Category Archives: Critiquing Classic Calvinism

The Freedom of the Human Before God: Getting Beyond the Usual Debates

Posted on by

What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be free? These are the types of questions that have often plagued the Christian theological dialogue for centuries. Indeed, these theoanthropological loci have been the source of much consternation and division; that is, depending on how disparate Christian thinkers conclude on an answer to these questions. Often, whether in the theological or philosophical realms, answering these questions are reduced to, generally, two disparate tribes: 1) Arminian/Libertarian Free Agency, and 2) Calvinism/Compatibilist Determinism. There are of course other iterations of expression along the continuum that these seemingly two polar opposites are comprised of; but again, and generally speaking, this is what we have seen play out—with reference to our original questions—within the development and history of theological ideas (e.g., Augustine/Pelagius; Luther/Erasmus; Calvin/Pighius et al.)

In contradistinction, Athanasian Reformed theology, after Barth (and Athanasius), elides the seemingly unavoidable binary that the annals of history have been scorched by. We focus on the freedom of God as the only ground from whence any notion of freedom might be construed. The arguments surrounding freewill vis-à-vis human agency, before God, all start with an abstract soteriological question bequeathed to the church by, primarily, St. Augustine. Augustine’s bequeathment comes primarily from his commitment to Neo-Platonism, and how he thought of the relation between the eternal forms and their shadows in temporal history. Without getting into that now, we can only gesture at it for time and space constraints. It is Barth, as already noted, who offers an alternative way to reformulate these questions and answers; not from an abstract lens grounded in various humanity for whom God gave His life alone; but from the concrete humanity of God, as that is given for us in Jesus Christ. When Jesus is the ground from whence all theological questions flow, we are sure to be provided with the answers that God has freely chosen to bequeath upon us by His dearly beloved Son.

In the following passage from Barth, he is describing what, from his christological lights, a genuine human being is comprised by. In a way, without all of the context, when the reader reads this, it might sound like Barth is speaking abstractly about a needed performativity of humanity before God. But know, he is referring to God’s humanity for us in Jesus Christ (and yet, dialectically so).

What can and does happen in the human decision as such is that man offers himself to God. He thanks God. He is responsible before God, i.e., he makes himself a response to the Word of God—no less but also no more than that. He gives what he has, i.e., what he is, and therefore himself. No less than this is required of him. Less than this is not sufficient to constitute true humanity. To offer himself and place himself at the disposal of God—it is to this that he is summoned and for this that he is strengthened and empowered. Doing this, he is established as a human subject, and posits himself as such. Failing to do it, he fails to realise himself as man. For to do this is his only possibility. Offering and disposing himself to go to God and to be obedient to the divine call: “Come,” he pushes open the gate and steps out into freedom. As he does so, he is a creature which transcends the limits of the creature. And in this way he is the human creature. No less than this is required of him. If he did not do this, if he decided differently, he would not be man. But also no more is required of him. It is not required of him that he should make himself into a gift which necessarily satisfies and pleases God. It is required of him rather that he should know himself and will himself on the basis of the fact that he is called by God; that he should affirm himself as the being which sets out on its journey to God and is therefore taking the step of freedom. But it is not required of him that he should place himself at the side of God, or that his action should decide or anticipate this justification before God. He can take the first step, but he cannot ensure that it will successfully lead him to the goal at which he aims. He cannot give mor than he has. It is not within his power to make himself right and acceptable and well-pleasing to his Creator, and therefore worthy of being with Him. This is a matter beyond his control. He cannot impart or attribute it to himself. He cannot ensure that he will come to God merely by setting out to go to Him. Hence his going to God, his responsibility before Him, must be of such a kind as to realise and express his limitation. It must be a pure self-offering. It must be free from any sort of encroachment. It must renounce any suggestion that man’s decision might anticipate the decision which only God can take. Man’s responsibility before God must consist in a self-offering to God which is referred to God’s own decision and dependent upon it. Only when it has this character does it happen that man comes as well as goes to God, so that he himself transcends the limits of the creature and is thus a human creature, real man.[1]

Barth’s claim that to be ‘real man,’ that the creature must transcend his own impotent limits, is functioning as something like a witness. A witness to the reality that what is required of ‘real man’ remains the impossible possibility that really and ultimately can and has only been achieved by the Son of Man for us. The underlying premise to Barth’s inklings on ‘real man’ is clearly in reference to who he takes to be the only real man in all of history: i.e., Jesus Christ.

