Irenaeus as a Christ Conditioned Theologian

Posted on August 13, 2023 by Bobby Grow

The following is taken from my final exam from my Patristic Theology class in seminary (circa 2003); we had to answer three out of five questions in essay form. This essay highlights the person and theology of Irenaeus. I will provide a brief description of Irenaeus first, and then get into the essay. This was before I ever started reading either Barth or Torrance in any depth. But you might see how once I did, I was already predisposed to their respective theologies vis-à-vis informing theologies like Irenaeus’ represents.

Irenaeus (ca. 130-200) was Bishop of Lyons. Most likely he grew up in Smyrna, where as a youngster he was able to listen to Polycarp. It is probable that he studied and taught at Rome. This all happened before he moved to Lyons. He also served as an important link between the Eastern and Western branch of the Church.

Irenaeus first promoted the doctrine of recapitulation, although he claimed that he received this view (in a germinal sense) from Justin Martyr. Recapitulation basically is the doctrine that states: Adam was originally created to walk in obedience with God. He disobeyed, thus all of humanity, as represented in Adam (seminally), disobeyed God with him. This obedience thrust all of humanity into a cursed life of sin. Resulting in a destroyed and alienated humanity.

Irenaeus, as derived from Romans 5, shows that Christ came as the second Adam; essentially representing all humanity. In a sense, this is a do over; Adam got it wrong, while Christ did it over and walked in perfect obedience to God. Irenaeus points out that Christ can legitimately represent all of humanity, as he uses the Luke 3 genealogy to show Christ’s line going all the way back to Adam. Therefore Christ can legitimately represent each successive generation of people, all the way from the beginning.

Christ’s perfect obedience was epitomized by his obedience unto death at the cross. He secured a restored relationship unto God because of his obedience. Therefore anyone found in Christ would have a restored relationship with God. The notion of corporate solidarity is taught here; i.e. one man representing all humanity. This teaching has been associated with the physical theory of the atonement. The idea of seminal representation. Some people oppose this idea saying that it focused on the incarnation as being redemptive, and not the actual death of Christ as redemptive. This assumption is wrong though, for in all reality the incarnation is the presupposition of the ultimate goal, which eventuates in the crucifixion — and thus redemption for all humanity (i.e. these are inter related realities).

Nevertheless, what Jesus did according to this doctrine was inaugurate a new way of life. The idea of seminal representation and corporate solidarity can be seen in the teaching of Tertullian and Augustine who both believed in original sin, and that as a result of our real representation in Adam, humanity has inherited the tainted seed from Adam. Recapitulation had an impactful effect on the teaching of the atonement, as just noted.

Without Grace Nature Cannot Be Perfect: Thoughts on an Irenaean Thomist Distinction

Posted on February 24, 2022 by Bobby Grow

Helmut Thielicke offers an important anthropological distinction, one that stems early on from someone as astute as Irenaeus, and then becomes appropriated and modified by someone as seismic, in the Latin church, as Thomas Aquinas. If this is not understood as a basic theological-anthropological datum vis-à-vis some form of classical theism, engaging with the theological past into the present will become immediately unintelligible—which I would suggest is why so much of popular apologetics and theologics that we see pervasive, particularly in the online theological world, ends up being an exercise in futility. I digress. Let’s hear from Thielicke on this all-important distinction, and yet complement, between ‘nature’ and ‘grace’ vis-à-vis the history of theological ideas:

It is very important that we understand this distinction between natural endowment and supernatural destiny, whereby the former the former is something firmly given and in substance indestructible whereas the latter is something variable which can be won or lost. For it is through this distinction so basic for later Roman Catholicism between nature and supernature, between nature and grace, the distinction which allows for the imago’s having an explicitly ontological character which continues intact through its impairment by sin and its restoration by grace. For with this distinction two ontic spheres are marked off in man. One of these, the sphere of nature, is constant. It cannot be altered in substance. The other, however, the sphere of supernature, is variable, ie, it is added or not added, and it can be lost.1

It is interesting that Thielicke draws this out of Irenaeus. Typically, this sort of distinction, between nature and grace, is attributed to Aquinas, indeed for good reason. But Thielicke makes a good case for this in Irenaeus as he notes the distinction Irenaeus made between the imago and similtudo; the former correspondent with ‘natural endowment,’ and the latter with ‘supernatural gift.’ But as this distinction is appropriated by someone like Thomas Aquinas what we get, as that is reified with Aristotelian categories, is what Norman Fiering, among others, identifies as Thomist Intellectualism. This is why, for Catholic theology, and scholastic Reformed theology, following, when the fall happens the imago cannot ultimately be plunged into a subhumanity, this is because the very nature of humanity is such that it retains its substantial point of contact with the samelike Godform it is given birth by. That is to say, the very integrity of humanity, on the ‘intellectualist’ account, is contingent upon its esse which it shares with God. If God is actus purus (pure being) defined by His Super intellect in monadic relief, then the very integrity of His imago in humanity must remain intact in order for humanity to retain its created integrity vis-à-vis God. Further, this integrity is such that it only has telos insofar that it finds its ‘elevation’ and supernatural completion as it cooperates with the ‘created grace’ that God gifts it, by eternal design, in the ‘accidents’ of its ‘essence’ as the image bearers of God. But key here, is that the fall didn’t actually “kill” the natural essence of what it means to be human, as such, in a sickness/remedy symmetry, salvation doesn’t require re-creation, but simply an ‘addition’ of medicine (created grace) into the accidents of the fallen human, such that said human can habituate (habitus) in the virtues of God, cooperate by way of gratia infusa, and finally actualize and experience what the human destiny always already has been by way of God’s supernatural complement to the natural way. So Thomas:

