“It isn’t voluntary”: Our Parents, Our History

Posted on July 3, 2013 by Bobby Grow

One thing that really helped me in learning to be a more “critical” theological thinker was to be immersed into the world of historical theology, in particular Reformational and Patristic theology, in my seminary days. Prior to this kind of immersion I felt somewhat aloof, kind of wandering around in a theological smorgasbord wherein I as the informed (because I had earned, at that point, a BA degree with a double major in Bible and Theology and a minor in NT Greek) agent, and ‘Free’ thinking Free church member had all the regal resources of something like the Wesleyan Quadrilateral at my fingertips; I had a kind of relative omniscient capacity to philosophically, and in a suspended kind of disposition, analyze the theological and exegetical options, and by my own voluntary act insert myself into whatever theological trajectory or narrative that I so desired. Okay, I am overstating this a little. My point is to highlight the kind of voluntary nature of my position prior to being introduced to the problematization of that provided by gaining a historical and critical perspective of things.

What I realized as I began reading and studying the developments of the early Christian church (the Patristic era), is that things were so much more dynamic, so much less cut and dry than things seemed to me prior to this engagement. I began to realize that I was part of a continuous move of God in Christ in His church that wasn’t something that was voluntary, but something that was highly intentional and given ongoing eschatological force by the continuous in-breaking of God’s life upon His people; and that by my participation in this move of God in Christ, I had entered into something that was not of my own making, nor of my own decision. I had entered into something that was of God’s making, and of his work, and by entering into this work of His (in His church), I have become attached to a body of humanity that is not our own. In other words, for good or for ill, I have become part of a reality that transcends me, but decisively includes me, in personal ways, in this particular transcendence, in Christ. An implication of this is that in some ways I don’t have a say in what has come before (just as children don’t have a say in who their parents are); I don’t have a say in whether or not I like the fact that part of God’s movement in Christ in His people the church has included decisions, arguments, and subsequent development of grammar that has become known as the Tradition of the church or the Apostolic Doctrine. But for good or for ill, this is the reality; I can kick and scream against this reality, OR, I can engage in dialogue with this reality with hopes of building upon and growing through the nourishment available through this work of God in His church. This does not mean I cannot critically engage with my inheritance, as part of this great continuum and move of God in Christ, but it does mean that I have to recognize that I am not the Master (even if I have a Master’s degree), and I don’t get to say who my ‘parents’ are; they simply are.

I think the thrust of my points here are twofold: 1) We cannot just look over the past and history of the Church as one monolithic blob that has no real import for me today, we have to engage with this blob, and in so doing our own posture will be problematized sufficiently in such a way that we will realize that the past is our present, as we are in continuous dialogue with God through His people, both past and present; 2) More simply, we will gain a proper orientation toward our own and personal theological development, as we realize that the past often critiques our present held beliefs, and at the same time provides new critical and thus fruitful ground upon which to constructively build and engage with contemporary churchly concerns that have real life consequent for our fellowship one with the other.

Conversational [Dialogical] Theology: Being a Catholic Interpreter, with Advice for N.T. Wright

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Bobby Grow

If the Christian life is dialogical, or shaped by conversation with God and His people; which it is (I would argue). And if Jesus Christ, according to Paul, promised that He would build His Church up by providing it with teachers/elders, evangelists, et al (Eph. 4); which He did. And this promise has come to fruition through all of the centuries since Jesus ascended, and into the present; then how can we ignore the fact that the Christian faith, and its self-understanding is catholic (i.e. universal, and reaches across all periods of the Christian church)?

I have learned much through engagement with N.T. Wright, but one lacuna or gap in his thinking (intentionally so on his part), is his failure to properly or thickly appreciate my point in the paragraph above. His common quip is that the Medieval church (and the early Reformed one) ‘got the right answers, but asked the wrong questions’ in regard to understanding the nature and ontology of Christian salvation. And that this, then, has had a distorting affect upon the subsequent development of the Christian church, since. And so, by and large (other than a head-nod, when he is pressed), Wright waves his hand over this whole period (from at least the 14th century into much of the present time—and he even goes after the ecumenical councils and the Greek Church Fathers), and acts as if he (and in many ways, he alone) can recover Christian truth about salvation, in particular, that had heretofore been lost; as if the gates of hell had prevailed against the Church of Christ, until he (and some of his company) have recently come on scene. Surely this is problematic, and overwrought! I have learned much from Wright, but Jesus has capably and conceptually been forming His church without Wright and our current situation, just as He said He would, through the teachers He has provided His church with through the centuries.

Thomas Torrance offers a better perspective on how to think about the dialogical nature of Christian interpretation and conversation/fellowship with God and His people. You will notice that in what Torrance communicates, he does not denigrate historical studies (which is what N.T. Wright’s discipline is), but gives them their rightful place; but he expands this idea of historical studies out beyond Second Temple Judaism, and into the history of the Church and history of interpretation, as if Jesus really has been offering fresh encounters with His people over all of the centuries of the churches’ existence. Torrance writes:

(iii) It is the combination of historical and ecumenical studies that is particularly valuable. Historical studies are necessary for the understanding of our brethren from another historical tradition, and yet it is only by engaging in conversation with those who belong to a Church that has embodied another historical tradition that we can fully understand the history of the Church. This applies not only to the separated Churches of the Evangelical world, but to the relations between so-called “Evangelical” and so-called “Catholic” Churches, between East and West, and indeed between the people of the New Covenant and the people of Israel who persist in living only according to the Old Covenant. It is thus that theological activity is enabled as fully as possible to engage still in conversation with the fathers of the Old Testament, with the Greek and Latin fathers of the ancient and mediaeval Church, and with the fathers of the Reformation in all its branches. We have to take very seriously the requirement of God to appear before Him, and to engage in conversation with Him, not alone, but with the whole company of God’s people past and present. It is thus that it belongs to the very nature of theology to be essentially catholic, and it is enabled to be that by historical and ecumenical dialogue with the fathers and brethren alike. [Thomas F. Torrance, The School of Faith: The Catechisms of the Reformed Church, lxviii-lxix.]

It is clear how Torrance thinks about this then. And I think it is much more of a healthy and balanced alternative than the sense that N.T. Wright often portrays in his own thinking. Ironically, I would note, Wright does not actually move away from the classic redemptive-historical-soteriological mode of Reformed-covenantal exegesis; instead he simply reorients it, by re-shaping it, a bit, through his historical reconstructive work of Second Temple Judaism. So he hasn’t really asked new questions from the Reformers, he has simply come up with new answers, albeit largely in the same ecclesio-soterio/centric frame that many of the ‘Reformers’ were working through.

The difference that Torrance offers, from Wright, is that he grounds his dialogical approach to theology/hermeneutics in a doctrine of Christ/God; which has to be the hermenutical order we follow. We must follow a Christ-centered hermeneutic as the key to providing the proper frame through which the right questions can finally be asked. As Torrance also writes of the best of the Reformed tradition:

[…] It is in that light that the Reformation as a movement for theological reform is to be understood, that is, as a thoroughgoing criticism of all the received doctrines in the light of correspondence to the Gospel and coherence with the central doctrine of Christ, and a radical reforming and correcting of these doctrines by bringing them into obedient conformity to the doctrine of Christ. It was in that movement of faithfulness to Christ and His Gospel that Reformed theology came to understand both the nature of true theology and the nature of its systematic presentation through consistent obedience to the Truth as it is in Christ Jesus. [Thomas F. Torrance, “The School of Faith,” lix-lx.]

