Problematizing a Development of Sacra Doctrina within the Church: With Reference to Peter of John Olivi

Posted on May 2, 2025 by Bobby Grow

Bernard McGinn writes the following with reference to the apocalyptic-theology-of-history present in the mediaeval theologian, Peter of John Olivi’s (c. 1248—1298) thought:

The invective Olivi directs against the evidences of the carnal Church is concerned not only with the ecclesiastical abuses of the day, especially with avarice and simony, but also, like Bonaventure before him, with the use of Aristotle in theology. The Provençal Franciscan also expressed belief in a double Antichrist—the Mystical Antichrist, a coming false pope who would attack the Franciscan Rule, and the Great, or Open Antichrist, whose defeat would usher in the final period of history. Characteristic of Franciscan apocalyptic is his emphasis on the role of Francis as the initiator of the period of renewal and his hope for the conversion of all peoples in the course of the final events.[1]

Olivi was a student of the infamous mediaeval theologian, Bonaventure. But I thought this treatment by McGinn on Olivi was telling. Telling in regard to the patterns and thematics of theological development. Telling, in regard to how theologies and emphases often repeat themselves in various and all periods of theological development throughout history. As McGinn highlights, Olivi was concerned with a “carnal Church”; he was concerned with the imposition of Aristotle’s categories upon Christian theology (which of course Thomas Aquians was famous for doing). We also observe, that for Olivi, according to McGinn, he saw that the Catholic church itself had corruption riddling it throughout; he saw the Antichrist coming from within the Church, not without. This latter development is interesting to me because it reminds me of Martin Luther’s view that the office of the Pope would finally produce the Antichrist (the Lutheran Church Wisconsin Synod still holds to this position in their confession). And then, we see in Olivi, a belief in something like a postmillennial understanding of the very end of history. He believes, according to McGinn, that the whole world will be Christianized prior to the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Many things stood out to me in this one paragraph on Olivi’s theology. The primary hook for me, and this won’t be surprising to my readers, is that Olivi was critical of Aristotle’s presence in the development of the sacra doctrina within the Church. Olivi, like his teacher, Bonaventure, believed that Aristotle could only serve as an artificial grammar for articulating Christian doctrine. Such sucralose, in the minds of Bonaventure and Olivi, respectively, had no place in affecting a theology for the Church, insofar that Aristotle himself thought a construct of God as a pagan.

It is important for Christian folks in the 21^st century to get beyond theology purely sourced from Twitter/X and other social media platforms. What the genuine student finds, if they study the books, is that things are much more complex and less concretized than they might want to think. There have been various strands of development, various traditions cultivated in the Church’s history that transcend the parochial and sectarian and absolutized divides we see today on the interwebs. I think this one paragraph alone on Olivi helps to illustrate that point.

Within evangelical/reformed theology today there is a movement towards retrieval. And yet what this has come to mean, especially through the work of someone like Matthew Barrett and Craig Carter, is that what is really being retrieved is one strand of development that is Aristotelian/Thomist heavy; as if ‘Christian Aristotelianism’ was the only development present within the mediaeval and early and post Reformed churches. This simply is not the case; again, as our passage illustrates.

Conversely, I am anti-Aristotelian myself (no shocker there!) Some might think that this is because of my appreciation for the theologies of Barth and TF Torrance alone. Again, this is not the case. I was anti-Aristotelian way before I ever read Barth and TFT. I was exposed to the Bonaventure-Olivi thread of development twenty-three years ago in seminary. This thread was developed further with the sparker of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther; he looked back to such threads in the via antiqua through his direct mentor, Johann von Staupitz, and before him, Jean Gerson.

Anyway, this post is somewhat of a smorgasbord of hits on various issues; something like a Miscellanies. But I hope, at least, the reader might be able to better appreciate the “problematized” nature of doctrinal development within the Church of Jesus Christ. In other words, I hope that folks might be alerted to the problem of reducing and then absolutizing one’s pet positions. Surely, we ought to be convicted about the theological things we believe. But those convictions ought to first take shape (in a spiraling and continuous way) through the caldron of toiling with the sources (ad fontes) of the history of interpretation and development of the sacra doctrina.

[1] Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 205.

Can Christians Still Learn from Steven Lawson’s Teachings and Preachings?

Posted on September 25, 2024 by Bobby Grow

Qualification. This whole post is an exercise in de jure. The basic principle I am getting at on this occasion is to touch on whether or not a sinner, or someone who has been found to be in sin, could have still been used of God to bear witness to Christ in spite of their own personal moral and egregious failures.

As most know now, at least those in the “right” circles, Dr. Steven Lawson has fallen morally. The church he started in Dallas, TX, Trinity Bible Church, made the announcement a few days ago that Lawson had admitted to being in an “inappropriate relationship with a woman” (a bit of an understatement). Now the news has come out that Lawson has been in an ongoing relationship with a gal in her late twenties (Lawson is 73) for at least five years; and he only admitted to it because the gal’s dad found out about it and threatened to expose it if Lawson himself didn’t. In other words, Lawson’s “coming forward” wasn’t because he was repentant, it was because he got caught; which I’m sure now he’s shedding many tears over (i.e., getting caught).

Suffice it to say, this has produced all types of fallout in the conservative evangelical and Reformed circles Lawson had become a “star” within. He was a fellow of Ligonier Ministries, the late R.C. Sproul’s ministry, and faculty and head of the DMin program at The Master’s Theological Seminary (John MacArthur’s school). As noted, Lawson was founding pastor of his church, and also of an international ministry known as OnePassion; and then of course, I’m sure he was on the board of various and multiple other unnamed ministries worldwide (in fact I know he was). When a high-profile pastor falls to such a besetting sin (which in my view, currently, has predatorial characteristics to it), it is going to produce angst, anger, and grieving of untold magnitude for those who held Lawson up as a model church leader in the respective evangelical world.

