Category Archives: Salvation

Martin Luther’s Centraldogma, ‘Faith Alone’ by Barth

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Martin Luther preaches in the pulpit, pointing to the crucified Jesus. Among the audience, are his wife Katherina von Bora with the little son and Lucas Cranach the Elder. Woodcut engraving after a painting from the predella (bottom of the altarpiece) of a triptychon (1547) in the church at Wittenberg by Lucas Cranach the Younger (German painter, 1515 – 1586), published in 1881.

Is there a centraldogma for the Protestant Reformation? It depends on what angle we attempt to answer that question by. For Martin Luther, per Barth’s lights et alia, the foundation for his reformational work was the doctrine of justification (sola fide). For Luther, according to Barth, this was the great differentiator between what became Protestantism versus the Latin Catholic church’s position on justification; which would entail a cooperative matrix in the God-human relation (gratia infusa). After Luther read the Greek New Testament for himself, he realized the synergistic salvation that Roma propounded was contradicted by the perspicacious teaching of Scripture alone. Barth offers some rich insight on how he sees this centraldogma operative for Luther:

It was again Luther, above all others, who obviously regarded and described the doctrine of justification as the Word of the Gospel. To him it was not merely the decisive point, the hub, as it were, of the whole of Evangelical theology in controversy with the Romanists. It was this, in the sense of the Schmalkaldic Articles of 1537 (Bek.-Schr. der ev.-luth. Kirche, 415 f.)—in which it is called the first and principial article in this special sense: “In relation to this article we cannot doubt or yield an inch, though heaven and earth or all things passing may fall . . . . On this article stands all that we teach and live against the Papacy, the devil and the devil prevail against us.” The fact that Luther linked together the Papacy, the devil and the world shows us, however, that Luther was not thinking merely in terms of the polemic against Rome. In the praefatio to the 1535 Galatians we are told immediately before the passage quoted earlier: That one article reigns in my heart, namely the article of faith in Christ, by which, in which, and through which all my theological reflections flow back and forth by day and by night. If the doctrine is flourishing, then will flourish all good things, religion, true worship, the glory of God, and assured knowledge of all conditions and matters (l.c., 39). Then in the argumentum of the same commentary we read (l.c., 48, 28): If the article of justification is lost, then the whole of Christian doctrine is lost at the same time. And on Gal. 1.3 (l.c., 72, 20): If the article of justification lies in ruins, then all lies in ruins. Therefore, it is necessary that we sharpen it (in the manner in which Moses spoke of the Law) and cram it in. For it cannot be understood and held enough or too much. According to Luther’s exposition of Gal. 2.20 (l.c., 296, 23) this article and this article alone has the power to refute all sects, anabaptists and sacramentarians, etc., seeing that they are all at error in relation to it. Moreover, it is by the position on justification that Christianity is distinguished from all other religions: For only Christians believe this doctrine and are righteous not because of what they themselves do, but because they receive the works of another, that is, the passion of Christ (Schol. on Is. 53.2f., 1534, W.A. 25, 329, 15; 330, 8). And in the same context (l.c., 332): this doctrine is the basis of the New Testament, from which, as from an open fountain, all the treasures of the divine wisdom flow. Similarly in 1537 Luther could open a disputation (W.A. 39.1, 205, 2) with the words: The article of justification is master and emperor, Lord, ruler and judge over all kinds of doctrines, and it preserves and steers all the church’s doctrine. If it does not know and consider this article, the human reason is defenceless against the vainest errors. But a mind which is strengthened by it will stand against all their assaults. The dominating role which Luther assigned to the matter in his own sermons and other works corresponds to these declarations of principle. The well-known description of the doctrine as the article by which the church stands or falls does not seem to derive from Luther himself, but it is an exact statement of his view. He found in it the one point which involved the whole.[1]

As Barth has illustrated, rather definitively, Luther saw the doctrine of justification as the watershed locus of all that mattered for the Church of Jesus Christ. For, if the Church gets the Gospel wrong, then what type of Church is one left with?

Once this spark lit on fire Luther’s affections his reformation was underway. It wasn’t the 95 theses on the Wittenberg church’s door that was motivating Luther—that is on the matter of the indulgences, per se, even as that was directly relatable to this matter—it went into the theoanthropological roots of the teaching of the New Testament itself. What was required for humanity to be justified before God? What in fact, were the fundamental entailments of the Gospel? Was it what the Latin church had taught Luther the Augustinian monk; the gratia infusa way? Or was it instead the iustitia aliena (alien righteousness) of Jesus Christ which when the would-be believer comes into union with Christ, by faith alone and grace alone (sola fide sola gratia), all of these benefits of Christ’s person and work become theirs? For Luther, and for the other reformers, it was clearly the latter; it was solo Christo (Christ alone). Soli Deo Gloria

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1 §61 [521–22] The Doctrine of Reconciliation: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 8–9.

