Category Archives: Scottish Theology

Unlimited Atonement in a Reformed Theology as Told by James Torrance and John McLeod Campbell

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James B. Torrance, brother of Thomas F. Torrance, offers a very nice and concise synopsis of the entailments of what me and Myk Habets (along with our various authors) have identified as an Evangelical Calvinism. JBT’s synopsis comes as he wrote the foreword for a book titled, So Rich a Soil: John McLeod Campbell on Christian Atonement by George M. Tuttle. Here, JBT is explicitly referring to the themes of John McLeod Campbell’s theology, particularly as that developed as an alternative to the juridically/forensically framed understanding of the Calvinism that we find in Federal (Covenantal) theology; indeed, as that gets codified in the Westminster Confession of Faith, among other confessions and catechisms. As JBT notes, Campbell’s theology, as an alternative iteration of Reformed theology, indeed, a Scottish Theology, challenges the assumption that God primarily relates to humanity through a covenant of works, rather than a relation based on triune love, thus leading to an ostensible Christian spirituality that leaves the would-be saint always wondering about their standing before the Lawgiving God. With further pinpointed clarity, JBT, also shines a light on the implications of thinking of God’s relation to humanity through a Love-giving God, as that is resplendent in Campbell’s theology, and how that rightly alters the way the seeking person might approach God; indeed, as an adopted child in the loving and caring arms of the Father of Life who freely gave His life for the world, in His dearly beloved Son, Jesus Christ. If you are looking for an alternative theology, Reformed even, that first sees God as Father, before Creator and Lawgiver, then what you will find in an Evangelical Calvinism might be just what you have been longing for.

Here is JB Torrance at some length:

A few years ago, while teaching for an academic year in the Vancouver School of Theology, I came across Dr. Tuttle’s doctoral dissertation in the library of the University of British Columbia, on ‘The Place of John McLeod Campbell in British Thought Covering the Atonement,’ and was so impressed by it that I encouraged him to have it published. McLeod Campbell was a remarkable Scottish theologian – thought by many to Scotland’s greatest – whose theology was hammered out on the anvil of his pastoral experience. Here was an invaluable study, not only of McLeod Campbell’s theology of atonement, but also of his influence on subsequent thought, not least on nineteenth century Anglican theology. Now Dr. Tuttle, from his own rich experience as a pastor and teacher in the training of men and women for the Christian ministry, has written this splendid study showing how McLeod Campbell’s theology is such fertile soil and so relevant for us today.

                As a young minister in Row in Dunbartonshire, Campbell was aware of a strong ‘legalistic strain’ in the religion of Scotland, coupled with an introspective lack of joy and assurance which he believed derived from the high Calvinism of his day, with its doctrine of a ‘limited atonement,’ that Christ did not die for all but only for an elect number. Generations of Scots had been taught to ‘examine themselves’ for ‘evidences’ of election. But this had produced an inward looking, too often guilt-ridden, attitude which contrasted so sharply with the joyful triumphant faith and assurance of the New Testament church. So he tells us he made it his early concern to give to his people ‘a ground for rejoicing in God’ by directing their minds away from themselves to the love of God the Father is revealed in the whole life of Christ, and supremely on the Cross.

                He soon came to see that our answer to the question of the extent of the atonement depends on our view of the nature of the atonement. The doctrine of a limited atonement, in the federal Calvinist tradition, especially taught by John Owen, the English Puritan, and Jonathan Edwards in North America, flowed from two convictions about the nature of God. The first that justice is the essential attribute of God, but the love of God is arbitrary, seen in his will to elect some individuals and send Christ to die for them. John Owen had taught that love is not God’s nature, but his will. This, Campbell saw, was not true to the New Testament and the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, that God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is Love in his innermost Being, and has created us and redeemed us in love and for love – for ‘sonship.’ With the ancient fathers, in their negation of Sabellianism, he saw that what God is towards the world in love, in creation and redemption, he is in his eternal nature, as the Triune God.

