Category Archives: Roman Catholicism

The Mediatrix Between the World and Jesus, The Blessed Virgin Mary

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The mediatrix theory of the Virgin Mary being a co-mediator with Jesus between God and humanity (i.e., Mary→Jesus→Father) has a very early pedigree in the Latin or Western Catholic church. Jaroslav Pelikan makes clear that someone like Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471), a middle medieval Catholic mystic, became a popularizer of the Marian mediatrix theory. He wrote and spoke in ways that had appeal to the masses. As Protestant Christians we shirk, we shrink back at such thinking, in regard to the Mariocentrism present within the Catholic mind; as we should (biblically). Even so, it remains the case that within Catholicism the cult of Mariology remains a radically present reality for the Church’s faithful. Pelikan writes,

The absolute necessity for a qualitative distinction between Christ and Mary served as a restraint on a tendency that had already become visible in the attribution to her of the title “mediatrix,” which during this period found an eloquent spokesman in Thomas à Kempis. He called Mary “the expiator of all the sins I have committed” and “my only hope”; it was through her mediation that all mercy was granted, and through her intercession that all prayers were heard. Although Christ in his final hours of need had not sought her solace, mortals were to do so. Therefore, he said, “do not seek only Jesus,” but “Jesus at your right hand and Mary at your left.” Various titles, prerogatives, functions, and scriptural passages that had originally belonged to Christ were now by extension being “transferred” to Mary. One of the most important proof texts in the early debates over the Trinity had been Proverbs 8:22–31, who designation of personified Wisdom as supreme among God’s creatures had been a crux for orthodox doctrine; but now this passage was a reference to Mary, who was the crown of creation. Transposing the words of John 3:16, a thirteenth-century theologian could say: “Mary so loved the world, that is, sinners, that she gave her only Son for the salvation of the world.” The words of Matthew 20:28 about Christ’s giving his life for the redemption of many pertained also to Mary as, for that matter, christological proof texts such as Philippians 2:5–11, Hebrews 1:1–2, and even Matthew 11:27, pertained to Francis.

Nor was it only the function of Christ that Mary took over, but after his ascension into heaven “the Virgin remains on earth, and, together with the Holy Spirit as Comforter and Teacher, she herself becomes the comforter and teacher of the disciples.” She had been the teacher of Joseph about the details of the incarnation; and at the crucifixion, when all the disciples wavered in their faith, she alone had been “the total church and the total faith of the Christian church.”[1]

The Protestant might wonder how anyone could ever arrive at this type of Mariological doctrina. This has to do with a theory of authority and ecclesiology. Catholics, of course, maintain that the Roman Catholic Church is the only true and visible body of Christ on earth, and the Pope as her vicar. Obversely, as Protestants, it is maintained that Christ alone, along with his incarnate and glorified body, has taken His bride, His Church with Him to the right hand of the Father. The Catholic maintains, in keeping with their notion that the Catholic church is the prolongation of the incarnation on earth, that the Church receives supplemental revelation as that is provided for by the Pope’s ex cathedra representation of Christ (and Mary, for that matter) on earth. And so, Scripture is not the only or primary source of authority for the development of Catholic doctrine. Contrariwise, since the Protestant maintains that Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father, along with His body, the Church, it is the case that Holy Scripture becomes the primary witness or attestation for the Church’s reality as it instrumentally serves as the ordained spectacles by which the Holy Church encounters her authority and head in Jesus Christ (viz. in a radical theology of the Word).

There are other developments that have led to the Mariology of the Roman Catholic church (and more recent). But the primary vector that allows for it is the space the Papacy provides for the ‘development of doctrine’ (that goes beyond Scripture, which the Catholic might soften by saying: ‘in a supplemental way’). Mary for the Catholic mediates for the sinner between herself and Christ (the judge), and the Christ for us before the Father. For the Catholic, Mary becomes the lynchpin between heaven and earth, as Pelikan so perceptively noticed for us. The centraldogma, it could be said, for the Roman Catholic church, is the primacy of Mary rather than the primacy of Christ. Is this to overstate things? I don’t really think so.

5 For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time, 7 for which I was appointed a preacher and an apostle—I am speaking the truth in Christ and not lying—a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. –1 Timothy 2:5–7

[1] Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine: Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300—1700), Volume 4 (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1977), 40.