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.

‘Very Man’

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Not only is Jesus Very God, but he is also Very Man. This is the Nicene-Constantinopolitan-Chalcedonian settlement in regard to the hypostatic union of Jesus person’ being both fully God, at His very being, and fully human as the ground of His being the Man from Nazareth in the Galilee. This post is meant to dovetail with the other side of this union where we looked at the way that Barth treated the personhood of Jesus Christ as ‘Very God.’ But without Very God, the Son of God, becoming Very man, we would of all people be most to be pitied. This is the stuff of the Gospel itself.

If God did not freely elect to become human, as both the electing God and the elected man, then there would be no way into reconciliation with the inner and triune life of God. We could not become partakers and thus participants in the divine nature if God did not first become us in Christ. As any good Bible reader understands, fallen humanity left to its own devices only remains in a vicious circle of self-love; a life constrained by the love of self, and its base desires, rather than being constrained by the love of God in Christ and His holiness. It took God to invade our war torn and dead sub-humanity, and re-create it such that the fallen person can finally be elevated into the throne-room of God’s life as the Son ascends with us back to the glory He has always already eternally shared with the Father in the bond of the Holy Spirit. All of this to say: the ‘man’ (human) part of the Gospel is just as important as the God part, insofar that without God becoming us it would be absolutely impossible for us to pierce into His inner and triune life and be saved. So, the man part, funded by the God part, both hypostatically united in the singular person of Jesus Christ is in fact the Euaggelion (Gospel). And for this we should be full of gratitude and worship to our Father who is in heaven.

Barth writes:

This means primarily that it is a matter of the Godhead, the honour and glory and eternity and omnipotence and freedom, the being as Creator and Lord, of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ is Himself God as the Son of God the Father and with God the Father the source of the Holy Spirit, united in one essence with the Father by the Holy Spirit. That is how He is God. He is God as He takes part in the even which constitutes the divine being.

We must add at once that as this One who takes part in the divine being and event He became and is man. This means that we have to understand the very Godhead, that divine being and event and therefore Himself as the One who takes part in it, in the light of the fact that it pleased God—and this is what corresponds outwardly to and reveals the inward divine being and event—Himself to become man. In this way, in this condescension, He is the eternal Son of the eternal Father. This is the will of this Father, of this Son, and of the Holy Spirit who is the Spirit of the Father and the Son. This is how God is God, this is His freedom, this is His distinctness from the superiority to all other reality. It is with this meaning and purpose that He is the Creator and Lord of all things. It is as the eternal and almighty love, which He is actually and visibly in this action of condescension. This One, the One who loves in this way, is the true God. But this means that He is the One who as the Creator and Lord of all things is able and willing to make Himself equal with the creature, Himself to become a creature; the One whose eternity does not prevent but rather permits and commands Him to be in time and Himself to be temporal, whose omnipotence is so great that He can be weak and indeed impotent, as a man is weak and impotent. He is the One who in His freedom can and does in fact bind Himself, in the same way as we all are bound. And we must go further: He, the true God, is the One whose Godhead is demonstrated and plainly consists in essence in the fact that, seeing He is free in His love, He is capable of and wills this condescension for the very reason that in man of all His creatures He has to do with the one that has fallen away from Him, that has been unfaithful and hostile and antagonistic to Him. He is God in that He takes this creature to Himself, and that in such a way that He sets Himself alongside this creature, making His own penalty and loss and condemnation to nothingness. He is God in the fact that He can give Himself up and does give Himself up not merely to the creaturely limitation but to the suffering of the human creature, becoming one of these men, Himself bearing the judgment under which they stand, willing to die and, in fact, dying the death which they have deserved. That is the nature and essence of the true God as He has intervened actively and manifestly in Jesus Christ. When we speak of Jesus Christ we mean the true God—He who seeks His divine glory and finds that glory, He whose glory obviously consists, in the fact that because he is free in His love He can be and actually is lowly as well as exalted; He, the Lord, who is for us a servant, the servant of all servants. It is in the light of the fact of His humiliation that on this first aspect all the predicates of His Godhead, which is the true Godhead, must be filled out and interpreted. Their positive meaning is lit up only by this determination and limitation, only by the fact that in this act He is this God and therefore the true God, distinguished from all false gods by the fact that they are not capable of this act, that they have not in fact accomplished it, that their supposed glory and honour and eternity and omnipotence not only do not include but exclude their self-humiliation. False gods are all reflections of a false and all too human self-exaltation. They are all lords who cannot and will not be servants, who are therefore no true lords, whose being is not a truly divine being.

