Category Archives: Reformation

Grace Compared and Correlated: classical Reformed theology versus evangelical Calvinist theology

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There is a lot of talk nowadays about the theology of Thomas Aquinas. Typically when it is Reformed Protestants the reference to Aquinas’ theology has more to do tommyaquinaswith his Trinitarian theology, and doctrine of God, and less to do with his soteriology. But in a way they are of a piece; how we conceive of God will implicate how we think of salvation, and other theological places downstream from God. In light of that I thought it would be interesting to present something of a portrait of Aquinas’ doctrine of salvation, and then leave that with some suggestive notes.

Steven Ozment, I have found[1], is a trustworthy guide in elucidating the theology of the medieval and early Reformed periods; as such we will refer to his nutshell description of how salvation looks within a Thomist frame. He writes:

It was a traditional teaching of the medieval church, perhaps best formulated by Thomas Aquinas, that a man who freely performed good works in a state of grace cooperated in the attainment of his salvation. Religious life was organized around this premise. Secular living was in this way taken up into the religious life; good works became the sine qua non of saving faith. He who did his moral best within a state of grace received salvation as his just due. In the technical language of the medieval theologian, faith formed by acts of charity (fides caritate formata) received eternal life as full or condign merit (meritum de condign). Entrance into the state of grace was God’s exclusive and special gift, not man’s achievement, and it was the indispensable foundation for man’s moral cooperation. An infusio gratiae preceded every meritorious act. The steps to salvation were:

1 Gratuitous infusion of grace

2 Moral cooperation: doing the best one can with the aid of grace

3 Reward of eternal life as a just due[2]

Bear in mind the flow of how salvation was appropriated in the medieval Thomist mind started with 1) a gratuitous infusion of grace from God (this is also called created grace where grace is thought of as ‘stuff’ the elect receive in order to cooperate with God in the salvation process through), 2) then the elect are ‘enabled’ to cooperate (as just noted) with God, doing good charitable works, with 3) the hope of being rewarded with eternal life.

It might seem pretty clear why contemporary Reformed Protestants don’t get into Thomas Aquinas’ model of salvation as a fruitful place to develop salvation themes, but the irony is, is that they do. Remember as I noted above that how we think of God will flow downstream and implicate everything else; well, it does.

Closer in time to the medieval period (than us) were the Post-Reformed orthodox theologians. These theologians were men who inhabited the 16th and 17th centuries, and they developed the categories and grammar of Reformed theology that many today are resourcing and developing for contemporary consumption; among not only overtly confessionally Reformed fellowships and communions, but also for ‘conservative’ evangelical Christians at large (think of the work and impact of The Gospel Coalition). The Post-Reformed orthodox theologians, interestingly, developed an understanding of grace and salvation that sounds very similar to what we just read about Aquinas’ and the medieval understanding of salvation (within the Papal Roman Catholic context). Ecclesial historian, Richard Muller in his Latin theological dictionary defines how the Post-Reformed orthodox understood grace and salvation this way:

gratia: grace; in Greek, χάρις;  the gracious or benevolent disposition of God toward sinful mankind and, therefore, the divine operation by which the sinful heart and mind are regenerated and the continuing divine power or operation that cleanses, strengthens, and sanctifies the regenerate. The Protestant scholastics distinguish five actus gratiae, or actualizations of grace. (1) Gratia praeveniens, or prevenient grace, is the grace of the Holy Spirit bestowed upon sinners in and through the Word; it must precede repentance. (2)Gratia praeparens is the preparing grace, according to which the Spirit instills in the repentant sinner a full knowledge of his inability and also his desire to accept the promises of the gospel. This is the stage of the life of the sinners that can be termed the praeparatio ad conversionem (q.v.) and that the Lutheran orthodox characterize as a time of terrores conscientiae (q.v.). Both this preparation for conversion and the terrors of conscience draw directly upon the second use of the law, the usus paedagogicus (see usus legis). (3)Gratia operans, or operating grace, is the effective grace of conversion, according to which the Spirit regenerates the will, illuminates the mind, and imparts faith. Operating grace is, therefore, the grace of justification insofar as it creates in man the means, or medium, faith, through which we are justified by grace…. (4) Gratia cooperans, or cooperating grace, is the continuing grace of the Spirit, also termed gratia inhabitans, indwelling grace, which cooperates with and reinforces the regenerate will and intellect in sanctification. Gratia cooperans is the ground of all works and, insofar as it is a new capacity in the believer for the good, it can be called the habitus gratiae, or disposition of grace. Finally, some of the scholastics make a distinction between gratia cooperans and (5)gratia conservans, or conserving, preserving grace, according to which the Spirit enables the believer to persevere in faith. This latter distinction arises most probably out of the distinction betweensanctificatio (q.v.) and perseverantia (q.v.) in the scholastic ordo salutis (q.v.), or order of salvation….[3]

If we had the space it would be interesting to attempt to draw corollaries between the five ‘actualizations of grace’ and the infusion gratiae (infused grace) that we find in Aquinas. I have done further research on this, and the ‘actualizations of grace’ we find in Protestant orthodox theology come from Aquinas, and for Aquinas it comes from Aristotle. Gratia operans or operating grace, gratia cooperans or cooperating grace, and habitus gratiae or disposition of grace all can be found as foundational pieces within Thomas Aquinas’ understanding of salvation; which is ironic, because these are all fundamental components that shape Protestant Reformed orthodox soteriology.

Why is this important? Because how we think of God affects how we think of salvation, and a host of other things downstream. If Protestant theology was an attempt to protest and break from Roman theology, but the Protestant orthodox period ends up sounding once again like the very theology that the magisterial Reformers (i.e. Martin Luther, John Calvin, et al.) were seeking to break away from; wouldn’t it behoove us to critically engage with what we are being fed by contemporary theologians who are giving us theology/soteriology directly informed by theologian’s theology that is shaped by a theological/soteriological framework that might be suspect? In other words, what if the Protestant orthodox period, instead of being an actual reforming project was instead a return to the theology that the early magisterial reformers protested against? What if the early Reformation was “stillbirthed?”[4]

Is it the best way forward for Protestant Christians to rely on Aristotle for funding our conceptions of God and Grace? It seems like many a theologian in the Reformed and evangelical traditions in the 21st century think so. But do we really want a conception of salvation that has us cooperating with God; with a conception then that has a focus towards our good works as indicatives and proofs of our salvation? Do we want a salvation like this that first points us to ourselves, even if in the name of Christ, which only after we observe our good works we are able to reflexively look to Christ our great hope? What will this do, at the least, to our daily walks and Christian spirituality? There is a better way forward.