Getting back to the opening of this article, the reader might be wondering how the aforementioned gets us past the binary that say Calvinism and Arminianism operate from vis-à-vis human agency/freewill in salvation. Barth, rather than starting in abstract people, those who have been “predestined” to be the elect of God, starts with the premise of a concrete person; the Theanthropos (Godman). What this move does is focus our attention on the altitudes God is expecting of [hu]man to genuinely be [hu]man. God has a holy requirement that a genuine humanity will meet in relationship to who God is. Since fallen humanity is unable to reach these heights it is has been required of God, if indeed reconciliation is to obtain between God and humanity, that God provide ‘Himself a lamb.’ It is God’s desire, because of who He is as eternal and triune love, within Himself, that God created to begin with. It is God’s desire to have fellowship and participation with us as counterpoints upon whom He, in His other-processive life, might fellowship and enjoy eternal bliss with. And it has always already been God’s free choice, to be God’s image for us in Jesus Christ (Col. 1.15); indeed, this has always been the goal of original creation in the first place: to elevate us in the humanity of Christ, His image for us, into eternal participation and interpenetration with Him by the grace of adoption. And so in this, He pre-destined Himself to be for us as He elected to be us in the humanity of Jesus Christ, that we might, again by grace, become one spirit with Him (I Cor. 6.17).

All of the above noted, the reader still might be wondering: “okay, so how does this implicate human freedom in salvation?” In a nutshell, it works off the assumption that there is only one genuine freedom for the human being to truly be free from—God’s, since God alone is free. This is how [hu]man ‘transcends the limits of the creature and is thus a human creature, real man.’ He or she moves within the freedom for God that God is first for us in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. Jesus has trailblazed the way for a real humanity, as the firstborn from the dead, to become real humanity; that is rightly related to God, as God has always intended. By the Spirit, the human can now correspondently say Yes and Amen to God, from God’s Yes and Amen for them in the vicarious human agency of Jesus Christ. Our freedom as human beings before God is funded by God’s freedom to be for us; and in this freedom, as we become united to Christ, not just ‘carnally’ but ‘spiritually,’ it is herein whence the human being becomes genuinely human. This is because, following the logic we have been operating with thus far, based on the premises set by Barth, what it means to be really human is to really be resident in the bosom of the Father through participation and union with the Son. We seek God, therefore, because He has first sought us in Christ. He is free to do that, and ironically, by His very freedom, by Him penetrating the ‘unhealed’ of our fallen human natures through the hypostatic unioning in the incarnation, we become participant in His freedom. It is a freedom that only has eyes for the living God. And it is these eyes that portend the entailments of what it genuinely means to be human and free; that is in right and forever relationship with the God who created us just for this very purpose.

More to be said, of course! But hopefully you can start to see, maybe only in a liminal way (but hopefully more!) how this reframing of things, that is through a christological frame, gets us far beyond the usual antics that surround this long and entrenched battle between the saints of old and today.

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/2 §44 The Doctrine of Creation: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 182.

John Calvin Juxtaposed with Theodore Beza on a Doctrine of Assurance of Salvation

Posted on by

Calvinism is not a monolithic reality (thus this blog), historically, often times I find, when interacting with classic Calvinists, that there is the pervasive belief that “their” tradition is pure gospel without development. I think the following, at least, illustrates that this is too reductionistic, and in fact there is significant disagreement between someone like John Calvin (Evangelical Calvinist par excellence) and Theodore Beza (classic Calvinist the fountain-head), on the ordo salutis and the decrees.

In Richard Muller’s book: Christ and the Decree: Christology and Predestination in Reformed Theology From Calvin to Perkins, he is discussing Theodore Beza’s articulation of Christ and the decrees relative to predestination and the consequent doctrine of sanctification and assurance. Let’s hear from Muller on Beza’s view on “finding assurance” of salvation:

The syllogismus practicus [practical syllogism] appears in Beza’s thought as, at most, a partial solution to the problem of assurance. Beza frequently spoke of the inner witness of the Spirit as a ground of assurance, particularly in the context of justification and sanctification. This accords, on the one hand, with Beza’s forensic definition of justification and, on the other, with his recognition that sanctification could not be equated with progress toward a sinless life; in neither case could the empirical syllogismus enter the picture as the sole ground of assurance. But when Beza asks the question of the Christian life that results from faith, justification, and sanctification, proceeding, that is, from the divine cause to its human effects, he more pointedly even than Calvin, demands that good work follow. Throughout Beza’s works there is a tension between the spiritual and the emperical grounds of assurance: there is, in the relatively late study on Ecclesiastes, a denial of any use of material riches as a sign of justification or election–but in the isolated statement of the Catechismus compendarius, the syllogism rears its head in unabated form.