In the original integrated state of man reason controlled our lower powers perfectly and God perfected the reason subordinated to him. This state was lost to us by Adam’s sin, and the resulting lack of order among the powers of our soul that incline us to virtue we call a wounding of nature. Ignorance is a wound in reason’s response to truth, wickedness in will’s response to good; weakness wounds the response of our aggressive emotions to challenge and difficulty, and disordered desire our affections’ reasonable and balanced response to pleasure. All sins inflict these four wounds blunting reason’s practical sense, hardening the will against good, increasing the difficulty of acting well and inflaming desire.2

Sometimes however men willingly suffer minor impoverishments so as to gain a major enrichment, and then the sufferings are medicinal rather than punitive. As such no particular sin is their cause, unless one say that the very need for medicine is due to our damaged nature and so is a penalty for inherited sin.3

Now this nature is disordered, however, man falls short even of the goodness natural to him, and cannot wholly achieve it by his own natural abilities. Particular good actions he can still perform in virtue of his nature (building houses, planting vineyards and the like); but he falls short of the total goodness suited to his nature. He is like a sick man able to make certain movements by himself, but unable to move like a man in perfect health until he has had medicine to heal him.4

I have left many things undeveloped in this post; rather enthymemic, really. But maybe you will still be able to catch somewhat of the gist of things by what I have shared.

1 Helmut Thielicke, Theological Ethics: Foundations (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 203.

2 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Concise Translation, 270-1.

3 Ibid., 273.

4 Ibid., 308.

Is the Antichrist an Actual Person? Irenaeus Thought So

Posted on May 18, 2020 by Bobby Grow

The Bible teaches that there will be, or currently is, an Antichrist figure who will come, or has come, and attempt to thwart the very purpose of God in a climaxing form. When the reader reads passages from the book of Daniel, II Thessalonians, and Revelation they are confronted with this shadowy figure. I grew up, and was even trained in a tradition that maintains that the Antichrist is indeed a singular person who will show up during the seven year period known as ‘Jacob’s Trouble’ or the ‘Great Tribulation.’ My former tradition teaches that this personage will rise up and provide world peace, but only for the first three and a half years of the Tribulation. Mid-point through the Tribulation this Antichrist personage will reveal his true character, his devil-possessed character, and declare himself God; to be worshiped in Nebuchadnezzarian fashion. During the last three and a half years of the Tribulation this Antichrist will wreak all sorts of pain and torture upon the world; that is if the world doesn’t bow down and worship him as God.

I have since moved away from the above tradition of interpretation, and believe that the Antichrist, while real and personal, does not necessarily have to be a single figure, nor does he have to fit into the ‘timeline’ of a purported seven year period known as the Great Tribulation. I believe, along with Richard Bauckham, that a proper reading of the book of Revelation leads us to believe that the ‘power of the Beast’, which is the power of the Antichrist, has been pervasive and present ever since the ascension of Jesus Christ; that the book of Revelation’s historical referent, when referring to his power and even personage, was the Roman Empire, and Nero as her emperor. This doesn’t mean that there cannot be multiple referents in mind, in regard to John’s apocalypse, but it does mean that the power of the Beast and the Antichrist have been present throughout all of the world empires that would seek to dominate the world over through military might and economic dominance built upon the backs of slave labor and human trafficking. What my view does entail is that the world empires are desperately evil and wicked above all else; no matter what period of world history we find ourselves in. What is interesting about our period in history is that we now live in a globalized situation never known before; mostly because of the techno-age we have come to inhabit. At some point in history there will be a final generation; the hard part is knowing if we are it or not. Indeed, this really isn’t the Christian’s aim, per se; but Jesus did say that we should be watching, and the Apostle Paul said that this time of orgasmic irruption should not take the sons and daughters of the light as if a thief in a night had come (I Thess 5). I believe all of the conditions for Christ’s second coming have already obtained. This is not to say that there cannot be a literal Antichrist figure who steps up, and attempts to have the whole globe worship him as God. But it is to say that we already have conglomerates of world leaders who already fit that bill; we already have had and continue to have Great Tribulation the world over, of the sort that the Scriptures indicate will be indicative at the parousia of Jesus Christ.

I write all of the above, really, to get to an early pre-Nicene church father, Irenaeus, to see what he thinks about the Antichrist. The interesting thing about Irenaeus was that he is reported to be the disciple of Polycarp, and Polycarp was the disciple of the Apostle John (and also, in the traditional account, for some: the author of the book of Revelation). Irenaeus was what was known as a chialist, today we would call that a ‘premillennialist.’ His chialism was different than what we typically understand as premillennialism today; and his reasoning for it had more to do with his debates with the Gnostics. Here is what he thought about a personal Antichrist:

In this age, some walk towards the light, and unite themselves with God by faith. Others, however, avoid the light, separating themselves from God. Therefore at the end of the age, the Word of God comes preparing a suitable dwelling place for both sets of people. For those who are truly in the light, He gives an abode where they can enjoy the light’s blessings, and the good things the light contains. For those who are in the darkness, by contrast, He gives an abode where they must share in the tribulations of darkness. Thus He says that those standing on His right hand are summoned into the heavenly kingdom, whereas those on His left hand He will send away into everlasting fire, since they have freely abandoned all that is good (Matt. 25:34, 41).

This is why Paul says: “Because they did not receive the love of God that they might be saved, therefore God shall also send upon them the power of error, that they may believe a lie, so that all may be judged who have not believed the truth, but consented to unrighteousness” (2 Thess. 2:10-12). For Antichrist will come, and by his own agency he will concentrate in himself the whole human enterprise of rejecting God. Antichrist will carry out whatever he does by his own will and choice, sitting in the very temple of God, so that those deceived by him will adore him as the Messiah. On this account, he will justly be cast into the lake of fire.