Ron Frost, my former historical theology professor in seminary, and mentor offers what he calls Affective Theology as an alternative to the Federal Protestant orthodox theology we just sketched and briefly considered. We here at the evangelical Calvinist offer an alternative that comes from a form of Scottish Theology through Thomas Torrance, and then from Karl Barth. These alternatives, different as they are (Frost’s approach is not related to Thomas Torrance or Karl Barth whatsoever), have a focus towards God in Christ that moves beyond the Aristotelian framed theories of salvation offered by the Post Reformed orthodox as well as what we find in contemporary popular theology like what we are currently finding in the theology promulgated by The Gospel Coalition (and other similar groups: i.e. Together 4 the Gospel etc.).

While I don’t talk about this as much as I used to, it is still this reality that motivates me. Barth and Torrance have become welcome voices for me, but there are other alternative voices in the history of ideas (which Frost really taps into, esp. with reference to Puritan theology). Like it or not there is some competition between ideas here; Federal/Covenantal/Confessional Reformed theology (i.e. corollary with Post-Reformed orthodox theology) versus what we in an umbrella term are calling evangelical Calvinism.

More to be said …

 

[1] Text we used for my Reformation Theology class in seminary.

[2] Steven Ozment, The Age of Reform 1250–1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe (New Haven&London: Yale University Press, 1980), 233.

[3] Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastics Theology (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1985), 129-30.

[4] See Ronald N. Frost, “Aristotle’s ‘Ethics:’ The ‘Real’ Reason for Luther’s Reformation?,” Trinity Journal 18:2 (1997).

 

The Theologians of the Fourfold Word in Conversation with the Theologian of the Threefold Word: The Post Reformed Orthodox and Barth

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A theology of the Word is the distinctive gift of the Protestant Reformation. The Word for the Protestant is the principle reality upon which all else is built, whether that be a theory of ecclesial authority or a theology of nature*; the Word of God is the ‘foundation’ (or fundamentum) for Protestant Christianity. Karl Barth was a Protestant (versus Roman Catholic) theologian, as such he based all of his theologizing in a Word-based mode of expression; this was well within the ‘spirit’ if not in some ways the ‘letter’ of the classical or Post-Reformed orthodox articulation of the cropped-whitebarth.jpgProtestant faith (the articulation that stands behind most of Protestant theology even today, at least by way of lineaments and over-lap with Lutheran and Anabaptist theologies in regard to a fundamental commitment to a theology of the Word).

Karl Barth famously articulated his theology of the Word from within a theory of revelation that started from the idea that ‘God has spoken’ (Deus dixit), and he grounded this in an anti-natural theology frame. In other words, Barth was concerned with the idea that humans (like Hitler et al.) could possess and imbue Scripture with their own strength and own machinations; the consequence being that man’s and woman’s voice could sublate or displace God’s living voice (viva vox Dei) in Scripture with their voices. Barth, in his own context and day saw this naturalizing of Scripture played out all too clearly with the development of the third Reich, and Hitler’s madness. So he innovatively articulated a theology of the Word from a theory of revelation that understood its context from the humanity of God’s life in Christ; i.e. the eternal Logos, Jesus Christ not only mediates God’s Word in written and preached form, but is the primacy of Word as the eternal Word of God for humanity (cf. John 1.1) — this is Barth’s understanding of the threefold form of the Word. Bruce McCormack of Princeton Theological Seminary and Kait Dugan of The Center for Barth Studies at Princeton Theological Seminary helpfully and collaboratively write this of Barth’s theory of revelation and doctrine of the Word:

Before it was anything else, Barth’s theology was a theology of the Word of God. The Word of God is, he maintained in the early years of his work on Christian dogmatics (in the 1920s and on into the 1930s), an address; a speaking of divine Person with human persons. But this theology of the Word is also “dialectical theology” – because the Word itself is never more than indirectly available to its human addressees. The Word of God comes to human beings in three “forms”: the humanity of Christ, the words of the prophets and the apostles (i.e. the canonical Scriptures) and the words of preachers. But the “forms” of revelation – even the humanity of Christ – are not “divinized” through God’s use of them in revealing God’s Self. And for that reason, revelation must never be directly identified with the “forms” through which it is divinely mediated. Put another way, revelation is never an “object” which is directly perceptible to human sensory activity (whether sight or hearing), even though God gives God’s Self to be known through “objects” of God’s own choosing. Revelation takes place in a “hiddenness” which is a function of the modality of God’s Self-revelation. To describe revelation in this way is to understand it as “dis-possessive.” The revelation of the Christian God cannot be taken under the control and management of human beings and made to serve the purposes established by human persons. Barth would continue to emphasize the hiddenness of revelation and its “dis-possessive” character throughout his life because he never ceased to be concerned with attending to the freedom of God.[1]

As they articulate this we can maybe sense a bit of Kant in Barth’s thought; but Kant on his head. The noumenal transcendent reality of the eternal Word comes hidden in the phenomenological of the manger, garbed in the real flesh and blood of the man from Nazareth, Jesus Christ; but the point is that the Word of God is ever present, ever breaking through the creaturely modes of its deliverance to humanity. First this comes through the humanity of Christ (which is homoousion or consubstantial with God as Christ is the God-man), and then it comes garbed through the broken language of Scripture (albeit inspired anew and afresh as lively testimony) which is given further attestation through its proclamation.

The important thing for us to consider, at least what I would like us to consider, is that for Barth the Word of God is Jesus; and inextricably linked to Jesus are the special words that he commandeers in Scripture as symbols that are given life as they break off and find their reality in and from Him by the Holy Spirit. The thing is, some have attempted to demonize Barth at this point, they have wanted to ridicule him because his understanding of the Word doesn’t fit well within North American developments on inerrancy. But to get hung up on this point could make you miss out on the depth available in Barth’s Christ concentrated theology of the Word; one that is attempting to elevate Scripture within a dogmatic frame, and within a theory of revelation that is grounded firmly in Triune Godself.

