On Being a Real Protestant: Calvin and Barth against Thomas and the Thomists on a Vestigial Knowledge of God

Posted on June 19, 2024 by Bobby Grow

Is God really knowable, secularly, in the vestiges of the created order? In other words, does God repose in the fallen order to the point that vain and profane people can come to have some type of vestigial knowledge of the living God? According to Thomas Aquinas, and other scholastics of similar ilk, the answer is a resounding: yes. Here is Thomas himself:

as we have shown [q. 32, a. 1], the Trinity of persons cannot be demonstratively proven. But it is still congruous to place it in the light of some things which are more manifest to us. And the essential attributes stand out more to our reason than the properties of the persons do, for, beginning from the creatures from which we derive our knowledge of the personal properties, as we have said [q. 32, a. 1]. Thus, just as to disclose the persons we make use of vestigial or imaged likenesses of the Trinity in creatures, so too we use their essential attributes. And what we call appropriation is the disclosure of the persons through the essential attributes.[1]

Karl Barth makes appeal to John Calvin to repudiate this type of ‘vestigial’ knowledge of God, as we find that in Thomas Aquinas previously. Calvin might not develop an anti-natural theology in the ways that Barth does, but he does share with Barth a principled and prior commitment to a radical theology of the Word, to a knowledge of God as Redeemer prior to Creator. And so here we have Barth and Calvin joining forces, even if only in incipient ways, on Calvin’s part (mediated through Barth), against the Angelic Doctor, St Thomas Aquinas:

To my knowledge, the strongest testimony of theological tradition in this direction is Calvin’s foreword to his Commentary on the Book of Genesis (1554). In this work he recalls 1 Cor. 1:21: “For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.” What Paul obviously means is: it is in vain for God to be sought by reference to visible things, and indeed that anything should remain, except so that we should be brought straight to Christ. Therefore we should make our beginning not with the things of this world, but with the gospel, which puts forth one Christ with his cross and holds us in him. In view of this, Calvin’s conviction is also: indeed it is vain for any to philosophize in the manner of the world, unless they have first been humbled by the preaching of the gospel, and have instructed the whole compass of their intellect to submit to the foolishness of the cross. I say that we will find out nothing above or below that will lift us to God, until Christ has educated us in his school. Nothing further can be done, if we are not raised up from the lowest depths and carried aboard his cross above all the heavens, so that there by faith we might comprehend what no eye has ever seen, nor ear ever heard, and which far surpasses our hearts and minds. For the earth is not before us there, nor its fruits supplied for daily food, but Christ himself offers himself to us unto eternal life; nor do the heavens illuminate our bodily eyes with the splendor of the sun and stars, but the same Christ, the light of the world and the sun of righteousness, shines forth in our souls; nor does the empty air spread its ebb and flow around us, but the very Spirit of God quickens and enlivens us. And so there the invisible kingdom of Christ fills all things, and his spiritual grace is diffused through all things. To be sure, this ought to prevent us from looking to heaven and earth as well and in this way fortifying ourselves in the true knowledge of God. For Christ is the image, in which God not only allows his breast to be seen, but also His hands and feet. By ‘breast’ I mean that secret love, by which we are enfolded in Christ; by ‘hands’ and ‘feet’ I understand those works which are set before our eyes. But: As soon as we have departed from Christ, there is nothing is so gross or trivial that we can avoid being mistaken as to its true nature. (C.R. 23, 10 f.). We do not find in Calvin any more detailed explanation or exposition of this programmatical assertion either in the Commentary on Genesis or in the relevant passages in the Institutio. Yet there can be no doubt that he has given us a stimulus to further thinking in this direction. The step which we ourselves have attempted along the lines he so impressively indicated is only a logical conclusion which is as it were set on our lips by the statements of the fathers, although they did not draw it for themselves.[2]

This is one reason among many why any serious Reformed person who would ever think that resourcing Thomas Aquinas and his Aristotelianism as a ‘congruous’ means by which to think God becomes quite staggering. Such a move flatly contradicts a principled and intensive commitment to the so-called ‘Protestant Scripture Principle.’ And yet, as the Post Reformed orthodox history bears out this is exactly what many of these Reformers did; they built their “Reformed” systems of theology on the Thomistic and Aristotelian ground provided for them in the Latin theological heritage so bequeathed. I’m still of the mind that it’s better to actually be principially Protestant rather than functionally Tridentine and Roman Catholic in my theology, as a Protestant. Many like Matthew Barrett, Craig Carter, and more seriously, Richard Muller and David Steinmetz et al. disagree.