As Bray remarks, we encounter in Beza hardly a trace of Calvin’s teaching concerning Christ as the ground of assurance. There is a strong christological center in all of Beza’s attempts at systematic formulation and we sense everywhere the connection between Christ and the decree, but on the problem of assurance, which must always relate to causally to the decree, there is little christological discussion. In a sense, then, Beza allows more of a separation to occur between the munus Christi and the ordo salutis than does Calvin, to the end that the causal-empirical and pneumatological interests of the ordo predominate. . ..[1]

The first point I want to highlight on Beza is that according to Muller the “Practical Syllogism” played a heavy role as the basis for the elect to find assurance of salvation—in other words, empirically “proving” salvation was predominate within the soteriology of Beza. Secondly, there is a juxtaposition between the trajectory set by Beza versus the trajectory set by Calvin in regards to the basis of finding assurance (Calvin, according to Muller, believed that Christ alone was the sole base for finding assurance of salvation[2] vs. Beza who “demanded” that good works are necessary if a person is to have assurance of salvation).

While Beza desires to present a Christocentric soteriology, it appears, at least according to Muller’s analysis, that he becomes bogged down by concerns relative to ordo salutis rather than to emphasize the PERSON AND WORK of Jesus Christ.

Let me leave with a suggestion: it is this kind of Calvinism that is considered “Orthodox” today, the kind that was ratified at the Synod of Dordt. Again, this kind of regimented Calvinism finds its genesis and shape through its Doctrine of God. The “Doctrine of God” that leads to a Bezan understanding (even a Westminster understanding), is the one informed by what has been called Thomism; that is, Thomas Aquinas’ (Roman Catholic scholar) integration of Aristotelian categories of the infinite with the Christian God. If we err at this point, which I believe Classic Calvinism has, then every other doctrine (including soteriology, issues dealing with salvaiton) will be skewed from an actual “Evangelical” understanding of Christian theology.

In fact, it is this issue that will determine whether someone ends up an Evangelical Calvinist versus a classic Calvinist; that is how we “start” out talking about God. I will need to unpack more of this later . . . I can do some of that in the comment meta if you want.

PS. If anything, I want you to walk away from this post realizing that there really is a discernable distinction, very early on, to be made amongst Calvinism[s]. Thus, at the least, my blog title is warranted; and in fact, within the history of ideas, these distinctions are demanded if we are going to be “people of the truth” (Janice Knight has made a distinction between English Calvinism, one she labels The Spiritual Brethren [which would correlate closely to our “Evangelical Calvinism”, in some ways], and The Intellectual Fathers [which would correlate to “Classic Calvinism”, exactly]).

*I originally posted this post in 2009, three years prior to the publishing of our first book on Evangelical Calvinism.

[1] Richard Muller, Christ and the Decree, 85.

[2] See Bobby Grow, “’Assurance is the Essence of Saving Faith’: Calvin, Barth, Torrance and the Faith of Christ,’” in Myk Habets and Bobby Grow, eds., Evangelical Calvinism: Vol. 2: Dogmatics&Devotion (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications and Imprint of Wipf&Stock Publishers, 2017), 30-57. I offer a constructive critique of Calvin’s doctrine of assurance showing that he does indeed have a Christological superstructure at play, but because of his commitment to some abstract thought vis-à-vis the decretum absolutum, fails to hold a consistent theological line in his attempt to offer a genuinely evangelical doctrine of assurance of salvation.

The Free Grace of God Counterposed with a Law Based Grace

Posted on by

How does the Christian know the depth of sin; how does anyone? How does a Christian have knowledge of themselves; how does anyone? According to Scripture we only know the depth of human sin through God’s Self-revelation in Jesus Christ. To think sin, to think humanity even, from any other ground than the ground of God’s Light of Light for the world in Jesus Christ will give us a skewed sense, a perverted perspective on just who we are as fallen humanity. Until we come to the realization and understanding of the depth dimension of our status as fallen creatures, before a Holy God, we will not be able to live life from and in the straight way. We will construct images of God in images of ourselves, and think that we are in fact “good people”; even though Scripture alone tells us, as it attests to Christ, that we are in fact bad people in need of justification before God. The incarnation of God demonstrates, beyond a shadow of doubt, that our personal status as sinners required the Creator of all life to become His creation in the humanity of Christ, and enter into the consequences of what we have brought to pass as sinners—a rupture between the “good life” God had always intended as we lived in “fellowshipped” lives within His triune life. What Christ’s life demonstrates for us, is that what it means to be genuinely human is to be Holy as God is Holy. What Christ’s life does, as He penetrates our lives by His vicarious humanity, is reveal God to, for, in and with us, and through His reconciling work brings us into His capacity to see and know God. And it is from this whence that we as human beings are adopted back into the place God had always already intended for us as counterpoints of His overflowing and superabundant life of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit love.