And here’s the real reason I am writing this post. It is not to draw lines of correlation that are not there in full, but it is to point up the fact that Barth did not think about such things in a vacuum of his own Swiss/German making. The Post-Reformed Orthodox theologians themselves, who Barth engaged with and learned from with vigor, had a theology of the Word that sounds eerily similar to the intent of Barth’s own compunction. We will close now with a quote from ecclesial historian Richard Muller on how the Post-Reformed Orthodox had their own framing of the Word, not in threefold but fourfold form. You might find it intriguing to see how precedence was already laid down for someone like Barth to come along, within his own context, from his respective “metaphysic,” and appropriate certain categories and extend them out to meet the needs of his own day while remaining faithful to the underlying Protestant commitment to a theology of the Word. With this quote we will close:

The Scripture, upon which true knowledge of God rests, is the Word of God, not a word of man brought into being “by the will of man” but rather the revealed Word of God put in writing at the command of God and through the agency of the Holy Spirit by the prophets and the apostles. Since the Scriptures are the “true Word of God” and have “sufficient authority of themselves”, they supersede all human authority in the “confirmation of doctrines” and the “confutation of all errors. [sic] No authority stands above Scripture except the authority of God himself. Even the great ecumenical symbols of the church, the Apostles’ and Nicene creeds, have authority only insofar as they reflect the truth of Scripture.

It is theologically incorrect and historically inaccurate to claim, as some recent writers have done, that the Reformers and the earliest of the Reformed symbols make a distinction between Jesus Christ as the only true Word of God and the Scriptures as Word in the derivative sense of witness to the incarnate Word. Nor can it be argued that any of the confessions — not even the Articles of the Synod of Bern (1532) — so identify revelation with Word and Word with Jesus Christ as to exclude any revelation of God outside of Christ. Both the Reformers and the confessions use the term “Word” with reference to Christ and to Scripture, recognizing that the identity of Christ as the incarnation of the eternal Word and Wisdom of God in no way diminishes but instead establishes the status of Scripture as Word. Thus Scripture is definitively Word, but not exclusively so. Word is, first of all, the eternal Word of God, the personal and archetypal self-knowledge of God. Second, Word is the unwritten revelation of God given to the prophets and the apostles. Third, it is the Word written and, fourth, it is the inward Word of the Spirit which testifies to the heart of truth of Scripture.[2]

Based upon what was shared earlier in regard to Barth we can see, I think, points of convergence and then points of departure relative to the Post-Reformed Orthodox and Barth. But all of that notwithstanding, one way or the other, hopefully for those who might be reticent to tolle lege (take up and read) Barth, maybe some of this will help to squash some of the fear and allow you to realize that Barth was a Protestant theologian working in his day and time (just like the Post Reformed Orthodox) who gave a theology of Word that was faithful to Protestant principles but in an ‘always reforming’ type of way; a way that magnifies Jesus, and may well better address the concerns of 21st century issues than can those voices from the 17th century. The point is, it is possible to constructively resource the past (which I am contending Barth did), which not only honors that past, but speaks in ways that the present can better understand and appreciate.

 

*Richard Muller writes, “… No Reformed confession, therefore, views natural theology as a preparation for revealed theology, since only the regenerate, who have learned from Scripture, can return to creation and find there the truth of God.” Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics. Volume Two, Holy Scripture The Cognitive Foundation of Theology (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2003), 154.

[1] Bruce McCormack and Kait Dugan, The Center for Barth Studies, accessed 05-10-2016.

[2] Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics. Volume Two, Holy Scripture The Cognitive Foundation of Theology (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2003), 154-55.

The Theologian for Us, Jesus Christ: The Word “Theology” and its Pagan Origin but Reception by the Protestants

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The word theology is a transliteration of the Latin theologia which itself is a transliteration of the Greek. Richard Muller helpfully develops the etymology of how ‘theology,’ the word, came into usage among Christians, and in particular how that took form among the Protestant Reformed Christians during the 16th and 17th centuries. Let me quote Muller at some length on this in two jesusbibleseparate chunks, and then I will close with some final reflection.

The word theologia is of Greek origin, taken over into Latin, and then borrowed or adopted by the fathers of the church from gentile writers. According to Aristotle and Cicero, the poets were to be called “theologians” because they spoke of the gods and of “divine things.” Thus, by adaptation and extension of the classical usage, Lactantius refers in his De ira Dei to those who know and worship God rightly as theologi and to their knowledge as theologia. Early on, moreover, Christians referred to the apostle John as Theologus, “the Theologian,” in titles added to the Apocalypse. Alsted adds to this the fact church fathers, like Nazianzus, were called Theologus because they wrote about and defended the doctrine of the Trinity.[1]

Like so much in the Christian heritage, in the ‘fullness of time’ as it were, us Christians have retexted grammar provided for by the classical Greek thinkers. You could imagine though, that as the Protestant Reformation took place, Christian Humanist movement that it was (i.e. ad fontes ‘back to the sources’ e.g. the Biblical text in its original languages and to the Patristics/Church fathers), the Protestant scholastics almost stumbled over the appropriation of the language theologia or theology; because in their minds it was too closely associated with Hellenistic philosophy, paganism, and what had caused so many of the problems that they were protesting against within the Roman Tridentine Catholic system.

The fact that the term theologia itself is not a biblical but an ancient pagan term cause the Protestant scholastics some brief anxiety. After all, the Reformation was, if nothing else, a profoundly biblical movement, zealous to avoid anything in religion that could not be justified from Scripture and careful, particularly in its first several decades, to formulate its theology upon the text of Scripture and to avoid the use of classical as well as medieval sources. The classic use of the term theologia by Aristotle and Cicero was not easily assimilated by Protestant system either on the basis of the ancient inscription to John as Theologus or on the basis of the usage of the fathers of the church, since pagan “theology” neither had access to supernatural or special revelation nor was capable of a proper use of reason in discerning the truths of natural revelation. What Christians call theology, by way of contrast with the ancient pagan usage,

is a science of divine things … which treateth of God, nor according to human reason, but divine revelation, which showeth not only what God is in himself, but also what he is toward us; nor doth it only discusse of his nature, but also of his will, teaching what God expecteth of us, and what we should expect from God, what we should hope for, and what we should feare. [Du Moulin, Oration in Praise of Divinity, 10-11.]