                The second was that in the federal (covenant) scheme, law is thus prior to grace. God is related to all humankind by ‘the covenant of works (law)’ and only to some by ‘the covenant of grace’ in redemption. Hence atonement was construed in terms of the view that God would only be gracious if law was satisfied and sin punished, that is, by Christ fulfilling for the elect the conditions of the covenant of works (law). McLeod Campbell saw that this inverted the Biblical order, that grace is prior to law, that ‘the filial is prior to the judicial.’ Both creation and redemption flow from grace, and law is ‘God’s heart coming out in the form of law.’ Law is the gift of grace, reveals our need of grace and leads to grace. The Incarnation and the Atonement, which must be held together, are the Father’s act of sending his Son to fulfill for humankind the filial and judicial purposes of creation. Atonement is God’s act of grace in which he takes to himself for us his own divine judgments ‘in order that we might receive the adoption of sons.’ The filial purposes of creation and incarnation are secured by atonement. Hence atonement must be interpreted in terms of both the Trinity and the Incarnation, ‘retrospectively’ removing condemnation on past sin and ‘prospectively’ leading to sonship.

                In our own day, theologians like Barth, Rahner, Moltmann, Jüngel and von Balthasar have seen how Western theology has too often operated with concepts of God which owe more to Aristotle and the Stoic Lawgiver, than the New Testament, and has consequently drifted away from seeing the centrality of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. McLeod Campbell discerned this long ago, and saw its implication, both for the pastoral ministry and for our understanding of the doctrine of God, that the sufferings of Christ the Son on the Cross reveal the suffering Love of the Father. ‘He who has seen me, has seen the Father.’

                Dr. Tuttle’s book is profoundly relevant for the contemporary situation both theologically and pastorally in its concern to show that the Gospel is the Good News of God coming to restore to us our lost humanity, ‘to bring many sons to glory’ – and therefore good news for every creature.

James Torrance[1]

There isn’t much to add to this. Only that, to my chagrin, as I have been sitting with this above reality since around 2002, and more pointedly since in and around 2007, when I first started reading TF Torrance et al., becoming aware of this development within a Reformed theology, I can really only continue to shake my head. I see so many young and old alike continuously running full speed ahead into a Reformed theology that is indeed shaped by the juridical/legal parameters that Campbell, JBT, TFT, Karl Barth et al., in their own respective ways, have presciently offered a more biblically based alternative to. Whether this be at the scholarly level or popular level, no matter, theologians and laymen/women, continue to harp and joust back in forth; as if the Calvinist/non-Calvinist binary, black and white as it apparently is, in regard to sides, is the only way through this theological malaise. I continue to see the masses in evangelical and Protestant christianities hem and haw, as if they have found the golden scepter of theological truth; and this within, again, their respective binary of Calvinism/non-Calvinism—to boot, with all the theological imagination of a dodo bird (sorry, too harsh? . . .). May the Lord give more eyes to see and ears to hear that in fact God is Father of the Son first, before He is ever Creator. With this realization there is a theological hope that outstrips much of the pablum being fed to the people today. Kyrie eleison

[1] George M. Tuttle, So Rich a Soil: John McLeod Campbell on Christian Atonement (Edinburgh, The Handsel Press, 1986), 6–7.

Theological Science, au contraire to the Natural Theology of the Schoolmen

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The following is a highly overlooked point, particularly with reference to Christian theology. What, or more pointedly, Who is theology’s control? The answer to this question drives what I attempt to be all about, when it comes to doing prayerful and dialogical theology. We could ask this question another way: is there an order, a taxis, to doing Christian theology; an order that takes into account a thoughtful and intentional theological ontology? These are important questions, and ones that I rarely see engaged with within the received theologies of much of evangelical Lutheran and Reformed theologies. It is just presupposed that there is some sort of vestiges theology available in the natural order; as if we might posit a general and special revelation: the former coming prior to the latter (and so, natural theology). But I would argue, au contraire, as does the great Scot theologian, Thomas Forsyth Torrance.

