Category Archives: Sacraments

Against the Augustinian-Lombardian Penitential Theology: From the Singular Person of Christ

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TF Torrance often refers to what he calls ā€˜The Latin Heresy,ā€™ when discussing Western theology; especially with reference to its fountainhead, Augustine. The Latin Heresy for TFT entails the neo-Platonist dualism that funds Augustineā€™s theology, and all other theologies that follow Augustineā€™s categories. For TFT, this dualism involves a competitive relationship between God and humanity; such that, humanity is thought in abstraction relative to Godā€™s life, rather than finding its concrete ground therein. This shows up most clearly in Augustineā€™s doctrine of election. JND Kelly masterfully describes this,

The problem of predestination has so far only been hinted at. Since grace takes the initiative and apart from it all men form aĀ massa damnata,Ā it is for God to determine which shall receive graceĀ and which shall not. This He has done, Augustine believes on the basis of Scripture, from all eternity. The number of the elect is strictly limited, being neither more nor less than is required to replace the fallen angels. Hence he has to twist the text ā€˜God wills all men to be savedā€™ (1 Tim. 2, 4), making it mean that He wills the salvation of all the elect, among whom men of every race and type are represented. Godā€™s choice of those to whom grace is to be given in no way depends on His foreknowledge of their future merits, for whatever good deeds they will do will themselves be the fruit of grace. In so far as His foreknowledge is involved, what He foreknows is what He Himself is going to do. Then how does God decide to justify this man rather than that? There can in the end be no answer to this agonizing question. God has mercy on those whom He wishes to save, and justifies them; He hardens those upon whom He does not wish to have mercy, not offering them grace in conditions in which they are likely to accept it. If this looks like favouritism, we should remember that all are in any case justly condemned, and that if God makes His decision in the light of ā€˜a secret and, to human calculation, inscrutable justiceā€™. Augustine is therefore prepared to speak of certain people as being predestined to eternal death and damnation; they may include, apparently, decent Christians who have been called and baptized, but to whom the grace of perseverance has not been given. More often, however, he speaks of the predestination of the saints which consists in ā€˜Godā€™s foreknowledge and preparation of the benefits by which those who are to be delivered are most assuredly deliveredā€™. These alone have the grace of perseverance, and even before they are born they are sons of God and cannot perish.[1]

As Kelly describes Augustineā€™s doctrine of predestination, election-reprobation, what stands out is the way God stands over humanity, as if humanity has no correspondence to God by Godā€™s grace. As if humanity must find a way to God, even as God finds His way to humanity. And for Augustine God only finds His way to humanity through an ad hoc arbitrary election of certain individuals, who he snares out of the ā€˜massa damnataā€™ (the ā€˜mass of damnationā€™ of humanity). But it is this that represents the inorganic notion of a God-human/God-world relation for Augustine; i.e., that humanity has no ground in Godā€™s life organically, creatively; that it is only by Godā€™s voluntary act that He brings ā€˜someā€™ into a contractive relationship with Himā€”as some would call it later, the absolutum decretum (the absolute decree of election/reprobation/predestination).

So, all of the aforementioned to bring up another application of this type of Augustinianism as it relates to soteriology. In Book 4 of Peter Lombardā€™s infamous Sentences, he writes the following:

Chapter 2 (110)