Some further, preferably biblical, justification of the term was desirable. Turretin resolves the problem by making a distinction between the term theologia and its significance:

The simple terms from which it is composed do occur there, as for example, logos tou theou and logia tou theou, Rom. 3:2; I Pet. 4:10; Hebrews 5:12. Thus it is one thing to be in Scripture according to sound (quoad sonum) and syllables, or formally and in the abstract; and another to be in Scripture according to meaning (quoad sensusm) and according to the thing signified (rem significatam), or materially and in the concrete,; “theology” does not appear in Scripture in the former way, but in the latter. [Turretin, Inst. theol., I.i.2.]

Theologia, then, indicates heavenly doctrine (doctrina coelestis) and has, in addition to the scriptural references to logia tou theou, words of God, a series of scriptural synonyms: “wisdom in a mystery (1 Cor. 2:7), “the form of sound words” (2 Tim. 1:13), “knowledge of truth according to piety” (Titus 1:1), and “doctrine” (Titus 1:9). Again, the thing signified by the term is discussed throughout Scripture.[2]

Just as with everything else in the Protestant Reformation words themselves were put to the test by way of the canon of Holy Scripture. The word ‘theology’ passed the test because it signifies something that truly is grounded in the reality found in the text of Scripture as it finds its reality and order of being from Godself. In a denotative or generic sense, just as with its origin, the word theologia and theologi (i.e. theology’s practitioners) can be used very generally with reference to anyone who studies a particular conception of god; however, when Christians use the term we understand that the reference of this word is to the Triune God, and that Jesus Christ himself is truly Theologus pro nobis (The Theologian for us).

[1] Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725 (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2003), 152.

[2] Ibid., 153.

Introduction to Ockham

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Since my next post on the Matt Chandler-John Piper two wills in God is going to be providing some historical background to where something like this developed (for Piper and Chandler); I thought I would give us a little more introduction to Ockham. I just ran across some reading notes I took on Ockham as I read Steven Ozment’s book ‘The Age of Reform’ for Reformation Theology class in seminary (back in 2002). It is a little fragmented, but I think it might be helpful in giving a fuller picture of Ockham when I get more particular with his relation to Chandler and Piper. Here are those notes:

William of Ockham: He had the reputation of being a revolutionary within scholasticism because of his teaching on universal concepts and he desired the removal of Pope John XXII (1316-34), and his support of the Pope’s adversary Louis IV of Bavaria. Hew as summoned before the Pope to defend his views. After this he fled to Michael Cesena in the refuge of the court of Louis IV, and he wrote tracts against the Pope from here defending the Franciscans and the emperor.

He challenged the views of many of these key figures on the issues of knowing (epistemology), he especially disparaged Duns Scotus. He did not believe our ability to know things rested in the universals.

Ockham’s razor: Plurality is not to be posited without necessity. What can be explained by assuming fewer terms is vainly explained by assuming more. He borrowed his idea from Peter of Spain who later became Pope John XXI (1276-77). He believed a person could know particulars unmediated. He came to this conclusion by coming up with two categories: intuitive and abstract. Ones memory of what was once empirically verified as simple abstract knowledge. Universals really existed in two modes: naturally in the mind, and conventionally in words.

He taught that there was artificial relations between God and man and nature as opposed to the real. The world is contingent, not necessary. Universals were distinctly human phenomena confined to the ordinary processes of a finite mind interacting with its perceived environment. Ockham’s reduction of universals, led him to be a fidiest. His focus was less on God’s being (e.g. Augustine and Aquinas), and more on God’s will. This brought a new anxiety into the picture—and that was the idea of God maybe not keeping his word.

The presuppositions of realism and nominalism were in dire opposition. Realism allowed the church to make the claim that they were the mediator between nature and supernature, while nominalism did not. It didn’t see this connection between universals and reality.

Calvin’s Doctrine of Sin, Through Torrance’s Eyes: Totally Perverse!

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Thomas Torrance describes, for us, John Calvin’s doctrine of sin. You will notice, as Torrance describes it, that for Calvin, we can never have a proper doctrine of sin without first placing it in its proper dogmatic context relative to grace (and its intensity). Here is Torrance,

Calvin refuses to enunciate a doctrine of sin apart from the doctrine of creation, and except in the context of grace. To think of man as he is within the confines of pollution would lead to the contempt of man and to slander against the Creator. The doctrine of depravity is properly a corollary of the doctrine of grace, an inference from the Gospel of a new creation. Just because the Gospel speaks of man’s salvation in total terms, the doctrine of depravity must be enunciated in total terms. This applies also to the doctrine of the imago dei. Since the Gospel speaks of a new creation, and tells us that man can be restored to a being in the image of God only by going outside of himself to Christ, the express image of God, it follows that in himself man is bereft of that image, while, if anything of it remains, it is but a fearful deformity. The total terms required by the Gospel of a new creation provide Calvin with a problem. On the one hand, Calvin admits that the image has been wholly defaced from man, and the he is utterly dead in trespasses and sins. In this sense one cannot speak about a portion of the image remaining in fallen man. However, Calvin makes a distinction between the spiritual gifts, and corrupted in his natural gifts, and that means the corruption of his whole nature. While he is completely despoiled of the spiritual image, that does not mean that his natural gifts are polluted or destroyed in themselves, though it is through the natural gifts, such as the mind, that the spiritual image is reflected. Sin does not mean an ontological break with God, for Calvin does not hold a doctrine of evil as the privation of being. Sin does mean, however, a total corruption of the whole person in a spiritual sense, which is quite consonant with the fact that man’s natural gifts, while impaired, are still maintained in being by the will of God. This doctrine of Calvin is formulated under the concept of perversity. By this he means tha the original order of grace upon which the imago dei was grounded is utterly perverted, though that does not mean that God’s gracious intention has been set aside by sin. As far as man himself is concerned, therefore, the imago dei has been totally perverted, and if there is a remnant of it, it is now a dishonour to God, inasmuch as it can no longer image the divine glory. Three facts emerge here: (a) Any remnant of the image must refer to man’s natural gifts, which indeed are used in the reflection of the spiritual image, but which are not in any sense the spiritual image or part of it. There is not a shred of the spiritual image left. If the distinction between good and evil remains, it has no relation to the spiritual image. (b) God does not let go His original intention in regard to man, ie, the imago dei as grounded in the objective act of grace. Yet He disowns fallen men as His children, for He will not be Father of the children of disobedience who have turned His image into dishonour. ( c ) Nevertheless, some light and a seed of religion have left in man, but in the nature of the case these partake of total perversity, so that from the very start they are turned into the fountainhead of superstition. The light that is in man is turned into darkness, and the truth is held down in the form of falsehood. This remnant of truth turned into a lie can never be a predisposition for faith, or a basis for the knowledge of God. [T. F. Torrance, Calvin’s Doctrine of Man, 83-4]