[1] Thomas Aquinas, ST 1, q. 39, a. 7 cited by Gilles Emery, OP, The Trinitarian Theology of St Thomas Aquinas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 328–29.

[2] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/1 §40 [031] The Doctrine of Creation: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 30–1 [italics mine, they represent the translation of Calvin’s Latin].

Calvin against the Calvinists: Alasdair Heron and Thomas Torrance on Calvin

Posted on April 10, 2024 by Bobby Grow

Here is a quote from TF Torrance on how he believed John Calvin contributed to the theological world, and thus how he would think on how “Calvinists” have used Calvin in the wrong ways, and for wrong ends; essentially muting the seismic Calvin into the tremor Calvin that is only allowed to shake to rhythms presented by classic Calvinism of today and even yesterday. True, Richard Muller and other post-Reformed orthodox Calvinists like David Steinmetz have placed Calvin in Context, but whose context? You should read the whole essay that I pilfer this quote from, from Heron; he might provide you with a rounder understanding of Calvin, and then of course Torrance’s appropriation of Calvin.

It belongs to the great merit of John Calvin that he worked out the difficult transition from the mediaeval mode of thinking in theology to the modern mode, and placed the theology of the Reform on a scientific basis in such a way that the logic inherent in the substance of the Faith was brought to light and allowed to assume the mastery in human formulation of it. Calvin has not always been interpreted like this, yet if he has been misunderstood, perhaps it was his own greatness that was to blame. Calvin made such a forward advance in theological thinking that he outstripped his contemporaries by centuries, with the result that they tended to fall back upon an old Aristotelian framework, modified by Renaissance humanism, in order to interpret him. Thus there was produced what history has called ‘Calvinism’, the rigid strait-jacket within which Calvin’s teaching has been presented regularly to succeeding generations.[1]

[1] Thomas F. Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction, 76 cited by Alasdair Heron, “Participaito” Vol. 2, p.46 fn. 2.

Boldness Before God in Christ’s Election

Posted on April 5, 2024 by Bobby Grow

More strongly than Calvin, Beza thinks when dealing with the “elect” [“electi”) [sic] of particular persons with particular names. He directs his interest toward what is going on inside them, their questioning and receiving answers, their unsettledness followed by quiet resolution and then more unsettledness in their souls, the entire process of strange ups and downs, back and forths, which constantly goes on there. -Karl Barth, The Theology of the Reformed Confessions, 121-2

This is what happens when election is thought of in “Latin” terms, in abstraction from both its objective and subjective ground in the Godman, Jesus Christ. This type of dualism, or competitive relationship with God, necessarily works from a turn to the subject mode of navel gazing on my innards as a step prior to looking to God in Christ. It results in a vicious circle of uncertainty before God; the exact opposite of what the author to the Hebrews said we should do in constantly coming boldly into the throne room of God.

No God Behind the Back of Jesus in Both Torrance’s and Calvin’s Theology

Posted on December 5, 2023 by Bobby Grow

Here is John Calvin commenting on Colossians 1:15:

The sum is this — that God in himself, that is, in his naked majesty, is invisible, and that not to the eyes of the body merely, but also to the understandings of men, and that he is revealed to us in Christ alone, that we may behold him as in a mirror. For in Christ he shews us his righteousness, goodness, wisdom, power, in short, his entire self. We must, therefore, beware of seeking him elsewhere, for everything that would set itself off as a representation of God, apart from Christ, will be an idol. (John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians, trans. John Pringle, 150)

And on Philippians 2:6:

. . . As, then God is known by means of his excellences, and his works are evidences of his eternal Godhead, (Rom. I. 20,) so Christ’s divine essence is rightly proved from Christ’s majesty, which he possessed equally with the Father before he humbled himself. As to myself, at least, not even all devils would wrest this passage from me — inasmuch as there is in God a most solid argument, from his glory to his essence, which are two things that are inseparable. (John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Philippians . . ., 56)