The second christological aspect is that in Jesus Christ we have to do with a true man. The reconciliation of the world with God takes place in the person of a man in whom, because He is also true God, the conversion of all men to God is an actual event. It is the person of a true man, like all other men in every respect, subjected without exception to all the limitations of the human situation. The conditions in which other men exist and their suffering are also His conditions and His suffering. That he is very God does not mean that He is partly God and only partly man. He is altogether man just as He is altogether God—altogether man in virtue of His true Godhead whose glory consists in His humiliation. That is how He is the reconciler between God and man. That is how God accomplishes in Him the conversion of men to Himself. . ..[1]

Very meaty stuff!

Without getting too distracted let me lift up one aspect of this, particularly as found in the second paragraph above. Some critics might latch onto the fact that Barth writes, “. . . the conversion of all men to God is an actual event.” They might claim that this makes Barth a dogmatic universalist (or maybe some Christian universalists might want to take this in the positive from Barth). But that would be to miss Barth’s theology. Barth has just got done communicating that ‘the man’ Jesus Christ is the conversion of God for all of humanity in actuality. Even so, whilst this christological objectivism is rightly present in Barth, this should not lead the reader to imagine that Barth is operating from some type of Aristotelian theory of causation; to the contrary. Barth’s primary focus is on the primacy of Christ’s archetypal humanity as the humanity ‘converted’ to God. And within this, it can be (and should be) explicated that for Barth’s theology this entails all of humanity after Christ’s. So, there is a universalist aspect to the incarnation and its implications for Barth, just as there is for the Apostle Paul. But it would be wrong and foreign (to Barth’s total theology) to conclude that this necessarily leads to all of humanity subjectively bowing the knee to Christ as their Savior. This freedom in Christ for God has now been recreated in God’s freedom for us in Jesus Christ. But it is still required that by the power of the Holy Spirit a person says ‘Yes’ to God, from God’s ‘Yes and amen’ for them in Christ, in order to become full participants in the actual humanity of the Godman, Jesus Christ. In other words, the way of salvation has been ordained for all of humanity in and from Christ’s humanity. But the lost person must still recognize this reality and finally acknowledge (repent in Christ’s repentance for them) that without them echoing Christ’s yes and amen for them that they will be left out on the shadow-side of God’s lefthand of final judgment. Which in the end remains as mysterious as the first fall of humanity in Adam and Eve’s rebellion to God’s Word.

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1 §58 [130–31] The Doctrine of Reconciliation: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 125–26.

‘Very God’

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Karl Barth develops what he calls, The Three Forms of the Doctrine of Reconciliation, in Church Dogmatics IV/1 §58. The first form is with reference to the ground of Christ’s person; i.e., the second person of the Trinity, the eternal Logos, the Son of God. As many of the early church fathers understood without the ground of Jesus’ person being the triune God in the eternal Logos, there could be no salvation for the weary wayfarers of a fallen humanity. Justification before and with God required that the “bridge” between the Holy God and the fallen humanity be God Himself; for He alone could bear the wages of sin in His own assumed humanity in the flesh and blood of the man from Nazareth, Jesus Christ. If Christ was not God’s pleroma (fullness) for us all he would have  been was some type of exemplar to ostensibly show a way to God; a way of works-righteousness, with the hope that fallen humanity, like the Christ consciousness, could elevate itself to God’s throne room based on their own merits; albeit, infused with an abstract power (or created grace) provided for by God—of the type that Jesus as the exemplar modeled for us in his own humanity. This might be one expression of attempting to develop a soteriology outwith Jesus being fully God. Genuine Christian salvation required that God reach down to us, become us, and then ascend with us in the garb of his full humanity whereby we might be participants in the triune holiness forevermore; indeed, as the Son has always already constituted that in His inner life with the Father by the Holy Spirit.

Barth writes:

The first is that in Jesus Christ we have to do with very God. The reconciliation of man with God takes place as God Himself actively intervenes, Himself taking in hand His cause with and against and for man, the cause of the covenant, and in such a way (this is what distinguishes the even of reconciliation from the general sway of providence and universal rule of God) that He Himself becomes man. God became man. That is what is, i.e., what has taken place, in Jesus Christ. He is very God acting for us men, God Himself become man. He is the authentic Revealer of God as Himself God. Again, He is the effective proof of the power of God as Himself God. Yet again. He is the fulfiller of the covenant as Himself God. He is nothing less or other than God Himself, but God as man. When we say God we say honour and glory and eternity and power, in short, a regnant freedom as it is proper to Him who is distinct from and superior to everything else that is. When we say God we say the Creator and Lord of all things. And we can say all that without reservation or diminution of Jesus Christ—but in a way in which it can be said in relation to Him, i.e., in which it corresponds to the Godhead of God active and revealed in Him. No general idea of “Godhead” developed abstractly from such concepts must be allowed to intrude at this point. How the freedom of God is constituted, in what character He is the Creator and Lord of all things, distinct from and superior to them, in short, what is to be understood by “Godhead,” is something which—watchful against all imported ideas, ready to correct them and perhaps to let them be reversed and renewed in the most astonishing way—we must always learn from Jesus Christ. He defines those concepts: they do not define Him. When we start with the fact that He is very God we are forced to keep strictly to Him in relation to what we mean by true “Godhead.”[1]

