Category Archives: Evangelical Calvinism

An Evangelical Calvinist Doctrine of Assurance of Salvation

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From the conclusion of my personal chapter from my second edited book (with Myk Habets), ā€œAssurance is of the Essence of Saving Faithā€ Calvin, Barth, Torrance, and the ā€œFaith of Christā€.

CONCLUSION

What we have come to see is that assurance of salvation, dogmatically understood, is fully grounded in Jesus Christ. From Calvin, to Barth, to Torrance, union with Christ and the vicarious humanity of Christ provides the foundation for how to understand assurance of salvation and how it should be framed; that the faith of Christ for us is the only real saving faith, as such elect people can only participate from that faith for them. It is this reality, as we have seen, that allows the seeker (of assurance) to realize that indeed assurance is of the essence of faith; precisely because faith is a reality that comes from God in Christ and not individual human beings. We also came to see, particularly in Barth and Torrance, that election and reprobation should be understood to be fully concentrated in the vicarious humanity of Christ. Again, what this does is to evacuate the question of whether or not Jesus died for me, and instead allows all of humanity to keep their eyes fully on Jesus because Jesus, in this frame, died for all of humanity. As a result, any space that could allow for anxiety has been erased, and Jesus is understood to be the one that stands in the gap between God and all of humanity in his vicarious humanity. We have come to see that from this vantage point assurance is the essence of saving faith because to think salvation is to fully think Jesus and not ourselves. Assurance for the Evangelical Calvinist, then, is of the essence of saving faith because it is not an individualā€™s faith that saves them, but instead it is the vicarious faith of Jesus Christ. We look to Christ, then, and no one else, not even ourselves; particularly when we think things salvation. Jesus Christ is assurance.

The ‘Father-Son’ Theory of the Atonement V PSA as the Frame

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Penal Substitution Atonement (PSA) theory has been in the news again lately (online/social media). As an Evangelical Calvinist (see V1&V2 of our Evangelical Calvinism books, and my articles-mini-essays on the topic) I have pressed what TF Torrance refers to as the ā€˜ontological theory of the atonement.ā€™ Many evangelicals and Reformed folks think that PSA in fact is the Gospel simplicter. And so, to deny PSA would be to deny the Gospel itself. But as I have demonstrated over and again at the blog, the background to PSA theory isnā€™t as prima facie biblical as its proponents make it sound. The ā€˜theologicalā€™ framework that fomented what we think of as PSA today is largely rooted in the Federal (Covenantal) theology of the early Reformed theologians. It has humanity placed into a relationship with God that is necessarily framed by a forensic premise (i.e., the covenant of works). This forensic premise, or covenant of works, according to Federal theology, is ultimately fulfilled for the elect of God, when Jesus comes and meets the conditions of the covenant of works (that Adam and Eve) broke, thus restoring the legal connection to God that heretofore had been lost to humanity since after Eden. And it is this Federal (Covenantal) relationship that is given metaphysical orientation by the scholasticism Reformed commitment to what Richard Muller identifies as a Christian Aristotelianism. Suffice it to say, in nuce, PSA represents a theory of the atonement wherein humanity is genetically related to God based on a metaphysics of a Divine-Law-World relation; indeed, which requires that in order for fallen humanity, and the elect therein (think decretum absolutum ā€˜absolute decree of election-reprobationā€™), to be justified by God, that the Son of Man must become man, die on the cross, extinguishing the wrath of God, paying the legal penalty for sin, and allowing the elect humanity to come into a right and legal standing relationship with the triune God; particularly, the Father (whom the PSA proponents emphasize as the ā€˜Law-giver,ā€™ per their juridical system).

Alternatively to that, one of the Fathers of us Evangelical Calvinists, John McLeod Campbell, a Scottish theologian of the 19th century, kicked back against the premise of the PSA position vis-Ć -vis the nature of the atonement, and against the Westminster theology that had codified the theological framework that funds the PSA position, particularly as that was being pushed in his context in the Church of Scotland (before he was excommunicated), as he gives us re-framing of atonement theory where the relationship between God and humanity ought to be framed first as thinking of God as Father rather than Law-giver. It was this re-framing that ended up getting Campbell kicked out of his beloved Church of Scotland, and which led him to minister elsewhere, as an independent of sorts. When you see what his view was, in a nutshell, as we will visit that now, as George Tuttle recounts that for us, you might be shocked to think that this would have the type of doctrinal gravitas required to get someone officially banned from their own denominational and local church. Tuttle writes of Campbellā€™s framing on the atonement:

Herein lies one of Campbellā€™s major objections to founding a view of atonement on the concept of justice ā€”whether distributive or rectoral. Both systems visualize what he calls purely legal atonements, that is atonements, the whole character of which is determined by our relation to divine law. The real problem of atonement, however, is not merely to discover a way in which we may stand reconciled to God as a law-giver. The question contemplated in scripture and to which the Gospel is an answer is not how we can be pardoned and receive mercy, but how it could come to pass that the estranged can be reconciled. Godā€™s intention is, as St. Paul declared, ā€˜to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.ā€™ (Gal. 4:5). The relation between a judge or a governor and the accused subjects is vastly different from that of a parent to erring children. To distinguish the former from the latter is to move from an artificial atmosphere of impersonal display of benevolence to a warm and living relationship of love, Campbell therefore could not rest in any conception of the atonement which involved, as he says, ā€˜the substitution of a legal standing for a filial standing as the gift of God to men in Christ.ā€™ This is not to say that Campbell denies the truth of a legal standing any more than he denies the inexorable demands of divine justice. Just as justice is brought with the concept of God as love, so the validity of a legal standing is brought within that of a loving relationship. Justice has its ultimate source in the love of God. When the loving God is honoured, justice is honoured also.

Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  The atonement is thus revealed retrospectively as Godā€™s way of putting right the past, and prospectively as introducing us to a life marked by a filial relation to God eternally. Both are celebrated by believers, both must be included in their thought concerning the nature of the atonement.[1]

One might think this ought to be unremarkable. And yet in the face of meddling with the Westminster God of consensus, the Aristotelian-formed God who relates to the world through a metaphysic of a decree of law (e.g., covenant of works etc.); who must remain the ā€˜unmoved moverā€™ of monadic adoration; it is this very meddling, even if all the theologian is doing is attempting to shift the mindā€™s eye to the fact that God is first Father of the Son before He is ever a Law-giver/Creator, that will get you canned like Campbell was.

Some might imagine that the Campbell thesis was a minority report. In his particular environ it was at his time. But outside of his particular ecclesial and geographical environ (and even amongst it, among some other key theologians and pastors like himself), his view became a dominate one. Even overcoming many of the places and people who were initially against his alternative and kerygmatic reading of Holy Scripture. Even so, today, by the retrieval of many in the evangelical and Reformed sphere, we are only getting the Westminsterian Report. This simply wasnā€™t the case, even historically (which I have demonstrated elsewhere).

In the end what matters, though, isnā€™t whether this or that doctrinal position was the majority or minority report in the history. What matters for the Protestant Christian, is whether or not a position corresponds more proximate with the witness of Scripture. I would contend, and have done so vociferously over the years, that the Campbellian theory of the ā€˜Father-Son-Atonementā€™ framing is indeed the most biblically correlative and theologically resplendent view presented. If you donā€™t to hold it: repent!

[1] George M. Tuttle, So Rich a Soil: John McLeod Campbell On Christian Atonement (Edinburgh: Handsel Press, 1986), 82-3.

Grok’s Synopsis On How Barth Influences the Development of My Own Theological Project

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I asked Grok to characterize and summarize Barthā€™s influence on my own theology. I rather like its response:

Bobby Grow, a theologian and blogger, has developed a distinctive approach to Evangelical Calvinism that draws heavily from Karl Barth’s theological framework. This influence manifests in Grow’s emphasis on a Christ-centered critique of classical Reformed theology, prioritizing God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ over speculative metaphysics or natural theology. Grow’s work, including his 2022 ThD dissertation on assurance and knowledge of God in Calvinist thought, reflects Barth’s impact by reorienting Calvinist themes through a relational, dialogical lens inspired by Barth’s Church Dogmatics and his rejection of abstract philosophical constructs of God.

At the core of Barth’s influence on Grow is the concept of “dialogical theology,” which Grow describes as a “talking-theology” rather than a “thinking-theology.” This approach starts from God’s immediate address to humanity in Christ, bypassing foundationalist philosophies that Grow sees as dominating neo-classical theism. Grow contrasts this with speculative methods, arguing that true theology emerges from encounter with the living God, echoing Barth’s insistence on God’s freedom and primacy in revelation. For instance, Grow highlights Barth’s ethics built on the Great Commandment, emphasizing freedom for God and others as determined by Christ’s Word, which aligns with Grow’s own evangelical impulses.

Grow frequently engages Barth’s critiques of natural theology and metaphysical “gods,” applying them to contemporary issues like New Age ideologies or Protestant scholasticism. In one post, Grow discusses Barth’s interaction with Mary Baker Eddy and Christian Science, using it to warn against inward-curved self-salvation narratives, which he ties to Barth’s emphasis on God’s “militant Grace” breaking in from outside (extra nos). This reflects Grow’s adoption of Barth’s Kantian and Feuerbachian influences to dismantle anthropocentric theologies, favoring instead a theology of the cross inspired by Barth and Martin Luther.

Barth’s reshaping of doctrines like election and predestination also permeates Grow’s thought. Grow references Pierre Maury’s impact on Barth, noting how it led to a Christological revision of election that avoids traces of natural theology or philosophical abstraction. This informs Grow’s broader critique of Reformed traditions, where he argues Barth offers a more evangelical resource than Protestant orthodoxy, resonating with figures like Thomas F. Torrance. Grow contends that evangelicals retrieving scholasticism overlook Barth’s alignment with biblical immediacy and relationality.