As we shall see later, in natural science, that is in the science of natural objects which have to objects of our cognition, when we known them, we can test our knowledge through experimental controls in which we force them to answer our questions. Moreover natural objects may be affected by our knowledge as they come under the coercive devices of our empirical methods of observation. But God is not subject to observation like that. He does not come under man’s command, and therefore we cannot put Him to the test or bring Him under the power of our controlled scrutiny. Nevertheless, here, as in all other genuine scientific knowledge, the method of knowledge must correspond to the nature of the object, so that where natural science has its controlled observation and experimental verification, we have to cast ourselves on the Grace of God and allow Him to determine the form of our knowledge will take, and the kind of verification appropriate to Him. Thus, for example, the kind of inquiry we have to direct to God that is in accordance with His nature as Divine Subject is rather of the nature of prayer, and never the coercive questioning we have to devise for mute and natural objects.[1]

This is how TFT develops what he calls his, theological science. He also calls it kata physin (according to the nature of) theology; and as mechanisms of this type of theology he will refer to a ‘stratified knowledge of God’ and/or an ‘epistemological inversion,’ wherein a knowledge of God, in a God-world order, sees the world’s antecedent, and inner-reality, in the triune God, as the ground and basis upon which a genuine knowledge of God might be arrived at. In this approach to theology there aren’t any hooks or ‘vestiges’ in the fallen created order wherein a philosopher or a theologian might stumble upon a discovery of the Christian God. For TFT, and for myself following, the only way the Christian God is known is after God. That is, as both Barth and TFT argue for verbosely, along with the early church fathers, only God reveals God. In this frame, the only mediary between God and humanity, humanity and God, is the Godman, the Theanthropos. It is here where an evangelical or kerygmatic knowledge of God fru-its; where the flower of God’s triune life for the world blossoms in the prosopon (face) of Jesus Christ. It is only as we know God as our Father, just as sure as the Christian is a Christian indeed, while in participation in the bosom of the Father in the Son, that a genuinely Christian knowledge of God might obtain; as we think from a center in God (that is, in Christ).

It seems to me that the above should be basic, a given for the Chrisitan way of theology. But surprisingly in the history of interpretation, and theological development, another way has unfolded. A speculative way; a way that attempts to synthesize the classical Greek philosophers, particularly, Aristotle and Plato, with Christian Dogmatics. Unfortunately, with the overemphasis on speculation provided for by appeal to the philosophers, theologians following this wake, end up providing a picture of God that is anything but personalist and relational. Indeed, in the 21st century such “theologians” mock the type of Christian theologizing that would come to think God in terms of Father of the Son; they call the proponents of such theologizing: theistic personalists (juxtaposed with their self-proclaimed classical and thus orthodox theology). But is the story these “theologians” self-narrate to their navels really the story of God for the world in Jesus Christ?

[1] Thomas F. Torrance, Theological Science (Oxford/London/New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 38.

A Telling of an Evangelical Calvinism [contra Westminster Calvinism] by T.F. Torrance

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TF Torrance was and remains the inspiration for what me and Myk Habets have called Evangelical Calvinism (after TFT). Torrance maintains that the evangelical Calvinism he affirms was really just representative of a Scottish development that unfolded concurrently alongside the development of Westminster Calvinism. Torrance argues that the themes he elevates as representative of an evangelical Calvinism are all present within the history and development of Reformed theology in the 16th and 17th centuries. Some would want to assert that TF is overreading the history, and eisegeting it through a Barthian lens. But this is misplaced. Yes, TFT was a (doctoral) student of Barth’s; yes, TF affirmed much of Barth’s theology (particularly election); but Torrance’s reading of the Reformed tradition, as he makes clear in his book, Scottish Theology, is a critical reading of the Reformed heritage as that developed in the Scottish motherland. Even if what TF says about Reformed theology sounds like strange teaching, that is only because (if you think so) you have been indoctrinated into the faulty supposition that the Reformed tradition is pretty much a monolithic machine—as that has been distilled in so-called Post Reformed orthodox theology. TFT is simply understanding that the Reformed trad is multivalent, and fulsome with multiple lines of development that aren’t as manageable as some would like to imagine.