In a way there is a parallel here, for me, between Steven Lawson and Karl Barth. As everyone knows I see Barth as a unique theologian for the church of Jesus Christ in ways that go unmatched in regard to his Christ-focusedness, among other things. And yet, as I have already rehearsed much too much already in the past, he lived in an adulterous relationship that he forced upon his wife and family from in and around 1926 till the time of his “mistress’s” death in the 60s. If you don’t know, Charlotte Von Kirschbaum lived in Barth’s house, along with his family. She was his “secretary” and fellow theologian involved in all of his work, with particular focus on his magnum opus the Church Dogmatics. I had heard rumblings of this for years, but it wasn’t till 2017 when Christianne Tietz published an essay that for the first time translated some of Barth’s and von Kirschbaum’s love letters. This was my “Steven Lawson moment,” and I wrote about it; and received lots of pushback on it, from many sectors; and lost connections with many because I dared to highlight it; and more. That said, what became the struggle for me was whether or not I could continue to read and learn from Barth. For me he wasn’t some modern demon, but a faithful explicator of the Word of God; in ways that could be in parallel with the church fathers of the patristic period. And so now, I would imagine, the same question is being pushed upon those who sat under Lawson for so many years and decades. They are wondering whether or not they can ever listen to another sermon preached, or ever read another publication from Lawson again.

In light of my own struggles with this and Barth, I would say: yes. For me this has always come back to the objective reality of the Gospel itself/Hisself. The Gospel is greater than its messengers, than its witnesses. Bobby Grow does not predicate the Gospel, nor does Karl Barth, or Steven Lawson, or anyone. The Gospel and its reality in Jesus Christ stand on the power of His indestructible life, and no filth or sin of those who bear witness to it can smear or corrupt its reality at the Right Hand of the Father. And yes, there can be reproach brought upon the witnesses to the Gospel when the witnesses themselves fall into a variety and sundry sins and immoralities. But ironically, even that reproach is ultimately reversed by the Gospel they have been bearing witness to; even while living in egregious sin. That is to say, the whole point of the Gospel is to bring salvation to sinners; even those who have been given the role to teach and preach it for the church. As James says, ‘the teacher will be under a stricter judgment.’ Indeed, we can see this playing out currently in the life of Lawson. But ultimately, he is not condemned before God in the risen Christ, because Christ is risen. There are some temporal consequences that Lawson will now have to bear up under, and hopefully he will be genuinely repentant; and not just upset that he got caught. Indeed, as long as Steven responds in the right way the Lord can and will use this in his life to prune and shape him more into the man of God God sees him to be in Jesus Christ. At the end of the day, we are all Steven Lawsons and Karl Barths. This is no excuse for engaging in sinful activities, it is simply to acknowledge that we all need to be vigilant in our walks with Christ; we all need to understand that we are in a spiritual battle that we have no resource to fight without being fully dependent upon the One who raises the dead.

I understand there will always be an asterisk next to Lawson’s name. But insofar that the LORD truly used and spoke through him to genuinely bear witness to the risen Christ, it would be foolish to think everything he preached and wrote was all rubbish (bearing in mind I am a heavy critic of the type of Lordship salvation and 5-point Calvinism he was a proponent of). Again, the measure of reality is not Steven Lawson or Karl Barth, it is the reality of the risen Christ and the triune God. We are all sinners while simultaneously being used of God to point people to Christ, if we are.

“Beggars All”: On Abandoning the Progressive and Legalist Mode of Salvation

Posted on April 26, 2024 by Bobby Grow

I don’t think I’ll ever understand the impulse towards perfectionism; not in light of the Gospel, that is. And yet it is rampant, especially as given non-stop expression on “Christian social media” (I’m mostly thinking of X/Twitter). There are always these extremes on a continuum. There are those who think to be anti-legalist is to be progressive and loose to everything. On the other hand, there are those who think to be holy (saved) is to be legalistic to the point that all of what they say about others never applies to them; as if they have perfectly arrived; as if they just are one of the elect and everyone else is reprobate, or at least highly suspect. But both centers stem from the same type of “meism.” As if the human agent is the determiner, on either side, of what is good, and beautiful, and free. This, I take to be, the perfectionist impulse; which really is just a performative mood wherein a person, one way or the other, simply must assert their own self-contrived standing before God and others. Either they assert their “freedom,” or they assert their ”legalism”; both being given ground by the homo incurvatus in se.

We aren’t saved based on being so-called “free” or so-called “constrained by our obedience.” We are justified before God because He who knew no sin assumed our unrighteousness that we might become the righteousness of God in Him; it is because of His poverty that we are made rich in the beautiful garments of righteousness which He has robed us with. All our righteousness is like filthy rags; that doesn’t end once we become Christians. We live, moment-by-moment, afresh anew, by His righteousness for us; by His re-creating for us and in us and with us. We remain simul justus et peccator (‘simultaneously justified and sinner’), as such, we live by His mercy and grace as He always lives to make intercession for us.

Are there standards of righteousness and holiness that we bear witness to as Christians? Yes, but this by the Holy Spirit in Christ in us, and not just against the broken world out there, but the broken world “in here,” in our own fallen and broken hearts. We ought to call out unrighteousness and evil, exposing the darkness with the light of God’s Word, but in so doing we really are only exposing our own wretched hearts, outwith Christ’s heart for us. This ought to at least humiliate us to the point that we remain obedient, even to the death of the cross. And the ground of this obedience is funded by God’s eternal life of humility for us, as He freely chose to become us in the humanity of Jesus Christ (Deus incarnandus). We certainly do have freedom in Christ, but it is a freedom circumscribed by being for God, and not for ourselves. It is a freedom to be holy as He is holy. It is a freedom to bear witness to the world that the Son has set us free, free indeed.

I’m not suggesting that we ought to be looking for some type of balance between being libertine or legalistic. I am suggesting that we abandon that whole paradigm altogether. God’s righteousness in Christ confronts us in the living color of His flesh and blood life for us in Jesus Christ; indeed, as He continuously breathes and hovers over us, from within, by the Holy Spirit. His work is ‘out of nothing’ (ex nihilo), which means that our daily lives are totally contingent upon His Word and Way, and not ours. There is nothing inherent to this world system that supplies us with the sustenance we require to live in the free life that God has brought us into by yoking Himself with us in His freedom for us in Christ. We have a new creation life that comes from outside of us, as an ‘alien life,’ as if manna falling from the heavens in the morning dew each and every day. This freedom, this righteousness we have been given through union with Christ, and thus participants in the triune life Godself, is not a possession of ours, as if a self-possession; we, instead, are a possession of this righteousness’s. This cannot be stressed enough: our lives, as Christians, as human beings, are fully and continuously, moment-by-moment, contingent on God’s Logos. We bring nothing to this arrangement except our dissolute selves, which the Creator, the Sustainer, indeed, the Father in His eternal relationship with the Son, has entered into, in the Son’s assumption of flesh, taking the depth of our fallenness, which He alone can see, into the bones and marrow of His humanity, allowing that to have its final and just result in the human life lived in obedience unto the Father, finally eventuating in death, even death on a cross. We couldn’t and cannot do that. It takes the homoousios Theanthropos (GodMan) to do that for us. And while that event, in itself, is once and for all, it is an event that has ‘perfect tense’ reality insofar that we gain our reality before God, continuously, as events-in-happening, moment-by-moment, through God’s reality for us in His Melchizedekian life as the Son of David, our High Priest, who sits at the right hand of the Father always living to make intercession for those who will inherit His eternal life.