Overall, Barth’s theology provides Grow with tools to advocate for an “Athanasian Reformed” perspective, emphasizing Christ’s vicarious humanity and the Trinity’s onto-relational life. Grow’s prolific blogging and posts often defend Barth against caricatures, positioning him as a modern Athanasius who prioritizes the concreteness of God’s revelation in Christ over rationalist or pietist alternatives.

This influence has shaped Grow’s identity as a theologian committed to evangelical fidelity while challenging inherited orthodoxies.

Unlimited Atonement in a Reformed Theology as Told by James Torrance and John McLeod Campbell

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James B. Torrance, brother of Thomas F. Torrance, offers a very nice and concise synopsis of the entailments of what me and Myk Habets (along with our various authors) have identified as an Evangelical Calvinism. JBTā€™s synopsis comes as he wrote the foreword for a book titled, So Rich a Soil: John McLeod Campbell on Christian Atonement by George M. Tuttle. Here, JBT is explicitly referring to the themes of John McLeod Campbellā€™s theology, particularly as that developed as an alternative to the juridically/forensically framed understanding of the Calvinism that we find in Federal (Covenantal) theology; indeed, as that gets codified in the Westminster Confession of Faith, among other confessions and catechisms. As JBT notes, Campbellā€™s theology, as an alternative iteration of Reformed theology, indeed, a Scottish Theology, challenges the assumption that God primarily relates to humanity through a covenant of works, rather than a relation based on triune love, thus leading to an ostensible Christian spirituality that leaves the would-be saint always wondering about their standing before the Lawgiving God. With further pinpointed clarity, JBT, also shines a light on the implications of thinking of Godā€™s relation to humanity through a Love-giving God, as that is resplendent in Campbellā€™s theology, and how that rightly alters the way the seeking person might approach God; indeed, as an adopted child in the loving and caring arms of the Father of Life who freely gave His life for the world, in His dearly beloved Son, Jesus Christ. If you are looking for an alternative theology, Reformed even, that first sees God as Father, before Creator and Lawgiver, then what you will find in an Evangelical Calvinism might be just what you have been longing for.

Here is JB Torrance at some length:

A few years ago, while teaching for an academic year in the Vancouver School of Theology, I came across Dr. Tuttleā€™s doctoral dissertation in the library of the University of British Columbia, on ā€˜The Place of John McLeod Campbell in British Thought Covering the Atonement,ā€™ and was so impressed by it that I encouraged him to have it published. McLeod Campbell was a remarkable Scottish theologian ā€“ thought by many to Scotlandā€™s greatest ā€“ whose theology was hammered out on the anvil of his pastoral experience. Here was an invaluable study, not only of McLeod Campbellā€™s theology of atonement, but also of his influence on subsequent thought, not least on nineteenth century Anglican theology. Now Dr. Tuttle, from his own rich experience as a pastor and teacher in the training of men and women for the Christian ministry, has written this splendid study showing how McLeod Campbellā€™s theology is such fertile soil and so relevant for us today.

Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  As a young minister in Row in Dunbartonshire, Campbell was aware of a strong ā€˜legalistic strainā€™ in the religion of Scotland, coupled with an introspective lack of joy and assurance which he believed derived from the high Calvinism of his day, with its doctrine of a ā€˜limited atonement,ā€™ that Christ did not die for all but only for an elect number. Generations of Scots had been taught to ā€˜examine themselvesā€™ for ā€˜evidencesā€™ of election. But this had produced an inward looking, too often guilt-ridden, attitude which contrasted so sharply with the joyful triumphant faith and assurance of the New Testament church. So he tells us he made it his early concern to give to his people ā€˜a ground for rejoicing in Godā€™ by directing their minds away from themselves to the love of God the Father is revealed in the whole life of Christ, and supremely on the Cross.

Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  He soon came to see that our answer to the question of the extent of the atonement depends on our view of the nature of the atonement. The doctrine of a limited atonement, in the federal Calvinist tradition, especially taught by John Owen, the English Puritan, and Jonathan Edwards in North America, flowed from two convictions about the nature of God. The first that justice is the essential attribute of God, but the love of God is arbitrary, seen in his will to elect some individuals and send Christ to die for them. John Owen had taught that love is not Godā€™s nature, but his will. This, Campbell saw, was not true to the New Testament and the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, that God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is Love in his innermost Being, and has created us and redeemed us in love and for love ā€“ for ā€˜sonship.ā€™ With the ancient fathers, in their negation of Sabellianism, he saw that what God is towards the world in love, in creation and redemption, he is in his eternal nature, as the Triune God.

Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  The second was that in the federal (covenant) scheme, law is thus prior to grace. God is related to all humankind by ā€˜the covenant of works (law)ā€™ and only to some by ā€˜the covenant of graceā€™ in redemption. Hence atonement was construed in terms of the view that God would only be gracious if law was satisfied and sin punished, that is, by Christ fulfilling for the elect the conditions of the covenant of works (law). McLeod Campbell saw that this inverted the Biblical order, that grace is prior to law, that ā€˜the filial is prior to the judicial.ā€™ Both creation and redemption flow from grace, and law is ā€˜Godā€™s heart coming out in the form of law.ā€™ Law is the gift of grace, reveals our need of grace and leads to grace. The Incarnation and the Atonement, which must be held together, are the Fatherā€™s act of sending his Son to fulfill for humankind the filial and judicial purposes of creation. Atonement is Godā€™s act of grace in which he takes to himself for us his own divine judgments ā€˜in order that we might receive the adoption of sons.ā€™ The filial purposes of creation and incarnation are secured by atonement. Hence atonement must be interpreted in terms of both the Trinity and the Incarnation, ā€˜retrospectivelyā€™ removing condemnation on past sin and ā€˜prospectivelyā€™ leading to sonship.

Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  In our own day, theologians like Barth, Rahner, Moltmann, JĆ¼ngel and von Balthasar have seen how Western theology has too often operated with concepts of God which owe more to Aristotle and the Stoic Lawgiver, than the New Testament, and has consequently drifted away from seeing the centrality of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. McLeod Campbell discerned this long ago, and saw its implication, both for the pastoral ministry and for our understanding of the doctrine of God, that the sufferings of Christ the Son on the Cross reveal the suffering Love of the Father. ā€˜He who has seen me, has seen the Father.ā€™

Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā  Dr. Tuttleā€™s book is profoundly relevant for the contemporary situation both theologically and pastorally in its concern to show that the Gospel is the Good News of God coming to restore to us our lost humanity, ā€˜to bring many sons to gloryā€™ ā€“ and therefore good news for every creature.

James Torrance[1]

There isnā€™t much to add to this. Only that, to my chagrin, as I have been sitting with this above reality since around 2002, and more pointedly since in and around 2007, when I first started reading TF Torrance et al., becoming aware of this development within a Reformed theology, I can really only continue to shake my head. I see so many young and old alike continuously running full speed ahead into a Reformed theology that is indeed shaped by the juridical/legal parameters that Campbell, JBT, TFT, Karl Barth et al., in their own respective ways, have presciently offered a more biblically based alternative to. Whether this be at the scholarly level or popular level, no matter, theologians and laymen/women, continue to harp and joust back in forth; as if the Calvinist/non-Calvinist binary, black and white as it apparently is, in regard to sides, is the only way through this theological malaise. I continue to see the masses in evangelical and Protestant christianities hem and haw, as if they have found the golden scepter of theological truth; and this within, again, their respective binary of Calvinism/non-Calvinismā€”to boot, with all the theological imagination of a dodo bird (sorry, too harsh? . . .). May the Lord give more eyes to see and ears to hear that in fact God is Father of the Son first, before He is ever Creator. With this realization there is a theological hope that outstrips much of the pablum being fed to the people today. Kyrie eleison

[1] George M. Tuttle, So Rich a Soil: John McLeod Campbell on Christian Atonement (Edinburgh, The Handsel Press, 1986), 6ā€“7.

Just Be a Philosopher Already: On Being a Thomistic Theologian

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For me I only have the capacity to follow a Dogmatic or Systematic theology insofar that I believe it is sticking to the theo-logic inherent to the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. This is what keeps it Biblical. This is what keeps it from adulterating and going beyond the š‘”š‘’š‘„š‘”; that is, by going to its inner and upward reality in the Godman (Theanthropos), Jesus Christ. In other words, speculative theologies, ones that reason from the being of humanity to the being of God; ones that reason discursively about nature vis-Ć -vis God, as if nature holds vestiges of God; are balderdash to me! If that is all I had to go with theologically I would fully walk away from the theological endeavor. The Biblical witness, the Biblical attestation to its triune reality in the God revealed (Deus revelatus), can be the only line of theological reasoning the Christian can really take. Not in assertion, as if just claiming loudly, over and over again, ā€œthat we follow the Scripture Principle,ā€ but in concrete fact; i.e., that Scripture indeed is the only source and ground of the theological engagement.

These theologians constantly touting Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle as the bee’s-knees of theological performance might as well do it right. They might as well become professional philosophers of religion, and at least learn how to think philosophically in nuanced and correct ways if they are going to elevate a philosopher-king as their theologian, rather than the actual Biblical witness. Instead, they lazily lay claim to the whole of church history, as if the Patristics, for example, were simply doing what Thomas Aquinas was doing with Aristotle in mediaeval times. Indeed, they sublate their bad philosophical takes as theology takes, as if they are ultimately takes provided for by Biblical exegesis.