  1. CONCERNING THOSE WHO DO NOT COMPLETE THEIR PENANCE. But if it is asked whether those who do not complete their penance in this life will pass through the fire to complete there, as it were, what they have left unfinished here, we say that the same is to be supposed concerning these as of those who repent at the end.ā€”For if their contrition of heart and their disapproval of crime were so great as to suffice for the punishment of sin, they will pass into [eternal] life free from other punishments, even if their penance was not completed, because they perfectly repented and groaned in their heart.ā€”But as for those who are not so contrite in heart, or who do not so groan for sin, if they died before the completion of penance, they feel the purging fire, and are punished more gravely than if they had completed their penance here, for it is an awful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
  2. For since God is merciful and just, he forgives the penitent from mercy, not reserving the sin for eternal punishment; but from justice, he does not leave a crime unpunished. Either man punishes it, or God. Man punishes it by repenting. And penance is inward and outward. And so, if the inner sorrow is such as to suffice as retribution for sin, God, who knows this, does not exact any further punishment from someone who repents in such fashion. But if the inward sorrow does not suffice as retribution for sin, and the external penance is not fulfilled, God, who knows the ways and measures of sins and punishments, adds a sufficient punishment.
  3. ā€œLet each one, then, see to it that he so corrects his crimes, that it will not be necessary to sustain a punishment after death. For some mortal sins become venial in penance, but are not immediately healed. Often a sick person would die, if he were not given medication; but he is not healed as soon as he receives medication: he who is going to live languishes, who before was about to die. But one who dies impenitent, dies wholly, and is tormented eternally. For if he were to live forever, he would sin forever.ā€[2]

The above longform to simply point out one simple, but profound reality: if humanity is not thought from Godā€™s grace for us in His hypostasized life for us in the person of Jesus Christ; if humanity is not from Godā€™s unilateral givenness for us in His election to be for all of humanity, indeed as He assumes all of humanity into His vicarious humanity pro nobis (for us) in Jesus Christ; then, humanity will always be left destitute, even ā€˜electā€™ humanity, not to mention the mass of humanity who God does not elect, to pursue God and fill up the gap between God and humanity through the various means of grace God has given them. The dualism, if not obvious, is present in the penitential theology of Augustine, and the Latins, both on the Catholic and Protestant sides, insofar that the human being must constantly strive, and constantly reach out and hope that ā€˜theyā€™ have done enough to be found worthy before God; even in the supplicant of His freely given grace. Grace in this frame becomes detached from Godā€™s personal and triune life in Christ for the world, and instead it becomes a created grace, a quality, that the elect (they hope they are) must rightly habituate in and handle in the right ways if they ever hope of being in the Beatific Vision, and maybe, just maybe getting to avoid the ā€˜purging firesā€™ (Purgatory) along the way.

It ought to be clear though, in a soteriological frame, how Augustineā€™s ā€œindividualisticā€ understanding, as detailed by Kelly, and illustrated by Lombard in an Augustinian penitential theology, throws the would-be elect individual upon themselves, rather than upon Christ, in their pursuit of salvation and eternal life, coram Deo. God forbid this! God has singularly brought Godself and humanity together in His pre-destination, within His own life, in His elected elect humanity in the eternal Logos, the Son of God, as He hypostatically united His divine life with our human life, in His assumptio carnis (ā€˜assumption of the fleshā€™), and made His human life our life, as we rose from the dead with His humanity, which is total humanity, by which all of humanity has been objectively saved (note: this does not entail a universalism, per se).

[1] J.N.D. Kelly,Ā Early Christian Doctrines,Ā Revised EditionĀ (New York: Harper Collins, 1978), 368-69.

[2] Peter Lombard, The Sentences: Book 4, On the Doctrine of the Signs, translated by Giulio Silano (Toronto-Ontario Canada: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2010), 122ā€“3.

For a Believer’s Baptism: Against the Sacramentalized Infant Baptism of Augustine

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Augustine took infant baptism to a level it hadnā€™t been theretofore prior to his development of a doctrine of original sin contra Pelagiusā€™ theology. My friend (who I had a falling out with some years ago), W. TravisĀ McMaken, offers a nice sketch of Augustineā€™s doctrine of original sin, and its necessary remedy through the Churchā€™s sacraments, particularly through infant baptism. Travis writes the following in his published dissertation entitled:Ā The Sign of the Gospel: Toward an Evangelical Doctrine of Infant Baptism after Karl Barth.Ā For Augustine,Ā 