So it isn’t that Torrance, like Wright, is receiving medieval categories and thought forms uncritically; it is just that Torrance (unlike Wright) is critically ‘receiving’ the history of Christian thought by submitting it to the reality of Jesus Christ Himself. So the methodology is a principled Christological one, and one that is in constant flux as it is given fresh voice through conversation with God in Christ by the Spirit. We don’t need to toss the whole thing and start over (which is often the impression that comes across through Wright), but we need to be in submission to the Lordly voice of the Christian heritage and present, in a way that we operate, as Torrance would say, with ‘repentant’ thinking; Jesus’ voice, the voice of the living God, being that which regulates our reception of His voice given in the past through and to His people. So as in dialogue, healthy ones, this is an ongoing reality.

classical Calvinism juxtaposed with Affective Theology: Comparing and Contrasting William Perkins and Richard Sibbes

Posted on April 20, 2013 by Bobby Grow

*This is a repost that I am sure almost none of you have read. I am feeling pretty undermotivated to write blog posts at the moment, so this will have to suffice. I have added a caveat to this post in an addendum at the end of the post. Don’t worry I have fresh posts coming (I always do), but I would imagine that for most of you this will be quite fresh (meaning that this will be the first time you have ever read this post, so it might as well be a new post.

The following is a lengthy quote highlighting the differences between Federal [Classic] Calvinism and Free-Grace Calvinism [Affective Theology]. William Perkins represents the Federal “Vision” side, while Richard Sibbes the “Free-Grace” perspective. The quote is taken from Ron Frost’s unpublished PhD dissertation on Richard Sibbes and English Puritanism. He is providing conclusion to a discussion he had previously undertaken where he had articulated, in detail (with bibliographic support), the disparate “covenantal approaches” reflected by Perkins and Sibbes. The primary disjunction between the two is how they framed the Adam-motif (i.e. first and second Adam theology, see Rom. 5, etc.); and the different trajectories this placed their soteriological outlooks upon. Perkins forwarded the “Federal” model, which assumes continuity between the “law-keeping” of the first Adam and second Adam (i.e. think “Covenant of Works”); while Sibbes forwarded the “Marital Mystical” construct, which assumes some discontinuity between the “two Adams;” viz. while Christ truly represents us before the Father (juridical–i.e. forensic or legal), He also takes us as His spouse, which is presupposed by a real union with Him. The main difference, then, between Perkins and Sibbes, according to Frost, is that Perkins framed salvation purely as legal and “juridical”, which did not assume a “real union” with Christ; while Sibbes framed his view, not just as legal, but beyond that, as a Marriage framework, which is presupposed by a “real union” with Christ.

A Brief Glossary of Terms: **Privative Sin = the privation or absence of God’s righteousness [negative definition of sin] — **Positive Sin = Self love vs. God’s love.

Enough said on my part, lets hear from Frost:

Some final observations may be made about the positive and privative views of sin. The two approaches differ fundamentally on the reason for sin; while man is identified as responsible for sin in both views, he tends to be portrayed more as a pliable innocent overcome by the serpent’s deceit in the privative model. It is Adam presented as inadequate, not because he was unable to fulfill the law, but, because, in his mutability as a creature, he was vulnerable to moral change. This the serpent exploited while God was willfully away. In scholastic terms, the formal cause of sin was twofold, given the double causality associated with God’s sovereignty. God, as the primary agent for all things, determined the outcome by his withdrawal. In this he was arbitrary but just. The second agent, Adam, failed to apply the grace he had available and thus was culpable for his own fall, albeit as something of a victim. In both considerations the issue of grace is pivotal in its absence. For the privative model, as seen in both Thomistic and Reformed theology, this leads to a greater emphasis on the acquisition and application of grace in hypostatized or commodity-like terms, and a tendency toward Aristotelian moralism — the establishing of one’s righteousness through righteous actions based on grace. To the degree that grace becomes an impersonal quality, the greater the impression one has that something worthy of appreciation, if not merit, is being accomplished.

The doctrine of positive sin, on the other hand, rejects any tendency to see man as a victim; Adam is always the culprit in that he willfully replaced the Creator with the creature as the object of absolute devotion. It also recognizes human mutability as a fact which allows the fall, but rejects it as a meaningful explanation. The fall, in positive sin, remains an impenetrable mystery; Adam is not portrayed as deceived and God is not portrayed as withholding grace. In the positive model sin is always a competition: Adam seeks to usurp God’s role while God confounds Adam’s autonomy.

Thus, the most important difference between the two models is found in the way God is portrayed. In the privative view, as Aquinas and Perkins have it, he remains a supplier of grace — withholding what is needed for salvation except to the elect. He even remains parsimonious to the elect but, as their efforts prevail, is increasingly generous. In the positive view, on the other hand, he is an enemy until conversion which comes by the Spirit’s direct intervention. He invites the elect to see God as he really is: righteous, strong, and loving. Conversion, in fact, is a litmus for the two views: the privative model generally adopts a catechetical process which culminates in an affirmation of faith. The positive model, while recognizing that the Spirit uses prevenient stirrings, expects a more distinct Paul-light conversion which displays the moment in which selfish autonomy melts before God’s self disclosure. For the one, nature remains very much in view; for the other, God, once unveiled by grace, dominates the scene.

The importance of the affections for Sibbes and the nomists differed in profound ways. For Sibbes the affections were both the avenue by which sin entered the world and the avenue by which God, through the Spirit, restores the fallen soul. Slavery of the will was seen to be an enslavement by one’s own desires, something broken only by transforming vision of God as more desirable than anything human autonomy offers. Perkins and the nomists, on the other hand, saw the affections as a subordinate element of the will; they also provided a suitable theology for the prominent will by adopting the Thomist privation-enablement model of sin and grace.

Perkins and the nomists thus established human responsibility as the center-theme of salvation; the moral law became the locus of the soul in the process of sanctification. The belief that the covenant of grace is essentially a legal contract shaped all spirituality into a restorative stance: life is seen as an effort to regain and sustain Adam’s original obedience through the Spirit-enabled will. This generated a Christology which emphasized the juridical work of Christ to the point that, for pastoral ministry, the purpose of restored communion was easily reduced into the preaching of moralist endeavor.

Against this view, Sibbes, in line with Augustine, emphasized the place of Christ as much more than the source of justification, but primarily as one to be loved. The promise of the indwelling Spirit, whose ministry in Christ’s life is now allocated to the Christian, gives promise of a greater hope than the nomists offered: full and eternal intimacy of the Godhead through a true, although mystical, union with Christ. The feet of the soul are the affections and the affections are meant for communion with God. (Ron Frost, “Richard Sibbes’ Theology of Grace and the Division of English Reformed Theology,” [unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, 1996 University of London Kings College], 94-96)

I realize this was quite long, but if you made it to this point, great! I really appreciate Sibbes’ approach, and find it to be much more scriptural. Hopefully you noticed some of the discontinuity I alluded to earlier. For Sibbes in the second Adam (Christ), we go beyond what the first Adam had with God. For Sibbes, we are brought into the very life of God, through Christ; for Perkins we enter a quid pro quo contractual relationship with God . . . likened to the first Adam’s relationship with God (this is Covenant theologies’ Covenant of Works).