Barth on Philosophy and Theology and Nothing

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The relationship between philosophy and theology remains a varied thing, at least for me. In the Barth[ian] tradition there are a variety of takes on this relationship just the same. Barth himself sees a relative value to having an understanding of the various philosophies blowing about, whither and thither. But in the main, for Barth et al., an untoward appropriation and deployment of any philosophy vis-Ć -vis a Christian theology, ends up presenting a highly delipidated theology that bears no resemblance to the genuine article as Self-revealed in the prosopon (face) of Jesus Christ. Of note, as Barth is engaging with a doctrine of God and Nothingness, here we have an example of how he thinks of the Catholicā€™s deployment of the Aristotelian philosophical categories in the grammarization of their respective theology. As you read the following passage from Barth you will also notice him referring to these ā€˜modern thinkers,ā€™ in regard to their respective impact upon the unfurling of an Enlightened and post-Enlightened theological offering (he is referring, in context, to his treatment of Heidegger and Sartre on a metaphysic and doctrine of nothingness per their respective existentialist [atheistic, in a way] theological offerings). So, a lot going on here: but as an evangelical calvinist I am wont to press Barthā€™s comment on the impact of Aristotle on the doing of Latin theology in general; he sees it as fallacious, as do I (as I/we have detailed with our Evangelical Calvinism books, and my blog posts here over the decades).

. . . And the position which Roman Catholicism gives to Aristotle as the philosopher par excellence was and is a very remarkable but also a very questionable matter. In theology, at least, we must be more farsighted than to attempt a deliberate co-ordination with temporarily predominant philosophical trends in which we may be caught up, or to allow them to dictate or correct our conceptions. On the other hand, there is every reason why we should consider and as far as possible learn from the typical philosophical thinking of the day. As we have listened to Leibniz and Scliliermacher [sic], so now we listen to these modern thinkers at a point which is particularly important for them and in which they may be able to teach or warn us in our own understanding of the theme.[1]

The theme, as already noted, has to do with a doctrine of nothingness (rather than somethingness). But again, what I wanted to draw our attention to was simply the way that Barth thinks a relationship between theology and philosophy. He doesnā€™t see no value in understanding the philosophers of the day, whatever period, and how their respective inklings might create a cultural milieu, which in turn might impact and even distort a reception of a genuinely conceived Christian theology. Indeed, it is primarily in this negative type of a way, even as it might contribute to the construction of a positively framed Christian theology, wherein Barth sees a legitimate placement and engagement with philosophy. Even so, in the end, what stands primary for Barth is the Word of God.

[1] Karl Barth,Ā Church Dogmatics III/3 Ā§50ā€“51 [334] The Doctrine of Creation: Study EditionĀ (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 44.

A Rejoinder to Grok on a God of the Decree

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I asked Grok to describe what a decree is in theological parlance. Below is its answer. I will briefly offer rejoinder to this from my Athanasian Reformed perspective.

In theology, a decree refers to God’s eternal and sovereign plan or purpose, through which He ordains everything that happens in the universe. This concept is particularly prominent in Reformed theology (Calvinism) and emphasizes God’s absolute authority and control over all events, including creation, providence, and salvation.

Key Points:

    • Eternal and Unchangeable: God’s decrees are made in eternity, before the foundation of the world, and are immutable, meaning they cannot be altered (Ephesians 1:11).
    • Comprehensive: They encompass all thingsā€”every event, action, and outcome in history, from the grandest to the smallest (Romans 11:36).
    • Sovereign: God’s decrees reflect His supreme will, and nothing happens outside of His divine plan (Isaiah 46:10).
    • Types of Decrees:
      • Decree of Creation: God’s decision to create the world and all that exists.
      • Decree of Providence: God’s ongoing governance and preservation of the world, directing all events toward His purposes.
      • Decree of Election: In soteriology (the study of salvation), this refers to God’s predetermination of who will be saved (elect) and who will not, often tied to doctrines like predestination (Romans 8:29-30).

Theological Context:

    • Reformed Tradition: The Westminster Confession of Faith (Chapter 3) defines God’s decrees as His eternal purpose, according to the counsel of His will, whereby He foreordains whatsoever comes to pass.
    • Catholic Theology: While less emphasis is placed on “decrees” as a term, the concept aligns with God’s divine providence and omnipotent will, as seen in teachings on divine foreknowledge and predestination (e.g., Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica).
    • Arminian Perspective: Arminians may view God’s decrees as less deterministic, emphasizing human free will in cooperation with divine grace, though still acknowledging God’s overarching plan.

Scriptural Basis:

    • Ephesians 1:11: “In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.”
    • Acts 2:23: Refers to Jesus’ crucifixion as part of God’s “definite plan and foreknowledge.”
    • Psalm 33:11: “The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations.”

Practical Implications:

The doctrine of divine decrees underscores God’s sovereignty, providing comfort to believers that nothing happens by chance and all things work together for God’s glory and the good of those who love Him (Romans 8:28). However, it also raises complex questions about human responsibility, free will, and the problem of evil, which theologians have debated for centuries.