Significantly, for Barth, it is because Jesus is truly God, that He can genuinely reveal God to humanity; indeed, to the very humanity He assumes in the womb of Mary. This is the only way, as Barth rightly presses, that salvation might actually obtain for a fallen humanity. That is, for God to be brought into humanity, in Christ, and for humanity to be brought into God, by the grace of Christ’s life for us.

In synopsis: The above passage from Barth could be taken as the guiding premise of his whole theological offering. Without salvation, without reconciliation being fully God and fully man, in the hu[man]ity of Jesus Christ, for Barth, and more importantly, for Holy Scripture, there is no eternal life to be had; there is no salvation to be enjoyed; and there is no vision of God to be experienced. This is the all or nothing reality that fortifies not just Barth’s Gospel, but the Gospel of Christ itself as revealed by Himself in the Father by the Holy Spirit.

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1 §58 [129] The Doctrine of Reconciliation: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 124–25.

Maximus and the Damascene Against Dualisms and the New Age

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Au contraire! John of Damascus, Maximus the Confessor et al. countered the persistence of the dualists into their own time; indeed, as they stood as Christian theologians of the East in the 7th and 8th centuries. For Augustine, in his pagan days, he partook of an early dualistic religion, known as Manicheanism. This type of dualism, indeed, as it was imbibed by the Gnostics, and even some so-called Christian Gnostics, gained a foothold into the life of the Church, the world, that would perdure even into our present in the 21st century. For the Confessor and the Damascene, they were fighting some heir-apparents of the earlier formed Manicheanism and Gnosticism simpliciter. In their day, respectively, these folks were identified as the Paulicians, and latterly (after Maximus and John), the Bogomils. In nuce, these dualistic systems attempted to identify two competing principles within the world, within the principle of all reality; such that, when applied to God, they saw Light versus Darkness as two equidistant primordial combatants. As a result, they posited two principles largess, rather than just the one that Christian trinitarian monotheism thought from. Even so, these heretical dualistic groups had enough purchase among the people, that people like Maximus, in his respective time, and John of Damascus in his, felt the need to counter them through Christian and biblical theological reasoning (which also entailed some metaphysics).

Jaroslav Pelikan describes the competition this way:

While maintaining against Judaism that the Shema did not preclude the doctrine of the Trinity, but rather, when correctly understood, included it, orthodox Christian monotheism simultaneously opposed any effort to modify the singleness of the divine nature through the introduction of a double principle [ἀρχή]. The Trinity did not imply any compromise in the fundamental axiom that the divine principle was one, and in opposition to the Filioque this axiom was reinforced. To the dualists the orthodox declared: “For our part, we do not follow your godless ways, nor do we say that there are two principles which are to be separated according to location. But, declaring that there is one Creator of all things and a single principle of all things, we affirm the dogma . . . of the Father and the Son.” “The confession of two principles, an evil god and a good one” was understood by the orthodox to be the “first article” of the Paulician creed, taken over from the Manicheans. From the Manicheans and Paulicians the notion of a multiple principle had in turn been taken over by later dualist groups, particularly the Bogomils. Biblical justification for it was found in such passages as Matthew 7:18, which said that there were two different sources for the two different kinds of deeds, or 2 Corinthians 4:3–4, which spoke of “the god of this world.” Replying to such exegesis, the orthodox produced biblical evidence that the very rejection of the authority of God by the world was evidence for one principle rather than two; for Christ “came to his own home, and his own people received him not.”

                Although in later theologians the proof from Scripture took a more prominent role, in the polemics of John of Damascus such proof was heavily reinforced by logic and metaphysics. When the Manicheans contended that the two principles “have absolutely nothing in common,” he replied that if they both existed, they had to have at least existence in common. By their very use of the term “principle,” the Manicheans contradicted their own dualism, for a principle had to be single. As in mathematics the unit was the principle of every number, so it was in metaphysics. If there was an individual principle for each existing thing, then these many principles had in turn to have a single principle behind them. Otherwise there would not be only the two principles of God and matter, as the dualists taught, but a plurality of them throughout the universe. Not only was this an absurdity on the face of it, but it negated the meaning of the word “principle.” Good and evil were not to be explained on the basis of a dual principle, but rather “the good is both the principle and the goal of all things, even of those things that are evil.”[1]

Okay, that is all well and interesting. But what I want to do with this is to attempt to identify how this type of dualism is presently present within the 21st century world, whether that be in the sacred or secular.