If you have any questions then please let me know, I will do my best to answer them. There are quite a few quotes I would like to share from Sibbes, provided by Frost which he used to support what his conclusion, above, summarizes so neatly–maybe another time. I wish I could just tell you to go buy Frost’s dissertation at Amazon, but unfortunately it was never published. Anyway I hope some of you find this helpful.

Addendum: I wrote this post before I was exposed to Thomas Torrance and the idea of the vicarious humanity of Christ, and a ‘Christ conditioned’ way. But this is an example of the kind of stuff that I will bring into conversation with the themes we have been articulating through evangelical Calvinism.

Addendum1: I really like what Sibbes has to offer (as mediated through my mentor Ron Frost). But here is the area that I plan on bringing into constructive conversation, in regard to the way Frost construes Sibbes’ Augusintianism; read:

[A]gainst this view, Sibbes, in line with Augustine, emphasized the place of Christ as much more than the source of justification, but primarily as one to be loved. The promise of the indwelling Spirit, whose ministry in Christ’s life is now allocated to the Christian, gives promise of a greater hope than the nomists offered: full and eternal intimacy of the Godhead through a true, although mystical, union with Christ. The feet of the soul are the affections and the affections are meant for communion with God.

It will be to simply bring together the person and work of Christ; instead of dualistically locating the ‘indwelling Spirit’ in elect individuals (as Sibbes does), I believe it ought to be located in Christ’s vicarious humanity for us (pro nobis). I think the Christological is the Soteriological, that Revelation is Reconciliation, and so I think Sibbes offers an excellent way forward, but that he needs a little help in being a little more radical and Christologically personalist by thinking from the humanity of Christ, and all of the beautiful bridal language and framing that is attendant (and rightly and biblically so) prior to thinking of the rest of us. I actually don’t think my proposal here will be that difficult to develop. Whereas Torrance was about personalising classical (Federal) theology, or as Leithart might say, ‘evangelising metaphysics’, I think it is even better if we follow the “classical” trajectory available from someone like Sibbes (and marriage mysticism), and do the same as Torrance was doing with Federal theology; that is, to ‘Christify’ it, or place the marital framework of Sibbes (Luther, Bernard, the Apostle Paul et al) into a dogmatically rich Christ conditioned frame.

So now you know further what I will be attempting to do.

The ‘thing’ Is Historical Theology

Posted on April 18, 2013 by Bobby Grow

You know the ‘thing’ in my last post, it is going to be a let down for you, I am sure! But it isn’t for me. The ‘thing’ that changed my life (other than Jesus, of course!), that I am referring to is Historical Theology. Until I entered seminary I had never really engaged with historical theology, except for working through some Church History (which is different). My exposure level, before seminary, from my Bible College undergrad experience was to Systematic Theology, which came from Millard Erickson; so my experience was rooted in Analytical-Evangelical-Systematic-Theology. But I had never really dealt with the history of ideas, or even much of the history of interpretation, when it comes to biblical exegesis. Seminary, and Dr. Ron Frost were the turning points for me. It was this exposure that opened me up to the wonderful reality that there is actually a development behind the Calvinist/Arminian debate; it was an exhilarating thing to understand that there was a richness to the Christian faith and heritage that before this exposure I never knew really existed. And so it was this turn in my life that literally changed everything for me (and this is no overstatement). I became open to the teachings of Thomas Torrance (and his Trinitarian theology, in particular) and Karl Barth because I first became a student of Historical Theology. I would never ever have been able to appreciate Torrance and/or Barth without first having the exposure that I did to the development and history of ideas that I did, through the discipline known as Historical Theology.

Some books that kicked all of this adventure into historical theology off for me were:

Steven Ozment’s : The Age of Reform, 1250-1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe (We used this book for the main text of my Reformation Theology class).

J. N. D. Kelly’s: Early Christian Doctrines (We used this for my Patristic Theology class).

Geoffrey Bromiley’s: Historical Theology: An Introduction

And these were just some starters into this wonderful world! I hope, if you haven’t, that you will expose yourself to the cultivation of doing Historical Theology in your own life. I have somewhat neglected it over the last couple of years (because I have been reading Torrance and Barth etc. so much, and other things were going on), but I fully intend on remedying this in the days to come. And so my blog ought to start to reflect this. To be sure I will still be reading and quoting TFT, and Uncle Barth (as Jason Goroncy refers to him); but I want to get back into the discipline of Historical Theology in a much more intentional way. To kick this off I am rereading Ron Frost’s doctoral dissertation on Richard Sibbes and English Puritanism (which deals with Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Bernard, et al.), and I also plan on publishing (here at the blog) a proposal that I mentioned on Facebook last night that involves bringing some of the themes that Frost has identified with those articulated by Torrance and Barth. So a bringing together of the Scottish Theology that Torrance has noted (and developed in his own theological project), with some of the shared impulses that were similarly being engaged from within English Puritanism (and from one side of that reality). It will be interesting, because what this is really going to be doing is placing Augustine and Athanasius into conversation with each other, and through some of their primary interpreters and readers. Stay tuned.

‘From’ Christ, not ‘For’ Christ: “Why don’t you have a category for obedience?”

Posted on February 21, 2013 by Bobby Grow

I have lots of people email (instead of comment) me about my various posts here at the blog. Recently I received an email from someone who wondered why I didn’t have a category (in my categories for the blog) designated as “obedience”? I haven’t emailed this person back yet, but I thought before I did that I would respond to this rather interesting observation here at the blog first (it seems fitting for me to do so).

To start with, I do have a category entitled “ethics,” which deals with issues and instances of concrete instantiations of Christian obedience (or disobedience); and then I do deal with Christian obedience in many posts, but they aren’t under a specific category of “obedience,” but instead those can be found under the category of “salvation” (and then a lengthy process of weeding through this posts will ultimately yield results that show I have dealt with questions that are oriented around Christian obedience). But I would like to answer this question with more particularity, and clarity on why my blog does not emphasize this category (as important as it is!). My blog does not emphasize this category (in the way my interlocutor is wondering, I presume) because the way I think of our relation to God in Christ, has Christ in the way; and I mean in the way of you and me (logically, theo-logically). Historically, and classically, Evangelicals (given their hybrided dependence upon Reformed/Covenant theology) have emphasized relation with God through a mode of emphasizing law-keeping conditioned by forensic categories of thought (just read an Evangelical systematic theology if you don’t believe me). And insofar that I have eschewed this classical mode, I have abandoned emphasizing law-keeping (code for ‘obedience’, usually) as the emphasis by which I understood relationship with God, and how I conceive of Christian holiness (or obedience as its subsequent expression). To provide an example of where the Evangelical heritage comes from, theologically, in this regard; let me quote Kim Riddlebarger (a contemporary advocate of Covenant Theology, and member of the White Horse Inn radio broadcast, along with Michael Horton), as he sketches the original and lasting relationship and way that he (and the classically Reformed) think of how God and man (God/world) relate to each other through the Covenant of Works (or Creation):

[A]s redemptive history unfolded, the first Adam—the biological and federal representative of all humanity—failed to do as God commanded under the terms of the covenant of works. The Lord God said to Adam, “You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die” (Gen. 2:17). This covenant of works or, as some Reformed writers speak of it, the “covenant of creation” lies at the heart of redemptive history. Under its terms God demanded perfect obedience of Adam, who would either obey the terms of the covenant and receive God’s blessing—eternal life in a glorified Eden—or fail to keep the covenant and bring its sanctions down upon himself and all humanity. Adam’s willful act of rebellion did, in fact, bring the curse of death on the entire human race. This covenant of works is never subsequently abrogated in the Scriptures, a point empirically verified when ever death strikes. This covenant also undergirds the biblical teaching that for any of Adam’s fall children to be saved, someone must fulfill all the terms of the covenant without a single infraction in thought, word, or deed (Matt. 5:48; 1 Peter 1:16). [Kim Riddlebarger, A Case for Amillennialism: Understanding The End Times, 47.]