Two eloquent statements, by Calvin, on (a.) Positive Theology, so that “knowledge of God” is limited to Christ alone — and not searching around for other “[sophist]icated” ways to talk about God (all you conceptually oriented scholastics out there). And (b.) on the relationship between the ontological/immanent nature of God, and the ‘evangelical’/economic nature of God. Calvin believed that the ‘works and miracles’ (“his glory”) are the external and univocal expression of His eternal being perichoretically united to the Father and the Holy Spirit. In other words, Calvin didn’t think that there was “a God behind the back of Jesus,” but that who Christ revealed Himself to be was the ‘exact representation’ and externalization of the coinhering glory (Jn. 17) that He has always shared with the Father by the communion of the Holy Spirit. So as John the Evangelist records Jesus saying:

If ye had known me, ye also should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him. 8. Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us. 9. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, shew us the Father? 10. Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. 11. Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works’ sake. John 14:7-11 KJV

This is all Calvin is getting at. When we do theology, when we work in the realm of “Christian epistemology,” we are strictly limited to doing Christology. If we want to know what the Father is like, if we want to talk about what God is like, then we are limited to looking at Jesus for all the proper boundaries and emphases that He wants us to know. Calvin would probably be appalled to see how his name has been applied to an theological methodology that has gone astray from this narrow framing provided by Calvin in his commentaries.

*originally posted in 2008 (the Calvin quotes were found in 2002 for a seminary paper)

John Calvin Juxtaposed with Theodore Beza on a Doctrine of Assurance of Salvation

Posted on November 28, 2023 by Bobby Grow

Calvinism is not a monolithic reality (thus this blog), historically, often times I find, when interacting with classic Calvinists, that there is the pervasive belief that “their” tradition is pure gospel without development. I think the following, at least, illustrates that this is too reductionistic, and in fact there is significant disagreement between someone like John Calvin (Evangelical Calvinist par excellence) and Theodore Beza (classic Calvinist the fountain-head), on the ordo salutis and the decrees.

In Richard Muller’s book: Christ and the Decree: Christology and Predestination in Reformed Theology From Calvin to Perkins, he is discussing Theodore Beza’s articulation of Christ and the decrees relative to predestination and the consequent doctrine of sanctification and assurance. Let’s hear from Muller on Beza’s view on “finding assurance” of salvation:

The syllogismus practicus [practical syllogism] appears in Beza’s thought as, at most, a partial solution to the problem of assurance. Beza frequently spoke of the inner witness of the Spirit as a ground of assurance, particularly in the context of justification and sanctification. This accords, on the one hand, with Beza’s forensic definition of justification and, on the other, with his recognition that sanctification could not be equated with progress toward a sinless life; in neither case could the empirical syllogismus enter the picture as the sole ground of assurance. But when Beza asks the question of the Christian life that results from faith, justification, and sanctification, proceeding, that is, from the divine cause to its human effects, he more pointedly even than Calvin, demands that good work follow. Throughout Beza’s works there is a tension between the spiritual and the emperical grounds of assurance: there is, in the relatively late study on Ecclesiastes, a denial of any use of material riches as a sign of justification or election–but in the isolated statement of the Catechismus compendarius, the syllogism rears its head in unabated form.

As Bray remarks, we encounter in Beza hardly a trace of Calvin’s teaching concerning Christ as the ground of assurance. There is a strong christological center in all of Beza’s attempts at systematic formulation and we sense everywhere the connection between Christ and the decree, but on the problem of assurance, which must always relate to causally to the decree, there is little christological discussion. In a sense, then, Beza allows more of a separation to occur between the munus Christi and the ordo salutis than does Calvin, to the end that the causal-empirical and pneumatological interests of the ordo predominate. . ..[1]

The first point I want to highlight on Beza is that according to Muller the “Practical Syllogism” played a heavy role as the basis for the elect to find assurance of salvation—in other words, empirically “proving” salvation was predominate within the soteriology of Beza. Secondly, there is a juxtaposition between the trajectory set by Beza versus the trajectory set by Calvin in regards to the basis of finding assurance (Calvin, according to Muller, believed that Christ alone was the sole base for finding assurance of salvation[2] vs. Beza who “demanded” that good works are necessary if a person is to have assurance of salvation).