By His foreknowledge, God foresees this human choice of sin, and therefore at just the right time, He sends to sinners such a man as Antichrist, “that they may believe a lie, so that all may be judged who have not believed the truth, but consented to unrighteousness.”[1]

We see things in the world today, particularly in the strange times we are currently inhabiting, that could make some to think that we are right in the very midst of a moment where a shadowy Antichrist could easily rise up and bring ‘salvation’ to this world order. It isn’t hard, not at all, to imagine a global delusion whereby people could be led into a state of panic and fear, of the sort that they would be willing to jump off a cliff if the ‘leadership’ told them to. No matter what moment we’re in, the Bible is clear that there will be, or maybe even is now, an Antichrist who will deceive the people, with satanic power, and attempt to ultimately rise up against the true and living God with all of his serpentinish might. Irenaeus, believed, clearly, that this intensification of evil would rise up at just the right, and ordained moment, leading the world to one last death-dance as the devil himself seeks to thwart the purposes of God’s Kingdom in Christ. Maranatha

[1] St. Irenaeus cited by Nick Needham, Daily Readings: The Early Church Fathers (Scotland, UK: Christian Focus Publications, 2017), February 28^th.

Irenaeus’ Theology of the Cross Contra Our Theology of Glory and Self-Worship

Posted on April 24, 2020 by Bobby Grow

Thus says the Lord: “Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, Let not the mighty man glory in his might, Nor let the rich man glory in his riches; But let him who glories glory in this, That he understands and knows Me, That I am the Lord, exercising lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For in these I delight,” says the Lord. –Jeremiah 9.23-4

Now concerning things offered to idols: We know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies. And if anyone thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, this one is known by Him. –I Corinthians 8.1-3

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. I Corinthians 13.1-2

If anyone knows me, I am not against gaining knowledge; even intricate knowledge when it comes to knowing God. I am all for growing into the depth dimension reality that our ineffable God is in Himself. I believe most Christians, particularly when they have abundant means to do so, who don’t work at growing in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ are lazy (at best) and engaging in the sin of ἀκηδία or acedia. That said the other extreme of this is present mostly among those of us who would be labeled ‘academic’ or maybe even ‘scholastic’ in orientation. It was this class of people that Martin Luther largely had in his sights when he thought of a theologia gloriae or ‘theology of glory.’ These were the clerical class, and theologians who sought approval, not of God, but of other men; ironically in the so called pursuit of God. Luther disdained this sort of theological spirituality, and I would suggest this disdain was in direct echo of Christ’s heart in Luther’s.

God wants us to know Him deeply, but if we equate that with our credentials as Christians, and how those give us status within the church, God hates this; it represents the sort of lukewarm and beguiling state that Jesus, in the book of Revelation, says sickens Him. At some level, one way or the other, as Christians, we all dip in and out of this sort of self-centered sort of Christianity; it is the constant battle between the flesh and the Spirit (cf. Gal 5.17). Unfortunately, where this sort of ‘centeredness’ flourishes, and even has been institutionalized, is within theological higher learning. For those pursuing careers in this field, it is required of them to earn terminal degrees; write peer reviewed essays, book chapters, and books; and build a curriculum vitae that blows the socks off the nearest competitor. When all of this is built into becoming a professor, editor, dean of a seminary or university, so on and so forth, it becomes almost impossible to fight the good fight and not give into the flight of fancies that all of our hearts and minds play on us. When ‘glory’ is built into career status, or even more brutishly, into plain old intellectual standing among one’s peers, the game is almost lost before it even gets started. Irenaeus knew this, a towering Christian intellect of his day, and so he penned the following:

It’s better, and brings greater benefit, to be a simple, uneducated man or woman, and to become akin to God through love, than to be well-read and clever (in our own conceited opinion) and to blaspheme the God who made us, by making up some imaginary God and Father of our own. As Paul cries out, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up” (1 Cor. 8:1). Not that Paul wished to condemn himself. But he knew that some people fall away from God’s love by making conceited pretensions to knowledge, imagining themselves to have found some sort of perfection — and then proclaiming a Creator who is less than perfect! To strike down the self-importance in which these folk wall through their so-called knowledge, Paul says, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.”

There can be no notion more self-conceited than this — to imagine that you are better and more perfect than God who created you, formed you, put the breath of life into you, and decreed that you should exist. What good will it do you to have knowledge even of a single reason why anything in creation was made, if you then become proudly puffed-up with this kind of knowledge, and fall away from God’s love which is the very life of the human soul? Far better to believe in God and keep yourself in His love. We should seek no other knowledge but the knowledge of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who for our sakes was crucified, rather than go downhill into ungodliness through super-smart inquiries and nit-picking explanations.[1]

May God in Christ have mercy on us all! We are all prone to wandering into self-incurved worship rather than worshipping the only true and living God. Without God we are as Calvin said (paraphrase) idol manufacturers; and as Feuerbach opined in his own way, we, as a people, self-project our image onto the heavens and see that as God. May we only see God, as we only can see God, in the prosopon or face of Christ; herein the glory of God is on full and cheerful display.

[1] Irenaeus, cited by Nick Needham, Daily Readings: The Early Church Fathers (Scotland: Christian Focus Publications, 2017).

