All Christian theology, ๐๐ ๐๐ข๐๐, is eschatological. This is what makes space for ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ก๐, ๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ ๐๐๐ข๐๐๐ข๐ ๐ฃ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ (โreformed and always being reformed according to the Word of Godโ). Selah
The nomist (law based) “Gospel” is a performance-based message that has no grounding in the true message of the Incarnation&Atonement of God in Jesus Christ. It is based on a mercantile quid pro quo transactional framework present in medieval and reformational times that isn’t attested to in the canonical Scriptures. Either the Gospel is God’s Grace all the way down, or it is a works-based Gospel typically associated with, in the history, what is known as Pelagianism. The tragic thing is that people in the classical Calvinist and Arminian, and generally Latin frames of Christian theological understanding, are beholden to this type of framework. Such that, the “framework” has been so conflated with the clear and pure teaching of Holy Scripture and the Gospel, that folks are unable to critically distantiate and disentangle themselves from the artificial non-biblical hermeneutic they have inherited; indeed, in the name of being the biblical hermeneutic.
The above is true even at the theologically academic level. And if this is the case, how much more so is this true in the downstream environs of the churches (places where doctrine is uncritically absorbed, typically, and where the people themselves don’t even generally read the Bible)? Hence, a result of this, especially at the “churches” level, is that people have no critical resource to allow them to be biblically and theologically discerning; since, for one thing, what they “receive,” subconsciously or consciously, is so baked into the way they are taught to read and think Scripture, that to question that is to question the Gospel, the Bible itself (the source of Protestant authority).
Charles Partee in his book Calvin and Classical Philosophy, by way of introduction, offers a nice treatment on the entailments of a mediaeval Christian Humanism versus a theological Scholasticism, as both of those were present in the early formation of the Protestant Reformation; with, of course, particular reference to John Calvin. I am going to share a long passage from Partee because it is rather pertinent to the way I see myself operating; as far as both mood and method goes. I will provide the passage, and then offer up some closing thoughts (the usual).
In the sixteenth century, however, the term โChristian philosophyโ is used in a different and important sense by some of the Christian humanists in referring to their program of reforming Christian thought by returning the correct understanding of Holy Scripture and purer Christianity in opposition to what they consider to be fruitless speculations and philosophical accretions of scholastic theology. These reformers seek not only a proper and faithful understanding of the Scriptures and patristic theology, but also a better and freer use of the wisdom of classical thought which does not jeopardize the revealed truth of God. For them revelation is not auxiliary to reason, rather reason is auxiliary to faith. That is to say, they object to the speculative use of reason to seek out hidden things, but not to its humble application to the understanding of Godโs word. Christian philosophy in the sixteenth century does not attempt a synthesis of revealed and reasoned theology in the Thomistic manner, but is willing, and even eager, to use the insights of classical philosophy as an aid to the exposition of Christian theology and as an admirable example of the fact that God has not left himself entirely without witness even among the pagans. Thus the Christian humanists study the philosophers not in order to achieve a balance between the unaided and the enlightened mind, but to point out the approximations of Christian truth which may be seen by the light of nature and also the darkness into which the errors of the philosophers lead.
Of course, the entire Renaissance recovery of the enthusiasm for classical learning involved in the knowledge and appreciation of classical thought and culture on the part of the humanists. Moreover, since many; if not most, of the humanists are Christians in some sense, it is difficult to distinguish the Christian humanists from other humanists with precision. Paul Kristeller suggests that the Christian humanists โare those scholars with a humanist classical and rhetorical training who explicitly discussed religious or theological problems in all or some of their writings.โ
It is true that the rhetorical tradition is an important identifying mark. As the Christian humanists use rhetoric, its relation to dialectics is a matter of emphasis. That is to say, they do not deny the value of dialectic, but they are more interested in the persuasive clarity of the truth than the irrefragability of logic. In Plato and Isocrates one sees a conflict between rhetoric and philosophy. Plato opposes rhetoric, the art of persuasion, to dialectic, the art of correct division and generalization. Plato thinks of persuasion as a matter of opinion based on probability; dialectic he regards as a matter of knowledge based on truth. The discussion develops in Aristotleโs seeking to rescue rhetoric from the obloquy of Sophistic flattery, by teaching that rhetoric is the counterpart of dialectic. In Cicero, whose ideal is the combination of rhetoric and philosophy which he sees exemplified in both Plato and Aristotle, wisdom is to be combined with rhetoric.
The same emphasis on the combination of rhetoric and dialectic is seen in Augustine. Augustine, who was trained as a rhetorician, insists that dialectics is of great service in understanding the Scripture. In Book Four of his Christian Doctrine he makes the point that rhetoric is necessary for the Christian orator, but truth is more important than the style of expression. The youthful study of the rules of oratory is not to be despised, but the study of the sacred writers who combine eloquence and wisdom, is sufficient to teach the wise man both what and how to communicate.
Likewise the Christian humanists are concerned with clarity in the service of truth rather than with syllogisms in the service of logic or embellishment in the service of persuasion. Since Melanchthon thinks that truth and clarity go together, he defends the clarity of rhetoric in opposition to the obscurity of some philosophy, but insists that dialectic and rhetoric are joined by nature. The Christian humanists associate scholasticism with sophistry and dialectical pride which seeks to find God at the end of a series of logical distinctions rather than with the attempt to make the truth evident and therefore persuasive. Moreover, as Rice observes [sic],
The Scholastics answered the question โIs theology a science?โ in the affirmative; the fathers answered it negatively. Theology is not a scientia, but a sapiential, not a systematically ordered body of true certain but undemonstrable principles of revelation, but a doctrina sacra of Scripture, a holy rhetoric in the humble service of the text, unprofaned by the syllogism of the Posterior Analytics.[1]
As Partee makes clear, in general, the Christian humanists, along with the church fathers, were interested in following the contours of Holy Scripture, rather than the speculative and discursive reasonings of the profane philosophers (which the scholastics were generally attuned to). These distinctions, as in any human endeavor, are not always nice and neat in the history; so the goal, of this development, is simply to provide demarcations available between two distinct approaches and methodologies that were profoundly informative, for our purposes, with reference to the Protestant Reformation. Partee argues that Calvinโs orientation was along the lines provided for by the Christian humanist rather than the scholastic tradition; so, Calvinโs form and style found within his Institutes of the Christian Religion. Even so, Calvin still operates with certain scholastic categories of his day, and yet he reifies them under a Christ conditioned, and thus Scriptural way, that fits well with the Christian humanist mood; indeed, as we have been considering that, with Parteeโs help, in this post.