This raises all kinds of questions and foci. A few that have stood out to me, pace Torrance’s accounting of Calvin, (1) the desire on Calvin’s part to maintain the integrity of creation, by placing his doctrine of sin within a doctrine of God, (2) the note that Torrance makes about Calvin not holding to a privatio definition of sin (at least alone). I find this compelling because this dovetails with Augustine’s doctrine of sin as something beyond privatio (or absence of, or simply a negative); as concupiscence or self-love. So that sin has its own evil life, a distorted life that feeds off of the good resources of the life that it inhabits (much like my gross cancer that I once had!). (3) It is instructive to note that Calvin places his discussion of the imago dei, into the matrix of God’s grace in Christ. It is here where we start noticing the place that Torrance himself constructively lifts some of the contours of Calvin’s seminal thinking on this, and develops this full force into a doctrine of the vicarious humanity of Christ (not in this book, per se, but in the rest of Torrance’s theologizing). It doesn’t seem as if Calvin presses the category of the vicarious humanity of Christ in the naked way that Torrance ends up doing. There are other things here; like the fact that obviously Calvin’s doctrine of sin require a doctrine of election (at least) that attends to the fact that the ‘elect’ are the ones who go beyond the state of “natural gifting,” but in fact are endowed with the presence of the Holy Spirit and Christ’s grace; in a way that they alone can respond in faith to God’s call of salvation.

Background to the ‘Reformed Tradition’

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For many, especially within the ‘Reformed faith’, there is a genuine failure to recognize that what they believe to be pure Gospel, from ‘scripture alone’, is actually informed, potentially, anyway, from an intellectual context that might not be ‘pure Gospel’. I would claim to be a ‘Reformed Christian’ (even an ‘Evangelical Calvinist’), so I’m not knocking the Reformed tradition; rather I want to alert us to the fact that some catechisms, some Confessions might not be as ‘pure’ bible as many folks think they are. In other words, there is a conceptual background to these respective confessions that might serve the Gospel; but sometimes (and esp. within one dominant development in the ‘Reformed tradition’) some of the conceptual background might ‘dis-serve’ the Gospel. Denis Janz makes this point about the development of Reformed theology:

If there is one thing that can be called a genuine breakthrough in the last half-century of Reformation studies, it would be the ‘discovery’ that the Reformation had a background. The reformers, all of whom were theologians, and a good number of whom had formal academic training in the discipline, emerged out of a theological landscape that profoundly shaped their horizons. Some elements from this late medieval theological bequest they rejected; some they appropriated; and still others they sublated by taking something old and fashioning from it something new. In other words, their ideas did not spring to life ex nihilo, or descend from above, or emerge full-blown from an ‘objective’ study of the Bible alone. They worked in the intellectual context of late medieval theology, and consequently, without some grasp of this context , there can be no adequate understanding of their theology. By today, this realization has had an impact on every area of Reformation studies. (Denis J. Janz, David Bagchi and David Steinmetz, eds., “The Cambridge Companion To Reformation Theology,” 5)

The problem is, especially amongst the popular level, this “breakthrough” that Janz speaks to is unrealized. When folks conceive of God in terms of decrees, for example, they assume that this comes straight off the pages of scripture. There is little, or no recognition that in fact Reformed theology has an intellectual history (see Stephen Strehle’s: The Catholic Roots of the Protestant Gospel); and that that history is not necessarily self-same with scripture (i.e. there are competing intellectual histories).

Until this general thesis is acknowledged, what we are calling Evangelical Calvinism will never get a fair hearing. Why? Because Federal Calvinism (Classic) will continue to assume that their reading of scripture is scripture; without any critical recourse to the fact that maybe their perspective actually has background.

This is one of the burdens of this blog; to inform folks of the “background” within the “Reformed tradition.”

Reformation Day

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Happy Reformation Day! If it wasn’t for Luther we wouldn’t have the Bible in the vernacular (English for me). If it wasn’t for Luther we wouldn’t have Calvin. If it wasn’t for Luther we might not be Americans. If it wasn’t for Jesus there wouldn’t be a Luther.

After Calvin : A Wee History

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Here is a little paper/article I put together (rather quickly — a couple years ago) on the history surrounding the debate between understanding Calvin as either 1) a Calvinist, or 2) not a Calvinist. I wanted to put this up again, because I think it still, at least, illustrates some of things at stake in this rather technical/sticky issue. It’s probably an issue that most could care less about (and to be honest I don’t care as much about it either anymore, but I still think it’s important).

The following represents a mini-paper I just wrote on the issue of Calvin vs. the Calvinists. What I want to provide for you all is what is at stake for Evangelical Calvinism and her place in the complex known as “Calvinism” or “Reformed” theology. The following is just an introduction to the major approaches to how we understand and frame this issue. I will be following this up with later posts, providing more flesh to the bones that this post present us with. The reason this is important is because if we follow the reading provided exclusively by Richard Muller, Evangelical Calvinism cannot be fitted into the framework known as “Calvinism,” in general. That is problem, 1) because it is not accurate relative to the history, but more importantly 2) because it mutes a rich conceptual and “doctrinal” heritage from being considered ‘orthodox’ by the broader body of people known as “Reformed orthodox.” What I will ultimately seek to demonstrate, of which this paper is only an introduction to, is that Muller does indeed provide a helpful corrective to some of what has been said by the “older scholarship;” but that he is inconsistent with his own thesis of “continuity,” because he in fact fails to include strains of Calvinism within the “Reformed orthodox” tradition. He says that he is only really concerned with methodology, and that he just wants to give us the real “history” around this issue; but upon further reading (which I’ll bring out later), he actually smuggles the conceptual back into his project — the very thing he accuses the “older scholarship” of doing. In other words, Muller demonstrates that his motivation is as much “theological” as those he accuses this of, and seeks to correct through his historizing. Anyway, here’s what I have thus far:

Introduction: Stating the Problem, Complexity and Conceptuality in the Readings of the ‘Reformed Tradition’

Engaging the period of Protestant history known as the ‘Reformed period’ has many and complex issues involved with it. Not least of which is how we should understand the relationship between what Richard Muller has called the ‘early’, ‘high’, and ‘late’ eras of this broader category that makes up the ‘Reformed period’. In other words, in the literature there has been reconstruction of this period, and the inter-relationship that inheres between the “three eras” just noted, that is in competition.