The Church as Prolongation of the Incarnation or as Witnesser: The Catholics and Protestants

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Ecclesiology for people in the churches is an underdeveloped, and even undeveloped teaching for most. Unless a Christian person is self-motivated to pursue study of this important doctrine they will most likely live their Christian existence within the darkness of absence (of teaching). I think this, in fact, has a lot to do with many so-called Protestant Christians swimming the shallow end of the Tiber River; i.e., to become members of the Roman Catholic church. In nuce, Roman Catholic ecclesiology entails the notion that the Roman church itself prolongates the incarnation of Jesus Christ. That is to say, that the Roman ecclesia, for proponents of Roman Catholic theology, believe that its church is the visible embodiment of Jesus Christ Himself; thus, their reference to the mystici corporis Christi (‘mystical body of Christ’). Here is a snippet of a longer encyclical that Pope Pius XII wrote for the Catholic church with reference to understanding just what the Roman Catholic understanding of the Church is:

But if our Savior, by His death, became, in the full and complete sense of the word, the Head of the Church, it was likewise through His blood that the Church was enriched with the fullest communication of the Holy Spirit, through which, from the time when the Son of Man was lifted up and glorified on the Cross by His sufferings, she is divinely illumined. For then, as Augustine notes, [39] with the rending of the veil of the temple it happened that the dew of the Paraclete’s gifts, which heretofore had descended only on the fleece, that is on the people of Israel, fell copiously and abundantly (while the fleece remained dry and deserted) on the whole earth, that is on the Catholic Church, which is confined by no boundaries of race or territory. Just as at the first moment of the Incarnation the Son of the Eternal Father adorned with the fullness of the Holy Spirit the human nature which was substantially united to Him, that it might be a fitting instrument of the Divinity in the sanguinary work of the Redemption, so at the hour of His precious death He willed that His Church should be enriched with the abundant gifts of the Paraclete in order that in dispensing the divine fruits of the Redemption she might be, for the Incarnate Word, a powerful instrument that would never fail. For both the juridical mission of the Church, and the power to teach, govern and administer the Sacraments, derive their supernatural efficacy and force for the building up of the Body of Christ from the fact that Jesus Christ, hanging on the Cross, opened up to His Church the fountain of those divine gifts, which prevent her from ever teaching false doctrine and enable her to rule them for the salvation of their souls through divinely enlightened pastors and to bestow on them an abundance of heavenly graces.[1]

The Roman Catholic church maintains, as indicated by Pope Pius XII, that the Holy Spirit, as the enlivener and Creator of the Church has so mystically tied Himself into the visible manifestation of the Roman See, along with all of her sacraments, hierarchy of pastors, so on and so forth, that the only ‘place’ union with God in Christ can obtain is if someone is brought into union with the mystical body of Jesus Christ; or, in the Roman view, with the Roman Catholic church herself. This union is supervened by the bishops and priests of the Catholic church, not least of which, is the Pope himself. Once inducted and confirmed into the Catholic church, through baptism and partaking in the Mass of the sacraments, it is at this time that the Catholic convert becomes a ‘feeder’ on and mystical participant within the visible body of Christ on earth; or the Roman Catholic church. In this sense, and per Pius XII’s aforementioned words, there is a real sense wherein the Roman ecclesiology, with its insistent assertion on their status as the visible body of Christ on earth, that the Church itself becomes a prolongation of the incarnation. That is, for the Roman, the Church has become and is so entwined with the notion that Roma is now the apple of God’s eye, that she alone is God’s visible body on earth; that in order for communion with God to obtain for humanity, would-be Christians must come into, again, union with the mystical body of Christ; which is none other, according to Roman doctrine, but the Latin Catholic church.

Protestants, on the other hand, rooted in a radical theology of the Word of God, maintain that the body of Christ is fully present within the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ; indeed, even as Christ has resurrected with that body, ascended with that body, intercedes in priestly session at the right hand of the Father with that body, and will come again with that body; His glorified body. For the Protestant, thusly, there is no prolongation of the incarnation of Christ as a mystical body of Christ, but rather its concrete existence in the flesh and blood of Imannuel’s veins as He has freely elected to be for us, with us, and not God without us in Jesus Christ.