Thomas Torrance spells the aforementioned out in the following way:

The human situation as revealed by the breaking in of the kingdom of God in Christ

The vexation and compassion of God in Christ over the distress of humanity

If we are to be true to the witness of the Gospels, the point from which we must begin here is the vexation of the heavenly Father over the condition of his children. God in Christ is burdened with the griefs and pains of men and women. He does not will their hurt or distress or destruction, but on the contrary wills that they shall be made whole, and therefore God allies himself with them against the evil that afflicts them and intervenes as the enemy of all that destroys humanity. That is the primary revelation of man in the light of the kingdom, a revelation that comes from the fact that God the Father looks upon men and women in compassion and vexation as he sees their fears and anxieties, their torments and sorrows and hunger and oppression. That is why the Acts of the Apostles can sum up what it has to say about the ministry of Jesus by the words that he went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed with the devil, while the evangelists all show how much Jesus carried upon his spirit the burden of people’s ills and hurts and gave himself to them in healing.

But what vexes and distresses God in Christ is not simply the sickness and pain of humanity but the fact that it is engulfed in an abyss of fearful darkness, too deep for men and women themselves to understand and certainly too deep for them ever to get out of it—a pit of bottomless evil power. Mankind is entangled in sin not wholly of its own making, enmeshed in the toils of a vast evil will quite beyond it; it is chained in terror and is dragged down and down into the poisonous source or pit of evil. It is evil at its ultimate source, evil at its deepest root, in its stronghold, that God has come to attack and destroy.

This revelation of the condition of humanity from the vexation of God is supported and redoubled by the fact that God in Christ acts towards mankind in its helplessness and distress in sheer grace, grace that is utterly free. Nowhere does Jesus accuse the sick of their sins before he stoops to shoulder their weakness (astheneia). The astounding thing is that God does not put responsibility upon them but takes the responsibility on himself. That is the most miraculous thing about the miracles and healings, the fact that God comes among sinners and makes himself responsible for their condition and even takes their sin and culpability upon himself vicariously. But that in turn reveals the ultimate helplessness and hopelessness of man, apart from such a stupendous act of divine grace.[1]

What is most pressing, at least for me, with reference with Torrance’s above writing, is how he emphasizes the role of God’s utterly free grace. That is to say, God doesn’t come as the punisher, but the slain Lamb. He doesn’t condemn the world; He redeems the world in Jesus Christ. This is the Good News: that God in Christ, who, rightly, could in fact condemn us for not being Holy as He is Holy, has entered into our depraved state, and reversed the curse of the whole thing. It is this reversal that the Christian has been redeemed by; and it is this reversal that the Christian, as an ambassador of Christ, has the privilege of declaring to the world that they too have been given freedom in Christ, the very power of God; and that this freedom is grounded in the eternally triune life of the living God.

The above is very different from the juridical gospel being communicated to many in the world; whether that be of the Protestant or Roman flavor. The juridical gospel has Jesus coming to the world as the instrument of an absolute decree, wherein He meets the forensic requirements of salvation for the world so that the elect (out of the world) might finally be loved by God. Do you notice the shift between the latter and the free grace view? God, in the latter view, primarily relates to the world as a brute Creator and Law-giver. Because the Law (Covenant of Works) has been broken God is no longer free to love His good creation; that is, not until the consequences of failing to meet God’s love are paid for. In this account, once God has found a feasible payment plan, He is free to love those he paid the fee for.

Even through this brief sketch of things it ought to be apparent that what is at stake, between these and various other competing theology propers, is the way we think of who God is. It is one thing to understand that without knowledge of God we cannot have knowledge of ourselves (and our sin, so on and so forth). But it is another thing to actually get a doctrine of God right. If we fail at that, we won’t have a real knowledge of ourselves, or the condition of the world around us. These are heavy matters that require prayer and sobriety as we consider them before the living God. Who are you God? If you have seen Me (Jesus), you have seen the Father.

[1] Thomas F. Torrance, Incarnation: the Person and Life of Christ, edited by Robert T. Walker (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, 2008), 240-41.

On Christian Dogmatics versus evangelical-Reformed Apologetical Theology

Posted on by

… dogmatics offers a means of producing a portrait of the economy of grace, and of humankind and its activities in that economy, free from anxieties about foundations and therefore at liberty to devote itself to the descriptive task with Christian alertness, charity and joy.[1]

Christian Dogmatics — the church’s orderly understanding of scripture and articulation of doctrine in the light of Christ and their coherence in him.[2]

If the Church is going to do Church theology, what both Webster and Torrance, respectively, are signaling above, is of the upmost importance to grasp. When Christians do theology, by definition, we aren’t first doing apologetics. That is to say, the Christian, as a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, is already assured of their Master’s reality; they aren’t trying to prove His existence and reality prior to speaking about Him. Indeed, the Christian, as Torrance rightly presses, is doing their theological work in ‘light of Christ.’