The “competition” revolves around how we should understand the continuity or discontinuity between the earlier Reformers and the high and later Reformers (the latter two classifications known as the ‘post-Reformed orthodox’). The so called older school of interpretation made up by folks like Thomas Torrance and Brian Armstrong (and even Karl Barth) are caricatured to have interpreted this issue in overly simplistic form, and through a biased dogmatic appropriation of the “history.” Muller says,

The older scholarship, exemplified by the writings of Ernst Bizer, Walter Kickel, Brian Armstrong, Thomas Torrance, and others has typically modified the term “orthodoxy” with the pejorative terms “rigid” and “dead,” and modified references to “scholasticism” with the equally pejorative terms “dry” or “arid.” Such assessment bespeaks bias, but it also reflects a rather curious sequence of metaphors. The implied alternative to such a phenomenon as “scholastic orthodoxy” would, perhaps, be a flexible and lively methodological muddle of slightly damp heterodoxy. . . .[1]

Muller takes issue with these “older approaches,” and seeks to clarify this issue by revisiting and sharpening how the key language of “scholastic” and “orthodox” should be understood within their historical context. He believes that the “older scholarship” has too quickly and anachronistically read their respective theological agendas into the history, thus subverting the history for their own usage; in the end what they give us, according to Muller is a revisionist reconstrual of the actual history.

Carl Trueman along the lines provided by Muller forwards the same thesis in regards to the way this issue has been framed and interpreted by the “older” school. He believes that people like Torrance and Armstrong have co-opted the “history” to provide credibility to their own theological constructive work; he seeks to correct this paradigm,

In the last twenty-five years many scholars . . . have moved away from the traditional models whereby Protestant scholasticism was judged by the standards of later theology, whether Barthian, neo-Calvinist or whatever, to developmental models which attempt to set the movement within the context of its own times and within the ongoing Western theological tradition. . . .[2]

It is this problematic that Muller, Trueman, and company seek to “revise” through providing, what they believe is the proper way to frame and understand this oversimplified approach that the older school has bequeathed upon us.

I will seek to elucidate how Muller, specifically, seeks to reify the understanding provided by the “old school,” and what in fact he believes is the proper way for moving forward. But, before we get there we should visit, for a moment, how this “older scholarship” sought to appropriate the “history” represented by the “Reformed period.” What is it that Muller and others are protesting in regards to the ways that these elder “theologians” and “church historians” approached this salient issue?

Answering this question is really not that difficult, at least not for Muller; he holds that the oversimplification provided by the “old school” was both a definitional and methodological quagmire. That is that the “old way” of interpretation was shaped by over-simply framing the issue by a misunderstanding of what “scholasticism” actually was, and by trying to orientate all of their reconstruction around how the “post-Reformed orthodox” (the ‘high and late’ reformers) related, or not, to John Calvin. In other words, their error, according to Muller is that they tried to correlate Calvin’s theology and methodology with the ‘reformers’ who followed him; and insofar as the post-Calvin reformers failed to cohere with Calvin’s “apparent” theological approach, this became the point of departure that served to disrupt and in fact thwart the “doctrinal” focus set by the early Reformers (e.g. Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, et al.). In short, the early Reformers were focused on confessional and christological concerns; while the latter Reformers became embroiled with rationalistic and speculative concerns that were not in continuity with the trajectory that was seminally set early on. Here’s Muller,

Scholarly perspectives on the phenomenon of post-Reformation Protestantism have altered dramatically in the last three decades. Studies of the Reformed or Calvinistic theology of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries written before 1970 or even 1975 tended to pose the Reformation against Protestant orthodoxy or, in the phraseology then common to the discussion, “Calvin against the Calvinists.” This rather radical dichotomy between the thought of the great Reformer and even his most immediate successors — notably, Theodore Beza — was constructed around a particular set of highly theologized assumptions, concerning the Reformation and Protestant orthodoxy, humanism and scholasticism, piety and dogma. At the heart of the dichotomizing argument was a contrast between the “biblical humanism” and christological piety of John Calvin and the Aristotelian scholasticism and predestinarian dogmatizing of nearly all of the later Reformed theologians, the sole exceptions being those who followed out the humanistic patterns of Calvin’s thought into fundamentally antischolastic modes of thought.[3]

Thomas Torrance, in line, somewhat, with Muller’s characterization certainly held that people like Muller (or the view that he represents) were the ones who have revised the “history” around this pivotal period; and in fact for the same reasons that Muller says that people like Torrance tried to revise this period — viz. for theological purposes. Torrance says in the context of his “Scottish church”,

. . . It was the imposition of a rigidly logicalised federal system of thought upon Reformed theology that gave rise to many of the problems which have afflicted Scottish theology, and thereby made central doctrines of predestination, the limited or unlimited range of the atoning death of Christ, the problem of assurance, and the nature of what was called ‘the Gospel-offer’ to sinners. This meant that relatively little attention after the middle of the seventeenth century was given to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and to a trinitarian understanding of redemption and worship. Basic to this change was the conception of the nature and character of God. It is in relation to that issue that one must understand the divisions which have kept troubling the Kirk [church] after its hard-line commitment to the so-called ‘orthodox Calvinism’ of the Westminster Standards, and the damaging effect that had upon the understanding of the World of God and the message of the Gospel. . . .[4]

We see Torrance exemplifies exactly what Muller charges him, and others like him with; and that is the notion that Torrance believes that the “federal system of thought” (or the post-Reformed orthodox) placed the “Reformed church” on a problematic trajectory, a trajectory discontinuous with the original shape set by John Calvin.

