Category Archives: Hermeneutics

Barth’s Covenantal Theology as the Reification of Hegel

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If you are familiar with Barth’s Covenantal theology, and how he reifies that in his doctrine of God and election, then the following development, from Michael Gillespie, on Hegel’s view of the state might be rather striking to you. Here is Gillespie:

This reconciliation of natural consciousness and spirit, of natural causality and freedom, of the individual and society is the state. “This essentiality is itself the unification of the subjective and the rational will: it is the ethical whole—the state, which is the actuality in which the individual has and enjoys his freedom, but in which it is the knowing, believing, and willing of the generality.” True freedom for the individual is only possible insofar as his actions are in accordance with the general movement of spirit itself. The “freedom” of capricious natural desires is only license and in truth the subjection to natural causality. Real freedom is thus only possible in an through the ethical life of the political community which unites the natural desires of the individual with the rational objects established by society for those desires: it is only the state that can guarantee a reconciliation of these two through laws and education.

Human beings in Hegel’s view can be truly free only when they live within convention, within the prevailing ēthos, and yet they tend naturally to obey only their desires and to seek only their own satisfaction. The state imposes a necessity supported by force and ultimately by the power of life and death that constrains the individuals to act in accordance with prevailing conventions. The freedom that men enjoy within the state is thus not the freedom that arises from a mutual limitation of their natural freedom but the concord of individual and society, of the subjective will of the individual and the objective general will of the society. “The subjective will, passion, is the motivating, the actualizing; the is the inner; the state is the present-at-hand, actual ethical life. For it is the unity of the general, essential will and the subjective, and that is the ethical community.” The state in Hegel’s view is neither a collectivity of individuals nor a people (Volk) as a whole, but the concrete actuality and ground out of which both arise and within which both subsist. Both the subjective will, i.e., natural consciousness as both consciousness of nature and natural desiring soul, and the objective or general will, as the inner idea or rational form, constitute the twofold that in its synthesis is the state: “For the true is the unity of the general and the subjective will; and the general is in the state in the laws, in general and rational determinations.” What is fundamentally true and real is neither the individual nor the society but the state, which establishes and maintains laws as the expression of its rationality. Moreover, as we saw earlier, the absolute alone is true or the true alone is absolute. The state is not merely the corporeal and therefore ephemeral reconciliation of the individual and society but a moment of the absolute itself, of the ultimately real phenomenological ground. It is in this sense that Hegel concludes, “The state is the divine idea, as it is present-at-hand on earth.”[1]

Some say Barth equally suffers from Hegelianization, as much as the classical theists (who in many ways he is in critique of) suffer from Hellenization. No matter, it isn’t ultimately the form, per se, but how much the form is capable of being evangelized in a way that the pressure of the kerygma is magnified rather than the grammatical form it commandeers.

It is interesting though, when the thinker can see the parallels between Barth’s reification of God’s covenantal relationship to the world, and how that seems to be anticipated in Hegel’s philosophy of the state. For Hegel the inner ground of historic and civil order, per Gillespie is the state. For Barth, the inner ground of creation is the covenantal life of God’s graciousness. In this we can see how Barth was a modern theologian, indeed. Just as he flipped Kant’s dualism of the noumenal and phenomenal on its head, through the Deus absconditus/Deus revelatus combine in the hypostatic union of the singular person, Jesus Christ. Similarly, Barth flips Hegel’s style of immanentized dialecticism on its head by using his categories, and redeploying those in such a way that the creaturely realm is re-creaturized, and God is re-divinized by seeing the divine attributes that Hegel collapses into Geist, as understood as rightfully and always God’s to begin with.

This is how all constructive theology, and its attendant grammars, have always been done; i.e. by appropriating current ideation and philosophical constructs in such a way that the grammar supplied by said constructs is reified or ‘evangelized’ in such a way that the material content of the philosophic is so gutted, so non-correlationized, that the Gospel itself shines as bright as the morning sun shines on our weary and horizontal faces. Solo Christo.

[1] Michael Allen Gillespie, Hegel, Heidegger, and the Ground of History (Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, 1984), 90-1.

An Addendum to My Last Post: Dialogical Scripture Reading and the Normal Tools

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Let me say something in clarification of my last post. What I wrote there, with reference to biblical hermeneutics, might sound like existentialist confusion at some level. It might sound like I think utilizing literary, grammatical, historical, and canonical tools in biblical exegesis is not a viable option. But I am exactly not saying this. What I am saying is that the way I approach Scripture, through the Chalcedonian pattern, has to do with a theological ontology, and ontology of Scripture. In other words, my primary approach to Scripture has to do with what Barth calls dialekin (see his Göttingen Dogmatics), or dialectic, or dialogical engagement with the text. This means that my engagement with Scripture, in this mode, is one that expects a dialogical encounter with the viva vox Dei (living voice of God) as He speaks, through Christ, throughout the total canon of Holy Scripture; in all its inter and intratextual and canonical vividness. There is an existential aspect to this, in an I-Thou sense of encounter; but the existential isn’t one that comes from below, but above as that is unilaterally shaped and given by God in Jesus Christ. I just didn’t want anybody thinking that I no longer see value in the normal biblical interpretive tools that often attend the exegesis of the text.

That said, those tools will be utilized in a way that is determined by the reality of the text, and thus the necessary paradoxes that come with the text’s res as that is revealed in the breath of Jesus Christ. This means, furthermore, that I will not engage Scripture in what TF Torrance identifies as the necessitarian logico-deductive schemata that Reformed and Lutheran orthodoxy approaches the text with; or we might say, in the Ramist/Agricolan mode that has shaped scholasticism Reformed and Lutheranism since the genesis of those movements. No, my approach to biblical interpretation will be principially and intensively regulated by the rule of faith, who I understand to be Jesus Christ (in contrast, but with some overlap with the Patristic regula fidei). My approach to Scripture, thus, is more of a con-versation I engage in through the koinonia I share with the triune God as that is mediated through my participation with Christ in and through his Spirit anointed humanity. But the literary and canonical critical tools are still utilizable within this sort of dialogical mode.

Not sure this really concretizes things much better than my original post. But since the reality of Holy Scripture is a subject there is going to be some serious relational and personalist resonances involved in the way that I approach Scripture; or maybe it would be better to say: in the way that Scripture and its reality approaches and confronts me as God’s living voice is proclaimed throughout every jot and tittle of its Christoformed and staurological disclosure. Maybe it would be even better to say that I read Scripture in a mode of prayerful doxology as that is pushed into me through participatio Christi.