Too often in evangelical theology (inclusive of Post Reformed orthodox theology) apologetics becomes normative for the rest of the theological task. Following someone like Thomas Aquinas in the Prima Pars of his Summa Theologiae, evangelicals/Reformed get caught in the snare of reassuring their readers that God’s existence is a reality, and that His reality is given credence by the philosophical prolix they offer up through their respective wits and machinations. But as Webster rightly underscores this creates an anxiety, indeed it starts with an anxiety, that ostensibly can only be laid to rest after the respective theologian assuages it with their virtuoso capacity to essentially “speak God” for God; that is before Deus dixit, ‘God has spoken’ for Himself in His living Logos for the world, Jesus Christ.

We are to come boldly to the throne of God’s grace in time of need; this is the genuine Christian way of doing theology. One of moment-by-moment dependence on the Word of God. Waiting expectantly for God to speak, afresh anew, through the vibrant and glorified vocal cords of the risen Christ; the Father’s Son seated next to Him at His Right Hand by the Holy Spirit. The Christian theologian is in a constant dialogue with the living and triune God. They are praying without ceasing, as they encounter the risen and ascended Christ throughout the pages of canonical Scripture. The Christian’s existence, in this way, is one where they are “at liberty to devote itself to the descriptive task with Christian alertness, charity and joy.” Most evangelical theology, whether it be of the scholastic or analytic sort is not done within this type of organic frame of con-versation between God and her people in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. As such there is a failure to make genuine contact with the center of God’s life for the world; and thus, it becomes impossible to have a genuine knowledge of the living God as we don’t go directly to His exegesis for us in the bosom of the Father (cf. Jn 1.18).

Let’s be lively Christians rather than pedantic ones caught up in the web of our own abstract wits. Let’s be concrete theologians who do theology from the wood of the crucified and risen and ascended and coming, Jesus Christ. There is wisdom in this way; that is the way of the cross. There is God’s wisdom in this way, even if others consider this way foolish and weak. Be a theologian of the cross where we are nourished by the broken body and shed blood of Jesus Christ, rather than by empty platitudes by those genuflecting on Mt. Olympus to a god of actus purus (‘pure being’).

[1] John Webster, Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch (Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 2003).

[2] Thomas F. Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ.

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

Posted on by

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

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

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

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

And Barth again:

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

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

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

[2] Karl Barth, CD II/2 §32.

Karl Barth and Thomas Torrance, The Modern Versions of Duns Scotus and William of Ockham?

Posted on by

When engaging the theologians, it is an important exercise to broaden out the frame, every now and then, in order to get a greater, even critical understanding of just who we might be engaging with. This holds true for any of the theologians, including Karl Barth and Thomas Torrance (the two modern theologians who, of course, have had the greatest purchase in my life over the last, almost, two decades). In an effort to expand the scope on the way we might respectively approach Barth and Torrance, I wanted to offer some words from ecclesial intellectual historian, the late, Steven Ozment. In the following, Ozment is describing the way that 20th century, Étienne Henri Gilson, a French historian of philosophy and intellectual history, understood the impact that medieval theologian, Duns Scotus, and philosopher, William of Ockham, ostensibly had on what Gilson took to be the disruption of the pinnacle of all medieval theological acumen in the blessed work of the Angelic doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas.

After the Parisian condemnations, Gilson argued further, the work of the Franciscans Duns Scotus (ca. 1265–1308) and William of Ockham (ca. 1285–1347) further undermined the Thomist synthesis. Scotus was seen to narrow the range of scholastic speculation by finding far fewer theological truths philosophically arguable than had Aquinas and other thirteenth-century theologians. The hallmark of Scotist theology was its appreciation of God’s distance and otherness. The vast differences between God and man moved Scotus far more than areas where reason and revelation overlapped and seemed to suggest a unity of things human and divine. Will, not intellect, became the central theological category in Scotist theology; what God and man did was more basic than what they were in themselves. The primary object of faith ceased to be God as pure being (actus purus) and became God as he revealed himself to man in Scripture. And the latter required trusting acceptance from man, not rational understanding.

Gilson found in Ockham the extreme conclusion of Scotist voluntarism and covenant theology: the confinement of theology to the sphere of faith and revelation and the denial of any rationally convincing knowledge of God. “Ockham is perfectly safe in what he believes; only he does not know what he believes, nor does he need to know it.” Here, for Gilson, the divorce between reason and revelation became final and the golden age of scholasticism effectively came to an end. Faith that was content simply to believe had supplanted faith that sought full understanding.