My simple observation is this (and this is for Christian consumption, primarily): The devil himself loves nothing more than leading people into the delusion that in fact he is equiprimordial with the living and triune God. He likes to lead his kingdom of darkness, and even us Christians who are still, in principle, in it (but not of it), into the fantasy that his powers of darkness represent a real-life contradiction of God’s life and Light. It is easy, in our bodies of death as we are, to give into this satanic delusion; indeed, even as Christians. In this current world of chaos and disorder it might in fact appear that the devil and minions have an upper hand on God’s economy in the world in Jesus Christ. But just as the Paulicians and Bogomils logic of antiChrist proportions were defeated, indeed, imploded, by folks like Maximus and John of Damascus, in their own respective ways, that same theo-logic applies against the inherent dualisms of our day in the 21st century.

Hence, there is no absolute dualism between the living God, and the minions of darkness. As the Apostle Paul triumphantly declares: “When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him” (Colossians 2:13–15). Jesus as the Theanthropos came and destroyed, not an abstract evil, but a concrete one as that has polluted the human being, from the inside/out. Even though evil and sin remain consequential things in this ‘evil age,’ they eschatologically have already been put to death by the Godman, Jesus Christ. He currently is reigning at the Right Hand of the Father, which so contraposes the so called god of darkness, that the apparent war can be said to have never even really gotten off of the ground for the satanic horde’s parasitic “nothingness” economy.

And so, our Lord, contra the dualistic-delusion exhorts: “These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world (John 16:33).” He has not left us as orphans, or as defeated ones. What can death do to us? The same thing it did to Jesus. Though we die, yet shall we live. The forces of this current world order have been defeated; death has been put to death; the scourge of sin has lost its power; and we in fact are the victorious ones as we stand in the Victor of God’s grace for the world in Jesus Christ. This doesn’t necessarily make our daily lives easier, per se, but it does let us know that even though we might feel like we are drowning in the scuz of this world system, even within our own bodies of death, we know as Christians that the power of God, the Gospel funds our lives in Christ by the Holy Spirit, to the point that we can stand in victory. Even if such victory, to the dark-system, looks like defeat (like weakness and foolishness).

Dualism is a wicked evil in our world. Most Westerners are caught in its clutches by their submission to New Age theatrics and demonism (this is ironic because New Ageism is based broadly in Eastern monism—I need to flesh this out more fully since New Age ostensibly denies dualisms::I don’t think they actually achieve that though). But as we have already visited, these types of dualistic movements have been present throughout the world order since at least Genesis 3. And yet, even before these fake-power-plays came into existence in the natural world order, God had already pre-destined Himself to be for the world, to not be God without, but with us in Jesus Christ. The Enemy, the darkness has never had an eschatological chance in hell to get beyond the boundary of hell God had always already determined for it in His free life as the Deus incarnandus (the God to be incarnate).

[1] Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine: The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600—1700), Volume 2 (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1977), 219–20.

On the Death of Scott Adams and “His” Saving Faith

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The creator of the Dilbert comic series, Scott Adams, just died today after a long battle with metastatic prostate cancer. He was also a popular author focusing on matters of daily life, and cultural commentary. I followed him on X. He had been publishing videos discussing his cancer, and the state he was in at that moment. Only a few weeks ago he said that he didn’t have much time left. Just a day or two ago he was placed into hospice care; and today he died. During these last few weeks, he said that he was considering becoming a Christian. His thinking sounded something like Pascal’s divine wager: i.e., if the Gospel is real then it will only be of great eternal benefit for the believer; if it isn’t real, then there was no loss. He wrote this a few weeks ago. But on his deathbed, he wrote the following:

I accept Jesus Christ as my lord and savior, and I look forward to spending an eternity with him. The part about me not being a believer should be quickly resolved if I wake up in heaven. I won’t need any more convincing than that. And I hope I am still qualified for entry.[1]

I’ve seen many responses to Scott’s admission from Christians stating that, unfortunately, they don’t think Scott was a real believer. They assert that he was simply using Jesus as a means to ensure that if God and Jesus are real, that he would end up in heaven. They don’t take this to be a saving, effectual faith. And yet, I would argue that it is most surely saving faith.

How many among us had all of the details, had some level of certain certitude that Christ was real, or that God’s grace in Christ could actually save us? We surely were placing our hope in Jesus for just that. But there was no level of certitude required in order to validate a real saving faith before God. In Scott’s final statement, noted above, he did what every single one of us have done, in order to come into a full relationship with the triune God. Some of us did that when we were young children (like me), others of us did that in our young adulthood, some later in life; and in Scott’s case (like the thief on the cross), on his deathbed. He didn’t go to the Buddha, or Mohammed, or the spirit god in the heavens; he didn’t go to the universal soul where atman is brahman for salvation. He had enough witness around him, and conviction of the Holy Spirit to know that if he were going to be eternally justified, saved before God, that it could only be through Jesus Christ.