Since our lives are contingent in the above way, we have no space for boasting except in the fact that our God is indeed the living and triune God who has not left us as orphans. This ought to change the way we approach the world, others, and ourselves. We, as Luther was wont to say (paraphrase), “are beggars all.”

Nala’s Salvation: Against Her “Christian” Legalistic Critics

Posted on April 8, 2024 by Bobby Grow

Legalism continues to be rife on the theological interwebs. An OnlyFans porn star (at the top of the “game”) just gave her life to Christ (she grew up as a Baptist pastor’s kid, like me). I watched her whole interview, where she shared her life story and testimony, on the Michael Knowles show (2:20 minutes). She has gotten lots of pushback and skepticism, particularly on the website formerly known as Twitter. There is a high profile (on said website) Jewess who has been saying vile things about this former star. But she’s a Jewess and not a Christian; so, definitionally she wouldn’t understand the nature of God’s grace (at least not yet). But then there have also been “Christians” pushing back at this sister. I want to highlight one of these fellas. Of course, this guy has written a book on “biblical masculinity,” has a podcast on the topic, and unfortunately, has quite a few followers on X and probably other social media platforms. What he says about this young sister makes my blood boil; it is as antiChrist/antiGospel that someone can get (let his message be anathema). Here is part of what he said:

Nala’s entire life has been a lie. She has profited in multi-millions from the twin society-crushing evils of Feminism and the Sexual Revolution. She has led countless men astray for pay, selecting for her profession a task built on values that are explicitly anti-family, anti-Law, and therefore anti-Christ and anti-Logos. She should be revolted at the multi-generational forces that twisted a creature made in God’s image into this demonic mockery of a human female. God didn’t just save her from hell. He saved her from years of her own sin-enslaved wretchedness, which spread virally over the internet touching the lives of potentially millions in exchange for cash. Honorable men with grit under their nails and sweat on their brow and scars on their arms engaged in months of backbreaking labor to make less than she probably did for one weekend’s parade of digital sin. You do not understand the truly cosmos-rending chain of confession, repentance, mercy, grace, and salvation well enough if you think baptism and a few words on camera suffice to expunge the stain on the earth, let alone herself, that she has created. A repentant heart would scrape off all remnants of that clownish makeup to reveal the unadorned face of the woman underneath, as God sees her, and beg the men she exploited for forgiveness. She would stare into the image of the photo below with horror and never wish for one second to be mistaken for that death-cult parasite again. She would decry from the mountaintops the fallenness of the world that allowed and even encouraged her digital prostitution, and tear her garments witnessing the wickedness in her bones and bloodstream that seduced her into this line of “work.” Work which she then relished in perfecting her craft to infernal excellence, I might add. She would strip herself of artificial beauty and clothe herself in modesty then disappear into her husband’s home and hearth, next seen by the public with a small pack of children, and a tearful song of Romans 8:28-29 on her grateful lips. In so doing, she would model the true path home for women. We live in a Christ-hating nation that despises God with every fiber of its being, making a middle-class, single-income household all but impossible as an explicit attack on the institution of the family and especially the role of the father. And suddenly I’m supposed to believe we’re all celebrating a sinner being saved? On the network that just fired a female commentator, in part, for daring to say, “Christ is King”? Please. Candace Owens, who showed at least a flash of true courage, should be furious. Nala has stepped onto the public stage and been thrust into a default position of spiritual leadership, as many celebrities sadly are the moment they whisper the name of Christ to a camera. Thus I criticize her as a leader. “Give her time”? How about instead we bring on a repentant believer who has already had time? I propose Rosaria Butterfield. Maybe Nala should give herself time. Maybe the media should give her time. Maybe the legions of female sinners and their white knight cheerleaders should at this very moment be ushering Nala off the stage forever, for her own good, rather than clapping like seals in the hopes that she’ll legitimize their poorly-discipled, halfhearted repentance for sins. Because she won’t. She literally can’t. Not until Feminism and the Sexual Revolution that produced her (and women like her) are ripped up root and branch from the salted earth of the American family, burned, and the ashes cast into the brook Kidron. (2 Kings 23:6) But that’s not what we really want, is it? Women today desire to be led… but only where they were already planning on going. Others want this to be a “meat sacrificed to idols” moment. 1 Corinthians 8 is the world-befriending Christian’s dog-eared chapter, isn’t it? “It’s not that bad. I’m under grace not law.”[1]

All this gal is doing is sharing her testimony. When a person is “born from above” they are born again of an imperishable seed; the seed of Christ’s life blossomed to the right hand of the Father for them/us. This guy, Will Spencer, thinks we need to “wait and see.” Is that what Jesus did with the Samaritan woman at the well; or many other female sinners, inclusive of prostitutes? No, once the re-birth is realized in someone’s heart, they become participant with Christ (participatio Christi), and partakers of the divine and triune being of God. Nobody can separate Nala from Christ, not even her. She’s entered into an indestructible life that is not contingent on her obedience, but Christ’s for her (which in fact is what the Gospel is all about).