Jesus is the Image of God For Us: How This Centraldogma Changes Everything

Posted on March 26, 2020 by Bobby Grow

I’ve written, more than once, on the theological anthropological theme of humanity being images of the Image of God or imago Dei. This theme, and its importance cannot be overemphasized, since it is directly related to how humanity is related to God. The primary point of the theme is that when the Christian refers to the imago Dei, what or who we are really referring to, according to the Apostle Paul, is Jesus Christ; he writes:

¹⁵He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. ¹⁶For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. ¹⁷And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. ¹⁸And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence.[1]

Notice, for Paul, to be created in the imago Dei is really to be created and recreated in the imago Christi (‘image of Christ’). Our humanity is a gift, it is extra nos (outside of us), it is continuously mediated to us through the intercessory life of Jesus Christ for us (cf. Heb. 7:25). This, what we might call, centraldogma, of the ‘image of Christ,’ is interconnected to a swarm of other theological themes; in particular a doctrine of God, doctrine of Creation (inclusive of protology and eschatology), doctrine of Sin, doctrine of soteriology/anthropology (inclusive of a doctrine of Scripture) so on and so forth. This makes sense, since as Jesus says: “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me” (Jn 5:39). In other words, if all of Scripture, if all of creation, if the whole cosmological sweep is centered upon Jesus Christ as its telos (or purpose), then it would only make sense to see Jesus Christ as the centraldogma of all theological reality. Our humanity, or our image of Godness, is contingent upon Jesus’s image of God for us. All of reality is contingent upon His choice to be this for us. It is a reality that presses into the very essence or esse of what it means to exist before and with God at all.

As my earlier posts have made clear, this theme of the imago Christi, among the Patristics, was of significant importance to Athanasius (later we would be right to think of Maximus the Confessor as well). But even before Athanasius, someone else noticed this theme, mostly in the Pauline corpus; Irenaeus, the theologian who can be closely linked to the Apostle John (through Polycarp), thought in these imago Christi terms as well. He writes:

The Word has saved His creation, humanity, which had perished. Seeking its salvation, He established through Himself that fellowship which should exist between humanity and God. Now, perishing humanity had flesh and blood. . . He Himself, therefore, took flesh and blood, summing up in Himself the Father’s original creation, seeking the race that had perished. That’s why Paul in the Epistle to the Colossians says, “Though you were formerly alienated, and enemies to His knowledge by evil works, yet now you have been reconciled in the body of His flesh, through His death, to present yourselves holy and chaste, and without fault in His sight” (Col. 1:21-22). He says, “You have been reconciled in the body of His flesh,” because the Lord’s righteous flesh has reconciled the flesh that was enslaved in sin, bringing it back into comradeship with God.

If, then, anyone says the Lord’s flesh was different from ours in that it didn’t sin, neither was falsehood found in His soul, while we, conversely, are sinners, this would be true. Yet if anyone claims the Lord had some other substance of flesh than ours, he overthrows the biblical teaching on reconciliation. What is reconciled is what had previously been hostile. But if the Lord had taken flesh from some entity other than humankind, He wouldn’t have reconciled to God the flesh that had become hostile through disobedience. Now, however, through human nature’s union with Himself, the Lord has reconciled humanity to God the Father, by reconciling us to Himself in the body of His own flesh, and redeeming us with His own blood. As Paul says to the Ephesians “In whom we have redemption through His blood, the remission of sins” (Eph. 1:7) . . . Indeed in every Epistle, Paul clearly testifies that we have been saved through the Lord’s flesh and blood.[2]

Reading, Irenaeus words, we might for a moment think we are reading John Calvin on unio cum Christo (union with Christ), or Martin Luther on mirifica commutatio (the wonderful exchange), or Karl Barth and Thomas Torrance, respectively, on a doctrine of the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. There is this silver thread woven throughout the whole of historical theology; it is a thread that finds its brilliance and splendor in the fabric of God’s flesh and blood in Jesus Christ.

I am afraid that what has been thwarted upon the Western evangelical churches of the 21^st century has kept it from ever delving into the depth dimension of what we are considering here. This focus on Christ, even a so called ‘conciliar Christ,’ is the focus of the New Testament, in particular, and the whole of Holy Scripture, in general! Without this focus the Christian will slide off into abstract scholastic philosophical or turn-to-the-subject discussions that have little to do with these riches. I commend this theme and Christ concentrated focus to you. Start trying to think all things theological from this christological reality. Start thinking the duplex consubstantiality of the singular person of Jesus Christ, who is both fully God and fully human, into all of your theological machinations; you won’t be sorry. You’ll only be sorry if you don’t.

[1] Colossians 1:15-18, NKJV.

[2] Irenaeus cited by Nick Needham in, “Daily Readings, The Early Church Fathers: February 17^th ‘Our Flesh and Blood’,” (Scotland: Christian Focus Publications Christian Heritage Imprint, 2017).

John Calvin’s Gospel of Wonderful Exchange Inspired by Irenaeus

Posted on November 25, 2019 by Bobby Grow

A beautiful passage from Calvin’s French Institutes. It is clearly inspired by Irenaeus, and wonderful exchange theology.

For the words of the Lord are: “This cup is the new testament in my blood” (Lk. 22 [20]; 1 Cor. 11 [25]), that is, a mark and witness of a promise. Wherever there is a promise, faith has a basis on which to rest and by which to give itself happiness and comfort. Our souls can receive from this sacrament a great sweetness and fruit of consolation in recognizing that Jesus Christ is so incorporated into us and we into Him that we can cal all that is His “ours,” and all that is our we can call “His.” Therefore we dare to promise ourselves with assurance that eternal life is ours, and that we cannot fail to reach the kingdom of heaven any more than Jesus Christ Himself can. And on the other hand, we cannot be damned by our sins any more than He can, because they are no longer ours but His. Not that any fault is imputed to Him, but because He has constituted Himself as debtor for us and has acted as the good debt-payer. This is the exchange which He has made with us by His infinite goodness: that in receiving our poverty He has transferred to us His riches; in bearing our weakness He has confirmed us in His power; in taking our mortality, He has made His immortality ours; in coming down to the earth He has opened a way to heaven; in making Himself Son of man, He has made us children of God.[1]

See Irenaeus, “Preface,” in Against Heresies, book 5, where he writes: “The Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself.” And the Apostle Paul who inspired both Irenaeus and Calvin famously writes: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich” (II Cor 8.9). In my view there is not richer reality than what Calvin, Irenaeus, and the Apostle Paul point us to in the reality of what God in Christ has accomplished for us; that is, that God became human, that we, by grace, not nature, might become God as sons and daughters of His who are partakers of His triune life as we are participants in the mediating life of Jesus Christ.