While Beza desires to present a Christocentric soteriology, it appears, at least according to Muller’s analysis, that he becomes bogged down by concerns relative to ordo salutis rather than to emphasize the PERSON AND WORK of Jesus Christ.

Let me leave with a suggestion: it is this kind of Calvinism that is considered “Orthodox” today, the kind that was ratified at the Synod of Dordt. Again, this kind of regimented Calvinism finds its genesis and shape through its Doctrine of God. The “Doctrine of God” that leads to a Bezan understanding (even a Westminster understanding), is the one informed by what has been called Thomism; that is, Thomas Aquinas’ (Roman Catholic scholar) integration of Aristotelian categories of the infinite with the Christian God. If we err at this point, which I believe Classic Calvinism has, then every other doctrine (including soteriology, issues dealing with salvaiton) will be skewed from an actual “Evangelical” understanding of Christian theology.

In fact, it is this issue that will determine whether someone ends up an Evangelical Calvinist versus a classic Calvinist; that is how we “start” out talking about God. I will need to unpack more of this later . . . I can do some of that in the comment meta if you want.

PS. If anything, I want you to walk away from this post realizing that there really is a discernable distinction, very early on, to be made amongst Calvinism[s]. Thus, at the least, my blog title is warranted; and in fact, within the history of ideas, these distinctions are demanded if we are going to be “people of the truth” (Janice Knight has made a distinction between English Calvinism, one she labels The Spiritual Brethren [which would correlate closely to our “Evangelical Calvinism”, in some ways], and The Intellectual Fathers [which would correlate to “Classic Calvinism”, exactly]).

*I originally posted this post in 2009, three years prior to the publishing of our first book on Evangelical Calvinism.

[1] Richard Muller, Christ and the Decree, 85.

[2] See Bobby Grow, “’Assurance is the Essence of Saving Faith’: Calvin, Barth, Torrance and the Faith of Christ,’” in Myk Habets and Bobby Grow, eds., Evangelical Calvinism: Vol. 2: Dogmatics&Devotion (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications and Imprint of Wipf&Stock Publishers, 2017), 30-57. I offer a constructive critique of Calvin’s doctrine of assurance showing that he does indeed have a Christological superstructure at play, but because of his commitment to some abstract thought vis-à-vis the decretum absolutum, fails to hold a consistent theological line in his attempt to offer a genuinely evangelical doctrine of assurance of salvation.

The Calvin Fund for Evangelical Calvinists: On Scripture as Prolegomena

Posted on October 6, 2023 by Bobby Grow

I have been asked many many times over the years how Evangelical Calvinism is different than classical Calvinism (i.e., Federal theology, 5-point Calvinism etc.). There are a few ways to try and answer that; but an important way is to signal the type of theological methodology we follow (contra the competing traditions out there). Us, Athanasian Reformed look directly to Calvin—unlike the Post Reformed orthodox, ironically—in order to distill the various themes that help fund what we are attempting with this project.

As Providence would have it (Christ conditioned Providence, that is), I am rereading John Webster’s little book (one of my faves) Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch. In the following he sketches the spirit of Calvin’s theologizing. In his sketching what ends up being revealed, to an extent, is what characterizes the way us Evangelical Calvinists intend to operate. Webster writes:

Calvin is, of course, a scriptural rather than a speculative or systematic theologian, fulfilling his office as doctor of the church primarily through his biblical lectures, commentaries and sermons. The Institutes is no exception, for its purpose is, as Calvin puts it in 1559, ‘to prepare and instruct candidates in sacred theology for the reading of the divine Word, in order that they may be able both to have easy access to it and to advance in it without stumbling’. But the principles which underlie Calvin’s intense engagement with Scripture are distinctly theological: Scripture is the lode-star of his work because of what he sees as its place in the divine work of salvation, above all, its functions of announcing the gospel, reproving idolatry and fostering true piety. And there is a direct consequence here for the reading of Scripture: what is required of the reader is not simply intellectual skill, but above all a certain brokenness, from which alone truly attentive reading can follow.[1]