In his above statement he ends it with, ‘And I hope I am still qualified for entry.’ He still didn’t fully grasp the freeness of the Gospel, and yet he thrust himself upon the very grace of the Gospel in his final hour. Of all people, genuine Christians ought to see this as a saving cry for mercy to the living God. Of all people, Christians should recognize Scott’s final plea, even entwined in much misunderstanding, as our own cry to the risen Christ. Scott waited till the very end to give his life to Christ. He didn’t have time to be fully discipled into the free grace he became participant with the second he said, ‘I accept Jesus Christ as my lord and savior, and I look forward to spending an eternity with him. . ..’ If that isn’t a saving confession, just as Christ’s plea to the Father, ‘Father into thy hands I commit my spirit,’ then God forbid it: I am not saved either. It seems to me that many of the Christians who are claiming that Adams didn’t have saving faith don’t really understand the freeness of the Gospel themselves. If anyone ought to be concerned, it ought to be these folks. And yet, God’s grace and mercy, just as in Adams’ case is big enough to absorb such petty and childish and immature misunderstandings as well.

Furthermore, and this a theological note: Since there isn’t a threshold of faith, as if some type of feeling, or created quality we can manipulate, there is no abstract creaturely register that must be punched through which someone can be saved. Salvation is purely of God in Christ; indeed, that is the whole point of the Gospel. God in Christ assumed our humanity, and by his poverty for us, he made us rich through participation with Him, as He resurrected all of humanity, objectively (carnally), in his vicarious humanity, thereby making the way for all who would say Yes out of His Yes and Amen for us by the Holy Spirit, to become spiritually and subjectively participant with His risen and ascended humanity for us. This is what grounded and grounds Scott’s final placement of trust in Jesus Christ. Not some level of salvific knowledge. Not full awareness of the triunity of God. Just that he was a beggar in need of a big hand to save him out of the pit of despondency he found himself in in his hospice room. The Way for Adams to be saved, even at the last minute, was always already a reality insofar that God freely elected to become Scott, to become us, in order that by the grace of adoption, we might become Him; as co-heirs with Jesus Christ; thus participating and sharing in the glory that the Son has always and eternally shared with the Father in the communion of the Holy Spirit. Scott wasn’t aware of all of the mechanics, and neither are we, really. But he knew that if there was and is salvation to be had, then it had to be through Jesus Christ. And by God’s wisdom and mercy that is all that is required.

I look forward to fellowshipping with Scott Adams in the Eschaton someday soon! Maranatha

[1] source here.

The Cipher-Jesus Predestined by the Fallen Heart

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German anthropologist and philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach stated: God is “the outward projection of a human’s inward nature.” A very telling observation with reference to a postEnlightenment turn-to-the-subject worldpicture. This remains a fitting observation even for our 21st century time; i.e., that people, by nature (according to Scripture, and empirical observation), in the inverse, have collapsed the classical attributes of God into the mirror of their own image. A postmodern, normative relativistic people simply wake up in the morning, look in the mirror in the bathroom, and say: “hello there God.” Even if not this overtly, it is the way us sinners operate enslaved, enbondaged to the incurvature of our in-turned hearts. We are, in the first Adam sense, slaves of our polluted, stained, dead souls; souls that by sinful being (ousia) naturally believe that our way is the way.

This is being played out every single day, not just out there, but in here; indeed, in our own daily lives. This is why the Apostle Paul by the Holy Spirit exhorts us to reckon ourselves dead to sin, and alive to Jesus Christ. Even so, the pagan, the heathen has no resurrection power to mortify these first Adam ways of life that dominate every shred and depth of the marrow of the bones; they are simply enslaved to love of themselves; and left to themselves have no capacity to not sin; to not worship the self as God. It is whilst inhabiting this type of beleaguered existence that in an attempt to worship, the person will name their own person as the Messiah. The urge to worship, of course, is because the human animal has been created by the living and alien God to worship; to worship Him in spirit and truth. But absent the Holy Spirit’s indwelling, the only reality the fallen person knows to worship, most immediately, is themselves. And yet, there seems to be some type of cultural pressure (maybe the Christian witness and the Holy Spirit’s conviction in the world) that leads said fallen people to worship something or someone outside of themselves; even though they haven’t the capacity to actually achieve a genuinely extra worship. And so, they might in parody, and for convenience’s sake, attribute their self-worship to the worship of Jesus. But their respective Jesus, as has already been alluded to, is really a Jesus who does what their deepest desires yearn for; the desires that are enchained to the kingdom of darkness; to their father of lies and death, the devil.