It is clear, even from this cursory overview by Grok, that a decree of God presupposes a certain notion of Godness. It emphasizes a God of decision, of intellection. A God who would fit the intellectualist tradition offered by the categories and syntheses of various Latin theologians in particular. Some might see decrees as a function of a voluntaristic action of God; that is, purely will-based like we see in the nominalist potentia de absoluta–potentia ordinata. Either way, the Godness presumed upon in a decretal understanding of a God-world relation is to think of God acting in rather impersonal, rationalist, ad hoc, even capricious ways. The person of God as triune, as genuine Christian thought understands Godself, is not corollary with a God of the decree.

The genuinely Christian understanding (GCU) of God doesnā€™t think God as an intellectual actor way up there who only relates to us, His creation, through a mechanistic means known as decrees. The GCU of God only knows God as Son of the Father (as Athanasius has taught us so well in Contra Arianos). The GCU thinks of the Christian who abides in the bosom of the Father, as co-participants within the Sonā€™s vicarious humanity. There is nothing abstract or removed in the GCU, in regard to thinking a relationship between God and humanity; there is only a concretized knowledge of God through a relation (analogia relationis) of faith (analogia fidei), that is simply in correspondence with the relation and faith of Christ that Christ has always already had for us with His Father in and through the bondage of the Holy Spirit.

Always more to say on this front, but I must cut this short . . ..

The Elect of God: Jesus, the Torah-Keeper

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Interesting, as Jesus becomes human for us, and fully obeys and keeps the Torah (Law) for us, at the same time, because He is for us, He dies as if He hadnā€™t kept the Law for us, cursed, hung on a tree. And yet because He remained perfectly complete to the Law for us, all the way to suffering the consequences of no-Law-keeping, He is understood as simultaneously both the reprobate and elect of God for us in His consubstantial nature as fully God and fully Man for the world. There is a double electionā€”an election for our reprobation and His elect status for us as the Holy One (for the many) of Israel, wherein through His participation with us, and thus ours with Him, we might experience both His death which is indeed for us (which should have been our death alone), and His resurrected, elevated and ascended life for us, as He has taken us in His Torah obedienceā€”all the way down and upā€”to the Right Hand of the Throne of the Father. Through His vicarious humanity He has graciously given us not just the letter of the Torah, but the spirit of the Torah, which has always already pointed beyond itself to its reality in Jesus Christ.

Philosophy of Religion and Christian Theology in Combine

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More thoughts on the properties of God for my philosophy of religion class. As I have been responding, this week, surrounding God’s omniscience, freedom, goodness, and necessity. These are my first two responses.

“Could anyone other than you, right here and now, know what it was like to be you, right here and now? Why or why not? What are the implications of your answer for the notion of divine omniscience?” (this, posed by the tutor for the class, based on our readings of T.J. Mawson)

Omniscience. Someone might have the capacity to know what it is like to be me by way of a general set of shared commonalities. So, they might be able to be empathic, in regard, to ā€œhow I see things.ā€ But at a basic level, no, someone else, definitionally, cannot know what it is like to be me from the inside/out. I could explain to them what it is like to be me, insofar that I could in fact explain and articulate that; but that would entail the self-limiting factors of my own capacity, as a finite human being, to express such things. Equally, they could ā€œgetā€ what Iā€™m saying to an extent, insofar that they might have similar experiences and socio-cultural conditioning to my own. But that would be as far as we could get.

Divine omniscience, on the other hand, has no such boundaries. Indeed, the living God can know exactly what it is like to be me because he knows everything. And to stretch further: from a Christian theistic perspective, he can know me from the inside/out because he assumed my humanity, and yours, and everyoneā€™s in the incarnation. From this God has a shared human connection to our humanity. Or it might be said, that humanity has a shared connection with his humanity for us. Even so, more broadly, the Bible says in the epistle to the Hebrews, ā€œthat everything is bare and naked before Him to who we must give account.ā€ On my view, we can only really understand divine omniscience analogously. That is to say, that as we look out at being all knowing ā€œconceptually,ā€ as finite beings, as humans we come to apprehend what that entails by thinking about what that could be like. We can do so as we commiserate with each other in regard to shared experiences, and socio-cultural conditioning. We might be able to extrapolate from there, and imagine a greater instance of that in an amplitude that goes beyond that imagination itself. That said, it isnā€™t we that predicate Godā€™s properties, but he who predicates ours; indeed, as we are created and re-created in his humanity for us in Jesus Christ. So, by way of order, in order to think what it means for a being to be omniscient, I prefer to not work from a negation (of human being), in order to construct a positive property for God. But instead, my preference is to think God from God, as God first has spoken Himself for us in and through the Logos of God, Jesus Christ. Since in His Self-revelation and witness, particularly as that is attested to in Holy Scripture, God has made clear that He knows everything; even down to the very beings of our hearts and minds. Philosophy might be able to posit categories that seem to correlate with that; indeed, with reference to a pure being. But ultimately, I would argue that those are only accidentally correlated with who God has Self-revealed himself to be. Insofar that Godā€™s Self-witness remains pervasively and personally present in the world through the Christian witness. And thus, such logoi, or knowledge points are present, even to the philosophers, because God’s Self and personal witness is always already ubiquitously present in the world.