Reading the Bible Through the ‘Chalcedonian Pattern’ is the Only Genuinely Christian Way

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Orthodox (little ‘o’) Christians of all ages have affirmed the Chalcedonian grammar about the two-natures/singular person Christology. The Chalcedonian council was a council convened in 451 AD in order to mitigate a variety of heretical christologies that had been plaguing the patrological church.[1] Ever since, the grammar produced has been the standard, the regula (rule) by which all other christological efforts are measured. The grammar has become so pervasive, that at least among the orthodox, all Christians operate with even a tacit understanding of it (although recent polls suggest that more than 30% of so-called evangelical Christians do not affirm the deity of Christ; which is why I keep qualifying with ‘orthodox’). As any good theology does, Chalcedon, and in this case, in a catholic way, offers a theological grammar that finds its correspondence in conceptions presupposed in the inner-logic of Holy Scripture. With this noted, here is the Creed of Chalcedon:

We, then, following the holy fathers, all with one consent teach men to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a rational soul and body; coessential with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the manhood; in all things like unto us, without sin; begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the Virgin Mary, the mother of God, according to the manhood; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one person and one subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ; as the prophets from the beginning have declared concerning Him, and the Lord Jesus Christ Himself has taught us, and the creed of the holy fathers has handed down to us.[2]

The point of rehearsing these things is to get us somewhere else, in a related way. I contend that since all orthodox Christians, in every place, operate with these conciliar categories—two natures/singular person—with reference to Jesus Christ, that it is this fortification, these grammatical loci, that fundamentally give hermeneutical shape to the way that even the most low-church evangelicals think Christ. As a subsequent implication then, this tacit Chalcedonian grammar, is, or should be the explicit way Christians interpret all of Scripture (both Old and New Testaments). More crudely put: since the conciliar Christ is fundamental to how orthodox Christians think Christ, and if Scripture is, at a first-order level, intensively and principially in reference to Christ, if Scripture is the sign (signum) to its greater and ontological reality (res), Jesus Christ, then all Christian exegesis of Holy Scripture will be and must be regulated by this sort of catholic (universal) Christological standard. That is to say, if Christians are going to think who Christ is through the Chalcedonian grammar, in an essential, but proximate way (vis-à-vis eschatological reality), eo ipso they will interpret Scripture through this rule insofar that Scripture refers to Jesus and the triune God as its inherent and life-breathing reality.

With the aforementioned noted, we now turn to Karl Barth; and in particular, with noted attention to an interpretive mechanism George Hunsinger has identified as a helpful key in regard to understanding the way Barth (and after Barth exegetes and theologians) constructively applied the Chalcedonian grammar, as a pattern towards his exegesis of Scripture whilst paying close attention to Scripture’s inner-theologic (which is what theological exegetes do). In the following Hunsinger describes the way this pattern looks when applied to various theological loci, as those are identified in the under-bubbling of Holy Scripture’s witness:

The coherentist mode of testing, as it emerged in the survey of rationalism, also plays a decisive role in Barth’s justification of his position on double agency. Directly and indirectly, therefore, it serves to justify his reliance on the conceptions of miracle and mystery in that position. On the exegetical or hermeneutical premise that the terms of the Chalcedonian pattern are rooted in the biblical testimony regarding how divine and human agency are related, the mode of doctrinal testing proceeds as follows. The Chalcedonian pattern is used to specify counterpositions that would be doctrinally incoherent (and also incoherent with scripture). “Without separation or division” means that no independent human autonomy can be posited in relation to God. “Without confusion or change” means that not divine determinism or monism can be posited in relation to humanity. Finally, “complete in deity and complete in humanity” means that no symmetrical relationship can be posited between divine and human actions (or better, none that is not asymmetrical). It also means that the two cannot be posited as ultimately identical. Taken together, these considerations mean that, if the foregoing conditions are to be met, no nonmiraculous and nonmysterious conception is possible. The charge of incoherence (as previously defined) thereby reveals itself to be abstract, in the sense that it does not adequately take all the necessary factors into account. It does not work inductively from the subject matter (as attested by scripture)–as the motif of particularism would prescribe. Instead, it starts from general considerations such as formal logic and applies them to certain isolated aspects of the more “concrete” position. At the same time, the charge may well have implicated itself, wittingly or unwittingly, in one of the rejected couterpositions.[3]

We see, in Hunsinger’s description, the way Barth used the revealedness of the miracle of God become human in Jesus Christ as the standard by which Christian exegetes ought to approach the many paradoxes that emerge from a world that is shaped, and given purpose (telos) by the reality of its confrontation by God in Christ. In other words, if what Chalcedon has attempted to describe (albeit through a series of ‘without’ negations) about the mysterium incarnatio (mystery of the incarnation), is indeed of an otherworldly origin, then the Christian engagement with Scripture, and all of reality, will take its hermeneutical cue and shape from this miracle; viz. it will not allow thisworldly conceptions of God, and thus Jesus Christ as the Theanthropos (Godman), to be determinative: 1) of how they think of a God-world relation, and 2) (as a subsequent) towards the way they interpret Scripture—insofar that Jesus Christ is Scripture’s centraldogma.

The point of highlighting the so-called Chalcedonian pattern is to note, at a first-order level, the way that orthodox Christians consciously or sub-consciously (as the case may be) approach their thinking of who Jesus Christ is. And then, at a second-order level, as that is determinative for the way Christians think Jesus, particularly as that finds concrete reference within the evangelical character of the triune life, of whom he is integral, and insofar that Jesus Christ is indeed the warp and woof of Holy Scripture, it is this miracle that ought to regulate, in a categorical way, the mode by which Christians interpret the Bible. Insofar that this Chalcedonian pattern is diminished, either through lack of intentional education, or merely by lack of education, per se, the Christian’s interpretation of Holy Scripture will be lacking; if not totally deleterious to the Christian’s soul and Kingdomed way of life.

A secondary point: many evangelical Christians operate with a sort of “cancel-culture” when it comes to church history and the history of interpretation. They often suffer from the myopia and fall-out that turn-to-the-subject modernity has projected into the soul of postmodern humanity. As such, they will, again, tacitly affirm, if they are ever confronted with it, that they believe Jesus is both fully God and fully human (so Chalcedon). But they won’t intentionally or self-consciously apply the emergent pattern this should evince for them, in regard to the regulative role that the miracle of the incarnation ought to play for them in their interpretation of Holy Writ. So, because they are willfully (and thus woefully) ignorant of the history of interpretation; because they are often intentionally devoid of the spirit of Church History (and her ideas); they will simply interpret Scripture from their own rationalizing about things, rather than from the miracle of the incarnation (particularly as that is given intelligible grammar by the Chalcedonian creed and its constructive engagement).