Much could be said in critique of this conception of things (and I have already said much, just check my category “critiquing classical Calvinism”), but in order to not get side-tracked from the point of this post, let me stay particular to my intention. In predictable form (since Covenant theology has Creation preceding Covenant), Riddlebarger allows Creation to condition Covenant instead of seeing Covenant (God’s life of gracious love) conditioning Creation (one serious fall out of this theological ordering is that Jesus becomes conditioned by creation instead of conditioning creation himself as homoousion—I digress!). In other words, when Reformed thinkers like Riddlebarger, and his whole tradition, start theologizing and biblical exegeting they start where Riddlerbarger starts, with Law (or the Covenant of Works/Creation). And yet, as Ray Anderson has highlighted (along with others), what should be understood (first), is that God spoke and created (which is an act of grace as corollary with His overflowing life of Triune love). So what grounds any relation with God, first, is not Law-keeping, but the fact that God spoke (which is grace)! This might seem to be a subtle shift, but it is profound!

Following this shift of emphasis, what becomes primary is not my personal obedience (and Law-keeping), but God’s in Christ for us. As Thomas Torrance has written (as I just quoted this in a post below this one),

[…] Under the gracious impingement of Christ through the Spirit there is a glad spontaneity about the New Testament believer. He is not really concerned to ask questions about ethical practice. He acts before questions can be asked. He is caught up in the overwhelming love of Christ, and is concerned only about doing His will. There is no anxious concern about the past. It is Christ that died! There is no anxious striving toward an ideal. It is Christ that rose again! In Him all the Christian’s hopes are centred. His life is hid with Christ in God. In Him a new order of things has come into being, by which the old is set aside. Everything therefore is seen in Christ, in the light of the end, toward which the whole creation groaneth and travaileth waiting for redemption. The great act of salvation has already taken place in Christ, and has become an eternal indicative. [see full text here].

This does not mean that personal obedience is not important, but it frames it in a way that allows me to keep my eye on Christ instead of first looking at myself (and then reflexively looking at Christ: i.e. reflexive faith], as if I, myself, can somehow be abstracted out of the only true humanity which is Christ’s. So I “seek first His kingdom and righteousness, then all these other things will be added unto me” (and I only seek first, because He first loved (and sought) first that I might love Him, through Him by the Spirit). My relationship with God is not dependent upon my obedience, but Christ’s obedience for me (us); and so this ought to go along ways in illustrating why I don’t have a separate category (apart from Christology) for obedience in my sidebar. Thomas Torrance in his (posthumously published) book Atonement: The Person and Work of Christ really captures the import of this shift and way of framing things from God’s gracious Self directed life for us in contrast to the Legalistic emphasis that the classical Covenant of Works flows from:

(iii) The holiness of the church is its participation through the Spirit in Christ’s holiness

This holiness is actualised in the church through the communion of the Holy Spirit. He only is the Spirit of holiness, he only the Spirit of truth; and therefore it is only through his presence and power in the church that it partakes of the holiness of Jesus Christ. Since the holiness of the church is its participation through the Spirit in Christ’s act of self-consecration for the church, then that is the only holiness, the only hallowing of the church there is. That is the holiness which was actualised in the church when it was baptised with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and the union of the church with Christ was fulfilled from the side of the church as well as from the side of Christ.

The church is not holy because its members are holy or live virtuous lives, but because through his presence in the Holy Spirit Christ continues to hallow himself in the midst of the church, hallowing the church as his body and the body as his church. Thus the true holiness of the members is not different from this but a participation in it, a participation in the holiness of Christ the head of the church and in the holiness of the church as the body hallowed by Christ. Participation in this holiness however involves for the members of the church a life of holiness, just as it involves a life in Christ, of faith relying upon his faithfulness, of love that lives from the overflow his love, of truth that comes from the leading of the Spirit. Because the church is the body of Christ in which he dwells, the temple of the Holy Spirit in which God is present, its members live the very life of Christ through the Holy Spirit, partaking of and living out the holy life of God. Therefore personal holiness, and all the qualities of the divine life and love found in their lives, are the fruits of the Holy Spirit. [Thomas F. Torrance, Atonement, edited by Robert Walker, 386-87.]

There is a lot to comment on here as well, but I must limit myself. I will just say that it is this reversal of things (i.e. placing the Covenant of Grace [God’s life Pre-destined]) from Law to Grace that explains why I don’t have a category explicitly labeled “obedience”. It isn’t because I don’t think Christian obedience is important, it is because I think the gr0und of this emphasis is roundly rooted in Jesus Christ for us (and thus I have a category for Christology instead). It isn’t that I don’t think personal obedience or holiness are important, I do! Instead, it is because I am persuaded that focusing on Christ and God’s Triune life of gracious love, and participating in that from the Spirit’s unioning activity will produce obedience and the life of Christ through the members of our bodies as they are constantly given over to the death of Christ that His life might be made manifest through the mortal members of our body. We obey, only because Jesus obeyed for us first. We don’t obey to ensure that we are one of the elect that God purchased from the mass of “perdituous” humanity; we obey because God loved us first that we might love Him back through the mediating and priestly Spirit anointed humanity of Jesus Christ. It is only through this framing of things that I feel I can live out this exhortation from St. Paul:

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. ~Galatians 5:1

Without the freedom of God for us in Christ I live under a burdenouss yoke that really ends up being hell; which, I am pretty sure this is what Jesus came to save us from (ourselves), and for Himself (and His shared life in the Monarchia or God-head). So obey, but only from Christ by the Spirit, not for Christ so you can find God’s approval.

A Boring Post: Are Evangelical Calvinists more ‘Scholastic’ than the Scholastics of Today?

Posted on February 14, 2013 by Bobby Grow

This post will probably be a little boring for most; but hey, I’m boring (I guess you’ll have to read it to find out).

Jon Hoglund (a PhD student at Wheaton College) recently wrote a review of Richard Muller’s newly released book Calvin and the Reformed Tradition: On the Work of Christ and the Order of Salvation (which now I must read). If you have read me for more than a few years, you will quickly recognize Muller’s name; I have engaged with him quite frequently in the past—here is the Muller category (from my blog) to prove it, and this post (Let Historians be Historians, & Theologians be Theologians) in particular anticipates the gist of this current post (which illustrates that I have been thinking about this error of Muller and others for awhile). Also in line with all of this; I used to engage with R. Scott Clark (a faculty member at Westminster Theological Seminary california), when he had his blog (before the elders of his church apparently made him take it down—at least that’s what I heard happen). I used to challenge Clark on the grounds that I will be speaking of in this current post; that is, that simply reconstructing the history of the Reformed period (i.e. doing genetic and genealogical work in the area of history of ideas and Reformed theology in particular) does not materially undercut contemporary theologies of retrieval that seek to constructively appropriate various themes, motifs, and foci presented by said period of theological development.