Original sin brings with it the state of guilt because sin dwelling in our flesh ensures that the fruit of such a tainted sexual union is likewise tainted. This taint is not mere inclination toward sin but the actual condition of sin insofar as one is born with ā€œdisobedience of the flesh.ā€Ā SoĀ Augustine, speaking of newborn infants: ā€œthe sinful flesh of those through whom they are born gives them a guilt which they have not yet contracted in their own life.ā€Ā 

Thusly did Augustine joint original guilt to original sin by means of infant baptism. Infants are baptized, and this must be done for a reason. The only intelligible reason is that they are in need of the forgiveness from sin that baptism brings. But sinceĀ infants haveĀ not yet committed any sins of volition, we must look elsewhere for the source of their guilt. This source is found in their birth and in the network of sexual reproduction that stretches from each person back to Adam and Eve. Given such an account of sin, Augustine was able to advance against theĀ PelagiansĀ a robust account of grace and predestination as that which rescues an individual from their hopelessly guilty state.Ā Ā 

Infant baptism was practicedĀ in extremisĀ in the early Christian centuries, but it was always something of a practice in search of a theology. By pressing into service in his dispute with theĀ Pelagians, Augustine ā€œprovided the theology that led to infant baptism becoming general practice for the first time in the history of the church.ā€ This was not his intent. In fact, he argued that it was already the churchā€™s general practice, and had been since the time of the apostles. Other sources considered above belie this claim. Further, the logic of his argument moved away from the practice of infant baptism and toward the establishment of his doctrine of original sin and guilt. However, once ā€œoriginal sin was established as the basic framework for thinking, then it was natural for it to become the principal reason for infant baptism.ā€ This resulted in infant baptism quickly becoming established as standard practiceā€”and, indeed, the definitive form of baptismā€”rather than anĀ in extremisĀ concession. As Karen Spierling notes, ā€œinfant baptism was an established practice of the Christian churchā€ within one hundred years of Augustineā€™s dispute with theĀ Pelagians.Ā 

In this way, Augustine provided Christian theology with the first of its two great arguments in support of infant baptism, namely, the sacramental argument: all humans are sinners in need of salvation, and the sacraments in general and baptism in particular are the appointed means for removing sin and securing salvation, therefore infants ought to receive baptism lest they die in their sins. This argument, and Barthā€™s rejection of it, is the subject of further consideration in chapter two.1Ā 

InĀ McMakenā€™sĀ purview Augustine represents the paragon of a developed sacramental doctrine of infant baptism vis-a-vis original sin. Travis is not alone, and stands on the shoulders of others in this unremarkable understanding in regard to Augustine as the sacramental theologianĀ par excellence.Ā 

My own view, as a Baptist, follows Barthā€™s, and the New Testamentā€™s teaching which entails a credobaptism (or believerā€™s baptism). Indeed, prior to Augustineā€™s development, believerā€™s baptism was the preferred method for baptism; particularly as people paid attention to the teaching of the NT, and the Apostolic practice. It wasnā€™t until later, like Augustine and following, wherein infant orĀ paedobaptismĀ took on an ecclesial life of its own. AsĀ McMakenĀ will turn to next (in his section on a survey of the development of a doctrinal baptism), he identifies the Reformed ā€˜covenantalā€™ rationale for infant baptism. While there is some discontinuous theological rationale within the Reformed development of aĀ paedobaptism, there clearly is some continuous overlap between the so-called covenantal and sacramental arguments for an infant baptism.Ā Ā 