In the following we have TF discussing the entailments of what he considers an evangelical Calvinism contra the Federal/Westminster Calvinism which he believes did untold damage to the Reformed tradition, particularly in TFT’s native Scotland (but elsewhere as well). You will notice as you read this that Torrance essentially counters all of the points of a Westminster Calvinism by offering biblically rich themes as those have come to light in the Self-revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Since TF is committed to allowing Scripture speak for itself, as it is regulated by the reality of Jesus Christ, he ends up trafficking in themes that focus on God’s universal and unilateral love, as that is fitting to who God is as triune Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So, you should notice, then, the type of alternative prolegomenon that TFT is working from as he arrives at his kerygmatic-rich notions vis-à-vis dogmatic points. Here is Torrance:

. . . Several comments on this understanding of Christ’s sacrifice may be in place. While traditional forensic language is used, the atoning sacrifice is not to be understood as fulfilled by Christ merely as man (which would imply a Nestorian Christology), but of Christ as the one Mediator between God and man who is himself God and man in one Person. This means that ‘the joyful atonement made between God and man by Christ Jesus, by his death, resurrection and ascension’, is not to be understood in any sense as the act of the man Jesus placating God the Father, but as a propitiatory sacrifice in which God himself through the death of his dear Son draws near to man and draws man near to himself. It is along these lines also that we must interpret the statement of the Scots Confession that Christ ‘suffered in body and soul to make the full satisfication for the sins of the people’, for in the Cross God accepts the sacrifice made by Christ, whom he did not spare but delievered him up for us all, as satisfication, thereby acknowledging his own bearing of the world’s sin guilt and judgment as the atonement. As Calvin pointed out in a very important passage, God does not love us because of what Christ has done, but it is because he first loved us that he came in Christ in order through atoning sacrifice in which God himself does not hold himself aloof but suffers in and with Christ to reconcile us to himself. Nor is there any suggestion that this atoning sacrifice was offered only for some people and not for all, for that would imply that he who became incarnate was not God the Creator in whom all men and women live and move and have their being, and that Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour was not God and man in the one Person, but only an instrument in the hands of the Father for the salvation of a chosen few. In other words, a notion of limited atonement implies a Nestorian heresy in which Jesus Christ is not really God and man united in one Person. It must be added that the perfect response offered by Jesus Christ in life and death to God in our place and on our behalf, contains and is the pledge of our response. Just as the union of God and man in Christ holds good in spite of all the contradiction of our sin under divine judgment, so his vicarious response holds good for us in spite of our unworthiness: ‘not I but Christ’. . . .[1]

The reduction should be clear: TFT’s understanding of Reformed theology is Christ conditioned, and explicated from that vantage point. As a result, an emphasis on God’s love for the world, just as He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, stands at the fore of TF’s thinking when it comes to a theory of the atonement, and its soteriological implications. This is at odds, of course, with Federal theology’s framing of a God-world relation as that is provided for by the legal contract of a Covenant of Works/Grace. Federal theology, as TFT presses, thinks God in terms of a pure being, and thus in categories that are metaphysically juridical and thus impersonal by nature. As a result, as TF also intones, since this notion of God relates to the world through impersonal, distant, and abstract decrees, when Christ comes to the world, under these conditions, Christ becomes simply an instrument in the hands of a wrathful Father. One significant Christological implication of this, as TF shows, is that the work of God in Christ is ruptured from the person of God in Christ, and thus we end up with a Nestorian-like dualism at play in Jesus of Nazareth.