Other scholars, sharing Gilson’s perspective, believe a natural alliance existed between Ockhamist philosophy, which denied direct rational knowledge of God, and Neoplatonic mysticism, popular in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which sought God in transrational and even arational experience. They also believe that it was not coincidental that the leader of the Protestant Reformation was a careful student of both Ockham and the German mystics.[1]

At a purely superficial level, does the reader see how what Barth and Torrance are doing sound a lot like the characteristics present in the thought of both Scotus and Ockham, respectively? Do you see how theologians like Barth and Torrance might be read as modern-day adherents of what also became known as Nominalism (i.e., what we see, loosely, in the thought-life of both Scotus and Ockham, respectively)? Indeed, some would attempt to argue that Immanuel Kant himself, and the dualism he proposed, was very much so akin to the nominalism developed by someone like Ockham. Without getting into the nitty-gritty of all of that, let it simply be noted that while someone like Barth was indeed conditioned by the impact of Kant on the modern Germanic ideational landscape, what Barth was doing, by way of the analogy of the incarnation (and thus faith), was to flip any sort of Kantian or Nominalistic dualism on its head by bringing the heavenlies into the earthlies as that obtained and concretized in the incarnate Son of God, the Man from Nazareth, the Theanthropos, Jesus Christ.

While the details of these matters go deeper than we will be able to penetrate herein (because of space and attention-span constraints), I think it is important to recognize that what we get, say, in the theologies of people like Barth and Torrance, have historical antecedents that reach much deeper into the well of historical development than many might imagine. Indeed, those who have imagined, in deeper more informed ways, would see something like what we are doing with Athanasian Reformed (Evangelical Calvinist) theology, as in contest with the Aristotelian/Thomism they believe entails the most orthodox way to be orthodox. It is possible to see, as we read Ozment’s distillation of Gilson’s critique, how the ole’ Thomist axiom of grace perfecting nature might become disjointed, indeed, destroyed if we were to follow the via moderna of the Scotuses, Ockhams, Barths, Torrances et al. of the world. They are afraid that if we follow the ‘modern way’ the whole Christian ground of knowing God by way of natural reason will be lost to the winds of the disenchanted moderns; i.e., those who don’t see a necessitarian link between God’s being, as the first cause, and the effects caused by God in the created order. As such, for the opponents of the perceived ‘modern way’, what is at stake is the loss of all theological order; is the loss of all ecclesiastical authority (even if presaged by a ‘paper pope’ instead of a ‘papal’ one). And yet theologians like Barth and Torrance, instead of grounding all of known reality in the ostensible capaciousness of the purely created order, ground such capaciousness in the in-breaking of God’s life for the world in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ (so within the “logic of grace” as TFT would identify that).

Things to ponder. I won’t attempt to tie this off here. I simply wanted to note how there is more than meets the eye when we are engaging with the theologians; even when those theologians are Karl Barth and Thomas Torrance.

[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), 15.

Calvin and the Conciliar Tradition against the Confessionally Reformed

Posted on by

The following is a post I wrote in 2012. I am simply reiterating the party-line among those who occupy the chairs within the confessionally Reformed world; i.e., that Calvin, along with the whole catholic tradition belongs to them. That they represent the most valid and definitive Protestant reception of the catholic tradition, and that Calvin simply stands among them. Thus, the great revision of Reformed development goes.

Here Muller confirms what I have been asserting all the while; that he sees an organic thread between Calvin and the “orthodox, Calvinists.” He writes:

In the early years of the Reformation emphasis on the faith of the individual and stress on a new found sense of Christus pro me placed atonement at the center of theological concern. Even so, the work of Christ as mediator occupies the center of Calvin’s thought. The following essay will argue in similar terms that Protestant orthodoxy did not depart from this emphasis, that it developed a doctrinal structure more formal in definition and more scholastic in method but nevertheless concerned to maintain a doctrinal continuity with the soteriological emphasis and christological center of the theology of Calvin and his contemporaries. In this development, orthodoxy completed the transition (already evident in the work of Calvin) from piety and the preaching of reform to the system of Reformed doctrine. New structures, like the threefold office and the two states of Christ were integrated into systems of doctrine as formal principles, indeed, as new doctrinal contexts elicited from scripture, in terms of which dogmas received from the traditions — the Chalcedonian christological definition, for example — would be understood and, to a certain extent, reinterpreted. In this context also, the doctrine of the atonement, because it manifested the gracious will of God, moved into close relation with the doctrine of election.[1]

Like I said, a “seamless whole.” Muller represents one of the best working within Reformed scholarship, and also as representative of the attitude that I’ve been trying to engage with. That is, what Muller calls “orthodoxy” is the only “live” option for what it means to consistently and coherently appropriate the thought of Calvin — thus the exclusive claim (by Federal theology) to the name “Calvinist.” It is this thesis that becomes the a priori force that shapes the sectarianism that is now evinced by Calvinists, today. That is, if someone says that there are other, even historic, ways to appropriate Calvin (much more in line with his evangelicalism): these folks are considered heterodox.