So, us Evangelical Calvinists are, in fact, rather Calvinian (versus, Calvinist) when it comes to our ressourcement of Calvin’s teaching; we do so constructively. Calvin, surely, was a product of his time; but he was also trailblazer, in the sense that he was much more Christ concentrated in his approach than many of his contemporaries. Like Calvin, Evangelical Calvinists are radically committed to the Protestant ‘Scripture Principle,’ and a radical Theology of the Word, to boot. Like Calvin, we reject the “schoolmen’s” deployment of scholastic methodology.[2] We aren’t prone to Lombard’s Sentence-like theology. We think Thomas Aquinas was a deeply entrenched Roman Catholic with very little to nothing to glean from (the late Webster disagrees with us there). We aren’t fans of applying Aristotelian categories to the exegesis of Holy Scripture. And we, like Calvin, reject the intellectualist anthropology that funds the whole superstructure of Latin theology; whether in its Catholic or Protestant iterations.

Webster, rightly leaves off with a final note, with reference to Calvin: “what is required of the reader is not simply intellectual skill, but above all a certain brokenness, from which alone truly attentive reading can follow.” As Webster underscores, Calvin had a theology of the cross funding his approach to Scripture. Calvin understood that the true theologian must be one who is fully dependent on listening to the Redeemer’s voice; that is, if an intimate knowledge of God was ever going to obtain.

[1] John Webster, Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch (Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 2003), 74.

[2] To be sure: Calvin was still the son of late medieval categories, so those are apparent in his personal theological grammar. Yet again, this is what makes Calvin so special for his time: i.e., he wasn’t a slave to his own period—I’d argue because he was first and foremost a slave of Christ, to the point that this affected his theological prolegomenon in more “relational” or “personalist” ways.

Calvin and the Conciliar Tradition against the Confessionally Reformed

Posted on September 19, 2023 by Bobby Grow

The following is a post I wrote in 2012. I am simply reiterating the party-line among those who occupy the chairs within the confessionally Reformed world; i.e., that Calvin, along with the whole catholic tradition belongs to them. That they represent the most valid and definitive Protestant reception of the catholic tradition, and that Calvin simply stands among them. Thus, the great revision of Reformed development goes.

Here Muller confirms what I have been asserting all the while; that he sees an organic thread between Calvin and the “orthodox, Calvinists.” He writes:

In the early years of the Reformation emphasis on the faith of the individual and stress on a new found sense of Christus pro me placed atonement at the center of theological concern. Even so, the work of Christ as mediator occupies the center of Calvin’s thought. The following essay will argue in similar terms that Protestant orthodoxy did not depart from this emphasis, that it developed a doctrinal structure more formal in definition and more scholastic in method but nevertheless concerned to maintain a doctrinal continuity with the soteriological emphasis and christological center of the theology of Calvin and his contemporaries. In this development, orthodoxy completed the transition (already evident in the work of Calvin) from piety and the preaching of reform to the system of Reformed doctrine. New structures, like the threefold office and the two states of Christ were integrated into systems of doctrine as formal principles, indeed, as new doctrinal contexts elicited from scripture, in terms of which dogmas received from the traditions — the Chalcedonian christological definition, for example — would be understood and, to a certain extent, reinterpreted. In this context also, the doctrine of the atonement, because it manifested the gracious will of God, moved into close relation with the doctrine of election.[1]

Like I said, a “seamless whole.” Muller represents one of the best working within Reformed scholarship, and also as representative of the attitude that I’ve been trying to engage with. That is, what Muller calls “orthodoxy” is the only “live” option for what it means to consistently and coherently appropriate the thought of Calvin — thus the exclusive claim (by Federal theology) to the name “Calvinist.” It is this thesis that becomes the a priori force that shapes the sectarianism that is now evinced by Calvinists, today. That is, if someone says that there are other, even historic, ways to appropriate Calvin (much more in line with his evangelicalism): these folks are considered heterodox.

I’ve read Muller’s book before; I don’t think he sustains his thesis; I think it remains an ad hoc assertion from him.

[1] Richard Muller, Christ and the Decree: Christology and Predestination in Reformed Theology from Calvin to Perkins, 10.