The fall-out is that many (most) modern evangelicals, particularly in North America, and the West in general, will piously affirm Jesus as the Godman, and yet proceed ignorantly blissfully as if this affirmation does not have the sort of pressure and force it ought to have on everything else following. In other words, they will and do read Scripture as if it is solely about them, and the Jesus they have constructed from their own desires and projections therefrom, instead of reading it, as the Chalcedonian pattern requires; as if Scripture is about how God freely chose to become human in Christ for them, for the world. In short: evangelical Christians, because the Chalcedonian pattern is not the pattern of their thinking as Christians, live in a world of dissonance and self-manufacture, rather than the miraculous world given shape by the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. Evangelical Christians of this order, as such, live in a rationalist, positivist, individualistic, empiricist world that is not given shape by the faith of Christ (pistis Christou); but instead it is given shape by the limit of their own short and self-sighted vision—albeit, all in the name of Jesus Christ.[4]

An Addendum: Click Here

 

[1] See the following description provided by Protestant Reformed Churches in America, “The Creed of Chalcedon, A.D. 451, is not mentioned by name in any of our three forms of unity, but the doctrine set forth in it is clearly embodied in Article 19 of our Confession of Faith. It constitutes an important part of our ecumenical heritage. The Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon settled the controversies concerning the person and natures of our Lord Jesus Christ and established confessionally the truths of the unity of the divine person and the union and distinction of the divine and human natures of Christ. It condemned especially the error of Nestorianism, which denied the unity of the divine person in Christ; the error of Apollinarianism, which denied the completeness of Christ’s human nature; and the error known as Eutychianism, which denied the duality and distinction of the divine and human natures of our Lord Jesus Christ. What was confessionally established at Chalcedon concerning the person and natures of Christ has continued to be the confession of the church catholic ever since that time.”

[2] Ibid.

[3] George Hunsinger, How To Read Karl Barth: The Shape of His Theology(New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 195-6 nook version. 

[4] I have hit on many themes in this post. It is not as coherent as I’d like, but it represents a first draft of a possible essay on such things.

A Riposte to Leighton Flowers and Dr. Brian With Reference to Their Video Response @ Me

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I think after this post I will quit engaging with Leighton Flowers and crew (but maybe not, that all depends). I just came across a video where he and his friend, Brian (a PhD in NT, not theology, clearly), respond to a critique post of mine directed at Flowers’ approach to interpreting Holy Scripture. Here is the blurb I quickly wrote up as I shared this video to my FB and Twitter feeds:

Leighton Flowers responds to a critique post of mine starting at 7:44 and running through 21:00. He and his friend just talk around what I was getting at. Ironically, they end up illustrating my critique of their approach by reverting to their sort of rationalist traditioned reading of Scripture. It is really strange to engage with folks who are not self-perceptive enough to see their own foibles, esp. when those are being pointed out to them. But then they deflect those back onto their critics (me) Lol. Flowers’ friend, a PhD in NT (not theology, clearly) calls my approach postmodern (very strange). But this is what you get when you engage with low church evangelicals who have no clue about the Christian Dogmatic tradition, and how that has taken form in the Church catholic. They dispense with catholicity in favor of re-inventing the wheel based on their own reconstruction (interpretation) of the Christian faith and Holy Scripture. But, again, this is what you get when you start with a turn-to-the-subject hyper individualism out of touch with the confessional nature of the Christian faith. And this is why I find folks like Flowers and his friend so dangerous to the Christian faith; they are the epitome of what has been dangerous to my own faith in the past. So, when I come across it I seek to alert others to its errors, and hope to provide a way forward that is more in tune with a reality contingent upon a source (Jesus Christ and the triune God) outside of themselves.

You can watch Leighton’s and Brian’s response to me here (it starts at 7:44 and runs approx. through the 21-minute mark). I want to expand a little more on their response to me; more than what I just shared in the aforementioned blurb.

Brian was really hung up on my language of all humanity being ENSLAVED to our interpretative traditions. But as Steve Holmes rightly underscores (Stephen R. Holmes, Listening to the Past: The Place of Tradition in Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2002), 6-8):

This is not something that can simply be swiped away, as Brian and Leighton attempt to do, unless of course the person is appealing to their people. Ironically, as I alluded to earlier, Brian and Leighton fall right into this point, even as they attempt to criticize my underscoring of it, by going back to “their tradition of biblical theology and soteriology.” This is ironic, indeed, because it is the very point of my criticism of them. The fact that they cannot see that, and then by not seeing it, appeal to their own particular traditioned way of reading Scripture should alert people to how imperceptive their educators are; viz. if they are looking to people like Leighton, and his friend Brian et al., as their teachers.

Further, Dr. Brian calls my approach, that is my approach to focusing on a Christ concentrated hermeneutic: Postmodern. He claims that I end up deconstructing all other traditions, and then presume that my own ‘christological’ approach is the only viable way forward. In a sense, this is true; but it isn’t just true for me, but for Leighton and Brian et al. I would imagine all sentient people have arrived at particular convictions and conclusions in regard to the way that they engage with reality in general, and the Christian reality (for Christians) in particular. There is nothing inherently “postmodern” about that. Indeed, and ironically, this is simply an attempt to “boogeyman” me into a straw-box that Leighton and his friend think they can easily dispense of once they have placed me therein. Unlike these fellas, I am not averse to labels, indeed, labeling is just as inherent to being human as traditioning is. In other words, labeling positions (you know like Leighton’s self-described provisionism) is a shorthand, precision way of engaging with a complex or basket of ideas as those are held within a sort of systematic frame of reference. But the point is here: my approach is not inherently postmodern, instead it works from a Christian confessional background that is grounded in the Christian Dogmatic tradition of the Church catholic.

But this is the point, which I also alluded to previously: Flowers and company, are situated in the Fundamentalist/Evangelical individualist tradition that starts, by way of theological or hermeneutical methodology, in an abstract rationality that is idiosyncratic and original to the individual knowers. This was my point of critique, which Leighton attempted to respond to, when he pushed back against my claim that his approach is: anthropocentric or as he calls it ‘from-below.” Both Leighton and Brian need to do more reading on problems associated with what has been called: solo Scriptura or nuda Scriptura. They both are proponents of this approach, and as such, they communicate this to the people looking up to them as faithful guides into the world of Holy Scripture and systematic theology.