Hence, Protestants are not burdened with the notion that we must present some type of mystical body of Christ to each other and the world writ large, as if that body is constituted by a physical address in Vatican City, Italy. On the contrary, Protestants understand that the esse of the Church is constituted by the literal body of Christ Himself for us. Resultantly, the Protestant doesn’t seek to point a would-be or already Christians to a particular iteration or expression of the Church in the world as the Roman does. The Protestant understands that their respective Christian existence is constituted, indeed by the Holy Spirit, by way of union with Christ immediately, directly. The Protestant bears witness to the finished work of God in Christ as the reality (res) of the Church in the triune God. Karl Barth writes on this status of the Protestant Christian similarly,

. . . Their existence in the world depends upon the fact that this alone is their particular gift and task. They have not to assist or add to the being and work of their living Saviour who is the Lord of the world, let alone to replace it by their own work. The community is not a prolongation of His incarnation, His death, and resurrection, the acts of God and their revelation. It has not to do these things. It has to witness to them. It is its consolation that it can do this. Its marching-orders are to do it.[2]

Barth rightly notes that the work of the Church is absolutely finished in the work of Jesus Christ. It is His work of salvation, of building His Church, that He has already accomplished; the Church’s task, by the Spirit, is to bear witness to this, her reality, in her Head and reality, Jesus Christ. The Roman church, alternatively, believes that it constitutes itself by re-presenting the Mass, the death of Jesus Christ, through the primary sacraments of baptism and the eucharist. There remains an unfinished work within the Catholic ecclesiology which makes the prolongation of the incarnation of Jesus Christ the most organic outcome. That is, because their remains a proving ground, so to speak, of the Christian’s worth to inherit eternal life through the treasuries of Christ’s merits, over and beyond the work of Christ’s atonement. And so, for the Catholic Christian, the Mass and its sacraments remain the portal whereby salvation might be constantly offered, affirmed, reaffirmed, over and again, as the Christian seeks to establish a level of sanctification whereby they are found worthy enough to in fact become real and ultimate participants within the mystical body of Christ. If the Church, as it is for the Roman, is a prolongation of the incarnation, then the incarnation, logically, requires further re-establishment and curation by the faithful; if in fact, the body of Christ can be shown to be the true body of Christ in the world today.

This requires further fleshing out. But hopefully there has been enough provided for the reader to start to digest.

[1] Pope Pius XII, MYSTICI CORPORIS CHRISTI: ENCYCLICAL OF POPE PIUS XII ON THE MISTICAL BODY OF CHRIST TO OUR VENERABLE BRETHREN, PATRIARCHS, PRIMATES, ARCHBISHOPS, BISHIOPS, AND OTHER LOCAL ORDINARIES ENJOYING PEACE AND COMMUNION WITH THE APOSTOLIC SEE, published by, The Holy See, accessed 05-05-2026.

[2] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1 §59 [318] The Doctrine of Reconciliation: Study Edition (London:T&T Clark, 2010), 312.

On Ryan Hurd’s Babylonian Captivity

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I’ve “known” Ryan Hurd for many years now; through online engagements and personal correspondences. I’ve only known Hurd in his classical Reformed context as that has taken place during his time at New Saint Andrews College, and then as he has been an instructor for Davenant Hall. My last correspondence with him was quite a few years ago; he and I were discussing his entrance into the PhD program in theology at the University of Kampen (he was just getting started then). There was no indication that he was wrestling with the types of ecclesiological matters that have now finally bubbled up in his recent announcement. In case you don’t follow online theological matters closely, Ryan just wrote a post for his Substack that announced his (and his wife’s) movement into Roman Catholicism. If you don’t know of Ryan his primary theological interlocutor over the years has been the ‘Angelic Doctor,’ Thomas Aquinas. Indeed, it was this hook that finally captured Hurd’s total intellectual and spiritual development. I have always contended that if you’re going to be a Thomist (follower of Thomas Aquinas), then for consistency’s sake you ought to be a Tridentine Roman Catholic (a Catholic after the Council of Trent). Ryan clearly arrived at that same conclusion. Here is a piece of what he wrote for his Substack announcement:

This occurred in my case. And here is where we find the reason for me becoming Catholic. Of course, there are always many reasons for a thing like this, a whole host and all very different. Actually, it is my impression that people often cannot point to really a single reason within the mass of them; but in my particular case, I can do so easily. The reason, for me, is precisely what initially determined me to the Catholic part on these contradictions. The name of that reason is Thomas Aquinas, and particularly his auctoritas.