In regard to modern theologians, I consider both Karl Barth and Thomas F. Torrance, respectively, as the clearest examaples of those following in the steps of the Christian humanist mood; and so in step even with Calvin and Luther in that way. There is a commitment to Holy Scripture and its reality in Jesus Christ, and the categories that come directly from this revelation that they attempt to pay attention to in theological ways. This cuts across the scholastic way, which involves the dialectics of thesis, antithesis, synthesis, so on and so forth. The scholastic way, as Partee helps us understand, involves a series of logico-deductive decisions, based primarily, not on a direct engagement with the text and reality of Scripture, but with an engagement with the commentary tradition the schoolmen prior to them offers up. This presents scholastic theologians with the problem of engaging, not with Scriptural categories, per se, but instead with the accretions of the sectarian theologians that had been developing in the mediaeval church for centuries upon centuries. This of course is a problem because as Christian theologians we are concerned not with the speculations of others, in regard to God and His ways, but, in principle, are concerned with the Word of God as He confronts afresh anew through the relational and organic sitz im leben of His life as He encounters us, as He is for us, in Jesus Christ.
People are still failing to recognize these really basic things as they have developed in the theological history of the church. Modern Christians, whether professional or lay, are too often uncritically controlled by the accretions and speculations of the schoolmen, rather than being contradicted and formed by fresh encounters with the Logos of God. This situation needs to be remedied. Of course, this takes thoughtfulness and work among the churchโs membership; and I have grown weary of holding out hope that people are actually willing to put in the work to come to see how all of these things matter and impinge upon their daily Christian existences. X/Twitter, Youtube, Facebook etc. are not sufficient in coming into the light of these greater realities.
[1] Charles Partee, Calvin and Classical Philosophy (Netherlands: E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1977), 8โ11 kindle.
In one of Martin Lutherโs famous treatises he speaks of the churchโs Babylonian Captivity. In his context this was in reference to the way the Gospel (and thus the church) had become conditioned to be what it was, programmed is even better, to imagine that the way people had been told things are by the Church, simply was the way it is. The people, en masse, had no real critical resource to imagine that what they had been told might not be the case; that the Gospel reality, and the Church of Jesus Christ might be much different than what they had been led to believe by their authorities (the magisteria of the Roman church). They simply lived in a world that was shaped by propaganda that led them into a captivity they believed simply was normal life. But Luther, following in the steps of the ad fontes (back to the sources!) movement, largely fostered by Lorenzo Valla et al., began to read the New Testament Greek afresh and anew. In Lutherโs case, as he did this, he came to realize that what the church had programmed him to believe about God and the Gospel simply was not the case. As many of us know his story, he was an Augustinian monk living a tortured faith, believing that God could only be angry with him because he was such a dreadful sinner. As the church had taught him, the iustitia Dei (Godโs righteousness), and the iustitia Christi (Christโs righteousness), or the merits won by Christ for those who, by an infusion of faith, through created grace, dispensed by the sacraments of the church, were able to perdue in a way that they might finally merit Christโs righteousness for them, thus allowing them to meet Godโs righteousness, resulting in an eternal reward of beatific vision. This was what Luther agonized under, until at the direction of his spiritual father, Johann von Staupitz, he found the truth of the Gospel held captive in the pages of the New Testament, breaking free as it mediated him to the Mediator between God and humanity, Jesus Christ. Luther had a break through! He was finally able to imagine a conception of God that was outside the walls of the cell the church had built for him, and so many, for the centuries.
We are not unlike Luther back then. As North American (Western) Christians we live in a secular and post-secular world that programs us to think in narrow bounded terms informed by a meta-narrative that proclaims the evangel of humanityโs ability to live like gods; to live the way we want; to live under the dictates of what our desires tell us are the true and the beautiful and the good. The people narrating for us have become our authorities. They are the magisteria for us, just as the Romish religion was for the late mediaeval world that Luther and the people of that time were for them. We might not recognize our โsocial engineersโ this way, indeed, we wouldnโt even want to think, particularly as American Christians, that we might be being programmed by others in a way that comes close to the authorities of Lutherโs day. But as Luther once noted: โโIt is not unusual in the world for villains and rascals to occupy every office and station in society and to abuse it.โ Christians seem to have a hard time admitting that they could be held captive by a cultural conditioning that comes close to resembling the sort of outright programming the mediaeval world had in the ex-cathedra of Rome. If this is you, or if you know of the types I am are referring to, maybe you ought to think again.
Kevin Vanhoozer, to my delight, hits upon these very themes in his new little book: Hearers & Doers: A Pastorโs Guide to Making Disciples Through Scripture and Doctrine. The section we will hear from him is him attempting to convict pastors, and Christians in general, to become alive to the idea that maybe, just maybe, they have become captivated by a type of Babylonian reality that has programmed them, and thus quenched their capacity to imagine that the world and reality of Holy Scripture, could in fact be the more concrete and real world; and that the vanilla status quo world they have come to think of as real and comfortable, or even just manageable, might not be the real world at all. As Vanhoozer notes, people, might be okay with affirming Scripture as Godโs Word, but then function in ways that betrays this because they have become ensnared by the secular world that is indeed anti-Christ and anti-thetical to what Christianโs affirm about the Bible. Vanhoozer writes:
Holy Scripture and the Discipleโs Imagination
As I mentioned above, many churches are suffering from malnourished imaginations, captive to culturally conditioned pictures of the good life. Chapter 2 focused on wellness, health, and fitness, but these are only symptomatic of other things that have dominated the social imaginary, like celebrity, wealth, and social power. Christians want to believe the Bibleโthey do believe it and are prepared to defend doctrinal truthโbut they nevertheless find themselves unable to see or feel their world in biblical terms (โI believe; help my unbelief!โ Mark 9:24). Consequently, they experience a disconnect between the world they actually inhabit and the world of the biblical text whose truth they confess. Their professions of faith are out of whack with their lived practices. If faithโs influence is waning, then it is largely because of a failure of the evangelical imagination to connect the biblical and cultural dots. Pastors can help, especially by reminding their congregations again and again what the Bible is and what it is for: Sola Scriptura is a shorthand way of doing this insofar as it reminds us that Scripture alone should exercise supreme authority over Christian faith and life, including the imagination.
In his essay โThe Demise of Biblical Civilization,โ historian Grant Wacker claims that during the twentieth century, the average American did not renounce the Bible but simply stopped using it as the primary plausibility structure with which to make sense of the world. People began to understand the meaning of events in terms of this-worldly historical processes rather than in terms of divine providence. The demise of biblical civilization was a failure of the imagination to read our world in terms of Godโs word. The demise of biblical civilization is related to the replacement of sola Scriptura in the social imaginary of the West by other stories.
Christian imaginations are captive to nonbiblical stories that do not lead us to Christ and thus fail to nourish our souls. We need to call these stories out and expose their shortcomings, for there is no other gospel (Gal 1:7). We cannot hide behind orthodox theology and pretend that we are invulnerable to the cultural programming that is happening to us 24/7. We need to know that the church is in competition with the powers and principalities that are trying to capture our imagination, and from thence our body, heart, and soul.