Barth helps us,

It is not, therefore, doing Him a mere courtesy when it names the name of Jesus Christ. It does not use this name as a symbol or sign which has a certain necessity on historical grounds, and a certain purpose on psychological and pedagogic grounds, to which that which it really means and has to say may be attached, which it is desirable to expound for the sake of clarity. For it, this name is not merely a cipher, under which that which it really means and has to say leads its own life and has its own truth and actuality and would be worth proclaiming for its own sake, a cipher which can at any time be omitted without affecting that which is really meant and said, or which in other ages or climes or circumstances can be replaced by some other cipher. When it speaks concretely, when it names the name of Jesus Christ, the Christian message is not referring simply to the specific form of something general, a form which as such is interchangeable in the phrase of Lessing, a “contingent fact of history” which is the “vehicle” of an “eternal truth of reason.” The peace between God and man and the salvation which comes to us men is not something general, but the specific thing itself: that concrete thing which is indicated by the name of Jesus Christ and not by any other name. For He who bears this name is Himself the peace and salvation. The peace and salvation can be known therefore, only in Him, and proclaimed only in His name.[1]

There are much too many cipher-Jesuses running around, reigning supreme in the world. There is only one Jesus Christ, and He alone puts His words in His own mouth in perichoretic conversation with the Father and Holy Spirit. The zeitgeist would make us think that Jesus is simply an imprimatur of our own waning and base desires; that Jesus is whomever our enchained souls would determine Him to be. Whether this be for interpersonal reasons, or collectivist political reasons. When Jesus simply becomes a cipher for me and my tribe, for our self-determined predestined agendas, He has simply been collapsed into us, as we have stolen His name and badged ourselves with it. God forbid it!

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1 §57 [021] The Doctrine of Reconciliation: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 18.

God’s Adversary and Ours: A Brief Theology of the Devil / A Book Impression

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Just finished. It is a good provocative read. It is written in a nice narratival theological style, which definitely works within the spirit and ambit of the Barth style (i.e. engagement with Holy Scripture throughout). Philip re-places a doctrine of the devil into the second article, so, Christology and Soteriology (think Apostle’s Creed) versus the traditional placement as found in the first article with reference to original creation and God’s providence. This reorients thinking the devil from emphasizing him as a fallen angel, and instead sees him primarily in the scenery of the wilderness, as the adversary (of Christ), as adventitious, and anarchic. These three themes serve to organize the way that Ziegler seeks to place the devil within a dogmatic location of the second article. And it shouldn’t be forgotten that Ziegler is doing all of this work as a type of revitalization of a satanology for and within Reformed theology, proper.

One question I had going into this book was to see if Philip would hold to the idea that the devil is “personal,” or if the devil has an ontology of diabolical sorts. In the long and the short of it: yes, Ziegler affirms a type of nothingness beingness (my phraseology) which pairs well with Barth’s doctrine of sin or “nothingness” (das Nichtige)—which you can read about in CD III/3 (I also have some passages on that in my Barth Reader).

As a North American evangelical, like myself, I am conditioned to think of the Devil in the first article. As someone who reads Barth and Torrance and Calvin a lot, I am re-conditioned to think within the second article. And so, this clash continues for me, particularly when it comes to such matters as a satanology represents. Beyond that, as a basic evangelical Christian, there are too many real-life encounters that I have had with the demonic—ones that mirror those in the Gospels etc.—that experientially keep me from falling into any type of crass physicalism when it comes to the dark spiritual realm. Even so, the themes that Ziegler develops, therein, don’t contradict that reality, it just textualizes them in ways that some readers might think envelopes this matter into a purely intellectual exercise; but that would be wrong. Take it up and read for yourself.