This guy, Will, is simply a product of a nomist subculture that has swallowed much of the North American evangelical community whole. It is through the “retrieval” of precisianist and juridical categories, as those are found particularly developed in the Post Reformed orthodox theologies of the 16^th and 17^th centuries, that this legalistic subculture, of the type this Spencer guy is fomenting, has come to have root. And yet, most of these cats aren’t aware of their informing theology. They simply receive it, and run with it. They don’t recognize, critically so, its historical and philosophical beginnings; and as such they simply conflate these mercantilist categories with the biblical Gospel. As a result, we end up with this “wait and see” attitude in regard to having certainty if someone is saved or not. This is absurdum! But this is simply a projection of their own uncertainty and lack of assurance before God. Barth was right when he wrote the following with reference to Calvin’s thinking on 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.[2]

It is this ill-formed doctrine of election that hangs over all of these legalists’ heads; it’s actually rather tragic. Not only can they not find rest in Christ for them, but then they project that unrest and uncertainty on anyone else who confesses Jesus as Lord; like Nala. If Jesus isn’t both the object and subject of God’s election, then election simply hangs in the balances of the decretum absolutum (absolute decree). And it is this type of election, the type grounded in an unrevealed, secret and arbitrary decree of God, that leaves these types of legalists floundering in their salvation. But, often, such people believe they’ve hit some sort of magical mark in their lives, finding a level of assurance that they indeed are one of the elect of God (because they haven’t sinned in certain ways like they used to; so based on their performance). But they’re still “waiting to see” if other new converts really have come to Christ based upon some subjective and abstract standard of judgment vis-à-vis the performance of said new converts. That’s what this Spencer guy and others are now doing to Nala. Historically this exercise is called experimental predestinarianism, which entails exactly what it says.

I have written more than I intended. Let me leave Will Spencer and his cohorts with a parable of Jesus’. It speaks against the type of performance and legalistically based salvation he unfortunately has been “discipled” into.

“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. ²When he had agreed with the laborers for a denarius for the day, he sent them into his vineyard. ³And he went out about the third hour and saw others standing idle in the market place; ⁴and to those he said, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and whatever is right I will give you.’ And so they went. ⁵Again he went out about the sixth and the ninth hour, and did the same thing. ⁶And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing around; and he *said to them, ‘Why have you been standing here idle all day long?’ ⁷They *said to him, ‘Because no one hired us.’ He *said to them, ‘You go into the vineyard too.’

⁸“When evening came, the owner of the vineyard *said to his foreman, ‘Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last group to the first.’ ⁹When those hired about the eleventh hour came, each one received a denarius. ¹⁰When those hired first came, they thought that they would receive more; but each of them also received a denarius. ¹¹When they received it, they grumbled at the landowner, ¹²saying, ‘These last men have worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden and the scorching heat of the day.’ ¹³But he answered and said to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? ¹⁴Take what is yours and go, but I wish to give to this last man the same as to you. ¹⁵Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with what is my own? Or is your eye envious because I am generous?’ ¹⁶So the last shall be first, and the first last.” –Matthew 20:1-16

[1] Will Spencer | Renaissance Man, accessed on X 04-08-2024.

[2] Karl Barth, CD II/2, 111.

A Response to the Reformed Baptists: Against Naked Scripture Reading

Posted on December 13, 2021 by Bobby Grow

What’s going on with these Reformed Baptists? I’m referring to people like James White, Rich Pierce (White’s sidekick), Owen Strachan et al. I just had a fun exchange with White’s guy, Pierce on Twitter. It’s always the same thing with these guys. I cut my teeth in the blogosphere with these types of extended engagements with the JMac crew over at the Pyromaniacs blog back in the day. White, and his whole Alpha and Omega crew, along with the Apologia guys, and then people like Strachan and Jeff Johnson, and all their followers in the so-called Reformed Baptist camp suffer from the same sort of arrogant naivete. They all operate with this notion that it’s possible for the biblical interpreter to read Scripture without a hermeneutic. In other words, they simply believe that they purely read the 5 Points of Calvinism out of the text of Scripture (or a modified/heretical understanding of the Trinity, in some cases). They don’t acknowledge any reception history from its development in the Reformed history of ideas. In fact, they are anti-Confessional (except maybe for the London Baptist Confession of Faith, the parts that resonate with them). Here’s a sampling of my recent excursion with that really nice guy, Rich Pierce:

This guy took this tone with me immediately, in a previous tweet exchange. This is how it always goes with them. The irony is that they operate out of an Enlightenment rationalist/naturalist hermeneutic, not confessionally Reformed whatsoever. They fail to recognize that all reading is interpretation, and that confessional Christian reading is simply the mode that has given the orthodox categories we use to think the Trinity and Christological loci like the hypostatic union, homoousios so on and so forth. Instead, they read from the confessionalism provided for by the naturalism inherent to the Enlightenment; being confessional is an inescapable reality of interpretation (any kind of interpretation). The only people in Reformation history who claimed to read the Bible outwith confessionalism were the Socinians (and maybe the Anabaptists before them). That’s the spirit people like White, Pierce, Strachan et al. operate from. Indeed, in Strachan’s case, and now White is defending him, he arrives at his eternal functional subordinationism (EFS) of the Son, precisely because of their anti-ecclesial confessional reading of Holy Scripture. No matter how much testosterone these guys muster up to counter critiques like mine, just as Pierce does above, the facts of the theo-logic, they are ignoring, remain.

What they don’t understand is how the order of authority works. People like White/Pierce seem to think that if you use conciliar categories (like we get from Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, Chalcedon etc.) that somehow you are denying the Protestant Scripture Principle (or more colloquially, sola Scriptura), but that is to engage in a radical error of thought. The ecumenical confessions/creeds, for example, are subordinate to Holy Scripture insofar that they are attempting to supply a grammar for the inner-theo-logic of the text. In other words, given the occasional nature of the text, which it always is, even if the occasion turns out to be purely canonical, the authors of Scripture make theological assertions; that is, they leave many things either inchoate or unstated in their respective communications about God. What the creeds/confessions do, in principle, is come along and recognize that things are stated about God, in Scripture, that require a grammar; particularly so that the Church can know the difference between truth and error; not to mention, so that the Church can speak and think intelligibly about God. There is no inherent denial of the Protestant Scripture principle in this endeavor. The only real problem that can and has obtained, at points, is that the ‘metaphysic’ used to flesh out said biblical theo-logic could potentially be at odds with the Scriptural categories and witness vis-à-vis God. This has always been the basis of my critique with reference to the developments of scholasticism Reformed dogma in the 16th and 17th centuries. But this sort of thinking goes right over the heads of people like White, Pierce, Strachan et al.