As someone who follows the Protestant Scripture Principal though, I am compelled to reject the theological reasons for an infant baptism, and solely affirm believerā€™s baptism. Because of my commitment to a doctrine of the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ, as funded by Barthā€™s and Torranceā€™s doctrine of election, respectively, I can appropriate certain themes from both the earlier developed sacramental and covenantal forms of infant baptism, without committing myself to infant baptismĀ simpliciter. These things represent a complex that we will not have time to disentangle in this post, but suffice it to say that if we see Jesusā€™ vicarious humanity as theĀ speculumĀ (mirror) of our election and justification in general, then it follows as corollary, that we can posit His baptism, both in the Jordan, and at Golgotha, as both sufficient and efficient for fulfilling the conditions that a baptismĀ entails (canonically). What the Christian does, in the wake of His baptism for us, is bear witness to the always already finished work of Christ, as we participate in and from His life for us. Indeed, Christ meets both the objective and subjective sides of baptism for us, just as He meets those more generally as the Electing and Elected Godman for us. As we come to recognize what He has already accomplished for us, as we come into a spiritual union with Him, it is in and from this participation that following Him into the waters of baptism find theirĀ gravitas; indeed, as we stand where He first stood first for us, that we might now bear witness to His always already finished work of redemption all the way down.Ā Ā Ā 

Ā 

1Ā W. TravisĀ McMaken,Ā The Sign of the Gospel: Toward an Evangelical Doctrine of Infant Baptism after Karl BarthĀ (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013), loc. 379, 386, 395.Ā 

Holy Communion: Remembering that Human Life is in Christ’s Blood

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The late, John Webster, wasnā€™t just a Christian theologian par excellence; he was also a pastor. The following comes from part of a sermon he gave on Maundy Thursday. A major thrust of his sermon was to remind the parishioners that Holy Communion is not something that re-enacts or re-presents the death of Jesus Christ; indeed, as Webster presses, the Eucharist is aĀ memorialĀ event wherein we, as the Church, remember the alreadyĀ finished workĀ (in the perfect tense: my insight) that Jesus alone accomplished once and for all in the givenness of His life for the world. As Webster presses this point, and rightfully so, he offers a beautiful description of what, in the history has been called: theĀ mirificaĀ commutatioĀ (ā€˜wonderful exchangeā€™). Here Webster is underscoring the idea that what God in Christ has done, has been done; indeed, what has been done God alone could accomplish on our behalf. I found Websterā€™s rendition of the ā€˜wonderful exchangeā€™ edifying, and so I want to share it with you now.Ā 

What was done there and then? What is it about the Lordā€™s death that the Eucharist proclaims or testifies? Isaiah, whose Servant Song provides the bass line of our thoughts this Holy Week, tells us that the wounding and bruising and chastising of the Servant is ā€œfor our transgressionsā€ (53:5). The cross of Jesus, celebrated in Holy Communion, is the climactic event in which God acts to win the world back from the darkness and misery of sin. In some way, the death of this one changes the entire course of human history; it intercepts and breaks the whole course of human wickedness; henceforth, because of what this man does and suffers, nothing can be the same. Why not? Because in this little scrap of an event one Friday afternoon, this unremarkable bit of human evil, God takes our place. He enters without reserve into the reality of our situationā€”into our situation, that is, as those who have damned ourselves, who have cut ourselves off from life and put ourselves into hell, all because we made up the lie that we can be human without God.Ā 

But God does not leave us in the hell we have made for ourselves. In the person of Jesus his Son and Servant, he comes to us; he takes on his own back the full weight of our alienation and estrangement; he freely submits to the whole curse of our sin. He takes our sin upon him, and in so doing he takes it away, fully, finally, and conclusively. And of all thatā€”of that miracle of grace on Good Fridayā€”this evening is a memorial, the memorial of that his precious death.Ā 

That was what was done. It was done not by us, but by God himself in the person of his Servant and Son. And it was done by God alone. Because reconciliation is thus Godā€™s work, Godā€™sĀ exclusiveĀ work, then this sacrament in which we remember the cross of Christ is also Godā€™s work. Here, in this assembly at this table, God is at work. And Godā€™s work here is to present to us, to make present to us, what took place on Good Friday. We donā€™t make Good Friday real by re-enacting it, or by thinking and feeling about it. God in this sacrament declares to us what Good Friday made true: that he is our reconciler; that sin is finished business; that weĀ canĀ repent because God has forgiven; that the promise acted out in the death of Jesus stands for all time and for each human person. In this memorial, God turns us backward; but he also makes present to us the limitless power of what the Son of God suffered. The God who was at work there and then is at work here and now, proclaiming to us his promise of cleansing, acceptance and peace.1Ā 