The gospel, especially the dramatic announcement that God has raised Jesus from the dead, sets the captive imagination free. What we might call the โevangelicalโ imaginationโan imagination ruled by the story of the gospelโfrees us to see, judge, and act in faith, in accordance with the way things really are rather than the way secular science or Madison Avenue say they are. It is all those other words and all that noise in contemporary culture that disorient and deserve to be called vain imaginings. The evangelical imagination alone opens up the real possibility of living along the grain of reality: according to what is really the case โin Christ.โ[1]
The Christian mind and heart are largely in captivity to the Babylonian culture we inhabit. This is a real captivity inhabited by real spiritual dark entities (Eph 6:12) who really do shape and condition and inform people who actively inhabit the โkingdom of darknessโ (Col 1:13). Their penetration is deeper, broader, and more intimate to our daily lives than we could ever begin to imagine; that is outwith our reliance upon and obedience to the reality of Scripture, Jesus Christ. This is why, currently, I am so shocked by peopleโs willingness to simply believe, as gospel truth, what the culture-makers are telling them. It is as if we are even suspicious about the depths of the coronavirus, and the numbers used to fear people into a lockdown and economic destruction of the sorts that a globalized economy has never seen before, that we are now โcoronavirus truthersโ (which I was recently called by a PhD in theology on Facebook).
But this is exactly the point, I think of what Vanhoozer is after. The Bible gives the Christian the โsocial imaginaryโ to think that the world we inhabit is indeed intent on conditioning us with messaging that forms us into its image. Once we become captive to this messaging, once we are thoroughly shaped by this worldโs kingdom, we no longer have the spiritual capacity to imagine that something very sinister is in control of this โevil ageโ; and that that is not some abstraction, but in fact is something the enlightened civilized West is held captive to in ways that make the Canannites of old look tame. This is how what Vanhoozer is getting impacts me. I look out at a world, a โChristianโ world that is consumed by materialism, and its perceived capacity to master the elements for its own purposes and creature comforts. This is the way of the nihilist and the demonic, not the via crucis (way of the cross). Iโm afraid that pastors and Christians reading Vanhoozer will walk away from what he has written with no real felt sense of the depth of what the world is up against; and thus we will not have an urgency about just how needed the power of God, which is the Gospel, is needed to confront and contradict the powers and principalities that seek to suck off the world, at all costs, to its final drop.
This is why I have been so vocal about the โcoronavirus,โ and the messaging promoting it. It is part of the same Deus ex Machina that has been programming us for years. The Bibleโs reality allows us to critically, other-worldedly, see things that this world system, and those in its clutches cannot see. But the church has become too much of this programmed world to even begin to see this. This present misinformation scam on the world will result in real life doom and destruction, and the church will simply sit there and bow the knee to its caesars; not Jesus Christ. This is a deep and broad Babylonian captivity. I pray many in the churches will be able to wake up, through the lens of Holy Scripture, and see what is for what it is. Soli Deo Gloria
[1] Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Hearers & Doers: A Pastorโs Guide to Making Disciples Through Scripture and Doctrine (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2019), 109-10.
Yesterday I wrote the following on Facebook: โWe need a Confessing Church to rise up in our post-secular culture; just as a Confessing Church rose up in Hitlerโs Nazi Germany.โ If you are unaware, the Confessing Church of Germany was the church that emerged in response to Hitlerโs Third Reich; Dietrich Bonhoeffer was its most prominent, and formative leader and voice (in Germany). In response an FB friend, Nicholas Forti, wrote:
The Confessing Church in Nazi Germany was organized in opposition to the Aryan Paragraph in particular and the encroachment of the Nazi government in Church polity more generally. In other words, there were deep theological issues at stake, for sure, but the goals of the Confessing Church were largely practical: oppose the Aryan Paragraph in the Church; resist the involvement of the Nazi government represented by the leadership of the Reichsbishof Ludwig Mรผller, who had been appointed by Hitler to lead the unified Reichskirke; etc. What would this new Confessing Church be opposing or resisting in particular and more generally?
He is right about the history of the originating Confessing Church, but what I had in mind was prompted by a discussion I recently was having with a theologian-pastor friend. We were discussing the state of the evangelical (Free) churches in North America, with pointed reference to the evangelical bible colleges and seminaries he and I attended, respectively. He has a couple of PhDs, a couple of Masters degrees; and I have my Masters degree and BA degree; all from familiar evangelical institutions (except one of his PhDs is from a European Continental school). The point: we both have had exposure, and the necessary time to reflect back on where our schools once were, and where they are today. What is clear to both of us is that there has been significant โmissionโ (and Iโd say moral) drift that has taken place at our respective institutions of higher Christian education. Essentially, or of note what I am referring to is the inroads that progressive socio-cultural policies and moods have made into the very fabric of these once highly orthodox seminaries. Whether we want to label this drift: moralistic therapeutic deism, neo-Marxism, social justice orientation, openness (or softness) to the LGBTQ agenda; however we want to label this drift, it has clearly crept in and transformed these institutions into a mere shadow (at best) of their former selves.
Essentially, the concern is the obvious capitulation these institutions, and the churches who receive pastors and leaders from them, have given into in regard to the broader cultural shift to a so-called post-secular (or even still, secular) posture. In other words, the problem is, as is typical among Godโs people, is that the seduction and ostensible sophistication of the surrounding cultures (or nations, in the Bible) seems to be too much to resist. Even beyond this, and I think this has a lot to do with the whole troubling scenario, there are real market forces at work. These schools, and churches who do the same (and they are legion!) perceive that if they donโt reposition themselves, as far as marketing and the types of degrees (emphases) they offer, that they will simply not be able to survive financially. So, in an attempt to cauterize this deep perceived bleeding, such schools (and churches) cave to the cultural forces at large, and in a sense give up the [Holy] ghost. They hire faculty that reflect the broader cultural mores, as those have taken shape in the churches; they retailor their degree packages; and as a result, trans-morph the whole culture of the campus into something they hope will attract more students, which will equal needed funding.
The Gospel is no longer front and center in such institutions. What is driving the schoolโs engines are the market forces of the culture at large. The culture at large is shaped by progressive ideology, at least in the university and higher learning contexts, and as such, what it means then to offer a quality education in such contexts will reflect these sorts of leanings and emphases. Sure, the Bible will still be touted as the ultimate grounding of the curriculum design, so on and so forth. But ultimately, what is underneath has more to do with a mood that is less Christ-centered, and more culture-centered; culture that is ultimately antagonistic to the foolishness of the Gospel.
This is why both me and my friend agreed that something like a Confessing Church is needed. Protestant Christianity actually has an orthodox and robust theological heritage and background that should be elevated not diminished. The Protestant heritage is one that venerates a theology of the Word of God, and sees that as the center-piece of all that is real and holy. The Protestant heritage does not capitulate to cultural or market forces; instead, it Protests and resists! The Protestant heritage emphasizes the theology of the cross (think, Martin Luther), and pushes into the depths of Godโs hiddenness by focusing on His revealedness in Jesus Christ. There is no place for capitulating to cultural norms, or ideologies within this sort of Protestant framework.