In order to end this post on a positive note, let me share something I’ve shared multiple times in the past from Oliver Crisp. He offers a nice taxis, in regard to how to think the relationship of Holy Scripture to the creeds, confessions, and theologoumena. And with this we’ll close:

Scripture is the norma normans, the principium theologiae. It is the final arbiter of matters theological for Christians as the particular place in which God reveals himself to his people. This is the first-order authority in all matters of Christian doctrine.
Catholic creeds, as defined by and ecumenical council of the Church, constitute a first tier of norma normata, which have second-order authority in matters touching Christian doctrine. Such norms derive their authority from Scripture to which they bear witness.
Confessional and conciliar statements of particular ecclesial bodies are a second tier of norma normata, which have third-order authority in matters touching Christian doctrine. They also derive their authority from Scripture to the extent that they faithfully reflect the teaching of Scripture.
The particular doctrines espoused by theologians including those individuals accorded the title Doctor of the Church which are not reiterations of matters that are de fide, or entailed by something de fide, constitute theologoumena, or theological opinions, which are not binding upon the Church, but which may be offered up for legitimate discussion within the Church.[1]

It would be nice if the Reformed Baptists under consideration could internalize the above, but they won’t. Instead, they will continue to appeal to their egos and insecurities and respond the way Pierce did to me in the aforementioned. Unfortunately, these things have real life consequences; like denying an orthodox understanding of the Holy Trinity (as we now see in Strachan, and White’s defense of him). This is why sometimes I’ll bring this sort of discussion up for consideration. Peoples’ eternal souls are literally at stake in many cases.

[1] Oliver Crisp, god incarnate, (New York: T&T Clark International, 2009), 17.

The Seed of the Classical Theistic God Given Blossom in the god of Modern Atheism

Posted on December 10, 2021 by Bobby Grow

I have been an oft critic of the ‘classical theistic’ god. The classical theistic God is typically known by actus purus, ‘pure being.’ I have argued that this conception of Godness as Monad comes to us from the ancient Greek philosophers, and not from God’s Self-revelation of Himself in Jesus Christ. Some would say that my argument is modern, but that would simply be the chronological snobbery fallacy. Truth has no provenance; that is, truth is truth no matter where or whence it comes. Bruce McCormack describes this sort of critique this way (here his comments are in the context of his treatment on Eberhard Jüngel’s explication of Barth’s doctrine of God):

The term “essence” in its origins is a class term, descriptive of what is common to all members of a class. As such, it is an abstraction from all exemplars belonging to that class in their lived existence. Applied to God, the qualification was traditionally added: “but, of course, God belongs to no class. God is unique.” But the qualification came too late for it did not qualify the definition of divine essence that had been devised by means of negations alone without reference to God’s existence. Jüngel shows that the classical ambivalence in holding and, at the same time not holding the claim that essence and existence are one in God gave rise in the early modern period to Descartes’ insinuation of the cogito (the “thinking human subject”) between divine “essence” and divine “existence” — thereby creating “a contradiction which disintegrates the being of God: namely, into a highest essence over me and into its existence through and with me.” Ibid., p. 126. From there, it was but a short step for modern thinkers to remove the contradiction through surrender of this highest essence. In this way, the ambivalence of classical treatments of the relation of essence and existence in God made a substantial contribution to the rise of modern atheism.1

Usually, it is the evangelical opponents of modern theology in favor of their retrieval of classical theism who decries anything modern; like Jüngel’s critique of the classical theistic god. Yet, if Jüngel is right, and McCormack’s commentary on him is to the point, then it is these evangelical retrievers of classical theism who, if anyone, should be ‘demonized’; insofar that the God they are introducing the churches to reduces to the god of modern atheism. Just because the evangelical suitors of classical theism (indeed, they have created that designation) assert that modern theology is demonic, doesn’t make it so. The greatest irony here is that in fact it is the god of classical theism who reduces, quite easily, into the “thinking human subject”; or the god of the modern atheist.

In my experience, nobody really wants to bite the bullet on these things. Most evangelical theologians today (of the Reformed provenance) simply live in a posture of denial. They feel the pressure to think God from antique roots, because they seem to think God spoke more clearly then than now, but then when a modern theologian[s] shows that the way this God was synthesized with Hellenic conceptualities results in the No-God of modern atheism, they simply deflect and claim that it is the modern theologian who is the devil. Both can’t be right. I’ve never seen an evangelical counter the sort of critique made by people like Jüngel, McCormack et al. There are guys like Craig Carter, Matthew Barrett, Scott Swain and Michael Allen, who are continuously pushing the classical theistic god for the massa of evangelicals out there. But again, this simply glosses past critiques like those made by people like EJ.

1 Bruce Lindley McCormack, The Humility of the Eternal Son: Reformed Kenoticism and the Repair of Chalcedon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 170-71 n.41.

Leighton Flowers Knows Just Enough to be Dangerous: A Would-Be Critic of Calvinism

Posted on June 12, 2021 by Bobby Grow

Theological polemics, for better or worse, have been at the heart of positive theological developments since the beginning of the Church. There are, of course, various levels of both polemics and theology attendant to this venture. That is, there is a variety of ‘quality’ and virtue that shapes the sorts of polemics the Christian might encounter in the broader ecclesial discourse. Since this is a blog, by definitional location, I operate in the online space; when I write for the blog. As a result, I am aware of other people in this space who similarly are attempting to engage in theological discourse; often times this involves, polemics. My preference is to focus on offline theologians, with particular reference to the Christian Dogmatists of the Church (from all periods). But then, I am also exposed to popular level, online characters who ostensibly are offering theological machinations for the edification of the Church. One of these people, operating in this realm, who I have become aware of is, Leighton Flowers. His primary focus, online, is to be an anti-Calvinist operative. If you know anything about me you can almost immediately see a potentially shared perspective between Flowers and myself in regard to being a critic of classical Calvinism. But the perception is where this commonality evaporates.

What I mean is that Flowers claims to be a critic of Calvinism, but what that actually means is that he is critical of a popular level, reductionistic understanding of what Calvinism entails. Of course, he wouldn’t say it like this, but this is the level of discourse he operates out of and within; with the type of Calvinism he is critiquing. Just recently he tweeted the following (this is in response to a popular level Calvinist who is in fact critiquing Flowers):

Looks like they aren’t happy with my videos biblically refuting their views, so they resort to mostly “to the man” arguments. I expected better . . . Maybe folks @WWUTTcom are only interested in 2 min vids? So here is one with a clip from a Calvinist correcting their proof texting error, all the while they continue accusing me of not understanding #Calvinism or basic soteriology . . . I get that’s the way you feel Gabe, but instead of just assuming someone who has spent his entire adult life studying a subject doesn’t understand it maybe just consider that they might understand it and disagree with your conclusions so then you can learn the actual reasons why.1

Flowers believes that he has accurately and successfully reduced the core premises of Calvinist theology to its very essences, and so he feels justified in simply speaking of Calvinist theology in terms of ‘theological determinism,’ and ‘compatibilism.’ If you listen to him for just a week straight you will realize that these two themes serve as the reduction of Calvinist theology that Flowers believes defines the whole phenomenon of Calvinist theology. But the irony of Flowers’ approach, and this is a symptom of his reductionist mode, is that he evinces no knowledge, none at all!, of how Calvinist theology developed ideationally in the 16th and 17th centuries; the period known as Post Reformation Reformed Orthodoxy (see Richard Muller’s Post Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, 4Vols). His common Calvinist opponents are James White, John Piper, and RC Sproul (with scattered references to Lorraine Boettner and Herman Bavinck). And yet the themes he picks out, even with these rather popular level Calvinists (they are not world renowned as Flowers claims—and I’m referring to the former three) are the reduced themes we have already noted.