By the way, the passage from Calvin is taken from his section on the Lord’s Supper. Holy Communion has got to be the most profound act Christians can participate in as participants of the body of Christ. It bears witness to the reality that Calvin speaks to: of God become man, that we might become who He is by way of the adoption of holy Grace. This is the sort of theology I revel and get lost in all my days. When I stray from this, I stray from the reason for thinking theologically at all. Soli Deo Gloria.

[1] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion: 1541 French Edition, trans. by Elsie Anne McKee (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009), 546-47.

The Patristic Rather than the Protestant, Calvin: Calvin’s Doctrine of Theosis and Ontological Salvation in Con-versation With Irenaeus

Posted on April 16, 2019 by Bobby Grow

It might be said that John Calvin was something of a theologian born out of time. When you read him, particularly the French version of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, what you will find is someone who sounds more like a Patristic theologian more than one who worked in and post late medieval theology. His Christocentric emphasis, I think, leads him to sound like maybe an Athanasius or Irenaeus; he offers insights about the eternal life of salvation that operate from the catholicity borne out by ecumenical councils like the niceno-constantinopolitano-chalcedony offered towards the orthodox grammar and thought of the Church since.

More materially, Calvin’s thinking sounds almost exactly like Irenaeus’s idea of theosis, and how it took God become human in Christ for humanity to become sons of God, by the adoption of grace, and thus participants in the eternal triune life of God. Note Irenaeus, and then Calvin following:

But again, those who assert that He was simply a mere man, begotten by Joseph, remaining in the bondage of the old disobedience, are in a state of death having been not as yet joined to the Word of God the Father, nor receiving liberty through the Son, as He does Himself declare: If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed. John 8:36 But, being ignorant of Him who from the Virgin is Emmanuel, they are deprived of His gift, which is eternal life; Romans 6:23 and not receiving the incorruptible Word, they remain in mortal flesh, and are debtors to death, not obtaining the antidote of life. To whom the Word says, mentioning His own gift of grace: I said, You are all the sons of the Highest, and gods; but you shall die like men. He speaks undoubtedly these words to those who have not received the gift of adoption, but who despise the incarnation of the pure generation of the Word of God, defraud human nature of promotion into God, and prove themselves ungrateful to the Word of God, who became flesh for them. For it was for this end that the Word of God was made man, and He who was the Son of God became the Son of man, that man, having been taken into the Word, and receiving the adoption, might become the son of God. For by no other means could we have attained to incorruptibility and immortality, unless we had been united to incorruptibility and immortality. But how could we be joined to incorruptibility and immortality, unless, first, incorruptibility and immortality had become that which we also are, so that the corruptible might be swallowed up by incorruptibility, and the mortal by immortality, that we might receive the adoption of sons?[1]

And Calvin:

What we have said will be clearer if we consider that the office of Mediator is not a common thing — that is; to restore us to God’s grace in such a way that we are made His children, we who were the children of people; to make us heirs of the heavenly kingdom, we who were heirs of hell. Who could have done that unless the Son of God had been made Son of man and had taken our condition so as to transfer to us what was His properly by nature, making it ours by grace? So we have confidence that we are God’s children, having the guarantee that the natural Son of God took a body from our body, flesh from our flesh, bone from our bone, to be united with us. What was properly ours, He accepted in his person in order that what was properly His might belong to us, and thus He had in common with us that He was Son of God and Son of man. For this reason we hope that the heavenly inheritance is ours, because the unique Son of God who completely deserves it, has adopted us as His brothers. Now if we are His brothers, we are His co-heirs.[2]

In context, both Irenaeus and Calvin are writing against people who are attempting to denigrate the full divinity of the Son. Both thinkers identify the necessity of full divinity in Christ in order for ultimate salvation and eternal life to obtain. Interestingly, particularly with reference to Calvin, what we see is an inkling toward what we freely call theosis or divinization in the Patristic writers like Irenaeus. What is significant to me, in this regard, is that Calvin has an ontological understanding of salvation operative in and underwriting his thinking on salvation; contra the steep forensic or declarative understanding of salvation we end up seeing the scholastic Reformed or Post Reformed orthodox theologians of the Protestant period in the 16^th and 17^th centuries develop. This continues to be an underappreciated reality in Calvin, particularly by those who would like to read him into the Post Reformed orthodox period.

Thomas Torrance picks up on this theosis motif in Calvin’s thinking and rightly brings Calvin into the ontological frame when developing his own constructive doctrine of salvation. Again, this is rebuffed by people like Richard Muller et al. who want to read Calvin away from divinization salvific grammar, and instead see him fitting into the juridical models developed in the Post Reformation period. I think Torrance is right to align Calvin more with the Patristic Fathers rather than with the Post Reformed orthodox Fathers. I commend the aforementioned from Calvin as evidence in that direction. I also present it to you as further evidence that Calvin was someone born out of time; that he often sounds more like the Patristics than the Protestants, so to speak.

[1] Irenaeus, Against Heresies: Book III, Chpt. 19 [Emphasis mine].

[2] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion: 1541 French Edition, trans. by Elsie Anne McKee (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009), 223-24 [Emphasis mine].

Irenaeus Against John MacArthur: What Hath Creatio Ex Nihilo to Do With the Genesis and Exodus of Biblical Interpretation?