For my money, the way I appropriate the Protestant heritage (as is well known by now) is even more radical and rejects all forms of natural theology. I take capitulation to cultural forces in the name of Christ as a gross form of natural theology. It is these Protestant hallmarks: 1) a heavy commitment to a theology of the Word, and 2) rejection of all forms of natural theology that drove the Confessing Churchโs movement (both โpracticallyโ and theologically) against the Reichโs attempt to coopt the Christian churches. Clearly, there is a big difference, as far as overtness and intensity, between the German churchโs capitulation to the Nazi (โculturalโ) dogma, and what I am referring to in regard to the more passive cultural appropriation of the evangelical churches and institutions in North America (and elsewhere in the West). But over the long haul the ideology can have just as drastic of consequences. I am thinking on a continuum of greater to lesser intensity and evil that is associated with capitulating to the broader cultural norms. But in principle, the capitulation is the same. The Word of God loses its supremacy, and the โnaturalโ components of the culture at large are allowed to shift-shape the churches (and their schools) into a syncretistic hot-mess (I could refer us to many OT passages that might illustrate this ongoing problem for the covenant people of God).
These are some of the reasons I believe we need a Confessing Church in North America (and elsewhere in the Western world). As the Apostle Paul so eloquently writes: โFor I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greekโ (Rom 1.16). The power of God is the Word of God; Jesus Christ is the Word of God; Jesus Christ is the Gospel. The Word of God capitulates to no cultural norm, it contradicts and confronts it in its heart. It really is this simple / but such simplicity is foolishness to the sophisticants among us. Let me leave us with the document produced by the Confessing Church of Germany; primarily written by Karl Barth (as he remained in exile from Germany in his Swiss homeland) and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I leave you with the Barmen Declaration (circa 1934).
In view of the errors of the “German Christians” and of the present Reich Church Administration, which are ravaging the Church and at the same time also shattering the unity of the German Evangelical Church, we confess the following evangelical truths:
“Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold through the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved.” John 10:1,9
Jesus Christ, as he is attested to us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God whom we have to hear, and whom we have to trust and obey in life and in death.
We reject the false doctrine that the Church could and should recognize as a source of its proclamation, beyond and besides this one Word of God, yet other events, powers, historic figures and truths as God’s revelation.
As Jesus Christ is God’s comforting pronouncement of the forgiveness of all our sins, so, with equal seriousness, he is also God’s vigorous announcement of his claim upon our whole life. Through him there comes to us joyful liberation from the godless ties of this world for free, grateful service to his creatures.
We reject the false doctrine that there could be areas of our life in which we would not belong to Jesus Christ but to other lords, areas in which we would not need justification and sanctification through him.
The Christian Church is the community of brethren in which, in Word and Sacrament, through the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ acts in the present as Lord. With both its faith and its obedience, with both its message and its order, it has to testify in the midst of the sinful world, as the Church of pardoned sinners, that it belongs to him alone and lives and may live by his comfort and under his direction alone, in expectation of his appearing.
We reject the false doctrine that the Church could have permission to hand over the form of its message and of its order to whatever it itself might wish or to the vicissitudes of the prevailing ideological and political convictions of the day.
The various offices in the Church do not provide a basis for some to exercise authority over others but for the ministry [lit., “service”] with which the whole community has been entrusted and charged to be carried out.
We reject the false doctrine that, apart from this ministry, the Church could, and could have permission to, give itself or allow itself to be given special leaders [Fรผhrer] vested with ruling authority.
Scripture tells us that by divine appointment the State, in this still unredeemed world in which also the Church is situated, has the task of maintaining justice and peace, so far as human discernment and human ability make this possible, by means of the threat and use of force. The Church acknowledges with gratitude and reverence toward God the benefit of this, his appointment. It draws attention to God’s Dominion [Reich], God’s commandment and justice, and with these the responsibility of those who rule and those who are ruled. It trusts and obeys the power of the Word, by which God upholds all things.
We reject the false doctrine that beyond its special commission the State should and could become the sole and total order of human life and so fulfil the vocation of the Church as well.
We reject the false doctrine that beyond its special commission the Church should and could take on the nature, tasks and dignity which belong to the State and thus become itself an organ of the State.
The Church’s commission, which is the foundation of its freedom, consists in this: in Christ’s stead, and so in the service of his own Word and work, to deliver all people, through preaching and sacrament, the message of the free grace of God.
We reject the false doctrine that with human vainglory the Church could place the Word and work of the Lord in the service of self-chosen desires, purposes and plans.
The Confessing Synod of the German Evangelical Church declares that it sees in the acknowledgment of these truths and in the rejection of these errors the indispensable theological basis of the German Evangelical Church as a confederation of Confessing Churches. It calls upon all who can stand in solidarity with its Declaration to be mindful of these theological findings in all their decisions concerning Church and State. It appeals to all concerned to return to unity in faith, hope and love.
Verbum Dei manet in aeternum.
The Word of God will last forever.
The riposte from Roman Catholic and Orthodox apologists, maybe even some Anglican, is that the Bibleโs canonicity is given to it in a causal way by the Churchโs recognition. But the historic 
Protestantย response is that as Calvin emphasizes, it is autopistis; or in other words, it is self-authenticating. Karl Barth, often chastised for being an enemy of Scripture, is actually one of Scriptureโs most ardent warriors; particularly in regard to its Protestant iteration. Barth appeals to historic Protestant thinkers in his own articulation of a doctrine of Scripture. More pointedly, Barth appeals to John Gerhard and Johannes Wollebius as they counter Roman Catholics like, Sylvester Prierias and John Eck when they grant infallibility to the Pope and Roman Catholic Church over against Holy Scripture. Clearly this is an issue of authority; who has it? Does Scripture have it at a formal level, or does the Holy Roman See (this not to mention Orthodox conceptions of episcopacy vis-ร -vis Scripture)?
Barth quotes Gerhard:
There is not a double authority of Scripture, but a single authority, and that is divine: it does not depend on the authority of the church, but on God alone. The authority of Scripture as far as we are concerned is nothing other than the manifestation and the knowledge of that single divine and supreme authority, which is internal and intrinsic to Scripture. Therefore, the church does not confer a new authority, as far as we are concerned, upon Scripture, but rather by its own testimony it leads us to the acknowledgement of that truth. We admit that of sacred Scripture the church is (1) the witness; (2) the guardian; (3) protector (4) the herald; (5) the interpreter. But let us not conclude from this that the authority of Scripture, whether in itself or in relation to us, depends on the church.[1]
And Wollebius:
The testimony of the church is prior in time, but the testimony of the Holy Spirit is prior in nature and causality. We believe that the testimony is of the church, not on account of the church. It is to be ascribed to the Holy Spirit on his own account. The testimony of the church demonstrates the fact โthatโ, but the testimony of the Holy Spirit demonstrates the โbecauseโ. The church advises, the Holy Spirit convinces. The testimony of the church provides opinion, but the testimony of the Holy Spirit provides knowledge and firm trustworthiness.[2]
Some Protestants, typically biblical studies folks it seems, want to signal the end of the Protestant Reformation. That in light of the New Paul Perspective[s] the soteriological reasons for the Protestant Reformation are no longer relevant; that Luther et al. were misguided. But these folks are moving too quickly. The Protestant Reformation, indeed had much to do with soteriology, but behind that there was a deeper issue of authority. This issue is ultimately an ecclesiological issue, and one that remains. What Gehard and Wollebius wrote in the 17th century is just as pertinent now as it was then; none of these issues have been resolved. Protestants still affirm the โScripture Principleโ or sola Scriptura, whereas Roman Catholics (and Orthodox) do not. Indeed, at this level, the traditions are as far apart as ever. And this does have serious soteriological implications. If Rome or Constantinople have โthe keys,โ then they decide who is genuinely โsavedโ and who isnโt. There might be room for ecumenicism, such as we find with Thomas Torrance and the Orthodox focused on the doctrine of Trinity. But if we were to look to a doctrine of Scripture as the basis for ecumenical convergence between the traditions, it is not there.