Calvin’s Christocentrism in the spirit of TF Torrance: No God Behind the Back of Jesus

Posted on December 6, 2022 by Bobby Grow

Here is John Calvin commenting on Colossians 1:15:

The sum is this — that God in himself, that is, in his naked majesty, is invisible, and that not to the eyes of the body merely, but also to the understandings of men, and that he is revealed to us in Christ alone, that we may behold him as in a mirror. For in Christ he shews us his righteousness, goodness, wisdom, power, in short, his entire self. We must, therefore, beware of seeking him elsewhere, for everything that would set itself off as a representation of God, apart from Christ, will be an idol. (John Calvin, “Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians,” trans. John Pringle, 150)

And on Philippians 2:6:

. . . As, then God is known by means of his excellences, and his works are evidences of his eternal Godhead, (Rom. I. 20,) so Christ’s divine essence is rightly proved from Christ’s majesty, which he possessed equally with the Father before he humbled himself. As to myself, at least, not even all devils would wrest this passage from me — inasmuch as there is in God a most solid argument, from his glory to his essence, which are two things that are inseparable. (John Calvin, “Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Philippians . . .,” 56)

Two eloquent statements, by Calvin, on (a.) Positive Theology, so that “knowledge of God” is limited to Christ alone — and not searching around for other “[sophist]icated” ways to talk about God (all you conceptually oriented scholastics out there). And (b.) on the relationship between the ontological/immanent nature of God, and the ‘evangelical’/economic nature of God. Calvin believed that the ‘works and miracles’ (“his glory”) are the external and univocal expression of His eternal being perichoretically united to the Father and the Holy Spirit. In other words, Calvin didn’t think that there was “a God behind the back of Jesus;” but that who Christ revealed Himself to be, was the ‘exact representation’ and externalization of the coinhering glory (Jn. 17) that He has always shared with the Father by the communion of the Holy Spirit. So as John the Evangelist records Jesus saying:

This is all Calvin is getting at. When we do theology, when we work in the realm of “Christian epistemology,” we are strictly limited to doing Christology. If we want to know what the Father is like, if we want to talk about what God is like; then we are limited to looking at Jesus for all the proper boundaries and emphases that He wants us to know. Calvin would probably be appalled to see how his name has been applied to an theological methodology that has gone astray from this narrow framing provided by Calvin in his commentaries.

*A post from 2010

John Calvin’s Theology of the Cross as Theological Theology

Posted on September 8, 2022 by Bobby Grow

Staying on theme from the previous post, let’s continue to focus on the theologia crucis; except this time it won’t be Luther’s, but John Calvin’s. Karl Barth in his Church Dogmatics III/1 refers us to the foreword Calvin wrote for his Commentary on the Book of Genesis (1554). Herein Calvin offers something that sounds intimately close to Luther’s thinking on a theology of the cross. So Calvin:

indeed it is vain for any to philosophize in the manner of the world, unless they have first been humbled by the preaching of the gospel, and have instructed the whole compass of their intellect to submit to the foolishness of the cross. I say that we will find out nothing above or below that will lift us to God, until Christ has educated us in his school. Nothing further can be done, if we are not raised up from the lowest depths and carried aboard his cross above all the heavens, so that there by faith we might comprehend what no eye has ever seen, nor ear ever heard, and which far surpasses our hearts and minds. For the earth is not before us there, nor its fruits supplied for daily food, but Christ himself offers himself to us unto eternal life; nor do the heavens illuminate our bodily eyes with the splendor of the sun and stars, but the same Christ, the light of the world and the sun of righteousness, shines forth in our souls; nor does the empty air spread its ebb and flow around us, but the very Spirit of God quickens and enlivens us. And so there the invisible kingdom of Christ fills all things, and his spiritual grace is diffused through all things.[1]

For any theology to actually be genuinely Christian theology, I submit, it must be conditioned and regulated by the kerygmatic reality of the cross of Jesus Christ (think of the ‘cross’ as the Apostle Paul does as a metonym for both the incarnation and atonement in toto). If this is not the basis, both ontologically, epistemologically, and ontically for the Christian disciple to more accurately think God, then we will only be ‘thrown back onto ourselves’ (as TFT would say), thus projecting our images onto God’s image, only to worship an elevated image of our collective selves as God rather than the true and living God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And yet this is precisely what we see happening in much theological programming these days. There is a recovery of a theology of glory wherein the theologian believes they are on solid ground simply because of the vintage of the theology, and theologians they are ostensibly recovering for the purported revitalization and fortification of the Protestant churches en masse.