Getting back to Hoglund’s review of Muller’s book; what really makes it interesting, is that he actually references me and Myk and our book (and the ‘mood’ that Myk and I, and the authors who make up our edited work are advocating for), and Evangelical Calvinism (in a somewhat derisive way (I say this because as you will read there seems to be a negative underlying presupposition behind Hoglund’s rhetoric implying that we haven’t actually engaged Calvin or the Reformed tradition on its own material and even formal grounds), relative, again, to this notion that because Muller has written a work of history that anyone who appeals to Calvin must only appeal to Calvin’s theology through Muller’s authoritative reconstruction of him … i.e. story over, Hoglund and others think). Here is what Hoglund wrote:

The great contribution of this book [Muller’s] is to refocus study of Reformed orthodoxy on the exegesis from which dogmatic formulations sprung. Muller’s use of example expostions [sic] of biblical texts presents a fruitful approach to understanding these early modern theologians. Muller’s reading of the early Reformed presents a direct challenge to contemporary movements like Evangelical Calvinism that appeal to a particular narrative of Calvin and Reformed orthodoxy in order to explain their own position. Anyone who makes claim to the 16th century Reformed traditon [sic] for a doctrine of salvation needs to be familiar with this book.

Myk registered a great comment in response to Hoglund’s review, and critique of us (and also in defense, somewhat, of both Charles Partee and Julie Canlis, who Muller apparently goes after as Calvin scholars who don’t really “get” Calvin [not like Muller & co. do]—both Partee and Canlis are contributors to our book!); and then I followed suit. Myk threw it down in his comment (which was very nice to see!), and challenged Muller & co. the way Muller and family ought to be challenged; that is, if you want actually challenge Evangelical Calvinism, and people who Myk and I would associate with that; then you are going to have to do more than historical work. You see, Myk and I are more concerned with CONSTRUCTIVELY retrieving and engaging with the Reformed voices of the past (inclusive of Calvin, Barth, Torrance, and many others), THEOLOGICALLY. As I noted above, it won’t do to simply do historical work (like Muller, Clark, et al), and then believe that you have undercut or engaged with the material proposals we are putting forward, working from within the Reformed mood as we are.

Ironically, I have just picked up a book I have engaged previously; it is entitled Scholasticism Reformed: Essays in Honor of Willem J. van Asselt (of which Muller and Carl Trueman are contributors—of course!). I was just reading the first chapter this morning written by Martijn Bac and Theo Pleizier, entitled Teaching Reformed Scholasticism In The Contemporary Classroom (exciting stuff, eh). I say ironically, because as they outline how scholasticism should be taught today in theological classrooms, they develop how scholastics of the past retrieved authoritative voices for their own material and theological purposes. They highlight, interestingly, that the scholastic mode of retrieval is very much so like ours (as far as methodology, not conceptually, ultimately) (and not like Mullers, Trueman’s, Clark’s et al). That the concern, more than simply reconstructing the history of ideas and theological development; was to engage the concepts of said voices by appropriating themes and motifs that fit their broader concerns to forward the cause of theological truth. In other words, the greater concern was to organically move within the trajectory and mood set out by the past in order to constructively engage the present and future by developing the ideas of these past voices by placing them within the burgeoning and developing movement of Reformed theology (hey, that’s what we are about “Essays Resourcing the Continuing Reformation of the Church” semper reformanda). Here is what they wrote in regard to the scholastic method, and what was called ‘reverential exposition’:

[R]eformed theologians did not read their sources of Scripture and tradition in a historical sense, i.e., as part of an ongoing tradition, but rather as ‘authorities’ of truth. Until the breakdown of scholasticism and the historical revolution, sources were not quoted in a historical way, be they the Bible, Aristotle, Augustine, or Thomas Aquinas. A quotation did not indicate a correct historical understanding of what its original author had meant, but was read systematically as bearer of truth. From this it follows that contradictions among authorities were solved logically rather than hermeneutically. (p. 39)

I find it highly ironic that people like Muller (Hoglund), and others, would critique Myk, myself, and Evangelical Calvinism (and others who could be so associated) for imbibing the ‘spirit’ of even the post-Reformed orthodox faith (methodologically) more than their apparent heirs (Muller & co.). Although, I would not go as far as to say that we are not sensitive to the importance of getting history right; but we are even more concerned with the ‘truth’ and ideas that were presented by various voices of the past (esp. Calvin’s). If there are themes and motifs present in Calvin (like his union with Christ theology) that are open for further development; then what is wrong with seeking to develop that motif in a way that situates it within a continuing development of this theme from within a Reformed trajectory?

Here is one more example of how these authors, Bac and Pleizier, develop this idea of reverent exposition:

[T]herefore, these texts had to be explained with reverence (exponere reverenter), that is, not in historical conformity with a tradition or with the author’s expressed intention but in conformity with truth, i.e., reverently denoted in correspondence with established theological and philosophical truth. This method of reverent exposition involved a hermeneutical procedure that went back to the patristic period. To be sure, there was room for some exegesis but, as de Rijk has noted, the scholastics used the hermeneutical norm of objective truth (of the debated subjects: veritas rerum) in addition to a kind of philological exegesis employing semantic criteria for interpretation. This resulted in an incorporation of the authoritative text into one’s own conceptual framework. [Scholasticism Reformed, p. 40]

So the scholastic methodology was not about repristinating and absolutizing a period as the norming norm, but it felt the freedom to fluidly engage with the past in a way that had relevance for the present; and in a way that organically built from the trajectory provided for in the past. Or, as Barth would argue (in his ‘The Theology of the Reformed Confessions’) to operate within the ‘spirit’ of the Reformed faith (subordinate to Scripture and thus always reforming), and not the ‘letter’, which is to appeal to a sort of repristinated procrustean bed of perceived static truth that can simply be inherited but not developed in any kind of new or meaningful way.

In summary, I would simply want to suggest that Evangelical Calvinism is actually imbibing the spirit of the Reformed faith even more so than those who are most visibly associated with the Reformed faith today (Muller & co., and others). And our mode is to primarily engage the past (Calvin and the crew) constructively with the goal of engaging the truth which transcends (but does not elide) the historical situadedness of particular people, simpliciter); but at the same time, doing so in a way that is seeking dialogical engagement with the past in order to provoke the present with themes that most magnify the name of Jesus. If Muller and company want to critique Evangelical Calvinism (and those of like mind), then they will need to be truly scholastic in form, and not just historians.

What is ‘Full Preterism’, and Why It is Unacceptable For Me and Most of the Christian Church

Posted on January 29, 2013 by Bobby Grow

Here is a post I wrote when I first started blogging; my own views have changed quite dramatically from when I originally wrote this post (I was a Pre-Tribulational Progressive Dispensationalist when I wrote this). But I thought it apropos given my last post on this similar topic, and since one of my interlocutors appears to be a Full Preterist (unfortunately!). This post is short, as originally written, but is intended to briefly sketch the difference between a Full Preterist (which I still consider heretical because it denies the bodily resurrection), and Partial Preterism. Here is the reposting, and I think I will follow it up with a few more words:

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Briefly, I will provide a quick survey of Preterism (latin=praeter, meaning beyond or past), and its inherent hermeneutical/theological problem. There are two camps within this particular belief system, either full preterist or partial preterist.