Auctoritas is a condition of a person comprising both his knowledge in a science, as well as his moral goodness. The former is how you know that he is not deceived; and the latter is how you know that he does not deceive when he testifies as to which part is true. When such a person does testify, you assent to that part merely on account of that person’s condition (propter auctoritatem)–and then you proceed from there.

Over time, it happened that Thomas’s auctoritas became supreme in my intellectual experience. Obviously, it is not supreme absolutely speaking–Thomas would be the first person to tell you that. But it is so in my experience–especially as I have undergone the confirming process of (1) assenting initially merely because Thomas said so; (2) eventually found rationes; and then (3) locked the proposition down in a demonstration and achieved scientia. All throughout this, my learning process, I have never found Thomas wanting, not even close. He has never steered me wrong. And over time, my intellect has become habituated to proceed about contradictions in precisely this mode (I have articulated this elsewhere as simply what it means to be a Thomist).

As I became intellectually obliged to follow Thomas wherever he leads me, so withholding my assent became intellectually unjustified–even regarding those contradictions where, initially, I had no reasons for the Catholic part, or even my remaining Protestant doubts. Remarkably, I became obliged to conclude Catholicism, merely because Thomas had told me to do so. And in the end, I listened.[1]

Why have I maintained that to be a Thomist most organically leads to being a Tridentine Catholic? Primarily because of the hierarchical chain-of-being and theory of causation present with Thomas’ appropriation of the Aristotelian categories and causation. Steven Ozment writes,

The assumption that real relations existed between God, man, and the world made possible Aquinas’s confidence in a posteriori proofs of God’s existence; finite effects led necessarily to their origin, because they were really connected with it. The same assumption underlay Aquinas’s distinctive views on the “analogical” character of human knowledge and discourse about God. According to Aquinas, one could speak meaningfully of one’s relationship to God by analogy with one’s relationship with one’s fellow man because a real relationship existed between the values of people shared and those God had prescribed.[2]

It is this theory of real hierarchical relations finding their causal and actual force from the Unmoved Mover, God, that in my view entails an ecclesiological theory wherein the Catholic church fits best. Why? Because it makes sense that if there is One God, One primary cause, that in a chain-of-being movement from highest to lowest, that within that chain there be one Church, one people of God. And on analogy even within the structural framework of the said Church, there be a hierarchy of one (like the Pope represents) that works its way down into diffuse levels of leadership out into the various priests, so on and so forth. Indeed, just as in Thomas’ theory, he sees the angels with a similar hierarchical structure within the angelic structure itself. And again, this all starts with the actus purus (pure act) or Pure Being of the singular God.

Does this mean that the hierarchical theory of God’s being in action must necessarily lead to the Roman Episcopy? No. But the most organic iteration of it, I would argue, given the Dominican’s ecclesial space for reasoning, is in fact the Roman Catholic church. And of course, this is why the Nominalists and the via moderna posed such a problem for the prelates within the Roman city. For sure, as the nominalists maintained, there were no real or necessary relations between God and the world. If the ‘moderns’ were right about this we can see how the authority of the Roman church could easily be called into question. If God merely related to the world through covenants and ad hoc words (think of the potentia theology), then the centrality and the necessity for the Roman church to mediate God to the world, could not theologically make an argument for the authority of the papacy. But then this is why I think that to be an ecclesiological Thomist is to be Roman Catholic. Aquinas constructed his theory by deployment of and synthesis with the Aristotelian categories toward buttressing the authority and reality of the Holy Communion of Roma in view. Even if early on his theology wasn’t as enthusiastically endorsed as it finally became post and contemporaneous with Trent.

To draw this back in: Hurd, as I have briefly sketched, I think, is being consistent with the aims of Thomas’ ecclesiology and its coherence with the Roman ecclesiology and theory of church government and authority therefrom. There was once another Reformed fellow, in his case, a Presbyterian, named Jason Stellman; he too, within his Presbyterian (Aristotelian) theological commitments arrived at the same conclusion as Ryan Hurd. As a result, he also swam the river Tiber. Surely, there are many former Reformed folk who have made this move. And I would argue for similar reasons to Hurd’s. Ultimately, I have greater respect for people like Hurd who see that the pressure of Thomas’ thinking, if held consistently, ought to lead all of his adherents to Vatican City, Italy. Of course, there are better ways to be genuinely Protestant. And so, I would invite Hurd et al. to abandon Thomas’ project altogether and recognize what it truly means to be a biblical Christian. There are theological, dogmatic ways for doing that; and ways that do not require a sacrificium intellectus. But alas, that was never Hurd’s way to begin with; that is, to be Protestant.