[1] John Gerhard, Loci theolo., 1610 f., LI c. 3, 39, cited by Karl Barth, CD I/2 ยง19, 19.
[2] Johannes Wollebius, Comp. Christ. Theol., 1620, Praecogn. 9, cited by Karl Barth, CD I/2 ยง19, 19.
It strikes me as completely petitio principii (circular) to simply presume that the Great Tradition of the Church just is caused by Godโs design. It is a total adjunct of natural theology to maintain that we, even collectively, can simply scan the contours of ecclesial history and identify what counts as orthodox, and what doesnโt; and then use what we count as orthodox to relegate anything we deem 
outside of โorthodoxyโ as heretical or heterodox. I write and think as a Protestant, a Free Church Protestant (FCP). Even if I wasnโt an FCP, just being a mere Protestant ought to fortify the thinker from simply affirming something as orthodox because โthe Churchโ says so. But this is what we continue to get as the mantra from evangelical and Reformed (and Lutheran) theologians. Iโm sorry, but I canโt get over this.
Iโm a โBible believing Christian,โ who sees value in the doctrinal contours presented by the church catholic. Along with Barth I even see a Chalcedonian pattern that ought to be paradigmatically followed in the ordering of our theological inklings. But it is a pattern that I see; it isnโt an absolute frame whereby I adjudge this โinโ and that โout,โ per se. There, of course, is a standard for determining what is in and what is out, but it isnโt ultimately Church tradition; for the Protestant it is Holy Scriptureโbut not Holy Scripture that is sublated by the Churchโs tradition. The Protestant, like myself, is committed to what the Reformed refer to as the Protestant โScripture principle.โ Yet, even those committed to this, or sola Scriptura, often qualify it to the point that in order to ensure they are understood to be โcatholic,โ that they end up hijacking Scriptureโs authority and embassy by using the categories presented by The Great Tradition as their biblical exegetical lenses. The result is that we are really given a reading of Scripture whose esse (being) is the Churchโs magisterium and the tradition that that is.
As an alternative, and what I take to be a genuinely Protestant doctrine of authority, for those committed de jure to the Scripture principle, I believe we ought to see Scriptureโs esse, or reality grounded in Christ alone (solus Christus). If we donโt intentionally, and RADICALLY, make this move then all we are left with is what we see unfolding currently in so much of the theological environs of โconservativeโ Protestant existence today. As an illustration, just go onto conservative theological social media (Twitter and Facebook come to mind), and see how many of the folks there are committed to some form of Thomism. Thomism has become the Tridentine Churchโs (post-Trent) mode for doing all things theological. And yet we can equally say that this mode has been just as entrenched, ever since the 16th and 17th centuries of Post Reformation Reformed orthodox development, for the Protestant churches. This is what being โrecoveredโ currently. But I would argue that this whole movement, particularly as that was given impetus in the 16th and 17th centuries, belies the very intent of the Lutherian and Calvinian (et al) Reformation to begin with. Luther in particular, even while constructively deploying certain Aristotelian categories, completely rejected the Thomist or Aristotelian theology of his day. Some point out that Luther only rejected what he understood of Aristotle and Thomas in order to marginalize my point, but the reality remains that Luther fundamentally saw the Pure Being theology of the Church at odds with the Faith of Christ as presented on the pages of the NT. And yet people continuously ignore this fact, and rush headlong into the Catholic faith; even as Protestants. They arenโt reforming anything, they are only submitting to the power of the river Tiber and drowning in its Thomist eddies and Papal undercurrents.
More importantly, what I am really at a loss over is what I was mentioning at the beginning of this post. In order to take advantage of some of the important doctrinal patterns that have developed over the centuries doesnโt mean that the person attempting to take this advantage must swallow the whole ball of wax! A person can constructively skiff these patterns as they see those emerging from the reality of Christ revealed or not. A person does not have to be a Thomist or Scotist (or even a Palamite) in order to find helpful conceptual theological matter that might be present in even some of those patterns. But it seems to me that people are conflating catholicity with identification with this sort of Church Tradition; that one must be Aristotelian or โspeculativeโ or of the negative way in order to be a catholic thinker. And yet all of this seems oh so AD HOC! Protestants, or what I take to be genuinely Protestant, donโt read Godโs face off of the developments of natural history; even if that takes place in the Church. Protestantโs know their Shepherdโs voice because their Shepherd is their life; their Shepherd is their brother and Savior, Jesus Christ. As such the Protestant knows that they have a direct and unmediated line between themselves and God, who is their Father by the adoption of Grace. Protestants donโt have a speculative relationship in regard to knowing Who their God is, they know Him concretely and relationally in and through Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is their mediator, and through participation and union with Him the Protestant comes to have a theological slab illumined for them that does not require the sort of speculative meandering that Tridentine theology requires.
I submit that in order to be genuinely Protestant in theological orientation, the Christian must forgo commitment to the sort of speculative theology that is being recovered by so many today in the Protestant churches (as part of a long line with Protestantism). I submit that in order to be Protestant one must be radically committed to Holy Scriptureโs authority and her reality in Jesus Christ. I submit that in order to be Protestant the Christianโs whole frame of reference must be shaped by the regula fidei, who I, in a reified sense, take to be Jesus Christ directly (not mediately through the Church). I submit that in order to be Protestant the disciple must repudiate all forms of natural theology, and rely solely on the apocalyptic and in-breaking of Godโs life in the risen Christ as that comes to be known by the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit as attested by Holy Scripture. To be genuinely Protestant, as a theological thinker, I submit that we must operate as confessional agents who reject all forms of apology as the basis for the theological task. To be a genuine Protestant thinker I submit that we have no other tradition but Christ, who in fact turns out to not be a tradition at all; but a person! If you attempted to place what Iโm saying in the history of Christian ideas it would be in the spirit of the via moderna, but I wonโt explain that now.
I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit
and born of the virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
ย ย ย ย ย he descended to hell.
The third day he rose again from the dead.
He ascended to heaven
and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty.
From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.