A “full preterist” believes, in relationship to the second coming of Christ that in fact it has already happened. They believe that Christ already came, when Rome destroyed Jerusalem in 70 A.D. They see this judgment, as the fulfillment of the resurrection prophesied by Jesus. Note Kim Riddlebarger’s analysis here:

“. . . full preterists teach that the resurrection—which, they say, is not bodily but spiritual—has already occurred. To teach, as full preterists do, that Christ has already returned and that the resurrection occurred in A.D. 70 at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem is heresy, according to the apostle Paul.” (see Kim Riddlebarger, A Case For Amillennialism: Understanding The End Times, 239)

As noted above, the full preterist position is heretical because it undercuts the blatant scriptural teaching that the general resurrection will be bodily not spiritual (cf. II Tim. 2:17-18). But there is a variant teaching, that does not cross the threshold of heresy, it is an adaptation of “full preterism” known as “partial preterism.”

Partial preterism, contrarily, does not believe that the “resurrection” or second coming happened at 70 A.D.; although they do believe that Christ did “judge” Jerusalem at the 70 A.D. date. They believe that this judgment signified the end of the “Jewish Age”, and concurrently inaugurated the “age to come.” Note Riddlebarger:

“Partial preterists, however, do not believe that the second coming and the resurrection occurred in A.D. 70, although they do believe Jesus did come back in judgment on Israel (a parousia), to bring about the end of the Jewish age (this age) and to usher in the age to come. According to many partial preterists, this view resolves the tension found throughout the New Testament between those texts which teach that Jesus and his apostles expected our Lord to return within the lifetimes of the apostles then living and again at the end of time when Jesus will return to judge the world, raise the dead, and make all things new.” (see Kim Riddlebarger, A Case For Amillennialism: Understanding The End Times, 239-40)

The interpretive problem this poses is one of positing a position that presupposes two returns of Christ (one local and one universal). The scriptures nowhere teach a local/universal two time return of Christ—only one return (cf. Acts 1:10-11; Heb. 9:27-28). The preterist position (full or partial) is an untenable position to forward, at least in its relationship to the clearer teaching of scripture (analogia fidei).

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As you can see at the end, I critique partial preterism as well, and I did so from my Dispy Premillennial perspective. I am willing to concede that there are some partial preterist elements going on especially as noted in the Olivet Discourse (cf. Mt. 24), and aspects of the book of Revelation (but I’d rather label what I hold as historist in a denotative way, and not in the connotative way that developed among the Calvinian Reformed and Lutherans who saw Roman Catholicism and the papacy as fulfilling the role of the Beast and the anti-Christ; I see the Roman Empire, in the context and historical situation of the book and theology of Revelation, as typifying the ‘kind’ of Beastly power that is characteristic of ages and peoples who are opposed to the purposes of God … I think even literarily this correlates well with a motif and theology of Babylon throughout scripture’s usage).

As far as Full Preterism, as I said, quite strongly, I see it as a full orbed heresy; why? Because it, by definition denies the bodily resurrection of all believers from all ages. According to scripture this transformation (Phil. 3.20-21) will happen when the last trumpet sounds, the dead in Christ will rise first, prior to those living at the time of Christ’s second coming (I Thess. 4 etc.); all of which will happen in a twinkling of an eye (I Cor. 15.) It contradicts the clear teaching of scripture and the angelical declaration that Christ will return in like manner; in like manner to his ascension, which was bodily. Acts 1.9-11 says,

⁹After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. ¹⁰They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. ¹¹“Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”

This requires no argument, it is straightforward; Jesus will return just as he left, bodily, and visibly; not secretly or platonically spiritually. There are theological points associated with this, especially by the book of Revelation; but those points aren’t necessary to undercut the aberrant teaching that Jesus will not return bodily (of course how ‘bodily’ is understood for some varies; some hold to the ubiquity of Christ’s body, for example, but even this view must account for the particularity of Christ’s body as understood in context found in Acts 1) and a second time (as the epistle to the Hebrews also refers to more than once).

I will have to discuss some of the theological reasons I see associated with the second coming at a later date (like the relation between justification/sanctification and glorification). I will also, in the future, like to address the theology of ascension from a Reformed perspective in the near future; these are underdeveloped themes in Christian thought, and I think Reformed theology has some hefty resource to tap into in this regard.

Reading Matthew Levering on Predestination, and Habets and Grow on the Same

Posted on November 26, 2012 by Bobby Grow

I just picked up a new book to read, and I am very excited to read it! It is by Matthew Levering, and is on the doctrine of Predestination. Here’s the biblio:

Matthew Levering, Predestination: Biblical and Theological Paths, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

I have just finished the Introduction chapter, and it makes me want to read it even more! Here is what the summary of the book communicates on the back jacket:

Predestination has been the subject of perennial controversy among Christians, although in recent years theologians have shied away from it as a divisive and unedifying topic. In this book Matthew Levering argues that Christian theological reflection needs to continue to return to the topic of predestination, for two reasons. Firstly, predestination doctrine is taught in the New Testament. Reflecting the importance of the topic in many strands of Second Temple Judaism, the New Testament authors teach predestination in a manner that explains why Christian theologians continually recur to this topic. Secondly, the doctrine of predestination provides a way for Christian theologians to reflect upon two fundamental affirmations of biblical revelation. The first is God’s love, without any deficiency or crimp, for each and every rational creature; the second is that God from eternity brings about the purpose for which he created us, and that he permits some rational creatures freely and permanently to rebel against his love. When theologians reflect on these two key biblical affirmations, they generally try to unite them in a logical synthesis. Instead, Levering argues, it is necessary to allow for the truth of each side of the mystery, without trying to blend the two affirmations into one.

Levering pairs his discussion of Scripture with ecumenically oriented discussion of the doctrine of predestination through the ages using the writings of Origen, Augustine, Boethius, John of Damascus, Eriugena, Aquinas, Ockham, Catherine of Siena, Calvin, Molina, Francis de Sales, Leibniz, Bulgakov, Barth, Maritain, and Balthasar. He concludes with a constructive chapter regarding the future of the doctrine.

Sounds great, right?! Before I even finish reading this book, I am going to recommend it to you 🙂 . Alongside this one, you ought to also read Suzanne McDonald’s excellent book: Re-Imaging Election: Divine Election as Representing God to Others & Others to God.

These issues, Predestination and Election continue to represent perennial discussion that seems to never go away; and seems to cause confusion and appeal to mystery like no other doctrine[s]. As Levering notes in his Introduction John Milton depicts this kind of discussion as one that shapes the demonic; note: […] in Paradise Lost, John Milton depicts the demons in hell as conversing ‘of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, / Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute, / And found no end, in wandering mazes lost.’ (Levering, p. 1)

Myk and I don’t take such an negative view of this doctrinal reality; here is what we wrote in our edited book, and in our last chapter which we co-wrote wherein we present 15 theological Theses that we hold. This Thesis, obviously, is the one that seeks to capture what Myk and I think about this doctrine[s]:

Thesis Five. Election is christologically conditioned.