You would hope by now that classical Calvinists would have come to realize the many errors of thinking God in decretal terms. You would have hoped that these same people would have repented of this by now, and turned to what TFT is describing and developing with reference to an Evangelical Calvinism. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. That’s okay, some types only go out by prayer.

[1] T. F. Torrance: From John Knox to John McLeod Campbell, 18-19.

 

Inhabitatio Dei: Living in God’s Triune Life Now and Forever as Co-heirs

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Scottish theologian, Hugh Binning, writes the following in regard to God as love:

Our salvation is not the business of Christ alone but the whole Godhead is interested in it deeply, so deeply, that you cannot say, who loves it most, or likes it most. The Father is the very fountain of it, his love is the spring of all—“God so loved the world that he hath sent his Son.” Christ hath not purchased that eternal love to us, but it is rather the gift of eternal love . . . Whoever thou be that wouldst flee to God for mercy, do it in confidence. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, are ready to welcome thee, all of one mind to shut out none, to cast out none. But to speak properly, it is but one love, one will, one council, and purpose in the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, for these Three are One, and not only agree in One, they are One, and what one loves and purposes, all love and purpose.[1]

God is three-in-one (de Deo trino / de Deo uno), as such God is love. There is no competition in the Monarxia of God for God’s threeness is His oneness and His oneness is His threeness. What One does Three do, and what Three do One does. This is not to say that they, as hypostaseis do not have distinct modes of being in their operations; but it is to say that their operations are indivisible, even as they carry them out in the mode of being distinct to them as a person in the Divine Monarxia.

What astounds me about this deep and mysterious reality (mysterium Trinitatis) at the moment is that my Dad, Ron Grow, inhabits this reality in a beatific and actualized way. He went from living in utter brokenness and sickness to inhabitatio Dei in the twinkling of an eye. He knows no more sickness, loneliness, or despair; He only knows the majesty of this triadic reality of Divine bliss and interpenetrative love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He went from his hospice bed in Menifee, California to the everlasting Kingdom where the intensity of God’s shekinah glory expresses in all its plenitudinous Oneness in Threeness. My Dad left this world in poverty, and entered the riches of the heavenly Kingdom in an instant. He entered into the joy of His Lord; a joy that is Love indeed, in all purity and serenity. God the Father welcomed my Dad into His life; just as He did on the day my Dad repented and gave His life to Christ in Lake Elsinore, CA back in the late 60s, in the fullness of His Grace as given revelation in the Son, Jesus Christ. My Dad now dwells in the heavenlies at the Right Hand of the Father in Christ by the bond of the Holy Spirit. He no longer wonders what love is, He knows it in its fullness unabated as He feels the nail pierced hands of the Lamb slain before the foundations of the world, as he touches the sword plunged side of the Lion of the tribe of Judah. This is the reality my Dad inhabits now; the glory that the Son has shared with the Father in the koinonia of the Holy Spirit from time-in-eternity.

What a genuine and steady hope we have in Christ. My Dad experiences this hope in the pleroma of God now; we can experience this same fullness in Christ now, even by the faith of Christ. We are participatio Christi, participants with Christ, in and through the adoption of Grace; we share in the same indestructible Life that He has always already freely had for us as the resurrection power of God that He is. Even when we are weak He is strong. Even when our faith fails us, His faith is for us. Even when we are too feeble to repent, He repents for us. This is the triune God we serve; this is the triune God my Dad inhabits in unimaginable ways. Maranatha       

[1] Binning, The Works of Hugh Binning (1735 edn.), as cited in Torrance, Scottish Theology, 78–79.