Posted on September 8, 2018 by Bobby Grow

I am going to apply the following quote on theological interpretation of scripture (TIS) from Colin Gunton to a popular pastor among many conservative evangelical Christians; i.e. John MacArthur. The reason I am going to apply the following quote to MacArthur is because part of my passion is to take deep school theology and use that to help correct what I consider to be wayward theological method and application as that is distilled, indeed, through people like John MacArthur. We could apply the quote and its content to many other evangelicals in North America and abroad, but MacArthur, because of his ubiquitous presence (at least in the circles I grew up in) works well as a typological character who I think needs correcting. What might seem ironic (or asinine, depending on the person) to some is that I would dare to correct someone like MacArthur; someone who prides himself on being slavishly committed to biblical exegesis in order to establish every jot and tittle of his exposition and sermonic form. In principle I think, at least for us Protestant Reformed, I can certainly get behind the idea that we want to establish all of our doctrine and teaching based upon biblical exegesis. But the problem arises, especially for folks like MacArthur, when one simply presumes upon some sort of prima facie mode of biblical exegesis; as if what counts as Literal-Grammatical-Historical is simply a neutered or generic way of engaging with texts, in particular the biblical text, such that whatever is produced through thorough application of this method will simply be just what the Bible says. This is the mode of MacArthur; he believes that his exegesis comes prior to his theology, but I am countering that he has a prior commitment to a certain theological paradigm that informs his exegesis in ways he can’t seem to imagine (we all have theological premises informing our engagement with Holy Scripture).

Colin Gunton as he is engaging with a Christian doctrine of creation, particularly the notion of creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing), and as he has been developing Irenaeus’ theology in this direction, brings theological interpretation of scripture into his discussion. I am just going to quote him at length (as is typical of my blogging style), and then we will draw off of what he has to intone about TIS and how I think we can apply that to MacArthur in particular and to many conservative evangelical pastors in general. Gunton writes:

What, then, is to be understood by a theological interpretation? At the very least we must essay an integration, if not systematisation, of the various biblical witnesses to creation, and not simply Genesis, in the light of the God made known in Jesus Christ and by the Spirit who relates the world to the Father through him. If we accept Irenaeus’ strong contention that the God of Jesus Christ is the one who created in the beginning, we must interpret Genesis in the light of God’s involvement in the material historicity of Jesus of Nazareth. This enables us not to read trinitarian themes directly into the book of Genesis, as if the author were in some way theologising in a consciously trinitarian way, but to understand the forms of divine action there depicted as the acts of the triune God. This is particularly well illustrated if we see that part of the divine engagement with creation in Genesis 1 involves the ministerial use of parts of the created order in the forming of others. When God says ‘Let the earth bring forth’ we have a picture of divine action enabling the sovereign creator intends. As we shall see, this has important implications for the way we shall understand the relation of creation and evolution.

A theology of creation does not in any case limit it biblical basis to Genesis 1, but is concerned with the meaning of the scriptural understanding of creation as a whole. Because Irenaeus’ focus is incarnational he looks at the whole of scripture through what happened in Jesus Christ, and refuses to become preoccupied, as were some of his opponents, with the exchange of ‘proof-texts’. This is not to say that we should hold that the biblical writers were consciously trinitarian thinkers. Clearly, they were not. The doctrine of the Trinity is a doctrinal development dedicated to saying something of who the God is who creates and redeems the world. In its turn and in its light, this enables an interpretation of the Bible’s teaching as a whole. Thus, when Psalm 33:6 says that ‘by the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth’, we may recognise the adumbration of a conception which is later filled out by an understanding of the personal presence of God made explicit by Jesus Christ and the Spirit. As we have seen, the heart of the matter is the concept of mediation which the Bible makes possible, generating as it does its unique doctrine of creation out of nothing.[1]

Does that make sense? Maybe a further illustration might help: Think of what the Evangelist in the Gospel of John did. He “re-interpreted,” or per Irenaeus’ style, he recapitulated the original creation account in Genesis 1.1 by linking his linguistic harmonizing in John 1.1 “In the Beginning God” with his introduction of the Logos or Word to the world. In other words, in light of Jesus Christ what is presented in the Old Testament is re-understood in light of its fulfillment and substantive res (reality) as that is actualized in the Son, Jesus Christ. This is something of a further illustration of what Gunton is after in his linking of biblical interpretation into the context of a doctrine of creation. I.e. without God in Christ there would be no creation, or indeed recreation, wherein all of reality could come to have a Christ conditioned Triune shape and meaning. In other words, particularly as Gunton leaves off with a reference to creatio ex nihilo, what Irenaeus was about, according to Gunton, is basing his interpretation of Holy Scripture within a grandeur context than simply reading off its purported ‘face’ and absolutizing biblical meaning and reality from there. No, what Irenaeus, according to Gunton was about was recognizing that Scripture has a depth dimensional context and reality, and that that only comes as its total canonical orientation is found in and from its ever afresh ever anew referencing beyond itself, beyond its paper and ink, to its flesh and bloodied reality in Jesus Christ and the Triune life co-inhering therein.

Let me try to bring this down a notch (never an easy thing to do): in Irenaeus’ frame, in particular, and in a theological exegetical frame in general, what theological interpretation of scripture entails as a method of biblical interpretation, is the full recognition that scripture itself only has meaning as it constantly is referring itself to its deep reality in Jesus Christ (cf. Jn 5.39). It recognizes that all of reality only has reality as a contingent reality as that is given forth by the Word of God in Jesus Christ. Gunton, through Irenaeus, is showing that at least for the theological interpretation of scripture mode, we must presume upon the reality of who God is as revealed in Jesus Christ in order to cognize any sort of biblical meaning; if in fact we can first recognize that the Bible only has meaning as an instrument mediating something greater than itself to us (something or someOne who has made clear that He alone upholds all things by the word of His power; even Scripture’s meaning as that is found in his Word).