This Maundy Thursday I thought it would be fitting to press into the reality of what in fact took place not only on Good Friday, but Holy Saturday. In the Apostles’ Creed we have the (not uncontroversial) phrase โhe descended into hell.โ For the remainder of this post we will look at how this phrase has been taken in and among the Protestant Reformed and Lutheran traditions; particularly as that developed in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Richard Muller in his book Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology (which I am currently working through) offers this definition on the Latin phrase descensus ad inferos (โthe descent into hellโ),
viz., that portion of Christโs work, in the text of the Apostlesโ Creed, is mentioned immediately after the death and burial of Christ and immediately before the proclamation of the resurrection. The concept was a cause of debate between Lutherans and Reformed and subject to various interpretations on both sides. In general, the Reformed view the descensus as the final stage of Christโs state of humiliation (status humiliationis, q.v.), while the Lutherans view it as the first stage of the status exaltationis (q.v.), or state of exaltation. Among the Reformed, Martin Bucer and Theodore Beza viewed the descensus as identical with the burial of Christ, while Calvin referred the descensus to the suffering of Christโs soul coincident with the death and burial of the body. The Reformed scholastics tend to draw these themes together and argue that, loosely, the descensus refers to all the spiritual suffering of Christโs passion and death and, strictly, to the bondage to death indicated by Christโs three days in the tomb. The Reformed deny both the idea of a local descent of Christโs soul into a place called hell or Hades and the teaching (based on 1 Peter 3:19) that he entered Hades to preach salvation to the patriarchs or to men from the age before Noah. Two sixteenth-century Lutheran theologians, Aepinus and Parsimonius, expressed doctrines similar to the Reformed. Aepinus clearly placed the descensus as the final stage of the status humiliationis and viewed it as the suffering of Christโs soul in his conquest of death. Like the Reformed, Aepinus denied the relevance of 1 Peter 3:19. Parsimonious denied any physical or spatial descensus and similarly referred the descensus to Christโs suffering. The Formula of Concord condemned speculative controversy on the descensus and argued that the descensus indicated Christโs deliverance of believers from the โjaws of hellโ in and through his victory over death, Satan, and hell. This positive, redemptive reading of the descensus carried over into Lutheran orthodoxy where the descensus ad inferos is interpreted as spiritual (i.e., neither physical nor local) descent to the domain of Satan to announce victory and triumph over the demonic powers. In this interpretation, 1 Peter 3:19 is not an evangelical preaching of salvation to the inhabitants of Hades but a legal preaching of the just damnation of the wicked. This is an act, not of the humiliated and suffering Christ, but of the exalted Christ. According to Lutheran dogmaticians, the descensus follows the quickening of Christโs body and is the first stage of the status exaltationis.[1]
This provides insight into the ways that the primary traditions that developed out of the Protestant Reformation read the Apostlesโ Creed and its phrase descensus ad inferos. No matter what emphasis we want to place on whichever theological syllable, what stands out is the wonder of the reality that God in Christ graciously humbled himself to the point of becoming man and was obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross; and this for us.
Beyond the mystery of it all there is a concrete physicality to it and existential grist that is felt in our lives as we participated with Christ, as he first participated with us, in the death, burial, and resurrection (cf. Rom. 6). The fact that he humbled himself also, as apiece, means that he exalted himself and this for us that we might be what he is, by adoption, and become flesh and blood children of the living God. The only thing I really know to say is: thank you, Lord.
[1] Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1985), 89-90.
I was first introduced to Martin Lutherโs theology, for real, in my 2002 Reformation theology class, during seminary, under the tutelage of Dr. Ron Frost (who I would later serve as a TA for, and be mentored by). Ron had written an essay for the Trinity Journal back in 1997, which caused an exchangeโby way of rejoinderโby Richard Muller; who wanted to dispute Frostโs arguments (which I think he failed, because he didnโt really address Ronโs basic thesis and thus subsequent argument). So I wanted to share, with you all, just the first few opening paragraphโs of Ronโs essay 
in order to give you a feel for what he argued.
Given the 500 year anniversary of the Protestant Reformation that is upon us, I thought it would be more than apropos to get into this through Frostโs essay. It throws how we think of the reason for the Protestant Reformation into some relief; relief in the sense that for Luther the indulgences werenโt the real driving force for him; what really motivated him had to do with Aristotleโs categories infiltrating Christian theologyโprimarily through Thomas Aquinasโs synthesis. What Frost convincingly demonstrates in his essay is that Lutherโs primary concern had to do with a theological-anthropological locus; i.e. that humanityโs relation to God was set up under conditions that were philosophical and intellectualist rather than biblical and affectionist.
Here is a lengthy quote from Ronโs essay; I will follow it up with a few closing thoughts.
Aristotleโs Ethics: The Real Reason for Lutherโs Reformation?
What was it that stirred Martin Luther to take up a reformerโs mantle? Was it John Tetzelโs fund-raising through the sale of indulgences? The posting of Lutherโs Ninety-Five Theses against the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences in October, 1517, did, indeed, stir the public at large. But Lutherโs main complaint was located elsewhere. He offered his real concern in a response to the Diatribe Concerning Free Will by Desiderius Erasmus:
I give you [Erasmus] hearty praise and commendation on this further account-that you alone, in contrast with all others, have attacked the real thing, that is, the essential issue. You have not wearied me with those extraneous [alienis] issues about the Papacy, purgatory, indulgences and such like-trifles rather than issues-in respect of which almost all to date have sought my blood (though without success); you and you alone, have seen the hinge on which all turns, and aimed for the vital spot.1
The concern of this article, then, is to go behind the popular perceptions-the โtriflesโ-of Lutherโs early activism in order to identify and examine this โhinge on which all turns.โ
What was this vital spot? Luther was reacting to the assimilation of Aristotleโs ethics within the various permutations of scholastic theology that prevailed in his day. Indeed, Lutherโs arguments against Aristotleโs presence in Christian theology are to be found in most of his early works, a matter that calls for careful attention in light of recent scholarship that either overlooks or dismisses Lutherโs most explicit concerns.
In particular, historical theologian Richard A. Muller has been the most vigorous proponent in a movement among some Reformation-era scholars that affirms the works of seventeenth century Protestant scholasticism-or Protestant Orthodoxy-as the first satisfactory culmination, if not the epitome, of the Reformation as a whole. Muller assumes that the best modern Protestant theology has been shaped by Aristotelian methods and rigor that supported the emerging structure and coherence of Protestant systematic theology. He argues, for instance, that any proper understanding of the Reformation must be made within the framework of a synthesis of Christian theology and Aristotleโs methods:
It is not only an error to attempt to characterize Protestant orthodoxy by means of a comparison with one or another of the Reformersโฆ. It is also an error to discuss [it] without being continually aware of the broad movement of ideas from the late Middle Agesโฆ. the Reformation โฆ is the briefer phenomenon, enclosed as it were by the five-hundred-year history of scholasticism and Christian Aristotelianism.2
The implications of Mullerโs affirmations may be easily missed. In order to alert readers to the intended significance of the present article at least two points should be made. First, Muller seems to shift the touchstone status for measuring orthodox theology from Augustine to Thomas Aquinas. That is, he makes the Thomistic assimilation of Aristotle-which set up the theological environment of the late middle ages-the staging point for all that follows in orthodox doctrine. It thus promotes a continuity between Aquinas and Reformed theology within certain critical limits3-and this despite the fact that virtually all of the major figures of the early Reformation, and Luther most of all, looked back to Augustine as the most trustworthy interpreter of biblical theology after the apostolic era. Thus citations of Augustine were a constant refrain by Luther and John Calvin, among many others, as evidence of a purer theology than that which emerged from Aquinas and other medieval figures. Second, once a commitment to โChristian Aristotelianismโ is affirmed, the use of โone or another of the Reformersโ as resources โto characterize Protestant orthodoxyโ sets up a paradigm by which key figures, such as Luther, can be marginalized because of their resistance to doctrinal themes that emerge only through the influence of Aristotle in Christian thought.