What is the Ground of Christian Salvation?: A Reference to God’s Vicarious Humanity in Christ as the Basis for “Christian Everything”

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Confession is enough. According to Holy Scripture becoming a Christian requires the following:

5 For Moses writes about the righteousness which is of the law, “The man who does those things shall live by them.” 6 But the righteousness of faith speaks in this way, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ down from above) 7 or, “ ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). 8 But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith which we preach): 9 that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. 11 For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.” 12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon Him. 13 For “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” –Romans 10.5-13

And there is a theological ground to this that is rarely to never discussed or acknowledged. When we reflect on the theo-logic implicate to the Incarnation of God, what we start to see is that God in Christ has freely chosen our humanity for His. In this assumption of our humanity He does for us what we could never do for ourselves; given our incurved predilection to seek first our kingdom and our rightness. He chooses what is best for us; what we were created for; He chooses the life of the Triune God for us, and re-conciles us to Eden lost into the Greater recreation of Jerusalem restored. In other words, and this is the Calvinist aspect of the Evangelical, because of our sub-human totally depraved statuses we could never seek God first; so, He has freely chosen to say Yes for us. It is this doctrine of the vicarious humanity of Christ that informs everything I say, do, and think as a Christian.

Here is the Athanasian Creed which articulates the significance of the Incarnation in regard to eternal life obtaining for each of us:

But it is necessary for eternal salvation that one also believe in the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ faithfully. Now this is the true faith: That we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, God’s Son, is both God and human, equally. He is God from the essence of the Father, begotten before time; and he is human from the essence of his mother, born in time; completely God, completely human, with a rational soul and human flesh; equal to the Father as regards divinity, less than the Father as regards humanity. Although he is God and human, yet Christ is not two, but one. He is one, however, not by his divinity being turned into flesh, but by God’s taking humanity to himself. He is one, certainly not by the blending of his essence, but by the unity of his person. For just as one human is both rational soul and flesh, so too the one Christ is both God and human. He suffered for our salvation; he descended to hell; he arose from the dead; he ascended to heaven; he is seated at the Father’s right hand; from there he will come to judge the living and the dead. At his coming all people will arise bodily and give an accounting of their own deeds. Those who have done good will enter eternal life, and those who have done evil will enter eternal fire.[1]

We might want to quibble with the idea of the performance based understanding of salvation that the last clause makes things sound like; but in a theosis theory of salvation, we might also want to frame this in the Luther-esque understanding of a ‘bad tree producing bad fruit’ and a ‘good tree producing good.’ The point being, the Incarnation is the key logic that should stand behind any theory of salvation.

TF Torrance eloquently articulates these truths in regard to salvation, and its Christological conditioning this way:

God loves you so utterly and completely that he has given himself for you in Jesus Christ his beloved Son, and has thereby pledged his very being as God for your salvation. In Jesus Christ God has actualised his unconditional love for you in your human nature in such a once for all way, that he cannot go back upon it without undoing the Incarnation and the Cross and thereby denying himself. Jesus Christ died for you precisely because you are sinful and utterly unworthy of him, and has thereby already made you his own before and apart from your ever believing in him. He has bound you to himself by his love in a way that he will never let you go, for even if you refuse him and damn yourself in hell his love will never cease. Therefore, repent and believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour.[2]

In order to press this further let me refer us to my friend, Jason Goroncy. Here is something he wrote in his chapter for our first Evangelical Calvinism book. He is detailing what this Christ-conditioned lens of salvation looks like; in particular, as that was developed in the soteriology of the Scot, John McLeod Campbell (someone TF Torrance admires, among other Scottish theologians):

While Western orthodoxy has mostly stressed the Godward side of the atonement, Campbell laid the weight on the creaturely side, following Anselm: “None therefore but God can make this reparation . . . Yet, none should make it save a man, otherwise man does not make amends.” Campbell recognized that an adequate repentance by those disabled by sin, while required, was morally impossible, and therefore if such were to be offered it would have to be by God, albeit from our side—that is, God in fallen flesh. This is because, Campbell argued, genuine repentance involves seeing the sin (and sinners) “with God’s eyes,”11 viewing broken humanity from within, feeling the deep sorrow  that sin creates and confessing the righteousness of God’s judgment upon it. As R. C. Moberly recalls, sin “has blunted the self’s capacity for entire hatred of sin, and has blunted it once for all.” Only one, therefore, who could see things as they really are could make an adequate confession both of God’s righteousness and of human sin. Such confession is not made in order to avoid sin’s consequences but precisely that sin’s consequences may be embraced in all their dreadfulness, “meeting the cry of these sins for judgment, and the wrath due to them, absorbing and exhausting that divine wrath in that adequate confession and perfect response on the part of man.”