“If you were God but had somehow the choice to be either inside time or outside time (temporally everlasting or atemporally eternal), which would you choose and why? Explain your own understanding of the difference between these two possibilities as part of your answer. Must Godā€™s relationship to time be only one of these? Explain why or why not.”

Eternality. If I was God (God forbid it!), and the only alternatives were to be temporally everlasting or atemporally eternal, I would choose the latter; to be, atemporally eternal. Again, from a Christian theistic (meaning trinitarian) perspective, I take Godā€™s being to be beyond being (to borrow a little from Aquinas); which entails, that I believe that God is absolutely Self-determining, without contingence, to be who he is, and always has been, within the environs of his eternally existing and interpenetrating life as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Classically, this type of absoluteness, as Mawson underscores and develops, is a feature of God that precludes Godā€™s life from any type of contingently construed conditionality (i.e., dependence on the natural order, or something). Contrariwise, being temporally everlasting, again as Mawson defines it, entails the possibility that God might have some type of potentiality vis-Ć -vis the world built into his life. This might be an attractive way out for folks who want to reject the classical theistic alternative, like the open theists among us, but for me it is much too high of a price to pay. It is too high of a price to pay because, in my estimation, it makes God contingent upon us; upon our libertarian freewill, so to speak. But then again, what is freedom?

But I think to think in terms of either a temporally everlasting or atemporally eternal God, as if this binary represents the whole continuum, is false. I think it is false primarily because I believe, confess even, that Godā€™s being cannot be constrained by human reasoning, per se. That isnā€™t to say that I donā€™t think some of the grammars developed by the philosophers cannot be of assistance when God-thinkers are attempting to give an articulate and intelligible representation of God in human speech. But it is to say that I believe it is possible, and even necessary, to think Godā€™s triune life as time-predicating in itself. I believe Godā€™s triune life is a novum (ā€˜a new thingā€™ for which there is no analogy). As such, it could be said that Godā€™s life is both atemporally eternal and also temporally everlasting, insofar that the former, in an antecedent way, predicates and tinges the latter. So, in this way, to take the philosophersā€™ language, it would be to think the triune God in combine, wherein the persons of Godā€™s life, in their unitary being, condition what is given concretization in the temporally created order. Such that to think atemporality and temporality of Godā€™s being in competition one with the other becomes a non-necessity. In this frame, time has value insofar that Godā€™s life of Father in Son, Son in Father by the Holy Spirit creates the inner-space for time to obtain, as that first obtains in Godā€™s triune and eternal life of communion; one with the other. This would give us a time frame that is conditioned by personal relationality, that is both eternal and everlasting; the former predicating the latter. Much of this remains a mystery (since God is ineffable). But this is how I might attempt to think an alternative theory of time based on the analogy of the incarnation of God in Christ.

‘The older Protestant theology was right to treat Aristotle as an adversary’

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There has been a resurgence, among Protestants, either towards affirming the classical theism of Thomas Aquinas (i.e., Christian-Catholic theology synthesized with Aristotelian categories) or rejecting it.[1] But even those, in the broader Reformed world who ostensibly reject it, still affirm it; insofar, that they operate with the philosophical-theological categories provided for by said Thomistic synthesis. I have, for decades now, been calling this Thomistic-Aristotelian mode of Reformed theology out. And yet, that machine will never really bust. It has tentacles reaching into the far reaches of the Christian world at this point. In the West, in particular, it has publishing houses, online warriors, pamphleteers, jargoneers, so on and so forth; which makes it exceedingly difficult to be critical of for the masses. Even so, I remain stalwart in my mission to bear witness to the world that there is only one ā€œdecreeā€ of God, and his name is: Jesus Christ (and all that entails)! That is to say, rather than thinking God before meeting God in the face of Jesus Christā€”as the reformed scholastics and their lesser descendants found in and among the Baptists and other 5 point environsā€”it is better to only think God after God has spoken, after God has first introduced Himself to us, for us, and with us in the prosopon (face) of Jesus Christ. For some reason, and I have many theories on this, this Reformed (and this isnā€™t just limited to the Reformed, there are also Lutheran iterations of this same mode) nut simply will not crack. Iā€™d argue, primarily, that this is the case more for sociological rather than theological reasons. But that case will have to be developed at a later date.