I’ve read Muller’s book before; I don’t think he sustains his thesis; I think it remains an ad hoc assertion from him.

[1] Richard Muller, Christ and the Decree: Christology and Predestination in Reformed Theology from Calvin to Perkins, 10.

More on classical Calvinism and Arminianism?

Posted on by

Out of curiosity: is anyone interested in more posts on classical Calvinism and Arminianism, and how they contrast with Evangelical Calvinism and/or Athanasian Reformed theology? I haven’t written those types of posts very much lately; I’m not even promising I will. But just curious if there is any interest in that, since that used to be the mainstay of what I engaged with.

Against the God of classical Calvinism and Arminianism From the For-ness of God for the World in Christ

Posted on by

The God of classical Calvinism and Arminianism is the same God, in the sense that their respective doctrines of God find resource in what Richard Muller identifies as ‘Christian Aristotelianism.’ How the Christian thinks of God will determine all else following, theologically. Since the actus purus (‘pure being’) god of Aristotle stands structurally and materially behind the way that Calvinism and Arminianism generally conceive of a God-world relation, what happens is that they must construct a system wherein this God remains untouched by said creation/world. In this effort, said systems have come to think of this God-world relation through a mechanism of decrees; what Barth, TFT et al. identify as the decretum absolutum (i.e., an Augustinian/Thomist inspired doctrine of predestination). Behind this conception of godness, i.e., the ‘unmoved mover,’ the ‘actual infinite,’ stands the notion that God is essentially monadic, singular, and impersonal. The only way this pure being god becomes “converted to Christianity” is by way of massaging said ‘godness categories’ into some form of commensurability with the triune God disclosed in Holy Scripture. This was Thomas Aquinas’ project, by and large; that is, to synthesize Aristotelian categories with Christian theology—which is why Richard Muller identifies the whole of the Post Reformation Reformed orthodox development, again, as Christian Aristotelianism (which is also inclusive of the Arminian way, as that follows Jacobus Arminius; himself, a bright scholastic Protestant thinker). In the end, what gets produced for the masses of Protestants who have come after such developments is to think God in a rather nomist (“law-ist”) way; as if God, in Himself, is first and foremost metaphysically defined by forensic categories. And so, we end up with things like Federal or Covenantal theology; or, the Canons of Dort (what has popularly been identified as the 5 Points of Calvinism; or, the Remonstrant or Arminian version of this with a soteriological focus on human agency vis-à-vis God [a system that rationalistically remains contingent upon the individual’s ‘free choice’ to be for God or against Him—and this choice, in juridical ways, can be reversed, based on the individual choosers of God]). At core, these systems, which unfortunately make up much of the conservative Protestant Christian ethos today, are grounded, as this sketch has been iterating, in a basic belief that God is first a singularity, and thus relates to the world in a detached impersonal way; that is, through decrees. Even if evangelicals are unaware of this background to the way they think God, salvation, so on and so forth, nevertheless, these remain the facts.

As is typical though in the usual binary thinking that funds the profane mind, in particular, when people start to get an inkling about this background to their respective theories of God and salvation, they will often swing the pendulum to an opposite extreme. They will go something like this: “okay, since I was taught to believe that God was really impersonal, related to me through law-like ways, even though glossed over by pietistic language, I will construct a notion of God by way of negation. I will construct a generous, winsome God who is simply the opposite of the law-ist (maybe legalistic) God I have been taught to believe in.” This is binary thinking: it’s a way of thought that is characterized by thinking in negative, even speculative terms. If one system of thought thinks God one way, and I hypothetically come to think God in an alternative way, the alternative way must entail negating this God. As a result, the binary thinker will negate the law-like features of God they have been taught, and assert, just as abstractly construed, a God who is defined by love (typically defined by socio-cultural mores rather than based on God’s Self-revelation). And so, when this happens, we end up with the classically liberal god, or the god of progressive and/or exvangelical atheology. In this frame, God is thought of, similarly, by way of appeal to speculation; it is just that an abstract notion of God’s law is displaced by an equally abstract notion of God’s love. Both approaches are fueled by appeal to profane thinking, whether that be supplied by classical Greek philosophers and/or 20th century existentialists and postmodern thinkers (to oversimplify).