This is too simple according to Muller. Similarly, Brian Armstrong — another “historian” in Muller and Trueman’s cross-hairs — follows suit with Torrance’s conception, and in fact up until Muller came along represents the scholarship which articulated a view that placed Calvin against the later “Calvinists.” His basic thesis, and the one that Muller seeks to problematize and correct is that once Calvin went off the scene, his successor in Geneva, Theodore Beza reintroduced Aristotelian scholasticism into the “Reformed” project, at odds with Calvin the Humanist (which was a method which sought to go back to the “sources” ad fontes or scripture and the Church Fathers), and schematized Reformed theology by what has been called the centraldogma. This was the idea that we could construe God through a rigid and deductive system of thought oriented and shaped around a deterministic supralapsarianism (or double-predestination) which was incompatible with his predecessor’s (Calvin’s) own understanding. Furthermore, Armstrong believes that Beza’s orientation was motivated by his devotion to Aristotle. Let me quote Armstrong at length:

This brief look at Calvin’s religious thought [which Armstrong just sketched] should make it clear that his whole theological program is at odds with the orientation of scholasticism as it has been characterized above. In general we must say, however, that scholasticism, not Calvin’s theology, prevailed in Reformed Protestantism. We are not here prepared to judge why Reformed theology developed as it did but only to recognize the phenomenon itself. Men like Martyr, Zanchi, Beza, Antoine de Chandieu, and Lambert Danaeus represent this divergence from a theology which had been carefully constructed by Calvin to represent faithfully the scriptural teaching and so usually presented a certain tension or balance of doctrines. . . . Of these men it was probably Beza who was most influential, and for this reason one may lay much of the blame for scholasticism at his feet. His very influential position as professor of theology at, and unquestioned supervisor of, the Genevan Academy gave him uncommon opportunity to direct the theological program of the Reformed Church. It was he who was responsible for the return to Aristotelian philosophy as the basis of the Genevan curriculum in logic and moral philosophy. As is well known, it was Beza who refused the humanist Peter Ramus a teaching post at the Genevan Academy because of Ramus’ anti-Aristotelian program.[5]

It is clear from Armstrong’s assertion that Muller has understood both of his interlocuters correctly in regards to their view of the Calvin and the Calvinists. Both Torrance and Armstrong believed that Calvin, conceptual-doctrinally, presented a different flavor and emphasis when juxtaposed with those who have come to be known as the “Calvinists.”

What I will argue later is that Muller is right to highlight the fact that the precision that folks like Torrance and Armstrong use in articulating their thoughts on this is probably too precise, and in fact comes short in doing justice to how this whole complex should be understood. Nevertheless, what I will point out, relative to Muller, is that even though he will try and argue that the issue of discontinuity that supposedly is present between Calvin and the Calvinists is simply one of different methodology and not one of conceptuality. More than that though, he wants us to believe that even though there is discontinuity between Calvin and the Calvinists on methodological concerns (e.g. Calvin being ‘confessional’ and the Calvinists being “dogmatic”); that when this issue is broadened what becomes apparent is that even method (between all of the early Reformers [not just Calvin] and the high and later Reformers) should be construed as continuous, and that the context for understanding this needs to be placed back into the late medieval period, and not simply from the ‘early Reformed era’ (as Torrance and Armstrong have done). When we do this we will see a thread of methodological concern that weaves all the way through the whole period; starting with the appropriation of Aristotelian method, which is consonant with both Agricolan and Ramist place logic and dialectical methodology. What is interesting about Muller’s argument, as I have already alluded to, is that he wants to say that all of this discontinuity talk — between Calvin and the Calvinists — should be jettisoned because of what I just mentioned (that the “old school” thesis faltered because they are short-sighted in their thinking, and they believe that the issue revolves around the “apparent” conceptual and material difference that obtains between Calvin and the Calvinists). Yet, what comes later in his book After Calvin is that Muller says that, in fact, by-and-large Aristotelian philosophy of some appropriation or form is present in most of the “later Reformers” who supposedly merely developed Calvin’s thinking (which of course the difference, previously, according to Muller was just a methodological one given the different historical concerns they were faced with). What this tells me is that Muller is playing fast and loose here. I think, and I’ll argue some of this later, that he is right in noting that there is more complexity and background than Torrance and/or Armstrong allowed into their interpretation of this issue; but that he is inconsistent because he actually smuggles “conceptual” stuff back into the criteria for adjudicating the question of continuity or discontinuity between Calvin and the Calvinists.

An aside: It is rather strange to me, when I first started this blog I had some very knowledgeable guys on this stuff reading here; they informed me that I was naive, and needed to read more of Muller (and now I have read all of the books they said I should of Muller, and in fact more — like many of his journal essays). The assumption was, that once I read more of him I would repent, and see it their way on this issue; yet, what is becoming more and more clear to me is that Muller, in some ways, plays fast and loose with his framing of this rather daunting historical conundrum. In short, I can appreciate, quite a bit more relative to the past, some of Muller’s more general themes that he helps to correct in this area; but I can now also more critically see where his thinking is flawed, and not sustainable at certain points (which I will have to get to later).

[1] Richard A. Muller, “After Calvin: Studies in the Development of a Theological Tradition,” 25.

[2] Carl R. Trueman and R. S. Clark, “Protestant Scholasticism: Essays in Reassessment,” xviii.

[3] Richard A. Muller, “After Calvin,” 3.

[4] Thomas F. Torrance, “Scottish Theology: From John Knox to John McLeod Campbell,” x-xi)

[5] Brian Armstrong, “Calvinism and the Amyraut Heresy,” 37-8 (Brackets and emphasis mine).

Responding To Tim Challies §3: Theodore Beza, "Need Some assurance . . ."

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The following is a very apropos repost that I am putting up in my series “Responding To Tim Challies” on assurance of salvation. My mom is in town this weekend, so I don’t have a lot of time to devote to blogging, but I wanted to keep the flow going; and I think this post taps that flow nicely! I originally posted it here (and it received quite a bit of feedback), and now it will become part of my series on this issue which I have also posted about here (#1) and here (#2). I plan on doing a couple of fresh posts to round this series off probably starting next Tuesday (but keep checking back, I might throw one up earlier than that). Anyway, check out the blessed en(dis)couragement that Theodore Beza has provided for the smoking flax who are struggling with assurance issues; be warmed and filled . . .