An alternative paradigm, advocated here, is that Lutherโs greatest concern in his early reforming work was to rid the church of central Aristotelian assumptions that were transmitted through Thomistic theology. To the degree that Luther failed-measured by the modern appreciation for these Thomistic solutions in some Protestant circles-a primary thrust of the Reformation was stillborn. The continued use of Aristotleโs works by Protestant universities during and after the Reformation promoted such a miscarriage. Despite claims to the contrary by modern proponents of an Aristotelian Christianity, Aristotleโs works offered much more than a benign academic methodology; instead, as we will see below, his crucial definitions in ethics and anthropology shaped the thinking of young theological students in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who read the Bible and theology through the optic of his definitions. Luther recognized that Aristotleโs influence entered Christian thought through the philosopherโs pervasive presence in the curricula of all European universities. In his scathing treatise of 1520, To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, Luther-who for his first year at Wittenberg (1508-9) lectured on Aristotleโs Nicomachean Ethics four times a week-chided educators for creating an environment โwhere little is taught of the Holy Scriptures and Christian faith, and where only the blind, heathen teacher Aristotle rules far more than Christ.โ His solution was straightforward:
In this regard my advice would be that Aristotleโs Physics, Metaphysics, Concerning the Soil, and Ethics which hitherto have been thought to be his best books, should be completely discarded along with all the rest of his books that boast about nature, although nothing can be learned from them either about nature or the Spirit.
This study will note, especially, three of Lutherโs works, along with Philip Melanchthonโs Loci Communes Theologici. The first is Lutherโs Disputation Against Scholastic Theology, presented in the Fall of 1517, at least a month before he wrote his more famous Ninety-Five Theses. Second is his Heidelberg Disputation, which took place April 26,1518. The third is his Bondage of the Will-which we cited above written in 1525 as a response to Erasmus. Melanchthonโs Loci was published in 1521 as Luther was facing the Diet of Worms.4 A comparative review of Augustineโs responses to Pelagianism will also be offered.[1]
It is interesting that we rarely if ever hear about Lutherโs Disputation Against Scholastic Theology; Luther posted 97 theses a month prior to his famous 95 that kicked off, at a populace level, what we know of as the Protestant Reformation of today. But because the โindulgence thesesโ are elevated to a level wherein we associate the Protestant Reformation with that, we miss the real reason Luther was so invigorated to Protest in the first place; and insofar that we miss his motivation we, as Frost notes, may well be living in the wake of a โstill-bornโ Reformation; a Reformation that has very little to do with Lutherโs real concern in regard to the impact that Aristotelianism has had upon Christian theology.
Furthermore, as we can see, as Frost is going to argue (and does), because of folks like Richard Muller who have championed the idea that what happened in the Post Reformation Reformed orthodox period of the 16th and 17th centuries, wherein an Aristotelian Christianity developed, the theology that Reformed and evangelical theologians are largely retrieving todayโfor the 21st centuryโlives out of the hull of a theological development that if Luther were alive today would cause him to start Protesting once again. This is ironic indeed!
And so maybe you, the reader, might gain greater insight into what has been motivating me all these years. I am really a Luther[an] in spirit; along with Frost et al. I am desirous to live out Protestant Reformation theology that is in line with Lutherโs original intent; i.e. to genuinely get back to the Bible, and to think and do theology from Godโs Self-revelation in Christ in a kataphatic key (or the via positiva โpositive wayโ). When I came across Thomas Torranceโs (and Karl Barthโs) theology the original attraction and hook for me was that he was operating under the same type of Luther[an] spirit; in regard to recovering the original intent of the Protestant Reformation. To be clear, Ron Frostโs work has no dependence whatsoever on Torrance (or Barth), his work is purely from a historical theological vantage point; indeed, Frost is Augustinian, whereas Torrance et al. is largely Athanasian. So while there is convergence in regard to the critique of Aristotelianism and its impact on the development of Reformed theology, the way that critique is made, materially, starts to diverge at some key theological vantage points. Frost finds reference to Luther, Calvin, Augustine, and to the Puritan Richard Sibbes as the best way to offer critique of the Reformed orthodox theology that developed in the 16th and 17th centuries. Torrance et al. look back more closely attuned to Athanasius, Cyril, Calvin, Jonathan McLeod Campbell, and Karl Barth.
For me, as I engage with all of this, you might see how I have viewed both streams of critique (the Frostian and Torrancean, respectively) as representing a kind of full frontal assault on something like Mullerโs positive thesis in regard to the value he sees in Aristotelian Christianity. Itโs like opening all canons, both from an Augustinian and Athanasian, a Latin and Greek movement against an Aristotelian Christianity that has taken root; and contra what is now considered โorthodoxโ theology when it comes to what counts as the Reformed faith.
Evangelical Calvinism, on my end, involves all of these threads; it is not just a Torrancean or โBarthianโ critique. And the relevance of it all is that it alerts people to the reality that: 1) The Reformed faith is more complex than it is represented to be; 2) the Reformed faith is much more catholic in its orientation; 3) popular developments like The Gospel Coalition and Desiring God (i.e. John Piper), and the theology they present, is given proper context and orientationโi.e. there is historical and material resource provided for in regard to offering challenges and critique to what they are claiming to be Gospel truth; and 4) the theology that we find in something like the Westminster Confession of Faith, insofar as it reflects the Aristotelian Christianity that Richard Muller lauds, is confronted with the sobering truth that Martin Luther himself would be at stringent odds with what they have explicated for the Reformed faith in general.
I hope you have found this interesting.
[1] Ron Frost, โAristotleโs Ethics: The Real Reason for Lutherโs Reformation?,โ Trinity Journal 18:2 (Fall 1997): 223-24.
Who is God? Or maybe the question is: What is God? The latter question is what the Post Reformed orthodox theologians were concerned with, and it is this question that we receive an answer for in the Westminster Confession of the Faith. But I am actually more interested in who God is. Iโd rather allow who God is to define what God is, rather than allowing what God is to define who He is. 