Further, Flowers takes issue with me saying that he speaks from a ‘resurrected voice of Pelagius.’ He cannot stand this charge. But anyone familiar with what he teaches on so-called ‘total inability’ (or more commonly understood in the history: total depravity, and its noetic and moral implications) knows that he is in line, let’s say, rather than with Pelagius full-blown, with someone like John Cassian. Again, because of Leighton’s non-Dogmatic orientation, he cannot fathom where this charge comes from. He believes that he can simply assert away that this charge just is not true; while at the same time advocating for a position that correlates almost exactly with Pelagius’ in regard to the neutrality of the moral agency latent within a broken, but not completely “inable” orientation towards God. I’ve already spilled enough e-ink in other posts, in regard to Leighton’s inchoate Pelagianism, that I will not belabor that further here. He simply does not understand the broad contours and moods that makeup the landscape of ecclesial historical ideas vis-à-vis their ideational categorizations (i.e. the dreaded “labeling” again).

Finally (although I think I’ve missed some of their response to me), Leighton, in general, hides behind this idea that if someone is going to critique him, they need to provide concrete examples or he doesn’t know how to engage with the critique. I think the article he and his buddy are responding to, of mine, offers all kinds of concrete examples that he could respond to; but it, again, this would require that he is versed in the realm of Christian Dogmatics (which he discounts out of hand; for reasons already alluded to). I give plenty of examples, in regard to the way he interprets and approaches Scripture; in regard to the way he approaches history of ideas; in regard to the way that his approach to soteriology is not grounded in a dogmatic ordering of things. I don’t feel compelled to offer exact examples (although I have done that in some other posts in reference to Flowers) all the time, because I figure that anyone who reads something like an article on Flowers, is already aware of a whole stable of examples that Flowers hits upon, thematically, seemingly everyday in his vlogcasts.

Oh, one more thing: Brian (and Leighton) almost seemed dumbfounded by the idea that I said we should think our theologies, and exegetical conclusions, from Jesus. Brian, in particular, couldn’t fathom how that would be possible apart from Holy Scripture. But this, again, illustrates the absolute rationalist approach he (and Leighton), are ENSLAVED to. They don’t think of Scripture, as John Webster rightly does, as if it has an ontology. In other words, they cannot even imagine how we might think Scripture from within a Christian Dogmatic ordering of things (a taxis). As such, just like with soteriology, they think Scripture in terms of an abstraction that only has value insofar as they can mine its data, as if archeologists trying to make sense of an artifact, and construct an understanding of it that fits within the realm of what they have determined biblical theology to entail. But you see who is regulative in this sort of interpretive and value-enriching process, right? It isn’t contingent upon Scripture’s res (reality) being regulated by the catholic Jesus (think the ‘Chalcedonian pattern’ that has served regulative for most of Church history when it comes to interpreting Holy Writ cf. Jn 5.39). No, it is contingent, instead, upon some sort of abstract realm of positivism that abstract wits have the capacity to manage and manipulate, with greater or lesser outcomes, based upon the interpreter’s disposition, training, and aptitude to approach Scripture with a minimal amount of presuppositions and pre-understandings. Because Brain (and Leighton) seemingly are critically unaware of the history and development of modern bible reading practices, as those developed in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the naturalist bed those were consummated in, they simply cannot imagine what I mean when I refer to: thinking our theologies and exegetical conclusions from Jesus.

My point doesn’t pivot on a competition between Scripture and Jesus—this is the false dilemma and premise Brian critiques me from—but instead, it is grounded in the idea, as John Calvin, Karl Barth, TF Torrance, John Webster, and other luminaries propound, that Scripture is the signum (sign) that points beyond itself to its res (reality) who is the, Christ. In other words, Brian and Leighton fail, in regard to their doctrine of Scripture, and thus hermeneutics, because they essentalize Scripture to the point that it ends in their interpretation of it, instead of being understood as the instrument whereby Christians come to encounter the living God in the risen Christ. I see Scripture from an instrumentalist vantage point, as most  Christians have in history, versus, the Leightonian and Brianian approach, that absolutizes Scripture as an epistemological end in itself; and end that has no idea that there is a theological ontology that stands antecedent to Scripture’s reality as a created medium that serves the instrumental purpose of pointing beyond itself and its many interpreters. Essentially, Brian’s and Leighton’s response to me fails, on this front, because, for at least one reason, they have an inadequate doctrine (and no ontology) of Holy Scripture. This is why Brian (and Leighton) seem so perplexed by my point on ‘from Jesus.’

Again, I would caution folks who are looking to Leighton and company for a healthy theological education. They, in my view, have not done enough homework, particularly in the area of Christian ideas, and the development of Reformed theology in particular, to be of any service to the would-be learner. I know this sounds harsh: but it is my considered opinion after listening to Leighton for about a year and a half now. My reason for saying this about Leighton should be illustrated by the themes I touched upon throughout this post. If someone wants to marginalize the history of Christian ideas, the history of theological grammar, and displace that with their reconstruction of the Christian faith, without engagement with the conciliar faith of historic Christian reality, then you know you are in a hazardous harbor. That’s what I think we get with the ministry of Leighton Flowers. Is he a nice guy? Clearly. Does this necessarily make him a trustworthy guide into the realm of theological and biblical studies? Nein.

 

Evangelical Hermeneutics, Christological Patterns, and Scripture-All-By-Itselfism

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Evangelicals, for good measure, at least in sentiment, claim to be committed to Scripture alone (sola Scriptura). But in reality, the majority of evangelical Christians are really committed to Scripture all by itself (nuda Scriptura solo Scriptura). What most evangelicals think about Scripture all by itself, is just that: i.e. that they don’t have tradition aiding them in the way they interpret Scripture. So, they operate with this sort of naivete about what tradition is, and how its inescapable reach implicates even their “interpretation” of Scripture; i.e. it isn’t just the Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox who have “tradition.” But my question is why, why do evangelicals operate with this sort of theological naivete? The response to that question is multiplex, let me focus on just one angle into that via a suggestion.