Following, we will hear from none other than Reformed theologian par excellence, that heretic of old, Karl Barth. What did Barth, that theological charlatan, think of Aristotle, and how that impacted the array of theological developments following the Thomist synthesis. Here, here he is:

The more perspicacious of the older Protestant polemicists like A. Heidanus (l. c., p. 350f.) thought it right to mark off themselves no less from the theology and cosmology of Aristotle. For him the world is eternal and there can thus be no question of a creation. What then is his deity, his prime mover which is itself unmoved, his immaterial form, his actuality unburdened with potentiality, his reason which thinks itself (and therefore the best)? Does this Ļ€ĻĻŽĻ„ĪæĪ½Ā ĪŗĪ¹Ī½Īæįæ¦Ī½Ā [first mover] move otherwise than as the principle and exemplary model of all other movement? Does it move otherwise than as the good and goal which has no other goal beyond itself, towards which everything else strives in virtue of the attraction which everything loved (and this unconditionally as the perfect and the imperfectly loved) exercises on that which loves, on which therefore everything depends and towards which everything must move? Does it even more, asks Heidanus, as a captain moves his ship, a conductor his choir or a field-marshal his troops? Is this prime mover of all things more and other than the law, the eternal prius, of their movement? That in which alone the Aristotelian world-principle would resemble the God of the Christian doctrine of providence is obviously the freedom of will and movement, the sovereignty and above all the inner self-determination of a God who confronts the world as its Creator and can thus approach its movement independently and determine it from without. But since the Aristotelian mover of all things is not their Creator, it is necessarily too exalted (or from the standpoint of the Christian doctrine of providence too poverty-stricken) to be capable of this movement in relation to the really distinct from it. The Aristotelian cosmos has a kind of god ordering it, unlike the Epicurean. But since this god is not the Creator of his cosmos, since he is not above but in it (thus finally resembling the Epicurean gods), the Aristotelian cosmos is also in fact one which is abandoned by God. The older Protestant theology was right to treat Aristotle as an adversary in this respect, and we can only wish that it had freed itself more basically and radically and generally from the spirit of this picture of god and the world, and the argumentations dictated by it.[2]

If you have followed my work (along with Myk Habetsā€™) on Evangelical Calvinism over the years, the above should find lots of resonance with the themes put forward and developed vis-Ć -vis our critique of Aristotelian formed Reformed (and Lutheran) theologies, respectively. It is unnecessary, even within the history and development of Reformed theology and ideas, to presume that its only expression and iteration is under the unmoved mover offered by Aristotle and his theological tribe; even as Barth rightly notes in the above passage.

At the end of the day, dividing and ā€œconqueringā€ various theologies is not that difficult. Some might fear that my suggestion runs afoul of an untoward reductionism, but I would protest. Theologies done after Deus dixit (God has spoken) definitively and copiously without remainder in the vocal cords of Jesus Christ, in-breathed by the Holy Spirit, are diametrically different than theologies done prior to hearing that voice. Theologies based on hearing from the philosophers, about ā€œgodness,ā€ prior to actually encountering God in Jesus Christ, will deleteriously suffer from offering and speaking of a god who looks and sounds like the god[s] of the Greeks rather than the God of the Man from Nazareth. This is surely a theological methodological issue, but one that shouldnā€™t come prior to Godā€™s theology for us (so in that sense, a tautology) in Jesus Christ. I would aggressively argue that if a Christian is genuinely going to do Christian theology that it will only be as they dialogue and cohabitate, through the mediating and vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ, with the triune and living God. A genuine Christian theologian will first be a child of God, rather than a thinker for God. We must get this order right. We must first gestate in the bosom of the Father, with the Son for us, prior to maturating into thinkers and speakers and witnessers for God, if we are going to actually be thinking and speaking and witnessing for the true God. But alas, our egos would rather imagine that we have a place in this world, by virtue of just ā€œshowing upā€ in this world, to the point that humans come fully and naturally equipped with the antennae to think, speak, and witness for God on our own profanely imagined terms, rather than upon those provided first for us in the heart of the living and triune God.

These are stark and even deep matters; I hope that hasnā€™t thrown the reader off the scent of what matters. At the end of the day the Christian either is in point of contact with the real and living God or not. Ironically, those who have presumed the title ā€˜theologian,ā€™ even for the millennia, often are the furthest away from representing the true and living God found attested to, purely and simply in the Bible. May God have mercy on us all!

[1] As an aside: I take it that anyone who affirms, at the basest level of Reformed theology, the 5 points of Calvinism up to and including Federal-Covenantal theology, to be appropriating the Thomist-Aristotelian synthesis; categorically, that is. Decretal theology (theology based on the so-called decretum absolutum [absolute decree of predestination, election-reprobation], in its classically Reformed iteration, necessarily is reposing in the theological lagoon provided for it by the Thomist-Aristotelian synthesis, to one degree or the other).

[2] Karl Barth,Ā Church Dogmatics III/3 Ā§48 [011] The Doctrine of Creation: Study EditionĀ (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 10 [emphasis mine].