Does John MacArthur fit into this sort of theological interpretation of scripture, or does he operate from somewhere else? The irony is, as we examine his antecedents, when it comes to his hermeneutical method and exegetical practice, is that he operates off of Enlightenment text critical premises that are actually in contest with the sort of Irenaean hermeneutic we have been touching upon in this post. If this is the case (and it is), then how can we accept that MacArthur is actually offering us the Gospel According to Jesus when he is working from hermeneutical premises that themselves are concocted from ideational commitments that are in fact antagonistic to the sort of rich and deep theological pedigree of interpretation that someone like Irenaeus operated from? MacArthur doesn’t self-critically even think from a doctrine of creation and recreation (resurrection) as the basis within which the Bible can find orientation and meaning. MacArthur naively presumes upon a certain method of biblical interpretation that starts with a sort of rationalist common sense notion of reality and language that sees words and meaning abstractly accessible by the powers of human wit and a pressing into linguistic and historical realities without recognizing how reality itself is contingent upon the Word of God. In other words, MacArthur doesn’t make an intentional (Dogmatic) connection between meaning generation and God’s Word as the predicator of all meaning; even Scriptural meaning. He doesn’t allow that primal reality to form his development of a biblical hermeneutic and exegetical practice. As such he falls short in untold manner of ways in his exposition and sermonic deliveries.

[1] Colin E. Gunton, The Triune Creator: A Historical And Systematic Study (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998), Loc 924, 931, 937 kindle.

Thinking of Creation in Elevated and Eschatological Terms with Irenaeus: And Allowing Such Terms to Bring Eternal Perspective to Temporal Realities

Posted on September 6, 2018 by Bobby Grow

Creatio ex nihilo. ‘Creation out of nothing’ is an important concept when it comes to a doctrine of creation for the Christian; TF Torrance, along with the Patristic tradition, made this a staple of his theological outworking. Colin Gunton offers a look at Irenaeus’, among others, doctrine of creation and brings to attention the central role that Christology and the economy of God’s Triune life plays in his theology of creation and redemption. What I want to focus on, through Gunton, is how eschatology functioned in Irenaeus’ conception of creation, and the role the ‘perfecting’ of creation played therein. It is interesting, as Gunton highlights, that for Irenaeus in-built into creation’s “perfection” there is an “imperfection” or a latency or potentiality within creation wherein it is originally created, out of nothing, with a pregnancy that can only come to term through an experiential maturation and growth process that finally comes to fruition and ultimacy only insofar as that is realized (recapitulated) in and through Jesus Christ.

We will hear from Gunton, and then I am going to try and draw out some implications of this Irenaean teaching for us in the 21^st century church. I want to emphasize how thinking reality from this sort of Christ-centric creatio ex nihilo is significant for understanding our purpose and place in the world coram Deo; and how it ought to clear away for us so much of the cultural accretions that we allow to artificially build up around us based upon our own pseudo-creating as human animals.

Eschatology is important because it enables us to engage with what is both a crux of interpretation of the thought of Irenaeus and a major problem in the doctrine of creation. Irenaeus has been accused of inconsistency in his doctrine of creation in teaching both that creation is perfect and that it is imperfect:

In his protracted rebuttal of gnostic sects, Irenaeus repeatedly emphasises the unqualified goodness of creation. But in iv, 38 he springs upon the reader the surprising contention that Adam, as first created by God, was imperfect.

Although, however, Irenaeus may appear sometimes to say that Adam was created perfect, sometimes not, there is a contradiction only on a rather static understanding of perfection. As we shall see when we come to treat them meaning of creation ‘in the beginning’, the doctrine of creation out of nothing does imply that creation in one sense indeed complete. But it does not follow that it is perfect in the sense that it does not have to be perfected. The creation is, we might say, perfect in that it is destined for perfection. That is, it is relatively perfect: created for an eschatological perfecting. It is the eschatological destiny of finite creation that makes a fall possible; in that sense, the creation is imperfect. As Douglas Farrow has argued, with particular reference to the passage on the basis of which Irenaeus is accused of contradiction, this theologian does apparently teach the imperfection of creation; but it is an imperfection which:

makes the fall possible, not inevitable. The ‘imperfection’ is this: The love for God which is the life of man cannot emerge ex nihilo in full bloom; it requires to grow with experience. But that in turn is what makes the fall, however unsurprising, such a devastating affair. In the fall man is ‘turned backwards.’ He does not grow up in the love of God as he intended to. The course of his time, his so-called progress, is set in the wrong direction.

For Irenaeus, ‘good’ means precisely that which is destined for perfection. On such an eschatological understanding, the relation of creation and redemption according to Irenaeus is clear in its basic outline, though complex in its outworking, because we are here concerned with the relation of time and eternity. Redemption or salvation is that divine action which returns the creation to its proper direction, its orientation to its eschatological destiny, which is to be perfected in due course of time by God’s enabling it to be that which it was created to be. By virtue of their trinitarian mediation, both creation and its restoration in redemption are acts of the one God in and towards the whole created order. In turn, that means that Irenaeus must not be thought to operate with a naively linear conception of time. As Dr Farrow has shown, for Irenaeus the world is to be understood as process, but it is not – as in the contemporary process theologians – linear process.

[I]t is one of Irenaeus’ great strengths to have incorporated process as a positive . . . feature of his world-view. But the process in question is not a straightforward, linear one. Rather it involves a fraction, a breaking up. Worldly reality in all its aspects, the material and the immaterial, enters into a situation of fructification and endless bounty precisely by way of participation in the descent and ascent of Jesus.[1]

That is an interesting discussion to me. It notes what Matthew Levering might call the ‘participatory’ nature of history and eschatology. Creation itself has a primacy, as the Scotist thesis understands, and its primacy is grounded in its experience with the Christ; with its originally intended ‘elevation’ to something greater than what it seemingly originally came with. Irenaeus was attuned to this early on, and I think it is something we ought to become attuned to ourselves. Beyond the technical critique of “inconsistency,” as Gunton has shown through Farrow, there is a depth dimension to what Irenaeus was thinking in regard to creation and recreation. That creation itself has always already been tensed by its prior reality given to it in and by the reality of God in Christ for the world.