The Apostle Paul describes the ā€˜wonderful exchangeā€™ this way: ā€œFor you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, thatĀ though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become richā€ (II Cor. 8.9). Webster brings out so many rich insights in his telling of what in fact unfolded in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The following clause, in particular stands out to me: ā€œas those who have damned ourselves, who have cut ourselves off from life and put ourselves into hell, all because we made up the lie that we can be human without God.ā€ This is the depth dimension of theĀ Evangel. What it genuinely means to be human is to be human before (in and from) God. To declare that ā€˜weā€™ can be human devoid of God, devoid of aĀ coram DeoĀ life, is indeed: Hell!Ā Ā 

Holy Communion is to remind us, moment by moment, that we are not our own; and that if we persist, indeed, perdure in the lie that we can be our ā€œown man or woman,ā€ that we will only dissolve into an abyss of hell. But Christ has entered into that deep abyss, and by the life which is in His blood, we can truly experience what it means to be human before God; indeed, to be human is to be in union and fellowship with God. This is who Jesus is for us, and what the Eucharist is to continuously remind us of until it is finally consummated in the eschaton as that finally comes in theĀ EschatosĀ of Godā€™s life for us in Jesus Christ.Ā MaranathaĀ Ā 

1 John Webster, Confronted by Grace: Meditations of a Theologian (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2014), 61-2, Kindle Edition.

A Low Protestant Churchman’s Reception of the Sacraments of the Church: Given Way by Calvin

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I come from a low evangelical church context. This means that words like ā€˜sacramentā€™ are not used much, if ever. Nevertheless, many in the baptistic context do refer to the word: sacrament. For the longest time I had a real problem grasping what a sacrament is; even up until recently. People who use this language just typically use it, as if itā€™s an understood, in regard to what it entails. But in reality, I am not totally convinced that even people who use this language, and who are situated in ecclesial contexts that have high sacramentology, actually understand what it entails. At base, a sacrament of the Church is a physical sign that points the believer to Christ and the triune reality. But often, and even traditionally, it has come to be more than that. In contexts like Roman Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy, for example, sacraments, like the eucharist, baptism, and other like components confer salvific grace upon those who partake of these sacraments. In fact, in these ecclesial contexts the sacraments are the only way for salvific grace to be dispensed for the seekers of God and His eternal life.

As a Protestant I am going to clearly have problems with the sectarian way that Catholics and the Orthodox view the sacraments of the Church. But I am wondering if there is a way that as a radical Protestant, I can constructively receive a sacramentology that has been properly denuded and reified by a concretization in Christ alone? In my view, John Calvin offers a way forward for a healthy Protestant understanding of the sacraments (I am referring to the eucharist and baptism, in the main, and Iā€™ll add in the Word of God aka as Holy Scripture). Let us read along with Calvin as he critiques the Catholic understanding of the sacraments, and offers his alternative Christ concentrated perspective instead (a long quote):

Now in the sacraments this ought to be the chief consideration, that they are to serve our faith toward God. The second consideration is that they are to testify our confession before people. In accordance with this last reason, the analogies noted above are good and indeed suitable.

On the other hand, we must be warned that as these of whom we have been speaking destroy the efficaciousness of the sacraments and abolish their use, there are also on the other hand those who ascribe to the sacraments some secret powers which one never reads were given to them by God. By this error the simple and the ignorant are deceived and tricked when they are taught to seek Godā€™s gifts and graces where they can never find them, and bit by bit are turned and drawn away from Him to follow purely vain things.