This follows on as a corollary from the thesis above. Christ’s work is perfect and requires no supplement, such as the faith of an individual. In forms of Classical Calvinism the subjective elements of salvation have tended to dominate its theology so that an experimental predestination (syllogismus practicus) developed and faith was separated from assurance in an unhealthy manner as Christ was separated from his work. The resultant crises of faith and assurance threw believers back onto themselves and their own works for assurance, rather than onto Christ our perfect mediator and redeemer. Christ has been sanctified, and in his sanctification he has sanctified the elect in him. Believers find their subjective sanctification in Christ’s objective work, and not the other way round. This reflects the duplex gratiaCalvin made so much about and yet contemporary Reformed theology has tended to separate—through union with Christ flows the twin benefits of justification and sanctification.25

Thomas F. Torrance is instructive as he comments on Scottish Calvinist, John Craig’s approach to articulating what a christologically conditioned doctrine of election looks like; with a carnal and spiritual union providing its orientation:

Craig regarded election as bound up more with adoption into Christ, with union with him, and with the communion of the Spirit, than with an eternal decree. The union of people with Christ exists only within the communion of the redeemed and in the union they conjointly have with Christ the Head of the Church. . . . Union with Christ and faith are correlative, for it is through faith that we enter into union with Christ, and yet it is upon this corporate union with Christ that faith and our participation in the saving benefits or “graces” of Christ rest. John Craig held that there was a twofold union which he spoke of as a “carnal union” and a “spiritual union.” By “carnal union” he referred to Christ’s union with us and our union with Christ which took place in his birth of the Spirit and in his human life through which took place in his birth of the Spirit and in his human life through which he sanctifies us. The foundation of our union with Christ, then, is that which Christ has made with us when in his Incarnation he became bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh; but through the mighty power of the Spirit all who have faith in Christ are made flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone. It is only through this union, through ingrafting into Christ by faith and through communion with him in his Body and Blood, that we may share in all Christ’s benefits—outside of this union and communion there is no salvation, for Christ himself is the ground of salvation. . . . 26 27

Thus election is grounded in a personal union with Christ through his “carnal union” with humanity in the Incarnation, and our “spiritual union” with him through his vicarious faith for us by the Holy Spirit. Christ, in this framework, is known to be the one who elects our humanity for himself; by so doing he takes our reprobation, wherein the “Great Exchange” inheres: “by his poverty we are made rich.”

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24. Historical antecedents to such an approach in which a doctrine of God correctly shaped their doctrines of Christology and soteriology would include, amongst others, Richard St. Victor and John Duns Scotus. For both, Theology Proper was robustly Trinitarian, thus relational, personal, and pastoral.

25. See further in Johnson, chapter 9.

26. Torrance, Scottish Theology, 52–53.

27. See further in Habets, chapter 7.

-Taken from our book, Evangelical Calvinism, pp. 432-33

As you can see we are articulating our view of election, but this entails how we think of predestination as Christologically conditioned as well. For more depth you would need to read Myk’s personal chapter 7 on his Christologically Conditioned view of Election. We also hold to a Christological conditioned understanding of Supralapsarianism, which is our Thesis number 8. If I had more time I would share that one too, since it overlaps with this whole discussion (maybe another time).

As you can see from what I have shared, Myk and I follow some Scottish lines, some Barthian lines, some Torrancian lines, and hopefully some biblical lines. Our view follows from our commitment to a Depth Dimension hermeneutic which sees Christ, in principled ways, as the touchstone for exegeting all of Scripture’s depth and breadth. Having published a particular perspective on this, as Myk and I have, I look forward to being challenged by Levering in reading his conclusions, and how he gets there. What he writes might very well add depth and layers of nuance to my own perspective, and might even morph mine to one degree or another; one never knows—which is the exciting thing about studying such things, and growing in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ in this way.

Good Works, The Work of the Great Deceiver

Posted on November 25, 2012 by Bobby Grow

I am starting to become less and less convinced that Christians, at least in America, actually struggle with things like I am about to highlight in this post. It seems as if a folkism has overtaken American Evangelicalism in a way that pragmatism and utilitarianism rues the day, and principle and doctrinal concerns no longer, for some reason are important—I am somewhat rabbit trailing from where I want to take this post. I hit on this because I think that what this post is going to talk about might be down on the pole of significance for many of us; in fact I think that American Evangelicalism, in general, has so imbibed our feel good pop culture that the concept of ‘good works’ and right standing before God really have no functional meaning for people’s daily lives and spirituality. We are so busy with everyday concerns, trying to make ends meet, watching TV, and entertaining ourselves to death; that serious reflection about doctrinal concerns—like the relation between good works and saved by faith alone—really have no place of import in our lives.

Nevertheless, for those who might be the exception to my sketch above, this post might mean something to you. As you might have already picked up, I want to bring up the issue of ‘good works’ in the Christian’s life. And in particular, I want to get more insight into what Martin Luther, the Reformer thought, who is primarily known for emphasizing sola fide, ‘faith alone’. Maybe though, maybe I am wrong about what I was getting at in my first paragraph above; maybe in fact good works for Christians are alive and well, maybe good works (whatever those are) are what provides salvation, psychologically, for so many of us. Maybe when we do good things we feel good before God (coram Deo), and maybe when we do bad things we feel guilty before God; so maybe that’s why we try to comfort ourselves by the good that we do, and brushing the bad under the good in a way that makes us feel ‘justified’ before God (and of course we attribute the good to the power of God in our lives, and thus we even feel more justified when we see our good works; in fact we start to look at our good works as the basis for our assurance of salvation). According to John Webster, Martin Luther would totally disagree with you—if you think your good works are a sign of your salvation or something—here is how Webster describes Luther’s view here:

[…] Luther’s doctrine of justification b grace through faith severs the bond between acceptance and self-realization which he found in scholastic anthropology; in effect, his moral ontology calls into question the notion that self-conscious, self-actualizing selfhood is anthropologically primary. Indeed, in a crucial phrase he notes how, in good works as traditionally understood (i.e. as ‘religious’ works), ‘the self has been set up as an idol’. He acutely sees that religious works, and the understanding of the human person through which their significance is expounded, have become an exercise in self-preservation; good works are in league with human egotism, and their consequence is accordingly the deepening of human depravity and not release from it. For such works have become ‘merely acts of appeasement and self-righteous attempts at self-salvation. Luther recognised the depth of the corruption of the self which attempts to turn all goods to itself’. The target of Luther’s critique is thus the prudential calculation of benefits which might accrue to the agent on the basis of certain kinds of moral performance; acts undertaken in anticipation of rewards are ipso facto disqualified as good works, because within them lurks the sinful, self-realizing ego. If the Christian is related to his or her good works ‘self-centeredly’, the result is that chronic inflammation of the self which is the curse of sin. [John Webster, Barth’s Moral Theology, 163.]

This seems like a dilemma! If good works aren’t the sign of my salvation; if good works can’t provide me with assurance of salvation, then what or who can? If good works which are done by natural Pelagian impulse only serve to really further my own self-deception about how sinful I am—as T. F. Torrance would say ‘all the way down’—then I am of all men most to be pitied.