[1] Ryan M. Hurd, Why I’ve Become Roman Catholic, accessed 04-10-2026.

[2] Steven Ozment, The Age of Reform 1250–1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1980), 49.

The Lombard, An Origenist Analogy On the Church Catholic the Church Protestant

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Peter Lombard (ca. 1095-1160), bishop of Paris. Lombard taught theology at the school of Notre Dame and his text Four Books of Sentences was the key theology text of the Middle Ages. (Photo by © CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

I was just pondering how all of us Protestants (Reformed, Lutheran, evangelicals et al.) are still members of the Latin/Western church (normally understood to be the Catholic church). As Providence would have it, as I’m reading Book 4 of Lombard’s Sentences (in my quest to become a mediaeval doctor of the Church), I came across the following citation from Lombard on and from Origen:

ORIGEN, ON LEVITICUS. And so those whom the Church’s sentence strikes and wounds according to what they deserve are outside also before God. Whoever did not deserve it, is wounded by the Church’s sentence, unless he holds it in contempt. Hence Origen: “One has gone out from truth, from faith, from charity: on this account, he goes out of the encampments of the Church, even if he is not cast out by the bishop’s voice. Likewise, on the contrary, another is sent outside by a judgement which is not right, but if he did not do anything to deserve to go out, he suffers no wound. And so, at times, one who is sent outside is within; and one who is outside, appears to be kept within.” (Lombard, Sentences, 4.18.7 (103).3)

In context this is referring to the binding and loosing power that the Catholic church believes priests have, in regard to forgiveness and confession of sins. But on analogy, it could also be observed, in principle, that there remains this type of “outside/within” dynamic even within the broader catholic Western church (and beyond). Of course, how this outside/within dynamic is affirmed, perspectivally, will determine who the outside and within are. From a historical perspective it would be the Catholic church within which the Protestant church, while outside, is still within in certain important ways. Indeed, in the way Luther had originally intended: to be a reformer from within rather than outside the church. Hence, Exsurge Domine notwithstanding, I would argue, de jure, the Protestants are still within even while outside.

Barth’s Visible and Invisible churches in Contradistinction to Roma

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The concept of the visible/invisible church has always intrigued me. The conception of the visible church as articulated and understood by the Catholic church has always irked me. Barth’s conception of the dialectic between the visible and invisible reality of the church has edified me. Christoph Schwöbel provides a very cogent sketch of what this ecclesiological reality entails in Barth’s ecclesiology (contra a Roman Catholic, and even iterations of scholastic Protestant understandings). Schwöbel writes:

For Barth, the visible Church is also an article of faith. The church is believed both as invisible and visible Church. “Visible” and “invisible” are not two species of the same genus, he emphasizes, but one and the same subject in two respects. In order to explain the dialectic, Barth points to a parallel in his doctrine of the Word of God. Just as God’s revelation is the Word becoming flesh in Christ, this Word becoming Scripture and Scripture becoming a human word in proclamation, so the invisible Church is where the visible Church is. However, the visible church can never by itself be an object of faith; the visible Church belongs to faith as pointing to its ground in God. By itself, it is a creature in which one cannot believe, because one can only believe in the creator. Everything else is idolatry. Therefore Barth can say: “One believes in God when one believes in the visibility of the Church that falls from above into history—because that is He, that is His work of reconciliation—just as an individual human person believes in God by believing in the grace falling from above into his boundless unholiness.” Believing in the Church means to believe in God as God creates, preserves, and perfects the Church. For Barth it is therefore clear that the visible church witnesses to the invisible church and in doing so witnesses to God as the only object of faith: “The glory of the church is to give all glory to God.”[1]