Contrariwise, as Calvin notes, and as Barth is emphasizing as he quotes Calvin, no matter what period a theology is developed in, no matter what its pedigree and historical pressures, if it isn’t funded by the fount of the cross of Christ, where the Christian is put to death over and again, afresh anew, thus being given over to the life of Christ, that His life might bring life to our lives in the mortal members of our bodies, then there is no savory life, leading to further life in the work and the words the theologians are propagating in the name of Christ, and ostensibly, for the churches. If Calvin, Luther, Barth et al. are to be taken seriously, as they should be, the theologian must constantly cast themselves at the mercy seat of God, which is cruciform in shape, and allow the staurologic (the logic of the cross), the ‘logic of God’s grace in Christ’ (see TFT) to fully condition the theologian’s mode as a theologian indeed. Outwith this wisdom, τῇ σοφίᾳ τοῦ θεοῦ (‘the wisdom of God’), which is the wisdom of the cross, the theologian is only pushed deeper into the well of their own resources; which of course only leads the theologian into self-congratulation and idolatry, even in the name of Christ.

I know I bang this drum loudly and often, but that’s because I think we are at endemic levels when it comes to what Luther would call theologies of glory. That is, the types of theologies that aren’t submitted to the wisdom of God, in a properly based theology of the cross wherein the theologian can genuinely say: “it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me,” and “I have determined to know nothing among you except Christ and Him crucified.” When this ethos characterizes the theologians demeanor (those expressed in the Pauline passages), when this becomes their daily mode as a Christian thinker and teacher for the Church, it is at this point they have something of value to say because they are no longer leaning on the powers of their own intellects, or of those they are ostensibly recovering, but instead they are resourcing the reality of the Gospel as that is the fund and ground of their very being, moment by moment.

[1] John Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Genesis: Foreword cited by Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/1 §40 [031] The Doctrine of Creation: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 31.

Calvin in Barth’s Services on an ‘analogy of relation’ against Natural Theology and Her ‘Resourcers’ in scholasticism Reformed

Posted on August 30, 2022 by Bobby Grow

Knowledge of God is the key, that is to the ‘secret of creation.’ If “Jesus Christ is indeed the real ground of creation,”[1] then in order to know what in fact creation is for, we must first know its Creator. But as Karl Barth underscores, in a rather Athanasian key, if Jesus is the ground of creation, and if Jesus is indeed the ‘Son of the Father,’ then to know the inner-ground, the secret of creation is first to know Jesus, to know the Son. As such, prior to knowing what and who creation is for, as the case may be, we must first come to know the Creator not as brute Creator, but as Father of the Son. It is from this frame of reference the Christian principially will come to think God all the way down; down into the flesh and blood humanity of the Son become man in Jesus Christ. This implicates, it even contradicts the classical theistic and/or scholastic mode for attempting to know God. This ‘mode’ thinks God by a prior means, by speculating upon the creation, with the philosophers, before coming to know God as Son of the Father; and thus, as Father of the Son. Because they fail to think God from God’s Self-revelation in Jesus Christ, all the way down, they end up thinking from an abstract place about both the who-ness and what-ness of the living God. Once they establish that God exists (like Thomas in his Prima pars), they then are ready to think God as Son of the Father. But you see what this step does: It inherently ruptures the creation from the Creator, such that the former, at an epistemological level, comes to predicate the latter at an ontic level. Barth rightly excoriates such epistemologies as failures at more accurately knowing the living God; he rejects this type of natural theologizing at the very get-go, as would his patron saint, Athanasius.