I am simply attempting to register, once again, that Flowers is ironically out of his depth in regard to who and what he claims to be critiquing. He has a huge YouTube following (45K), but this isn’t an indicator of the solidity of Flowers’ provenance as a “sound” critic of Calvinist theology. It only indicates, at best, that there is an audience in the churches that would like to have a solid alternative to Calvinist theology. And I am here to say that Flowers is not offering that. His followers, though, do not have the resources to know whether or not Flowers is actually offering a sound alternative or not. And Flowers (and I don’t think maliciously) is capitalizing on the genuine want for an alternative to the Young, Restless and Reformed; and he does so by having enough linguistic and conceptual knowledge, along with rhetorical ability, to be dangerous.

As my readers know, I am a critic of classical Calvinism. But for me this means we must do our homework with reference to the entailments of Reformed theology, proper. I am a critic of classical Calvinism (as I call it) from within the Reformed family. If we are going to criticize anything, as Flowers himself often notes, we ought to critique a ‘steelman’ rather than a ‘strawman.’ And yet Flowers critiques a caricatured version classical Calvinism; particularly because of his historical anemia. He doesn’t understand the development of Calvinist ideas, historically, and thus can only engage in a critique of Calvinism that is skimmed off the top of popular ideas about the entailments of Calvinism. As an alternative you ought to read us Evangelical Calvinists, or Athanasian Reformed types. We attempt to engage with the history of ideas and theological development of historic Calvinism, and do our respective critiques from there. True, our approach is more academically oriented, and it takes more work to follow along. But if we are going to be true theological Bereans (as Flowers claims to be, but isn’t), then it will require that we spend the requisite time in expanding our personal theological vocabularies, and elevating our respective theological understanding in general. Flowers does not offer his followers the sort of tools necessary to think properly theological in general, and thus critically (with reference to Calvinism) in particular.

A Response to Anthony Bradley’s Insufficient Critique of Voddie Baucham’s Fault Lines

Posted on April 20, 2021 by Bobby Grow

Anthony Bradley Tweet-stormed the following with reference to Voddie Baucham’s recently released book, Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe

In Chapter 6, it becomes glaringly clear that Voddie Baucham does not understand what the “Sufficiency of Scripture” actually means. He straw mans the definition, divorces it from the Reformed Tradition, and then critiques David Platt, John O, Eric Mason, Ligon Duncan, & others. This explains so much. Baucham’s personal definition of the sufficiency doctrine is 1920s fundamentalism rather than Reformed. He says, “there’s not a better book to address men on the issue of race in America than the Bible.” But the “issue of race” includes economics, e.g. The Sufficiency of Scripture is about faith. “The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture”(WCF 1.6). In his book, his quotes the wrong part of the WCF to defend the doctrine. He seems to be out of his lane here. He says that the Bible is sufficient to address every issue of race in America. How is that possible when dealing with race which is not what the Bible is about? Fact: the actual Reformed tradition will say that Bible is insufficient to address matters outside those of saving faith (like Presbyterians believe). Baucham’s book is a departure away from the Reformed tradition & takes its readers back a century in biblicist Fundamentalism. WCF: “and that there are some circumstances concerning the worship of God, & government of the Church, common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature, & Christian prudence…” (1:6). It’s so bizarre that he’d quote section 1:1 not 1:6. This chapter only further exposes that Baucham doesn’t know what the doctrine actually means in the Reformed tradition. “The light of nature” includes “sociology, psychology, and political science.” The disciplines he says Christians don’t need. Using Reformed doctrines as a proxy for American fundamentalism misleads readers. It’s sad. Calvin, Vermigli, Althusius, Turrentin, etc. are all turning in their graves with Baucham’s anti-Reformed, American fundamentalist understanding of the Sufficiency of Scripture. You can’t get more of the false distinction between sacred and secular than reading Chapter 6 of “Fautlines.” It’s simply Neo-fundamentalism masquerading as apologetics. The only thing it’s defending in its attacks on Ligon Duncan, Eric Mason, David Platt, & others is biblicism. It’s too much to post here but Baucham’s misunderstanding and misuse of the Reformed doctrine of the Sufficiency of Scripture would be helped by joining a confessionally connectional denominational where theology is practice in community & leaders are bound by confessionalism. A great example of confessionalism on race is the Missouri-Synod Lutheran discussion of race. This conservative and Reformational denomination use “the light of nature” to discuss race. Baucham isn’t representing confessional Reformation perspectives. Perhaps Baucham would have better theological application of the doctrine of sufficiency if he were in the PCA & could learn about the insufficiency of Scripture and put the straw men to death.

I Tweeted the following in response to Bradley, and in some defense of Baucham:

What Bradley fails to grasp—as usual—(and I’m not in Baucham’s “theological lane”) is that Voddie’s assumption is that Holy Scripture is Gospel-centric in orientation. As such, and this is clear from other things Baucham et al have noted, he believes that the Gospel is sufficient for all “issues,” particularly because it addresses the central problem of humanity; ie a depraved heart. If this is the premise Baucham is working from, he hasn’t strayed from the formal principle of the Protestant Reformation at all: viz. ‘the Scripture Principle.’ Like I noted: Bradley is engaging in his typical cultural subterfuge by errantly appealing to his people.