I think evangelicals operate with the sort of interpretive naivete that they do, vis-à-vis the Bible, because they have never been “catechized” into the conciliar, and thus historic categories of the Christian reality. In other words, evangelicals, in the main (although per a recent poll, this is becoming less and less the case too), believe the Chalcedonian grammar that Jesus is both fully God and fully human in a singular person; and the Nicaean-Constantinopolitan grammar that God is one in three/three in one. But they only know this, if they do, tacitly. They don’t appreciate the serious hermeneutical gravitas that gave rise to such orthodoxizing grammars as that obtained in the patristic churches. As such, these grammars about who Christ is, and who God proper is, are, for them, accidental rather than essential realities of the Faith.

My contention is a simple, but I think a profound one: evangelicals, in the main, are not educated, in their early Christian formations with the sort of theological and christological categories that allow them to even begin thinking about scriptural interpretation in terms of a necessarily theological way. Surely, this development of Christianity has to do with the modern turn-to-the-subject/individual and the rise of individualism that engendered. Modern humans consider their personal con-sciences to be the terminus of all that is real and holy. Insofar as evangelicals are slavishly “modern” in this way, to think in terms of conciliar grammars or from within the communio sanctorum (communion of the saints), is rather anathema to them. As such, they only are able to think in terms of “me-and-my-Bible,” as their hermeneutical norm. Some might call this the rationalist way; I would.

Just some notations I thought I would make. Carry on.

Avoiding Traditionism On One Hand, and Biblicism On the Other

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In brief. There is a fine line, for the Protestant Christian, to navigating not falling into an absolute creedalism, and on the other hand, into an absolute naked biblicism (i.e. solo Scriptura, nuda Scriptura). This navigation is not necessarily charted by finding a so-called via media, but instead it is an attempt to simply recognize the authority of Scripture (e.g. Protestant Scripture Principle), and at the same time recognize that even that principle is a deeply dogmatic one that has developed from paying attention to the confessional and thus evangelical nature of the church catholic. My goal as a Protestant Christian is to live in and out of the confessional nature of the church and reality, while at the same time recognizing that I do not want to allow for a scholasticized commentary-tradition that ends up hybridizing Scripture’s meaning rather than magnifying it. But on the other side, we do indeed have a false notion of a naked biblicism wherein certain Christian traditions have erroneously run sloppily along with an undeveloped notion of what sola Scriptura actually entails, thus opting for a rationalist engagement of Scripture where the individualized interpreter is king or queen.

We want to be confessionally oriented Christians who understand that what that entails is that we are part of the broader communio sanctorum (communion of the saints). Often I will hear low-church evangelicals (which I am low-church myself) ridicule Christians who pay attention to the theologians, and what has come to be called theological exegesis. So, what these types of Christians are saying is this: don’t listen to the theologians, just listen to MY interpretation of Scripture instead; since my interpretation of Scripture is Scripture. Can it get anymore shallow or facile than this? But this attitude reigns supreme all throughout the land of North American evangelicalism. Many caught in this trap end up escaping this flame only to jump into the frying pan. In other words, many who escape this sort of naïveté end up in high-church confessionalism where Scripture ends up being read through the magisterium of said tradition’s confessions (I have the Westminster Confession of Faith in mind).

Evangelical Calvinists, like me, want to recognize the confessional, even conciliar nature of the Christian churchly reality, and at the same time allow the Scripture principle to operate with all of its minimalist due; in regard to the One it bears witness to. In other words, the Evangelical Calvinist alternative, along with many in the broad tradition of the historic church, is to simply operate with an analogy of faith wherein the faith of Christ is that faith. We want to operate with his personalising reality as the fundamentum of the Scripture’s meaning, thus avoiding the accretions of too many confessions built up, one on the other; on the other hand, we want to recognize that nobody can read Scripture as an island unto themselves. So, in my view, the best way to do this, as an Evangelical Calvinist, is to be a conciliar Christian; meaning that we allow the early theology proper and christological church councils to be regulative in the interpretive task of reading Scripture—insofar that those councils adequately provided an orthodox grammar for thinking the triune God and the Christ. And insofar that those councils weren’t developed enough, it is best to continue to constructively engage with them until we all attain to the unity of the faith that Christ is for us; and I am referring to the eschatological reality of all things.

Contra Good Ole’ Boy Hermeneutics in Response to Leighton Flowers: With Reference to John Webster and the Conciliar Age

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For some reason I continue to listen to this popular level voice, Leighton Flowers, as he attempts to critique and offer an alternative to classical Calvinism. I just listened to one of his newish videos (pertinent discussion starts in and around 28 minutes) where he interacts with a Calvinist friend of his. In this video he reveals his hermeneutical approach, which is pretty clear after you’ve listened to him for awhile. He sees the ecumenical church councils, for example, like Nicaea-Constantinople, Chalcedon, so on and so forth as ‘inspiring’ but not derivatively ‘authoritative,’ insofar as they aren’t scripture in themselves. In fact Flowers tells his friend that he sees the [Holy Spirit “inspired”] conversation he is having with his friend as potentially as ‘authoritative’ as these councils. So, as I have noted before, Flowers, in the name of sola Scriptura (but he is really solo Scriptura) has swallowed an Enlightenment rationalism ‘whole-hog,’ wherein he sees himself as the interpretive center in isolation from past doctors of the church. And yet, with this dissonance (that he doesn’t experience, as he should), he presumably affirms the definitive language of Trinitatis (Trinity), and the Christological grammar that developed in the conciliar age. For some reason he doesn’t have the capacity to make the connection between that grammar as fundamentum to everything he thinks about who God is in Christ, and how that implicates the way the Christian, historically and into the present, has interpreted Holy Scripture. He operates out of an anthropological ground like we might find in John Locke’s theory on tabula rasa.

In order to offer a correction, that Flowers himself will not take (he claims to be humble and teachable in a good ole’ boy sort of way, but he isn’t), let me offer up an excellent word on these things from theologian, par excellence, John Webster. You will note that what Webster says, following, stands in stark contraposition to what this chap, Flowers maintains. Here is how John Webster sums up his discussion on the relation of ‘The Word’ (Jesus) to biblical interpretation (hermeneutics). Webster has been arguing against the usual modes of hermeneutical consideration, as anthropology; and through a ressourcement of Barth, he is presenting a ‘way’ that provides for a thick dogmatically oriented mode of hermeneutical theory.