There is a better way. And that is what I have been seeking to promote here at the blog (not to mention our books) for years now. It isn’t rooted in an abstract speculation about godness, and its ways. Instead, it is conditioned by being fully Christ concentrated; that is to say, by being fully triunely focused on the living God as Self-revealed and exegeted (see Jn 1.18) in Jesus Christ. This is not a tertium quid, but in fact an alternative, yet biblical way, to think God through the ‘logic of Grace’ (cf. TF Torrance) as, again, Self-revealed in the novum of His life for the world in Jesus Christ. To think God this way is to de jure rest upon the foundation which has been laid already in Christ alone for us. It is to think God from a concrete center in Himself for us, in Jesus Christ. It is to understand that our capacity to think God under these pressures is based purely in revealed categories and emphases, rather than in speculative constructs based upon the naked wits of a “natural humanity.” When we think God this way we think of Him, truly, as triune Love; as the One who by inner Self-definition, is engaged in a Self-givenness for the other in the inner-perichoretic frame of His divine and eternal life. And this then becomes the antecedent reality of a God-world relation. That is, God pre-destines Himself for us, as He freely elects Himself for us in the humanity of the eternal Son, to be God for, with, and in us forevermore. This type of predestination brings with it (Him) a new affectivity, a new rationality, a heavenly logic whose foundations are not of this world. This doctrine of God envelopes humanity in such a way that has always already been the free choice of God to be the Lamb of God slain before the foundations of the world. That is to say, this way of thinking God is based in a unilateralism of God, such that there is nothing Pelagianly present; there is nothing that we in an abstract or natural capacity have brought to God prior to encountering God in the concrete of His flowing and living blood for us in the veins of Immanuel. This is a different, not binary way to think God. We are ‘beggars all,’ as Luther rightly understood.

Hopefully, once again, this brief off the top sketch, will help to demonstrate just how different Evangelical Calvinism or Athanasian Reformed theology is juxtaposed with its competing, and underdeveloped counterparts (on the theological plane) as deposited in the annals of both classical Calvinist and Arminian theologies, respectively. I invite you to abandon these other ways, for the positive way (via positiva) I am seeking to promote here. amen amen

God is Cruciform Love not Zealot Law

Posted on by

God is love. He isn’t a sappy sentimental love. He is the Holy triune love of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There is an overreaction in either direction. Some so overreact to the law-based God they grew up with, or who they were first introduced to, that they construct a “God of love” who ends up affirming them in all their desires and fleshy wants. We need to come back to the God of our first love, in Jesus Christ. He is a God of justice, but it is a staurological (cross) shaped justice that flows from and is grounded by His life of love. But He truly is love. He is our Father, just because He is first the Son’s Father by the Spirit. This is the God of love we need to proclaim. He isn’t simply a winsome God; He is a God of expectation; an expectation that has been met for us in the vicarious humanity and obedience of Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, He expects that we be transformed from glory to glory; to be holy as He is Holy. This kind of love ought to inculcate a life of holy gratitude; a life of repentant thinking and living; a life of emboldened and holy living, of the type that reflects and bears witness to the ground of our newly created lives in the resurrected and ascended humanity of Jesus Christ. Let God be true, and every man a liar.

On the other hand, others so run from the pietistic, sappy God of love presented to them by mainstream evangelicalism and mainline churches, that they end up turning God into an Iron Fist. They prefer this God because He appears to be a God of moralistic law-coding wherein the person’s obedience begins to almost count towards “their election/salvation.” They like this God because within the bilaterally configured relationship they think this God operates with, in a God-world relation, that they have their end of the covenant/pactum to keep; that is if they are going to persevere and demonstrate the fruits of an effectual salvation. These folks like to cudgel others into submission, almost as if Allah and their God have something in common. Indeed, their God, and the Muslim’s God, respectively, are construed from the same fount of Aristotelian intellection; of the notion of actus purus (‘pure being’). As such, these Christians begin to emulate their God of metaphysical law-coding. They don’t think of others in terms of God’s love, but instead in terms of a God who expects them to keep their end of the bargain; to keep their end of the salvific promisso.

There is a better way to think God’s love, I already referred to it above with reference to God as cruciform-shaped. The triune God, who is love by way of His Self-givenness for the other, in the other, as a subject-in-being love that so interpenetrates the other that it becomes impossible to think the other apart from the self and vice versa. This is the ground of Christian love; that is, God’s triune interpenetrating love. It is a love, that in the assumptio carnis (‘assumption of flesh’) has so interpenetrated all of humanity’s lives that it becomes impossible to think of the other apart from God’s life for them. This is the way we ought to approach all others in and from the life of Jesus Christ. He loves people, as if sheep without a shepherd. He is the Great Shepherd of Israel, of both Jew and Gentile alike. Treat others with this type of love, even as this love is grounded not in the winds of the cultural turbines, but in the holy and triune life of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Let God be true, and every man a liar.