One irony I noticed in Bradley’s Tweet was when he wrote: “Baucham’s personal definition of the sufficiency doctrine is 1920s fundamentalism rather than Reformed.” This is an interesting oversight since the ‘1920s Fundamentalists’ were the Protestant Reformed by and large, particularly when it comes to the issue of biblical inerrancy. 1920s biblicism was vanguarded largely by the thought of Charles Hodge, B. B. Warfield, and J. Gresham Machen among others. 1920s Fundamentalism was by-and-large made up of the ‘conservative Reformed’ of that day; and they were largely confessional. Bradley’s diatribe might work on the historically anemic, but not on folks who know American history vis-à-vis the Reformed faith and its biblical inerrancy.

Ultimately, I am not sure Baucham is all that concerned with affirming natural theology or natural law theory as that relates to parts of the confessionally Reformed faith. What Bradley seemingly fails to mention is that Post Reformation Reformed Orthodoxy rejected ‘natural theology,’ and thus natural law theory in the main (see Richard Muller’s Post Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, 4Vols). Bradley wants his uniformed readers to think that the confessionally Reformed faith was a monolith; how convenient (and absurd!)

But to the point of Baucham’s book: like I noted in my Twitter response, I don’t think Baucham would accept Bradley’s characterization of racism as not being a matter of the Evangel; indeed, that’s precisely the point (which is clearly lost on Bradley, who obviously is simply attempting to charter the “Reformed faith” in the direction of his wanderlust for using ‘analytic’ tools like Critical Race Theory). For my money, Calvin and Vermigli et alia would be turning in their graves if they saw where someone like Bradley wants to take Reformed theology in the 21^st century. Is Baucham guilty of appealing to a 1920s Fundamentalism? Sure, just as much as someone like Machen or others would have been, particularly as they articulated the sort of inerrancy vis-à-vis sufficiency of Scripture principle that Baucham is appealing to himself. What Bradley is leaving out of his Tweet-storm is that Baucham believes that racism is indeed a matter that ‘salvation’ itself corrects. This would make Bradley’s critique moot, with reference to Baucham’s premise, in regard to the transformative power of the Gospel. And as I already noted, Bradley is only appealing to certain parts of the confessionally Reformed faith; he is misrepresenting its development and history though. Baucham stands squarely within the formal principle of the Protestant Reformation. Bradley is simply being selective to serve his own purposes. This is not good form, no not at all!

What’s the Relationship Between Emphasizing God’s Love and Progressive Theologies and Politics?: Barth as a Case Study

Posted on January 5, 2020 by Bobby Grow

It seems like so called progressive and exvangelical Christians present the world with a gushy-squishy God who just ‘loves,’ and nothing else. The theologians I follow most closely, namely Karl Barth and Thomas F. Torrance, along with others in the universe of theologians, likewise emphasize that God is love. Often progressive Christians are drawn to theologians like Barth et al., because he seems to present an emphasis on God that resonates with what they perceive as the good and the beautiful. Most of the Barthian Christians I know are in fact progressive Christians (PC); both theologically and socio-politically. In fact, for most, Barth serves as a gateway to more radical conceptions of ‘God is love’ than Barth actually offers (as some of these folks begin to realize when they actually read Barth for themselves). But the fact remains that Barth is often a mainstay theologian, at least in spirit, for the progressive Christian. My question is: is there a substantial causal correlation between this perception of Barth’s et al. conception of God as love, and the progressive politics and theology that so many progressive Christians (we might want to call them liberal Christians) operate with?

This really, in my mind, comes down to a question of ‘inclusiveness,’ and inclusiveness understood in a particular direction. I think the PC wants to believe in a certain instance of God’s bigness. What I mean is that the PC, as you listen to their logic, will often appeal to God’s all-encompassing compassion and grace. As you listen further, and start reading between the lines, you start to realize that they are now presenting a concept of God’s bigness and graciousness in abstraction from God’s Self-revelation in Jesus Christ; even as they continue to conflate this abstraction with the name of Jesus Christ. This is where they quickly depart from Barth’s conception of God as love and grace.

For Barth, God is the Judge judged. For Barth, there is no abstract conception of God’s bigness and graciousness. He is a full-frontal and flaming trintarian actualist. In other words, for Barth, there is nothing speculative or abstract about God; at least not for a genuine Christian understanding. For Barth, we can only conceive of God’s love, bigness, and graciousness as that comes to us in the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ; the shed blood of Jesus Christ, in fact. What is, in the incarnation, for Barth, is who God is for us; there is no room for PC abstractive thinking about what and who God’s bigness includes. Surely, for Barth, all are included; just as sure as the eternal Son assumes humanity in the incarnation. But unlike the PC approach to God’s inclusiveness, Barth doggedly clamps off any other way for knowing God’s way except by way of looking at Jesus Christ. Notice how TF Torrance presses this in Barth’s theology:

Because Jesus Christ is the Way, as well as the Truth and the Life, theological thought is limited and bounded and directed by this historical reality in whom we meet the Truth of God. That prohibits theological thought from wandering at will across open country, from straying over history in general or from occupying itself with some other history, rather than this concrete history in the centre of all history. Thus theological thought is distinguished from every empty conceptual thought, from every science of pure possibility, and from every kind of merely formal thinking, by being mastered and determined by the special history of Jesus Christ.[1]

The progressive Christian has no quarter in Barth’s theology. Barth’s God is inclusive, big, gracious, and for the world; the progressive’s conception of God is not grounded in the concrete history of God as given in the humanity of Jesus Christ.

The progressives would be better suited in looking for the God they’d prefer in such theologians as Friedrich Schleiermacher and Rudolf Bultmann. Barth, as we know, worked against any notion of turn to the subject theology like we find in the romantic theology of Schleiermacher and the existentialist of Bultmann. But there is an explanation, theologically, for why so many PCs go off the rails in their conception of God and his inclusiveness; it is because they project from themselves, and more collectively, the cultural moment, and construct a conception of God in their desires and images. Exvangelicals, by and large, while good intentioned, don’t like the classical or biblical conception of God as Judge judged, and so embark on a life-long pursuit and project of constructing a God who is not bounded by the delimiting historical reality of God’s givenness in Jesus Christ.