The former presupposes that God is personal and revelatory, while the latter could simply operate off of a conception of God or Godness that could potentially be impersonal and discoverable. And yet because the Post Reformed orthodox or classical Calvinist theologians were attempting to answer what God is, this allowed them to slip back into an approach to the God of the Bible that did not necessarily have to start with the God of the Bible revealed in Jesus Christ in order to arrive at the categories it required to grammarize or speak of God for the church. As such, I would contend, the God articulated, say by the WCF, and the โwhat Godโ therein, actually offers a rather distorted picture of the God of the Bible in a God-world relation since methodologically it reverts back to a speculative philosophical and a priori conceiving of God and brings that to the God of the Bible revealed in Jesus Christ; and attempts to synthesize the God conception say conceived of by someone like Aristotle with the God of the Bible. Cornelius van der Kooi and Gijsbert van den Brink summarize this issue nicely when they write:
Through the ages many have tried to synthesize the Greek-philosophical approach to the content of the biblical faith, but these attempts were rarely successful, as the philosophy usually received priority (Augustine being a positive exception). The most impressive example is found in the theology of Thomas Aquinas (thirteenth century). However, twentieth-century research has shown that the biblical-theological dimension of Aquinasโs doctrine of God was much more extensive and decisive than had long been assumed. Nonetheless, Aquinas saw the ideas of Aristotle in particular as a significant tool. Arabic scholars were instrumental in rediscovering Aristotleโs work, and Aquinas and others gratefully employed it for the Christian doctrine of God. Aquinas starts with the general question about the being, properties, and acts of God, so that who God is (or is not) is in the first instance discussed with reference to the classic answers of Aristotleโs metaphysics, while the section about Godโs interaction with the world uses more biblical language. However, when he deals with the specifically Christian concept of God in relation to the doctrine of the Trinity, Aquinas offers a speculative, philosophical interpretation of the immanent Trinity rather than foregrounding the biblical stories about the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. This is also true for many other representatives of medieval Scholasticism.
Among the Reformers, Calvin and especially Luther were very critical of the concepts and speculative character of the scholastic doctrine of the Trinity. But apparently this critique was soon forgotten. Numerous theologians of later Protestant orthodoxy (between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries) adopted the pattern of medieval scholastic thought without much further ado, including its basis in a general , highly transcendent view of God in the locus de Deo. Their preferred description of God is that of an eternal and infinite spiritual being, adding only toward the end any reference to a number of properties regarding Godโs turn toward us. This pattern is also visible in the confessional documents of the era. The Westminster Shorter Catechism (1647), for instance, defines God as โa Spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truthโ (question 4), a statement that, as late as the mid-nineteenth century, Charles Hodge could praise as โprobably the best definition of God ever penned by manโ (ST: 1:367). It should be noted, however, that this definition is given in reply to the question โWhat is God? (not โWho is God?โ), as is typical of post-Reformation orthodoxy.[1]
This issue continues to dog the development of contemporary โReformedโ theology, and even evangelical theology that operates from that mood as is typified in the work being done for the churches by The Gospel Coalition.
It seems to me that many in the evangelical and contemporary Reformed church, particularly in the West, want to stick with what they see as the tried and true path; what some have referred to as the old paths. But my question is this: as those regulated, in principle, by the Scripture principleโreferring to us Protestantsโwhy is there a type of slavish need to be in lock-step with theological reflection that operated in and from a 16th and 17th century milieu wherein Aristotle primarily gets to define what the grammar should be for articulating God for the church of Jesus Christ? It is as if the Confessions and Cathechisms of the Protestant Reformed church have become the new magisterium of the church; that Protestants havenโt just replaced a personal Pope for a paper one (i.e. the Scriptures), but that they have succumbed to the idea that the tradition of the latter day Protestant Reformed church (16th and 17th centuries) was given by God providentially. Yet if this is so what has happened to the โscripture principleโ for us Protestants? If we want to absolutize the theology of say the Westminster Confession of Faith as the most proper distillation of the Bibleโs teaching, then in what material way can a distinction be drawn between the theology of that Confession and the teaching of Scripture itself? In what meaningful way, if indeed we want to absolutize certain Reformed Confessions, can we maintain that all of the Confessions and Catechisms of the Reformed church are indeed subordinate to Holy Scripture? I donโt think we can.
What Kooi and Brink highlight for us is that there is a problem, in regard to the development of a doctrine of God, for the Protestant Reformed church; both in the past and presently. A mentor and former professor of mine, Ron Frost, argued similarly to Kooi and Brinkโs point about a kind of still birth relative to the Protestant Reformation; i.e. a betrayal of the type of critique that Luther made in regard to the substance metaphysics funding late medieval theology relative to a doctrine of God (the metaphysics of Aristotle as deployed and appropriated by Thomas Aquinas et al.). Here is what Frost has to say:
An alternative paradigm, advocated here, is that Lutherโs greatest concern in his early reforming work was to rid the church of central Aristotelian assumptions that were transmitted through Thomistic theology. To the degree that Luther failedโmeasured by the modern appreciation for these Thomistic solutions in some Protestant circlesโa primary thrust of the Reformation was stillborn. The continued use of Aristotleโs works by Protestant universities during and after the Reformation promoted such a miscarriage. Despite claims to the contrary by modern proponents of an Aristotelian Christianity, Aristotleโs works offered much more than a benign academic methodology; instead, as we will see below, his crucial definitions in ethics and anthropology shaped the thinking of young theological students in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who read the Bible and theology through the optic of his definitions. Luther recognized that Aristotleโs influence entered Christian thought through the philosopherโs pervasive presence in the curricula of all European universities. In his scathing treatise of 1520, To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, Lutherโwho for his first year at Wittenberg (1508-9) lectured on Aristotleโs Nicomachean Ethics four times a weekโchided educators for creating an environment โwhere little is taught of the Holy Scriptures and Christian faith, and where only the blind, heathen teacher Aristotle rules far more than Christ.โ[2]
We see his concern is the same as Kooi and Brinkโs. What we also see is that beyond simply focusing on the problem that Aristotleโs categories bring in regard to a doctrine of God (i.e. Kooi and Brink), Frost rightly highlights the linkage that Luther saw between Aristotleโs God and subsequent teachings in regard to developing a theological anthropology and ethics. And this is the point I want to drive home in closing: what we think about God, in regard to who we think God is, determines every other subsequent theological development after that commitment. In other words, a doctrine of God, in a proper dogmatic and theological ordering (taxis) of things is of basic and first order value; who we understand him to be will dictate the way we come to theological conclusions later, whether that be in regard to theological anthropology, salvation, or what have you. This is why I press on this issue so much, it is that central. And I believe that the starting point for so much of what counts as Reformed and evangelical theology today is eschew; and I think it is eschew precisely at the point that this post is highlighting. God help us!
[1] Cornelius van der Kooi and Gijsbert van den Brink,ย Christian Dogmatics: An Introductionย (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2017), 134-35.
[2] R.N. Frost, โAristotleโs โEthics:โ The โRealโ Reason for Lutherโs Reformation?,โย Trinity Journalย (18:2) 1997, p. 224-25.