To sum up: because God in Jesus Christ speaks, because Jesus is God’s living Word, then the ‘hermeneutical situation’falls under the rule: ‘We do not know God against his will or behind his back, as it were, but in accordance with the way in which he has elected to disclose himself and communicate his truth’. Once this is grasped, then doctrines begin to do the work so frequently undertaken by anthropology or theories of historical consciousness in determining the nature of the hermeneutical situation, thereby making possible the ‘formed reference’ which is the basic mode of theological depiction.[1]

In other words, modern hermeneutical proposals that seek to propound a theory of biblical interpretation that aren’t first given shape by a direct encounter with the Word (Jesus), dogmatically, will always fail to encounter Jesus for who he actually is because the interpretive event is not dominated by him, but them. This hermeneutical error not only applies to Flowers, but many other so-called biblical exegetes who have swallowed the higher-critical mode of a naturalist biblical hermeneutic. As Barth underscored in his Göttingen Dogmatics, we can only rightly do biblical and Christian theology Deus dixit, after ‘God has spoken.’ This necessarily entails that we can only do theological exegesis of the biblical text from the grammar, or implicates of God’s life for us in the mysterium that is the Theanthropos, the Godman, Jesus Christ. This is the only genuine Christian way for reading Scripture; i.e. through the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. It is in this foundational and fertile ground wherein the Divine Meaning can be ascertained aright; “for no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (I Cor 3.11).

If the Christian is going to be part of what has been called the communio sanctorum (‘communion of the saints’); if they are going to live in the vibrancy of the Church catholic; they will realize they are not a ‘clean-slate,’ that they are not a hermeneutical island with ‘me-and-my-Bible’ in hand. They will repudiate anthropologies that suffer from turn-to-the-subject[ivism], as the rationalist mode (like the one Flowers operates with) suffers from, and instead will recognize that as they were ‘born from above,’ they were born into a holy communion that is grounded in the very triune life of God Himself. The Christian will recognize that we all interpret Scripture from a particular tradition, one way or the other; since tradition making is as inevitable as being a creature with extension into time and space, and all that entails. A misguided Christian might think they are able to read Scripture de nuda (nakedly), but what they will really be doing is reading Scripture from a naturalist tradition that has no Christian confessional grounding whatsoever. When the Christian attempts to operate this way with Scripture, they are bound to come to exegetical conclusions that reflect their deepest and most innate (natural) desires. In other words, because of anthropological, and thus epistemological definition, they will really only be able to read Scripture homo in se incurvatus (from an incurvature upon themselves); they will only be able to read Scripture, from this vantage point, out of  categories that have been constructed from self-projection (see Feuerbach for this critique)—the history of higher criticism and Jesus Quest illustrates how this trajectory concludes. No amount of good ole’ boy piety or piousness can overcome this sort of hermeneutical dilemma. Sorry Leighton.

[1] John Webster, “Hermeneutics in Modern Theology: Some Doctrinal Reflections,” Scottish Journal of Theology, 328.

 

If Peter Ramus is Your Homeboy When it Comes to Biblical Hermeneutics You Ought to Shudder: I’m Looking at You, Classical Calvinists

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Classical Calvinism, or Westminsterian Calvinism, or scholasticism Reformed, or Federal theology, so on and so forth has a particular way of exegeting Holy Scripture, and for me it is an absolute turn-off; it should be for you too. Have you ever heard of Peter Ramus? If you haven’t, you should look him up. His locus methodology was appropriated by Federal (Covenantal) theology, and used to abstract particular doctrinal topics (loci) from Scripture’s greater canonical whole, and then harmonize said topics through theological confessions like we find in the Westminster Confession of Faith. The problem with this approach, for my money, is that it propositionalizes teachings in Scripture that never intended to be read in the sort of haphazard or broken way that they are; that is relative to the canonical reading Scripture intended to be read from as that is ruled by the reality of Jesus Christ. Paul Hinlicky has this nice description of ‘Ramism’ as he contrasts its approach to Scripture, and how that is fleshed out in what he calls Protological Divine Simplicity (he uses James Dolezal as his example) versus what we find in a canonically oriented reading of Scripture (and he refers us to the post-liberal, George Lindbeck for that alternative—prior to this he refers to Brevard Childs, who I am a fan of, and was trained to read Scripture from in his canonical critical approach). So, Hinlicky:

The rule theory of Christian doctrine is above all credited in recent times to George Lindbeck’s seminal critique of propositionalism in theology, The Nature of Doctrine. Dolezal’s book is a textbook case, hermeneutically, for propositionalism in that the diverse testimonies of Scripture are ahistorically and uncritically torn from their context in God’s history with His people, principalized (i.e. turned into free-floating abstractions) and as such harmonized according to an agenda other than the revelation: “God consigned all to sin in order to have on all.” Lindbeck’s hermeneutical critique of propositionalism, however, does not amount to noncognitivism in theology; rather, it specifies the way in which cognitive claims regarding God are to be made—that is, in first order, directly Spirited discourse (“Be of good cheer, your sins are forgiven!” For “Jesus is Lord.” And Jesus is Lord because “God has highly exalted Him” who undertook your lot and bore your burden. And God exalted Jesus because God freely chose to surpass the wrath of His love by the mercy of His love).[1]

To help explicate what Ramism entails even further, let’s read along with Richard Muller as he describes the impact Peter Ramus had on the Post Reformed orthodox biblical hermeneutic:

In this era, the French and Dutch Reformed also developed, and did so under the pressure of intense persecution at the hands of Roman Catholics. In addition to the framing of the French Reformed faith by the Gallican Confession, the third quarter of the sixteenth century saw the development of a distinct French Reformed style that would be exported to other Reformed centres, notably to England, in the latter part of the century: specifically, the rhetorical and logical or dialectical models of Petrus Ramus (c. 1515-72), much debated in their time, had a vast impact on the structuring of Reformed theology in the early orthodox era. Ramus argued for the replacement of Aristotelian categories of predication with topics elicited from the materials of argument, at least in the organization and exposition of the major academic disciplines, including theology. This approach itself was not at all revolutionary: the use of a topical or place logic had been effectively advocated in the fifteenth century by Rudolf Agricola, and the Agricolan pattern had been developed by Melanchthon and, arguably, adopted by Calvin as well. Ramus’ importance stems instead from the pointedness of his advocacy of the topical method and, above all, from his connection of the topical model with a method of division of the topic into subtopics, all organized into the form of charts utilizing ‘French brackets’ as a visual tool.