The ‘Father-Son’ Theory of the Atonement V PSA as the Frame

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Penal Substitution Atonement (PSA) theory has been in the news again lately (online/social media). As an Evangelical Calvinist (see V1&V2 of our Evangelical Calvinism books, and my articles-mini-essays on the topic) I have pressed what TF Torrance refers to as the ‘ontological theory of the atonement.’ Many evangelicals and Reformed folks think that PSA in fact is the Gospel simplicter. And so, to deny PSA would be to deny the Gospel itself. But as I have demonstrated over and again at the blog, the background to PSA theory isn’t as prima facie biblical as its proponents make it sound. The ‘theological’ framework that fomented what we think of as PSA today is largely rooted in the Federal (Covenantal) theology of the early Reformed theologians. It has humanity placed into a relationship with God that is necessarily framed by a forensic premise (i.e., the covenant of works). This forensic premise, or covenant of works, according to Federal theology, is ultimately fulfilled for the elect of God, when Jesus comes and meets the conditions of the covenant of works (that Adam and Eve) broke, thus restoring the legal connection to God that heretofore had been lost to humanity since after Eden. And it is this Federal (Covenantal) relationship that is given metaphysical orientation by the scholasticism Reformed commitment to what Richard Muller identifies as a Christian Aristotelianism. Suffice it to say, in nuce, PSA represents a theory of the atonement wherein humanity is genetically related to God based on a metaphysics of a Divine-Law-World relation; indeed, which requires that in order for fallen humanity, and the elect therein (think decretum absolutum ‘absolute decree of election-reprobation’), to be justified by God, that the Son of Man must become man, die on the cross, extinguishing the wrath of God, paying the legal penalty for sin, and allowing the elect humanity to come into a right and legal standing relationship with the triune God; particularly, the Father (whom the PSA proponents emphasize as the ‘Law-giver,’ per their juridical system).

Alternatively to that, one of the Fathers of us Evangelical Calvinists, John McLeod Campbell, a Scottish theologian of the 19th century, kicked back against the premise of the PSA position vis-à-vis the nature of the atonement, and against the Westminster theology that had codified the theological framework that funds the PSA position, particularly as that was being pushed in his context in the Church of Scotland (before he was excommunicated), as he gives us re-framing of atonement theory where the relationship between God and humanity ought to be framed first as thinking of God as Father rather than Law-giver. It was this re-framing that ended up getting Campbell kicked out of his beloved Church of Scotland, and which led him to minister elsewhere, as an independent of sorts. When you see what his view was, in a nutshell, as we will visit that now, as George Tuttle recounts that for us, you might be shocked to think that this would have the type of doctrinal gravitas required to get someone officially banned from their own denominational and local church. Tuttle writes of Campbell’s framing on the atonement:

Herein lies one of Campbell’s major objections to founding a view of atonement on the concept of justice —whether distributive or rectoral. Both systems visualize what he calls purely legal atonements, that is atonements, the whole character of which is determined by our relation to divine law. The real problem of atonement, however, is not merely to discover a way in which we may stand reconciled to God as a law-giver. The question contemplated in scripture and to which the Gospel is an answer is not how we can be pardoned and receive mercy, but how it could come to pass that the estranged can be reconciled. God’s intention is, as St. Paul declared, ‘to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.’ (Gal. 4:5). The relation between a judge or a governor and the accused subjects is vastly different from that of a parent to erring children. To distinguish the former from the latter is to move from an artificial atmosphere of impersonal display of benevolence to a warm and living relationship of love, Campbell therefore could not rest in any conception of the atonement which involved, as he says, ‘the substitution of a legal standing for a filial standing as the gift of God to men in Christ.’ This is not to say that Campbell denies the truth of a legal standing any more than he denies the inexorable demands of divine justice. Just as justice is brought with the concept of God as love, so the validity of a legal standing is brought within that of a loving relationship. Justice has its ultimate source in the love of God. When the loving God is honoured, justice is honoured also.

                The atonement is thus revealed retrospectively as God’s way of putting right the past, and prospectively as introducing us to a life marked by a filial relation to God eternally. Both are celebrated by believers, both must be included in their thought concerning the nature of the atonement.[1]

One might think this ought to be unremarkable. And yet in the face of meddling with the Westminster God of consensus, the Aristotelian-formed God who relates to the world through a metaphysic of a decree of law (e.g., covenant of works etc.); who must remain the ‘unmoved mover’ of monadic adoration; it is this very meddling, even if all the theologian is doing is attempting to shift the mind’s eye to the fact that God is first Father of the Son before He is ever a Law-giver/Creator, that will get you canned like Campbell was.

Some might imagine that the Campbell thesis was a minority report. In his particular environ it was at his time. But outside of his particular ecclesial and geographical environ (and even amongst it, among some other key theologians and pastors like himself), his view became a dominate one. Even overcoming many of the places and people who were initially against his alternative and kerygmatic reading of Holy Scripture. Even so, today, by the retrieval of many in the evangelical and Reformed sphere, we are only getting the Westminsterian Report. This simply wasn’t the case, even historically (which I have demonstrated elsewhere).

In the end what matters, though, isn’t whether this or that doctrinal position was the majority or minority report in the history. What matters for the Protestant Christian, is whether or not a position corresponds more proximate with the witness of Scripture. I would contend, and have done so vociferously over the years, that the Campbellian theory of the ‘Father-Son-Atonement’ framing is indeed the most biblically correlative and theologically resplendent view presented. If you don’t to hold it: repent!

[1] George M. Tuttle, So Rich a Soil: John McLeod Campbell On Christian Atonement (Edinburgh: Handsel Press, 1986), 82-3.