For the schools of the sophists have determined with one accord that the sacraments of the new law, that is, those which the Christian church uses now, justify and confer grace, if we do not put any obstacles of mortal sin in the way. We cannot adequately declare how dangerous this opinion is; and it is even more so because for so many long years it has been accepted, to the great detriment of the church, and it still continues in a quite large part of the world. Certainly it is obviously diabolic. For since it promises righteousness without faith it casts consciences into confusion and damnation. Moreover, setting the sacrament as the cause of righteousness, it ties and entangles the human mind in the superstition that righteousness rests on a corporeal thing rather than on God, since the human understanding is naturally very much more inclined toward the earth than it ought to be. It would be desirable if we did not have such great experience of these two vices ā€” much less do we need great proof of them!

What is a sacrament taken without faith, except the destruction of the church? Nothing should be expected except in virtue of the promise which announces Godā€™s wrath to the unbelievers no less than it presents His grace to the faithful, therefore the one who thinks he can receive from the sacraments a different good than that which he receives by faith as it is presented to him in the word, greatly deceives himself. From this also the rest can be inferred: confidence of salvation does not depend on participation in the sacraments, as if righteousness were established there. We known righteousness is located in Jesus Christ alone, and communicated to us not less by the preaching of the gospel than by the testimony of the sacraments, and it can exist entirely without that sacramental testimony. In this way what St. Augustine says is trustworthy: ā€œThe visible sign often appears without the invisible sanctification, and the sanctification without the visible sign.ā€

Therefore let us be certain that the sacraments have no other office than Godā€™s word, which is to offer and present Jesus Christ to us, and in Him the treasures of His heavenly grace. They do not serve or profit at all except to those who take and receive them by faith. Besides, we must be on guard not to fall into another error close to this one from reading that the early church fathers, in order to increase the value of the sacraments, have spoken of them with such honor that we may think that some secret power is annexed and affixed to them ā€” to the point that imagining that the graces of the Holy Spirit are distributed and administered in them as the wine is given in a cup or glass. Instead the whole office of the sacraments is only to testify to us and confirm for us Godā€™s good will and favor to us, and they profit nothing beyond that it the Holy Spirit does not come ā€” the Spirit who opens our minds and hearts and makes us able to receive the testimony. In this also Godā€™s different and distinct graces clearly appear.[1]

We could tail off into a discussion of substance metaphysics, and how Calvin is ostensibly critiquing that when he refers to ā€˜wine of the glass or cup,ā€™ but we wonā€™t. For our purposes it is good to simply focus on how Calvin thinks of the sacraments as helpful witnesses to the risen Christ who stands beyond and behind them. To think of sacraments as salvific gateways, according to Calvin, is to distort them by artificially elevating them to levels that Christ alone, should, and does indeed have.

If we think of the sacraments from a Christ concentrated frame, as Calvin does, then we can have an expansive understanding of sacramentology in the main. If we think of creation as finding its res or reality, indeed, its telos or purpose in and from Christ alone, we can have a sacramental view of all of reality. Indeed, we ought to see an intensification of the sacraments that Christ ordained for His Church, but this shouldnā€™t diminish the fact that even the elementary parts of the sacraments, juice and water, are indeed part of the created order. And this is the point, these ā€˜signsā€™ are creaturely redeemed elements that bear witness to the greater reality that stands behind them: the blood and water of Jesusā€™s broken, baptized, and raised body. These signs bear witness to the fact of new creation, of the recreation that apocalyptically obtained in the resurrected humanity of Jesus Christ. As we look at, as we taste, as we feel, as we smell, as we partake of these elementary pieces, we are pushed to do these things ā€˜in remembrance of Him, until He comes.ā€™

This is the way I can operate with a sacramentology: only if the sacraments are properly and orderly situated in the reality they have been given by the risen Christ. It is when they are elevated to an altitude they shouldnā€™t have, because of an ecclesiology that hasnā€™t been prescribed (by Christ), that the language of ā€˜sacramentā€™ becomes something of an anathema for the low churchmanā€™s Protestant ears. But this need not be the case.

 

[1] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion: 1541 French Edition, trans. by Elsie Anne McKee (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009), 502-04 [emphasis mine].