The massive impact of this approach is seen in Reformed tracts, treatises, theological systems, and commentaries of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In brief, Ramus offered his age as an approach to organization and, indeed, architectonics, that proved eminently useful in the construction of well-argued systems of theology and in the production of clearly organized biblical commentaries. In the latter case, as evidenced in the works of Johannes Piscator (1546-1625) and Jean Diodati (1576-1649), the diagrams could be effectively conjoined with the rhetorical analysis of text. Ramus’ influence, however, must be fairly strictly limited to method: older scholarship has claimed an association between the advocacy of Ramist logic and non-predestinarian, a posteriori, salvation-historical and covenantal approach to theology. This claim, however, fails for lack of any solid historical documentation. There is, in the first place, a clear use of Ramist method by staunch predestinarians; in the second place, there is no ultimate separation in Reformed theology between covenantal and predestinarian thinking, and in the third place there is no clear association of Ramism with the foundations of Reformed covnenant thought.[2]

Muller helps us appreciate the sort of deep impact that Ramus had on the development of Post Reformed orthodox theology as it sought to exegete Holy Scripture. I mean, you know, if you’re into slicing and dicing Scripture up into bite-sized pieces without any real concern for its canonical whole as that finds its res (reality) in Jesus Christ; more power to ya! I’m just not a fan of reading Scripture this way. I really do prefer reading it as a contextual whole, and allowing its very composition and final canonical form, as that is regulated by its witness to Jesus Christ, to shape the way that I read and meditate on Holy Scripture.

Yes, I am being a little snarky, but that’s what Ramism does to me. I take my Bible reading rather seriously, so when I come across someone who has injected a methodology into its reading that abstracts its intended contextual flow to be broken down into pieces, per an a priori system of theological development, I find myself balking at such attenuations. I would say this is a fundamental flaw in the whole of classical Calvinist theology. If its biblical hermeneutic presents us with this sort of artificial apparatus for reading Scripture, and developing doctrine, just think of what it is doing to its whole theological presentation. I shudder at the thought of being submissive to such biblical gymnastics as we hope to develop the sacra doctrina of Holy Writ. Solo Christo

[1] Paul R. Hinlicky, Divine Simplicity: Christ the Crisis of Metaphysics (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2016), 202.

[2] Richard Muller, The Cambridge Companion To Reformation Theology, 136-37.

*I would have rather found a thug life picture of someone like Amandus Polanus or someone, but Edwards will have to do.

Confronting the Bible-All-By-Itself-Guys in the Churches: Theology as the Corrector

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Online interaction is what it is; we all know what it is by now. Christian social media is an interesting place, eh. Just recently I had a reminder (on Twitter) what it is like to run into a brother (apparently) who harbors some serious insecurities based upon his lack of knowledge (i.e. lack of study), and ego issues. In this particular instance I commented on someone else’s thread (I don’t even think I really “know” them), in regard to a question orbiting around a so-called ordo salutis. I challenged this person, a bit, because their position sounded rather semi-Pelagian. So, I poked back on what this Tweeter was asserting, and this guy, the one in question, didn’t understand what I had to say, per se; he just knew he didn’t like it. I attempted to offer a bit further explanation in regard to his push-back, and he really didn’t like my gist. He believed my response was too intelligentsia, to the point that I was outstripping what Scripture allows for. In other words, he believed that my responses were rubbish simply because I used concepts and language that he has no familiarity with; thus eo ipso I must be an arrogant priss who simply appeals to jargony language in order to ‘fudge’ my way around offering concrete and ‘biblical’ responses. And yet my responses represent a start towards very concrete answers; the problem: the person has to have some level of theological acumen in order to appreciate said responses. Since this fella doesn’t have this acumen (which is different from not having the smarts, per se), his come-back to me was that I must be an arrogant full-of-myself egg-head who has abandoned the simplicity of the Gospel long ago. This is what I want to address, briefly, in this post.

I tire of this sort of arrogance. I am referring to the arrogance of my interlocutor. His testosterone levels surely have gotten in the way of his ability to engage in any sort of meaningful way. He wanted me to operate in a mode he deemed acceptable, to think in a way commensurate with his lights rather than mine. He wasn’t interested in ‘learning’ anything, instead he simply wanted me to submit to his way of thinking; which appeared to be to denigrate thinking theologically. He wanted me to only speak from biblical categories, as if theological grammar and categories are non-correlative with thinking ‘biblically.’ He wanted me to adopt his solo Scriptura mode of thinking and speaking, when I repudiate that, and am only comfortable in thinking in terms of sola Scriptura. In other words, I understand Scripture to be an occasional volume, as far as its composition, which trades on theological assumptions that lie just underneath what it overtly expresses in its various types, genres, and forms. This means that in order to actually understand Scripture we must dig deep, toil even, and seek to understand how it can make claims about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit being distinct persons, but one and the same God. In order to understand Scripture we must ask how Scripture can speak of Jesus being fully human and fully God. And if we must dig into Scripture this way, in order to understand its primary subject matter, i.e. Jesus Christ (cf. Jn. 5.39) and the triune God He reveals, then this means that all of Scripture, if it’s going to be Holy, finds its orientation and meaning from this sort of deep theological leveling. Once we can accept this we have now joined the church catholic, and the communio sanctorum (‘communion of the saints’); we have come to the point of recognition that Scripture, as TF Torrance says, has a ‘depth dimension,’ that outwith understanding this the would-be biblical exegete will be hopelessly mired in attempting to make sense of Scripture without really understanding Scripture’s real ground and context in Jesus Christ.

My Twitter interlocutor has never, apparently, been introduced to the world of theological interpretation of Scripture (TIS), or theological exegesis. Thus for him, his reading of Scripture remains on mute; and he attempts to ostensibly order Scripture by his lights rather than the light of God in Jesus Christ. And so when he comes across someone like me he is confronted by, what to him must feel like an invasion by some alien life form who thinks it is superior to him. And so he almost immediately charged me with being arrogant because I did not fit into his expectation of what a serious Christian exegete ought to be. But then I ask myself: who is the one being arrogant here? I spent seven years of my life (and $60K) being formally trained on how to interpret Scripture, read the Bible in its original languages, learn how to think with the past (dead guys and gals), and learn the art of thinking constructively, along with the theologians, about who God is as revealed in Jesus Christ as attested to in Holy Scripture. But I’m the arrogant one because I have spent my time doing that homework, and my interlocutor hasn’t. None of this is about being ‘smarter’ than anyone else; it is simply about how God distributes various gifts within the body of Christ for its edification. The irony is, is that because there are so many egos out there in the church, particularly among men, that people like me, with all my training and praying, are cast aside as know it all theological geeks with no meaningful space for providing the church with anything of temporal and eternal value. I have had this experience over and again by pastors I have come into contact with, at the MANY churches we have attempted to be part of, once they realize I have some level of theological acumen. For some reason they believe my goal is to move in and take over their kingdom (which is a laughable concept — especially if you knew me in person — I’m actually a really nice non-threatening person, although I do have lots of passion for the Gospel).