The significance of Barth’s ecclesial dialectic cannot be overstated. As Schwöbel underscores, Barth’s is an ecclesiology, as is typical, that is portioned out by concentrating on Jesus Christ and the Triune life as the church’s ground. Schwöbel also, and rightly so, highlights how the analogy of Barth’s particular concept of the threefold Word of God implicates Barth’s understanding of the visible/invisible church. As is thematic in Barth, the visible only has its reality as it bears witness to its res in the invisible inner-ground of her life in the perichoretic liveliness of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This serves as a protection against absolutizing one iteration of the visible church as the one and only iteration of the church catholic by grounding the church’s esse or reality in the transcendent God who genuinely is ‘universal’ and, in the Barthian sense, ‘for all’ (pro nobis). This gives Barth’s doctrine of the church a freedom that the Catholic ecclesiology, simpliciter, cannot have. This is so, because the Catholic church has so collapsed the reality of the church into her idiosyncratic expression of the church, that God’s grace is held captive to this church’s liturgical formulas rather than the liturgical reality, in se, that obtains in the mysterium Trinitatis.

More to say, out of time for now.

[1] Christoph Schwöbel, “’The Kingdom of Christ Now Present in Mystery,’ and the Question of the ‘Distance between Christ as Lord, King, and Judge and His Church,’” edited by Matthew Levering, Bruce L. McCormack and Thomas Joseph White, OP, Dogma and Ecumenism: Vatican II and Karl Barth’s Ad Limina Apostolorum (Washington D.C., The Catholic University of America Press, 2020), 104-05.

What Hath Benedictine Monks to do with the Mammon of Capitalism?

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I just started rereading a book we read in undergrad worldview class back in 1998; the book is the late Neil Postman’s Technopoly. He makes an interesting observation about the invention of the clock and capitalism/mammon. He is noting how there are unseen consequences to the development of technology that can be both good and bad; I like the way he interprets how the clock was turned into a bad as it was put into the service of worshiping Mammon rather than the living and Triune God (which was its original intent). He notes:

But such prejudices are not always apparent at the start of a technology’s journey, which is why no one can safely conspire to be a winner in technological change. Who would have imagined, for example, whose interests in and what world-view would be ultimately advanced by the invention of the mechanical clock? The clock had its origin in the Benedictine monasteries of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The impetus behind the invention was to provide a more or less precise regularity to the routines of the monasteries, which required, among other things, seven periods of devotion during the course of the day. The bells of the monastery were to be rung to signal the canonical hours; the mechanical clock was the technology that could provide precision to these rituals of devotion. And indeed it did. But what the monks did not forsee was that the clock is a means not merely of keeping track of the hours but also of synchronizing and controlling the actions of men. And thus, by the middle of the fourth century, the clock had moved outside the walls of the monastery, and brought a new and precise regularity to the life of the workman and the merchant. “The mechanical clock,” as Lewis Mumford wrote, “made possible the idea of regular production, regular working hours and a standardized product.” In short, without the clock, capitalism would have been quite impossible.” The paradox, the surprise, and the wonder are that the clock was invented by men who wanted to devote themselves more rigorously to God; it ended as the technology of greatest use to men who wished to devote themselves to the accumulation of money. In the eternal struggle between God and Mammon, the clock quite unpredictably favored the latter.[1]

While this is noting a negative in regard to the mechanical clock, it doesn’t emphasize the various positives the clock has also brought. Nevertheless, I thought the juxtaposition was an interesting one, and one that we all live under the weight of in our daily lives for good or ill. It illustrates how a medium can be used for good or for bad; in this case the mechanical (now digital) clock served to help revolutionize society as a whole—in such a way that we couldn’t even imagine living in a world without one that is regulated by the Almighty Clock.

[1] Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 14-15.

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).

 

Matt Frost Critiques Arminius’ ‘Actualism’/Salvation; And I Say Some Stuff Too

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Here Matt Frost—Barthio-Lutheran theologian—offers a critique of Jacobus Arminius (the purported founder of what we know today as Arminianism, but from reading Arminius, directly now, I would claim that what defines fatimamarymost Arminians today and what defined Arminius’ theology yesterday are not corollary, or they are different); and in particular, Matt is critiquing based upon my little claim that Arminius was trying to offer his own version of theological actualism in contrast to the substance metaphysics supporting the “Calvinist’s” understanding of salvation and predestination that he (Arminius) is arguing against. Here is Matt Frost’s response to Arminius (and his ‘actualism’ i.e. oversimplified what is, is):

Such a theology of glory. The cross need never be mentioned; it is not central, not substantial, but accidental. It is not the shape of the thing, but merely the opening gambit. The decree is the thing.