Let me make what will seem like an abrupt turn at this point. What theology like this does for me, from a doxological perspective, is that it takes me deeper than the normal church sub-cultures allow me to go. It takes me into an orientation where so much of the hubris generated by the superficialities we experience in the church, as we allow the culture at large to shape the church culture, to be cut away. What we are left with as we reflect on these deeper creational and primal realities is that God is God and we are not; that the world we live in is his and its shape, whether we are saturated in its reality or not, is that Jesus is King. What thinking at these levels does for me is to ground me in the fact that almost all of what counts as reality and culture in the broader societies is chaff. So this gives me a substantial hope and orientation; one that is grounded in the reality that the Word of the LORD will endure forever whereas what the World says is reality will simply fade away as the grass withers and blows away.

[1] Colin E. Gunton, The Triune Creator: A Historical And Systematic Study (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998), Loc 812, 819, 825, 831 kindle.

Irenaeus of Lyon Against the Annihilationists and Evangelical Conditionalists of the 21st Century

Posted on March 5, 2018 by Bobby Grow

Remember in the past when I said that I was going to write a paper refuting annihilationism or evangelical conditionalism? I haven’t forgot about that, it’s just that I have a lot of other things going on (including the ongoing trial of putting together my PhD proposal). In my reading of my friend’s published PhD dissertation for the University of Manchester, Jerome van Kuiken’s Christ’s Humanity In Current And Ancient Controversy: Fallen Or Not?, as he gets into engaging with Irenaeus of Lyon’s theology/Christology, Jerome refers to Irenaeus’s theological-anthropology. If you remember, part of my thesis in arguing against annihlationism was going to be to refer to the immortality that grounds what it means to be human being as construed from the elect human being of Jesus Christ for us. As Jerome develops Irenaeus’s theology he refers to something therein that helps underscore my own thesis contra the annihilationist position. Note Jerome’s reference to this pertinent point in a footnote he offers on Irenaeus’s theology:

In passages like Haer. 3.20.2 and Epid. 15, Irenaeus can speak of humanity’s possessing immortality prior to the Fall; however, Haer. 5.12.1-3 explains that humanity lost its life in Eden because it had only the ephemeral breath of life, not the eternal Spirit of life available in Christ. Cf. Haer. 5.3.1, which says that humans are naturally mortal, and 5.7.1, which interprets Gen. 2.7 as teaching that human nature comprises an immortal soul and a mortal body (i.e. a soul incapable of decomposition and a body capable of it). Cf. Lane, ‘Irenaeus’, pp. 145-6.[1]

As a reminder the conditionalist position is this (at least for those over at the ReThinking Hell consortium):

Conditionalism is the view that life or existence is the Creator’s provisional gift to all, which will ultimately either be granted forever on the basis of righteousness (by grace, through faith), or revoked forever on the basis of unrighteousness.

Evangelical conditionalists believe that the saved in Christ will receive glory, honor and immortality, being raised with an incorruptible body to inherit eternal life (Romans 2:7). The unsaved will be raised in shame and dishonor, to face God and receive the just condemnation for their sins. When the penalty is carried out, they will be permanently excluded from eternal life by means of a final death (loss of being; destruction of the whole person; Matthew 10:28).[2]

For the conditionalist, contra Irenaeus, immortality is a contingent reality that is only given with the gift of eternal life in Jesus Christ. Irenaeus, according to van Kuiken’s observation, held that immortality was an inherent property to what it means to be human, albeit a property ultimately grounded in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ.

My original thesis was going to be to argue the Irenean position, albeit in a modified form through Thomas Torrance and Karl Barth’s theologies, contra the ReThinking Hell conditionalist position. My thesis, now bolstered by Irenaeus’s own reasoning, was and would be that humanity’s ontological grounding in the humanity of Jesus Christ necessarily requires that humanity itself, once originated and created in and from the image of God in Christ’s vicarious humanity is ultimately immortal or unable to be distinguished once created. This, because, to reiterate, what it ultimately and archetypically means to be human is grounded in the singular humanity of Jesus Christ’s humanity for us (pro nobis). On my account, since humanity is always already ‘immortal,’ or unable to be annihilated, the definitional distinctions that must be made come to how we think ‘immortality.’ For my treatment, there is an asymmetrical symmetry between people who experience the light side of immortality—which would be equal, potentially, to the conditionalist position on the univocal relationship between immortality and eternality language vis-à-vis ‘salvation’—and the many people who will experience the shadow side of immortality. The light side of human immortality is to fully experience the divine plenitude of participation within the Triune life, mediated through the gracious humanity of Jesus Christ to those who believe; the shadow side of human immortality would be for those who have chosen to reject the beauty and resplendence of full immortality available for them in the humanity of Jesus Christ; nevertheless, de jure, by virtue of the ground of human being, even those who reject the experience of what it means to be human, and live out of the immortality that is available in the humanity of Christ for them, remain ‘human’ and thus ‘immortal’ insofar as their humanity has ultimately and creationally/recreationally been grounded by Christ’s.

This is a thesis I continue to ponder. And maybe someday I’ll have the time to actual work it out in paper form. Until then I’ll just keep throwing out dispatches about it, like this one, until the time comes for me to finally write the darn thing.

[1] E. Jerome van Kuiken, Christ’s Humanity In Current And Ancient Controversy: Fallen Or Not? (London/New York: T&T Clark Bloomsbury, 2017), 94 n.14.

[2] ReThinking Hell, Statement on Evangelical Conditionalism, accessed 03-05-2018.

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