The enigmatic thing to me is this: why are so many Barth scholars (like we find at Princeton) liberal and progressive? My current conclusion is that these scholars have elevated their school understanding of Barth’s theology, and then read that into, and in fact deployed that as their biblical hermeneutic. The emphasis in my conclusion should be placed on ‘school.’ These scholars, and the progressive Christians who follow them more popularly, are subject to the atmosphere they have devoted their lives to in the university setting. Such settings, as we all know, are rarified by air that blows with the spirit of Marx, Schleiermacher, and the idea that the human condition is an exalted reality. This somehow mixes, in the case of Barth scholars, with their reading of Barth, and somehow gets transposed into their understanding of God and all subsequent reality. It’s a rather complex thing when it comes to such Barth scholars; since Barth’s theology itself was intended to thwart this sort of ‘humanistic’ approach to reality. True, Barth wasn’t a North American evangelical (I mean he was known as the ‘Red Pastor’ after-all), but the lineaments of his theological project, in my view, militate against theologies that become conflated with the cultures at large; school or otherwise.

There is still the question that we started out with: is there a substantial causal correlation between this perception of Barth’s et al. conception of God as love, and the progressive politics and theology that so many progressive Christians (we might want to call them liberal Christians) operate with? No, I don’t think so. But then again, it depends on the cultures Barth is read within. Currently, in North America, and anglophone Barth studies in general, he is read from within school contexts that are progressive, liberal, and navel-gazing. So, Barth, in my view, and those who are in his wake, are guilty by association with professors and Christians who have been taken captive by their particular cultures rather than the God who invades and contradicts such cultures, in Jesus Christ.[2]

I still want to probe this question further, and not focus as much on Barth, but instead on the question of the relationship between understanding or emphasizing God as love, and the appropriation of progressive theologies and politics (like is there a causal/material connection, or is it more incidental?). More to come, at some point.

[1] Thomas F. Torrance, Karl Barth: An Introduction to His Early Theology 1910-1931, 196.

[2] I’m trying to win a popularity contest; can’t you tell?

Pastors Will Be Held to a Higher Standard than Group Think; The Elder Said ‘God just is Wrath’: Miscellanies on FaceBook Posts

Posted on January 7, 2019 by Bobby Grow

This post will attempt to expand and clarify upon two FaceBook posts that seemed to cause some people confusion and even consternation. I mean this is usually the case on such platforms, isn’t it? People share context-less anecdotes, or enthymemic notions that are usually sub a greater and more fulsome context of meaning. This post will attempt to provide some of that for these two little ‘posts.’ Here’s the first one:

Much theology is adopted for purposes of pastoral polity and expediency, not necessarily because it represents the best alternatives critically available.

What I had in mind with this one isn’t all that profound, but here’s the context of thought: Growing up as an evangelical Baptist Christian, particularly as a ‘pastor’s kid’, it has made me sensitive to trends in the evangelical churches; as I’m sure it has for many of us. As someone who has been trained formally to be involved in some sort of Christian ministry, and been involved in pastoral and evangelical ministry over the years, what I’ve come to recognize in the Free churches, is that they are largely driven by trends. Usually because of time and personnel constraints, which is almost always driven by fiscal issues, pastors and leadership teams in churches are simply attempting to stay afloat among the rigors of daily ministry. As a result, there isn’t seemingly a lot of time for doctrinal reflection or development, so they fall back on whatever their ‘denomination’ or ‘tradition’ has adopted or gravitated towards. In the baptistic oriented churches, if they are wanting some sort of doctrinal bases, they seemingly have looked to outlets and ministries like The Gospel Coalition, John MacArthur’s ‘Grace to You’, Mark Dever’s 9Marks, or even Paul Washer (so on and so forth); but something in this range of theological trad. What, of course, is common to these various outlets is that they are largely shaped directly by what I call soteriological (versus Federal/Covenantal) Calvinism. But this is what is expedient and in the air for those who want to be doctrinally astute, at least at some level. So, the churches are being fed this sort of theological fare, whether that be in a more aggressive or passive way, respectively.

This is really all I was getting at with my FB post. Most local churches, for mostly administrative reasons, and then the way that pastors are trained to think to be pastors these days, are caught in this doctrinal web. If not, then they’ve caught other trends, like: moralistic therapeutic deism, self-help, seeker sensitive, market-based churching. But my basic premise is: That churches, largely because of their pastor[s], end up going along with theological group-think, rather than being critically reflective on what in fact the Bible might actually teach; and then the attending theological grammar and thought that comes along with that. Pastors will be held to a higher standard than ‘group think.’

My second post was this (this one was more doctrinally focused):

We attended a church for a while where one of the elders, as he was going to lead us in prayer stated: we just thank God for His wrath. Everything has a theological background. Do you want to guess the theological background that would lead someone to say something like this, in an abstraction?

Knowing me, this one should be pretty clear already. The theological background I’m referring to is classical Calvinism, of the sort we’ve already mentioned in the last explanation. The stunning thing to me about this pronouncement, from this elder, was that there was no qualification. He just got up, and as a matter of fact, he simply stated what I’ve noted; I’d never heard, not even a Calvinist be so blatant in language like this before (that was actually our last Sunday at this church). Does God have wrath? Yes, but in the sense noted by Thomas Torrance:

God loves you so utterly and completely that he has given himself for you in Jesus Christ his beloved Son, and has thereby pledged his very being as God for your salvation. In Jesus Christ God has actualised his unconditional love for you in your human nature in such a once for all way, that he cannot go back upon it without undoing the Incarnation and the Cross and thereby denying himself. Jesus Christ died for you precisely because you are sinful and utterly unworthy of him, and has thereby already made you his own before and apart from your ever believing in him. He has bound you to himself by his love in a way that he will never let you go, for even if you refuse him and damn yourself in hell his love will never cease. Therefore, repent and believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour.[1]

Or in the Barthian sense that God in Christ is the Judge, judged. The point being that God’s first Word of wrath is one of love. He first loved us that we might love Him, and in this God’s wrath begins to make theological sense. To simply state that we thank God for his wrath without explicitly grounding that first in His life of triune love gives the impression that God just is wrathful, full stop. But we know that this isn’t the case. We know who God is first, as Athanasius says (paraphrase): as Father of the Son; we know Him filially, and familially, as a child knows their parent—but in a primal, ultimate way. To unhinge God’s wrath from His love, from His being that is shaped by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is to give the people a No-God; at least not a God who the Christian first has come to know as their Lord and Savior.

Clearly, there is an interpretive tradition this particular elder has been formed by; one that I’ve spilled much cyber-ink over. What this elder illustrated for me once again, is that theologies have consequences; of the sort that could potentially destroy people’s recognition of the true and living God; the God Christians only know, by definition, through the biblical reality who is the Christ.

Soli Deo Gloria.

[1] T. F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ, 94.

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