The problem is that Arminius’ “actualism” here is actualism of the human person in history, as the central agent involved in the question of salvation. We are what we do, and the matter of salvation follows accordingly. God has possibilized salvation in Christ, and it is the believer who actualizes it. The proximate cause of salvation here is always belief and perseverance; only the ultimate and mediate/instrumental causes belong to God. This is the problem with the decretal understanding of salvation: it becomes the “law of the land,” which does not fulfill itself. It sets the terms of salvation, terms which are either met or not by human agents.

By comparison, Barth’s actualism (for example) declares that God is what God does, and that the matter of salvation follows accordingly. There is no decree. There is action, the primary fact, and announcement of that action, the secondary fact. Faith does something else: it leads toward moral behavior concordant with God’s accomplished salvation, when we understand and trust that fact. By trusting in God’s grace we begin to become what we are in Christ—our existence begins to conform to our essence—but we are that regardless of the relative possibility of our absolutely impossible existences in sin.

Either Arminius presumes (which he seems to) that there are human beings who shall be judged righteous on the basis of their perseverance in faith, and therefore saved, or he’s proposed a system in which all fail and all are therefore damned in divine foreknowledge. Grace in such a system as he proposes is (as in so much of scholasticism) the provision of effective assistance, and of reward. And it can be this because the assumption underlying it is that there is something worth saving, and that salvation and damnation are on the basis of worth. Salvation is a reward, the attainment of which has been made possible and then announced, and its achievement is left to human agency under the mask of divine foreknowledge. God has only achieved the salvation of the willing, and “election” is the election of a self-selecting group of people who choose salvation by sufficiently embracing the given means.

Have I mentioned I don’t like it? 😉

I think Matt is right! That is why our mode of Evangelical Calvinism, along with Torrance (and Barth) sees humanity’s humanity grounded and conditioned by Christ’s vicarious humanity for us. Instead of salvation being left to human agency under the mask of divine foreknowledge; salvation is left to Spirit anointed human agency under the mask of the divine life that the Son has always shared with the Father. There is no wondering whether salvation will be accomplished, in our scheme; salvation has been accomplished by the surety of God’s own person. It is not something that needs more accruing—by our perseverance in good works—it is someOne who has already finished the work of the Father by the Holy Spirit’s creative and recreative work through the Son’s obedience to become a man, and ultimately His obedience unto death, that makes salvation sure. Thus all we can do is participate in this by the Holy Spirit as we are united to the priestly humanity of Jesus Christ.

See what Matt is rightly critiquing is a form of semi-Pelagianism (moralizing) that he sees at work in Arminius’ theology; and it is this same conception of grace (and moralizing) that is present, not just in Arminius, but in the Calvinism (of which he was a part) of his day. This is the critique of Calvinism that I was first introduced to by Ron Frost in seminary, and it is still one I hold to today; viz. that any time we commodify grace (i.e. created grace), and see it as a quality that we can habituate in as the process by which we attain enough merit before God to then be found worthy to become initiate in the pilgrimage (think ‘viatore’) of salvation (i.e. Medieval conception of salvation), or as that which secures our process in the perseverance of good works (classical Arminian and Calvinist conceptions of salvation); then salvation becomes contingent upon “my” (and your) earning power—as if we could earn more “chips” from the meritorious achievement of Christ (which is how the Roman Catholic Church operates, as the dispenser of grace or merit chips)—and not based on the personal life of God for us in Jesus Christ. We are condemned to a world of obsessively and introvertedly looking at ourselves before we might ever be able to (reflexively) look at Christ. We, if we do this (along with Arminius), have just, at least engaged in the Nestorian (if not Ebionite) heresy of placing divinity in competition with humanity; when in fact the incarnation declares that these two have been reconciled and recreated by the Spirit in the second person of the Trinity, in the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

I am streaming now, time to stop.

Cornelius Van Til on Karl Barth: Grace and Nature, Worship Creation or Creator

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I think Cornelius Van Til offers a good sketch of Barth’s understanding of grace as personified personally in Jesus Christ (instead of grace as a principle or quality). You will notice in Van Til’s sketch how he accentuates Barth’s disdain for the natural theology and analogy of being of both Roman Catholic theology and later post-Reformed orthodoxy (or Westminster Calvinism, simpliciter). I totally appreciate this emphasis, from Barth, as you know; and I think Van Til presents Barth accurately in this way; note Van Til,

[B]arth’s answer to both charges is that speaking Christologically of grace is not to speak speculatively in any direction. One may freely use the language of any school of philosophy. But one must, as a theologian, be free from the control of all philosophy.