Of course the answer is ‘faith’, the faith of Christ at work in us by the Spirit. This is the ground of assurance, it is the faith of and the faith in Christ that resolves the dilemma. Good works, the ones we have been recreated in, in Christ (Eph. 2:10); are a result of the overflow of relationship that we already have with Christ. We don’t look to our good works as if those are our ‘Yes’ before God, He already said ‘No’ to them at the cross; instead, with the Apostle Paul we look to Christ where ‘all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory’ (II Cor. 1:20).

What Luther’s emphasis can provide is a way out of a moralistic Christian spirituality that can only produce introspective navel gazing Christians who ultimately are driven by angst, instead of the power of God, which is the true Gospel of Jesus Christ; the one that we are not ashamed of (Romans 1:16).

Christ the Key: My Developing Jesus Hermeneutic

Posted on November 9, 2012 by Bobby Grow

*Sorry about the formatting with this post, I copy and pasted this one from another former blog of mine, and it translated to WordPress in this compressed form (as far as the paragraph breaks.

I have been seeking a hermeneutic, or a way beyond the impasse created by my move to what Gibson and Muller have called a principial & intensive method of biblical interpretation (in reference to Barth on their part, no less). I have become disenchanted, over the past few years, with the hermeneutical framework (but not all of the ways) that I was trained in through both Bible College and Seminary; that is, theLiteral, Grammatical, Historical method. Certainly, though, I cannot, nor do I want to fully abandon the Grammatical, Historical, and Canonical realities that make up the shaping of what we call the Bible. So in other words, I have been in some personal conflict when it comes to my theory of hermeneutic; wanting to affirm a methodologically and principled way of reading scripture, in Christ. And on the other hand, not also wanting to reject the historical and canonical aspects of scripture that repose in it its Christic shape; so I want to continue to use the grammar, the syntax, the lexical, and the canonical markers of scripture that serve instrumentally to point beyond themselves to the deep reality they signify, in Christ.

In this seeking of mine, I have been reading Jens Zimmerman’s Recovering Theological Hermeneutics: An Incarnational-Trinitarian Theory of Interpretation. And unlike T. F. Torrance’s book Divine Meaning: Studies in Patristic Hermeneutics (which I thoroughly benefited from, of course, especially in serving the purpose in providing a general theory of hermeneutics that, indeed seeks to present a truly principled christocentric hermeneutic); Zimmerman’s book, and brief development of Luther (thus far in my reading of his chapter on Luther’s hermeneutic) has help to affirm the way that I want to proceed by being principially Christic in my biblical exegesis, and at the same time understanding that withinthis theoretical hermeneutical framework; that there is a viable way to employ all of the philological tools that one ought to employ when engaging the text of scripture, which isspecial literature.

The following two quotes from Zimmerman on Luther’s approach to biblical interpretation are the ones thus far that I have benefited from the most in my pursuit to provide some denouement to my, as of late, hermeneutical angst.

[I]t follows that the subject matter of the Bible, the good news of God’s love for humanity shown in the incarnation, cannot be understood through historical research alone. Nor in contrast to the historical school of the nineteenth century is historical distance a problem. The historical distance is nullified (not bridged) by the Word, which first created history and then was spoken into history. Luther concludes that it is the role of the Holy Spirit to make the incarnate Word present to the reader. Thus for Luther; a hermeneutics adequate to interpret the subject matter of the Bible is based on the unity of “Christ, Word, and Spirit” (EE, 365). Luther’s theory differed from a theory of verbal inspiration, for he insisted on a word behind the word that requires from the reader constant revisions in interpreting the written letter. . . . [59]

In light of this, it is no surprise that someone like my friend, Matt, a Lutheran, is also a Barthian; for the above sketch of Luther’s hermeneutic sounds very much so like Barth’s (and T.F. Torrance’s, no less) approach to understanding the written word as it continually, and ever anew proximate the Living Word in whom the written and proclaimed word find their reality and orientation. As Karl Barth (I believe in his CD I/1) describes this, there is both the ‘outer-logic’ and ‘inner-logic’ of Scripture (playing off the Reformer’s perspicuity ‘outer/inner’ clarity dialectic); such that the written letter (outer logic) remains stable, our understanding of that is provisional and ever changing as we understand more and more the One, the Word, to whom this written word points (this is the ‘inner-logic’ according to Barth … and the reason that ‘theological exegesis’ should be understood as the norm for biblical interpretation).

Here is the second quote that again helps assuage and also confirm me in my own movement forward as a theological/Christological exegete of Holy Scripture; Zimmerman summarizes:

To sum up, for Luther, “the Word of God in the cosmic sense was the eternal Christ, and as the Word of God in the New Testament was essentially the historical Christ. Given his doctrine of the Word, it was logical for Luther to see Christ and the cross as the central theme of God’s redemptive word”…. Luther’s systematic Christological hermeneutic principle does not mean, however, that he simply read his opinion into the text; the assiduous use of all philological aids available at his time in his sermon and lecture preparation demonstrates Luther’s desire to develop theology from the text. That is not to say, of course, that sometimes his vivid imagination saw Christ in the text where modern scholarship does not. However, respected strands of contemporary scholarship have come to agree in principle with Luther’s reading of Paul and the plausibility of the Pauline assertion that Jesus the Christ is the fulfillment of Torah and the messianic promises in Isaiah pertain to his redemption and vindication of humanity … [Jens Zimmerman, Recovering Theological Hermeneutics, 59-60]

As Zimmerman developed in an earlier iteration of his chapter on Luther; for Luther there is no understanding the historical word of scripture without the Word of Faith breathing life into the history as it is conjoined in Christ as he is the point and purpose of creation and creation’s history unfolded toward and in Christ. If this is the case, the words of scripture cannot have meaning or signification if they are abstracted from their reason for being as they are taken up in Christ. And yet, more constructively, this is exactly how higher-critical and historist approaches to biblical interpretation (some of which I have been discussing in previous posts, whether on the ‘Liberal’ side or the ‘Fundamentalist/Evangelical’ side) have colluded in their adumbration of the text of scripture (adumbrated because these ‘critics’ have place scripture into a pretext of their own construction, one that doesn’t have eyes to see and ears to hear, because if it did, these critics would understand that they can’t understand the text without understanding that it’s all about Jesus).

And so, since this post is now just over the reported attention span of blog readers (which is a 1,000 words, max.); I will close this post. Maybe you can appreciate a little better, then, where I am at in my own development; and maybe you can see why I have jettisoned my beloved LGH and even Dispensational hermeneutical theory.

PS. I am, at the end of the day, really quite pragmatic when it comes to all of this stuff; meaning that I have one principle that guides the way I proceed:“Jesus is the Key”. So, if it is Thomas Torrance, Karl Barth, John Calvin, my child-hood Sunday school teacher, or whoever else; if anyone or anyway serves my principle that ‘Jesus is the key,’ then I am willing to at least listen and test whether what one particular or another teacher communicates actually contributes to this principle or, instead, whether they quench this principle. Luther, and Zimmerman’s constructive reading of Luther is helpful towards my principle. That said, the only way we can really know if someone is helpful towards affirming my principle is to truly understand what said teachers really taught and thought; for this is the only way we can potentially benefit from their stated christocentrism.

repost

	Duane D on A First Proposal: On Barth…
	Bobby Grow on A First Proposal: On Barth…
	Steve on A First Proposal: On Barth…
	Bobby Grow on Secular Dogmatics / Secular Es…
	Duane D on Secular Dogmatics / Secular Es…

Theologie der krisis

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