. . . May Theodore Beza comfort your soul:

In order to resist this second [temptation], it is necessary to know if we have this faith or not. The means is to ascend (monter) from the effects (effets) to a knowledge of the cause (cause) which produces them. Now, the effects (effets) that Jesus Christ produces in us, when we have apprehended him by faith, are two. In the first place, there is the testimony that the Holy Spirit gives to our spirit, that we are children of God . . . . Secondly, . . . when by faith Jesus Christ has given himself to us eternally in order to dwell in us, his virtue produces and reveals there his powers, which are known in Scripture by the word “regeneration” . . . . This regeneration has three parts . . . . The power of Jesus Christ coming to take possession of us produces three effects (effets) in us: the mortification of this corruption which Scripture calls the old man, his burial, and finally, the resurrection of the new man . . . . To know this regeneration it is necessary to come to its fruits. Thus, . . . the man, being set free from sin . . . begins to do what we call good works (4.13).

Need more:

[Good works] make us more and more certain of our salvation, not as causes of it, but as testimonies and effects (effets) of the cause (cause), that is, our faith . . . . Since good works are for us sure testimonies of our faith, it follows that they also make us certain of our eternal election . . . . So then, when Satan puts us in doubt about our election, it is not necessary to first go and search for the decision of the eternal plan (conseil) of God; his majesty would dazzle us. But, on the contrary, it is necessary to begin with the sanctification which one experiences in oneself, and to climb higher (monter plus haut). Since our sanctification, from which proceeds good works, is a sure effect (effet) of faith, or rather of Jesus Christ is necessarily called and elected by God to salvation, . . . it follows that sanctification with its fruits is the first step (le premeier degre) by which we begin to ascend (monter) all the way to the first and true cause (la premier . . . vraye cause) of our salvation, that is, our eternal and gratuitous election (4.19).

— Theodore Beza quoted from his, “Confession de la Foy (1558),” in “Adaptations of Calvinism in Reformation Europe,” 64-5 ed. Matt P. Holt

Rest now my weary souls! Look to the decree and find rest . . . 😉

How can anyone read this, and say, “yep, this is pure ‘Gospel’ truth?” Let me just say, with all of my attitude in-tact, that I realize folks like Beza & co. were just working with the theological tools they had (they didn’t know any better). What’s your excuse? Have you paid attention to the kind of spirituality that this kind of stuff produced in the ensuing years following . . .

There are too many people, who I care about, stuck under this kind of ‘spirituality’, one that doesn’t invite them into the loving arms of Jesus; but instead calls them to the courtroom of the ‘Divine Law-giver’, and asks them to examine themselves to see if they think that they have evinced enough ‘good works’ to be found worthy to look at the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Typically folks, who are serious about this, never get past the moment they wake up. The kind of ‘spirituality’ shaped by a Bezan framework can only lead to one place . . . despair, bewilderment, and wonderment over whether or not Christ died for me. I know, I know, you hold to something similar that Beza speaks of here, and you have no problems this way at all — well your special then. But, I know (personally) folks who aren’t so assured; and it’s because this kind of soteriology is taken seriously by them, even if they know, intellectually, that they are saved (thanks to the practical syllogism), yet they can’t shake the implicaitons of this kind of salvific project. They can’t get past the idea that God is this Sovereign Law-giver who decrees that some are elect, and the rest reprobate; that He died for some, and maybe not them (they’re not totally sure, since they’re good works aren’t really measuring up today). Anyway . . .

The Unmoved Spirituality, Thomas and His Impact

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Carl Trueman, Church historian, and faculty at Westminster Seminary (Penn.) just penned a post on the role that historians should provide in providing perspective on the intellectual history of our past. He believes that over the  last 1,000 years there has only been 2 major paradigm shifts that have actually been intellectual (even spiritual) paradigm shifts; one of which is the following:

Enter the church historians.  Any intellectual historian of any merit will tell you that the last 1,000 years in the West have only produced two moments of paradigm shifting significance, and neither of them was the Reformation.  The first was the impact of the translation into Latin of Aristotle’s metaphysical works.  This demanded a response from the thirteenth century church.  The response, most brilliantly represented by Thomas Aquinas, revolutionized education, transformed the philosophical landscape, opened up fruitful new avenues for theological synthesis, and set the basic shape of university education until the early eighteenth century.  Within this intellectual context, the Reformation was to represent a critical development of Augustinian anti-Pelagianism in terms of the understanding of the church and of salvation . . . . (whole post here)

This is pivotal. This is something that I don’t think most Calvinists/Arminians grasp (or want to acknowledge). I’m not talking about folks like Trueman, Muller, Clark et. al.; I’m talking about folks involved with The Gospel Coalition, folks who follow John MacArthur, folks who follow John Piper et. al. Most folks who follow these groups and teachers and pastors believe that they don’t have an apparatus in place when they read Scripture through their Calvinist (and also Arminian) categories. Most people who are in this camp believe that they “just” read Scripture. But the reality is, is that they (by-and-large) interpret Scripture through the synthesis of Aristotelian philosophy with Christian theology provided by Thomas Aquinas (even if Thomas and Aristotle get “Protestantized”). The moral is, is that we all read Scripture through interpretive traditions; shouldn’t we acknowledge that, and then strive to appropriate modes of inquiry that are most proximate with the categories of Scripture? Do Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas provide the best grammar to articulate the implications and teaching of Scripture? Does Aristotle’s God, the Monad, the Unmoved Mover, the Singular Substance provide the best apparatus for articulating the Christian God who is Triune, Relational, and Love in His inner-life? If not, then why would you appeal to this interpretive tradition to do the heavy-lifting for Christian thought that it clearly cannot do? Is it because you have sentimental attachment to teachers of the “old paths” that did; is it because your pastor says this is so; is it because this is the only way you think it possible to talk about God’s sovereignty; is it because you think it’s the “Orthodox” way, and any other way is heterodox or Neo-orthodox; is it because you like a God who is static, and so you’re comfortable with a static view 😉 ?

Evangelical Calvinism eschews this approach (the one that Trueman identifies as a major paradigm shift for Christian intellectual history). Not because we (I) think being different is cool, but because we think being different in this case is sound and reflects a more orthodox way to think about God. We think that if you start (methodologically) with a wrong approach to God, then you’ll end up with a wrong approach in living to and for God. This is why I am so motivated to continue to write about this stuff! It’s not a political power play, it’s not to impress people with intellectual acuity, it’s not because I want to win an argument, it’s not because I want to polarize the body of Christ, it’s not because I’m noble; it’s because “I” have become convinced that following Thomas (in general, methodologically) leads to a spirituality that reflects the god that provides an “Unmoved spirituality!”