Thinking Christologically of grace enables us, says Barth, to speak along the lines of Reformational theology. Thinking Christologically of grace enables us to escape the Romanist approach to grace and the free will of man. Romanism thinks along the lines of the analogy of being (italics mine), and in doing so, is largely controlled by philosophical speculation. It is this philosophical speculation that accounts for its use of natural theology. In Romanist theology Christ comes into the picture too late; he comes in afterwards, and a Christ coming in afterwards is, in effect, Christ not coming in at all.

Against this the Reformers, thinking Christologically, gave God the true priority over man, and grace the true priority over man’s participation in it.

But the Reformers did not consistently work out the relation of grace to sin along Christological lines. They were unable to fathom the full implication of their own idea of the sovereignty of grace. They did not realize that the full freedom and glory of God’s grace to man in Christ is expressed in the very idea of his being the one who suffers the wrath of God for man.

Again, the Reformers, and notably Calvin, had no full appreciation for the biblical universalism involved in the true idea of grace. We must therefore go beyond the Reformers in stressing both the full sovereignty and the full universality of the nature of grace. Instead of thus going beyond the Reformers, later orthodox theologians all too often fell back on natural theology and on the idea of direct revelation in history. Thus they tended once more to make the consciousness of man think of itself as autonomous. And thus they became, all too often, the forerunners of the consciousness theology of Schleiermacher and his followers.

This in turn prepared the way for a theology which was, in effect, as Feuerbauch maintained, nothing more than an undercover anthropology.

If then we are to work out the true Reformation principle of theology, and therewith escape the synergistic views of Romanism, we must think of grace Christologically. And if we are to escape the narrowness of an evil orthodoxy and the subjectivism of the consciousness theologians, we must think of grace Christologically. And finally if we are really to enjoy the full certainty of the gift of the grace of God in Christ for all men, and in doing so laugh in Feuerbach’s face, then we must think of grace Christologically. [Cornelius Van Til, Christianity and Barthianism, 31-32]

Why Does This Matter Again?

There are a lot of threads in Van Til’s sketch of Barth; let me focus on one thread, the primary thread running throughout this account. That is that Grace is Personal in Christ, and any other account—as evinced in those noted (the Romanists, post-Reformed orthodox, Schleiermacher, et. al.)—collapses grace into creation such that creation dominates our thinking about God. If we follow this method—natural theology—we take God captive by our creations and constructs, and God is no longer capable to speak Lordly words over and against us (so he ceases to be Lord in this scenario). The Apostle Paul warns of such madness when he writes:

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19 because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, 21 because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. Romans 1:18-23

This is why this discussion matters; the gravity of this weights on whether we can say that we are worshipping God as revealed in Jesus Christ, or are we worshipping God created in our image? This oversimplifies things quite a bit, but this is the nub of it for me.

Moses, The Pope, and Evangelicals

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What do you think God thinks about John Piper? Some times, often times, I think we think that since certain pastors have huge followings; that this is a sign that somehow this particular preacher/teacher has been anointed of God in a special way. In the Calvary Chapel movement (a movement essentially founded by Chuck Smith out of Costa Mesa/Santa Ana, CA—I attended there for awhile), they follow what is known as the “Moses model;” wherein the senior (nowadays “lead”) pastor is known to have a special anointing of God on them and their ministry—much like Moses (this is a self conscious designation and model that is intentionally followed within many Calvary Chapels). The result is that if someone wanted to question a doctrinal point that someone like Chuck Smith might hold and articulate; then that person is not simply questioning the man, Chuck Smith. But that person is questioning God’s anointed (and thus God) himself! I think there is transference to this model of ministry (and theory of authority) along most of the continuum of what we know as Evangelical Christianity in America. I think John Piper has come to carry, for many, Moses’ anointing; so that if someone wants to question John Piper’s teaching, then that someone is now questioning God’s anointed and anointing. The Pope could be said to be someone who has Moses’ anointing too; couldn’t he?