1946 when he published The New Modernism. A careful consideration of Barth’s more recent writings has only established him more firmly in this conviction. (p. vii)

There you have it. I plan on posting some of the stuff from Van Til on Barth. There are plenty of things that are perfect bloggy material provided by his essay (booklet) Barth’s Christology. Van Til continues to be the great defeater of Barthianism for some within the post Reformed orthodox camp today (mostly by those who attend and teach at Westminster Theological Seminary). Even what I know of Barth, which has some depth at this point (relatively speaking), Van Til’s points fall flat (in his little booklet tract against Barth’s Christology). My “e-friend” Darren Sumner recently took Van Til to task here; I wish more folk would pay attention to critiques of Van Til, but instead those who follow Van Til seem to continue to follow the notion that Barth is a demon and not a saint—which ultimately is scary!