What many of the Reformed of today might find troubling is that Barth can appeal to the namesake of the Calvinists himself, John Calvin. Barth can find commentary from Calvin on cognitio Dei (‘knowledge of God’) that militates against the natural theology of the scholastics Reformed. Even if Calvin has some dissonance, ultimately, that is when it comes to presenting a coherent position on knowledge of God, vis-à-vis his duplex cognitio Dei (‘twofold knowledge of God’), it is precisely in this dissonance that ripe fruit can be plucked by Barth in service of making his case for the inner reality of creation being God’s covenant life of grace for the world in Jesus Christ; and thus, to know creation as creation is to first know it as that is gift in God’s life of grace for the world come down in the Son of Man, Jesus Christ. Here Barth plucks Calvin’s fruitfulness found in what better place, but Calvin’s commentary on Genesis. Note how he puts Calvin to his services:

As Barth notes, whilst Calvin mined the depths of the fathers, he took them in a direction that they didn’t go in the type of explicit ways that he took them; that is with reference to ‘knowledge of God as Redeemer’ vis-à-vis ‘knowledge of God as Creator.’ As an extension of this constructive reception on Calvin’s part, that is of the implications provided for by the fathers, Barth constructively receives Calvin’s insights and applies them in a Christ concentration that Calvin only provided for in an incipient way. The material point of the matter is that as Barth has underscored, to know what creation is about we first must know who the Creator is; and the only way we can do that, according to Barth, and more importantly, according to Holy Scripture, is to understand that Christ is the ‘firstborn from the dead.’ That is to say, to understand that creation’s ultimate telos has always already been the Christ, as David Fergusson aptly notes: “the world was created so that Christ might be born.” It is this type of patristic theo-logic, to think God as Son of the Father (per Athanasius), that Barth is appealing to, and pressing Calvin into his services in this way; such that to think creation rightly, according to Barth, is to first think the ‘Son of the Father’ in Jesus Christ. It is as we are confronted with this effervescent reality of God’s life come with hair, toenails, flesh and blood, that creation comes to life, just as sure as the Son of Man fell into the ground as a seed, died, and sprung to life in the greenness of new creation, as the consummation and ground of creation’s final existence and reality. And it is union with Christ (unio cum Christo) by the Spirit that the ontological ground of creation, as that comes as a prius for us in Jesus Christ, gives epistemological life for us as we see the face of God, and thus creation’s ultimate reality, in Jesus Christ’s vibrant smile for us.

The moral: to attempt to think God from nature, from a natural theology, and in extension, as natural law, is to think a projection of ourselves into the vestiges of creation and name those vestiges Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is to say, it is idolatry to attempt to think God outwith principially thinking Him from the evangelical contours of His life for the world in the fullness of life for us in Jesus Christ. It is only as we repose in this analogia relationis (‘analogy of relation’) that has eternally co-inhered between the Father and Son by the Holy Spirit, that we have any hope of knowing the God who has eternally inhabited the supra-physical reality of His triune life of plenitudinous joyousness.

There are many today, particularly those attempting to resource the scholastics Reformed of the 16^th and 17^th centuries, respectively, who are introducing the evangelical churches to a god connived from speculative categories; as if God might be known and grammarized in the abstract ways we noted earlier. They would have people think that God is a monad, and our only hope for knowing Him is if first he elected us individually (so the decretum absolutum), and then secondarily, as a result of being one of His ‘elect’ we might come to have capacity to observe Him as His vestiges of infinitude, eternality, and immutability lay latent on the soil of the earth and atmosphere of the heavens, as those are discovered by our powers of abstract rationales and creativity. Indeed, I may have misspoke, even the pagan philosophers, like Plato and Aristotle, according to these ‘resourcers,’ have the capacity to see God’s vestiges in the creation, what they require, and what only the elect of God have been gifted with is a superadditum of ‘grace perfecting nature,’ of ‘revelation perfecting reason,’ such that the theologian can finally make the leap from God’s effects in the created order to their final cause and repose in the Unmoved Mover of actus purus (‘pure being’) who they name Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Barth is countering this; he is putting Calvin to work to counter this; and he is intimating that certain church fathers are odds with this type of ‘classical theistic’ reasoning that would attempt to think creation, and thus its Creator, in abstraction from the primacy of Christ, and our union with Him as the ground and basis for a genuine knowledge of the genuine and living God in Jesus Christ.

Be Blessed

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/1 §40 [031] The Doctrine of Creation: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 30.

[2] Ibid., 30-1. [italics mine, they represent the translation of Calvin’s Latin]

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Athanasian Reformed

𝑉𝑒𝑟𝑏𝑢𝑚 𝐷𝑒𝑖 𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑒𝑡 𝑖𝑛 𝑎𝑒𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑢𝑚. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐆𝐨𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫.

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