Anyway, all I can say to all of this is: look at the state of the Free low-evangelical churches in America. This is the ecclesial context I grew up in, and where I have attempted to stay for all these years. Maybe if these types of churches allowed space for us theological-geek types to be more present for the discipling process, it might have a lot more depth and not produce so many atheists and Nones; it might not be so impotent, and quit capitulating to the culture as it does. I guess we will never really know. My interlocutor, at least his attitude, is a lost cause; insofar as his attitude is pervasive in the evangelical churches, they too are lost causes.

Confronting Leighton Flowers and Kevin Thompson on their ‘Humanless’ Reading of Holy Scripture

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If we read the Bible we all do it, we read it theologically. I was just listening to Leighton Flowers, and this time his friend, Kevin Thompson on their attempt to refute Calvinism. Now, I have no problem with critiquing classical Calvinism (and Arminianism), but it at least needs to be done responsibly; these two are irresponsible. That will be the topic of this post: a critique of the claim that a person can or does read the Bible without following “other people” in the process (this is the method of their supposed critique of Calvinism). That is what both Flowers and Thompson claim to being doing at this mark (approx the 50 min mark) in Flowers’ podcast. They want to reject being part of a movement, like Calvinism, Arminianism, Lutheranism, Evangelical Calvinism so on and so forth because they believe that absolutely identifying with a tradition or “label” shuts down rather than stimulate independent interpretation of Holy Scripture. They both ostensibly maintain that they don’t want to be known for following a ‘man’, like Calvin, or Arminius, or Luther, or whomever; that they simply want to be associated with following what the Bible teaches unabated—without being associated with any sort of tradition of man or the Church.

Some would discourage engaging with what most would consider to be a non-serious position, but I persist under such inanities; if only to alert the many people who follow folks like Flowers and Thompson—that they are under a ruse. It is ironic, wouldn’t you agree?, when people like Flowers and Thompson want to reject being the type of person associated with a label or an artificial paradigm created by men (as Thompson claimed), that they themselves are men who have now created a new paradigm (which really isn’t new, i.e. think Socianism), with a label (for Flowers it is, Provisionism) that simply ends up illustrating the inevitability of tradition making. Even their supposed ‘Scripture all by itselfism’ (solo Scriptura not to be confused with sola Scriptura) is a tradition embedded in the history of ecclesial ideas developed by men.

Not to mention that solo Scripturaism is in fact a bastardization of the Protestant Scripture Principle; in other words, to say that a person is solely committed to hearing from Scripture alone, as if that can be done in an ecclesial vacuum, illustrates just how naïve the person making such claims is. The Protestant Scripture Principle was developed by Christian men in the history of the Protestant church in contravention of the theory of authority pulsating through the veins of the Roman Pontificate. Even so, a right understanding of the Scripture Principle, or more pointedly, a theology of the Word, understands, as Calvin did (i.e. his concept of Scripture as spectacles), that Scripture itself is or should not be reduced into a paper version of the Roman chair; which might yield for us a Paper Pope, instead of a Pulsating Pope. Sola Scriptura in its best iteration understands that Scripture is a signum (sign), and it bears witness to or points beyond itself to its res (reality) in the triune life of God as that is mediated to humanity through the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. Solo Scriptura, in the dress of Flowers and Thompson, ends up, ironically, re-establishing a new mode of the papal posture by absolutizing the ‘independent’ Bible interpreter, and collapsing all authority into the binding of their goatskinned Book (and their interpretation of it). Don’t get me wrong, I take Scripture to be the Christian’s sole authority as well, but the way we understand Scripture’s ‘ontology’ (as John Webster identifies that), or ‘being’ vis-à-vis God, and its ‘instrumentality’ will relieve the pressure that Flowers and Thompson place onto Scripture in absolute and even rationalist ways. To maintain that Scripture is our sole authority, and then presume upon a theory of authority where independent interpreters of Scripture are the keyholders of that authority, by way of the accuracy of their interpretation, only makes a person maintaining this position highly hypocritical when they claim that they only follow the Bible and not men. Apparently these men are not men; or they somehow have achieved a Lockean tabula rasa wherein they come to Scripture with no preunderstandings, or less preundertandings than us other mere mortals, to the point that they can make the claim that they are only following Scripture and not men; as if they don’t interpret Scripture as men.

There is always more to say, but I had to at least speak to this silliness as it got under my skin earlier today. Before we go, let me share a nice index once offered by my friend, Oliver Crisp. This index provides a nice and articulate way for understanding what our friends, Flowers and Thompson, fail to grasp, in regard to the role and reality of tradition, creeds, and even theologoumena, as these categories find their orientation from Scripture and its reality, not against it.

    1. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. 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]

Flowers and Thompson would do well to take heed to what Crisp wisely outlines for us. The idea that we do not ‘follow men,’ when we interpret Scripture makes a laughing stock of empirical reality, and the inevitable reality of tradition-making (i.e. even denying that we make traditions becomes a new tradition; so the dialectic runs on), but more importantly, it mocks what the Apostle Paul himself taught us when he wrote this:

11 And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, 12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ,13 till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; 14 that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, 15 but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ— 16 from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love. –Ephesians 4:11-16

Apparently Calvin, Arminius, Luther et al. aren’t or weren’t teachers of the Church; but hey, we’re good to go because we have Flowers and Thompson around to give us non-men human teachings about what Scripture teaches. If you’re a follower of Flowers, Thompson, and others with their mindset, I would exhort you to reconsider putting yourself under people who are pointing away from Christ, and pointing to themselves as the proper gateway between rightly knowing Christ or not. While their teaching might come with a warm smile, a Texas drawl, or just one of the guys’ sentimentality, just know that what they are teaching is dangerous to your soul and will ultimately point you back to yourself, and to Flowers and Thompson, but not to the risen Christ. The underlying anthropology these folks have adopted has much to do with all of this, but that will be reserved for another post.

 

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