Genuine repentance and confession for “The sin of His brethren” would have to come from one who, as it were, stood on God’s side in the human dock.14 What was impossible for sinners was possible for this man who in the fullness of the hypostatic union penetrated into the depths of our humanity to see sin as God sees it, and to condemn sin as God condemns it, and yet do so from our side and as our head. That is, in “The High Priest of redeemed humanity” such confession and condemnation of sin happened not only with “great sorrow” but from the side of sin. So Campbell: “This confession as to its nature, must have been a perfect Amen in humanity to the judgment of God on the side of man. Such an Amen was due in the truth of things. He who was the Truth could not be in humanity and not utter it—and it was necessarily a first step in dealing with the Father on our behalf. He who would intercede for us must begin with confessing our sins.”

Christ’s “perfect Amen in humanity to the judgment of God” has value for humanity insofar as Christ, ‘spiritually speaking . . . is the human race, made sin for the race, and acting for it in a way so inclusively total, that all mortal confessions, repentances, sorrows, are fitly acted by him in our behalf. His divine Sonship in our humanity is charged in the offering thus to God of all which the guilty world itself should offer,” as Horace Bushnell notes. In offering that perfect response from the depths of humanity Christ “absorbs” the full realization of God’s judgment against sin. Standing as God, Christ knows “a perfect sorrow” regarding sin. And, standing with no “personal consciousness of sin” but fully clad in fallen flesh, Christ is able to offer “a perfect repentance” that is required from humanity’s side offering that perfect “Amen” to God’s mind concerning sin. With this response—even in the midst of Calvary’s darkness—God re-speaks those words first heard over Jordan’s waters: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” And in response, humanity cries out “Our Father, hallowed be thy name.”[3]

Goroncy helps fill things out for us. The most important aspect to grab onto is how the logic of the Incarnation is brought to its soteriological conclusion. In other words, and I think this is an inescapable conclusion, if the eternal Word of God became human, His humanity becomes the fully ‘in-stead’ humanity for us. Not as a cipher or instrument, per se, but as the ‘personalising humanity’ that genuinely gives us space, in our own particularity, to be human before God; that is, human in and from the recreated/resurrected humanity of Jesus’s priestly and vicarious humanity for us. This is the Word of God’s Grace; it is Christ become human and in this downward trajectory He unites us to an upward vector that He has always already and eternally shared in glory with His Father by the bond of the Holy Spirit.

Conclusion

I still have Kanye West’s conversion on my mind. I have been shocked, once again, by how much apparent confusion there is ‘out there’ in regard to what Christian salvation actually entails. Kanye, like all of us, has an antecedent voice, a voice that has said, and continues to say Yes to the Father for Him. It is this that gives substance and heft to West’s confession of faith before the world; it is the confession of Jesus’s faith being echoed in and through the vocal cords of Kanye’s voice—through every Christian’s voice. This is the miracle and mystery of salvation, and it is one we should rejoice in whenever and in whomever we see it obtain. We are seeing the miracle of God becoming human borne witness to; not directly, but indirectly as we someone else come to the realization that they are now participants in the plenitude of the Triune Life. This is the Evangel, and it has already succeeded in West’s life, just as sure as Jesus’s Yes can never be turned into a No.

 

[1] Source.

[2] T. F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ, 94.

[3] Jason Goroncy, “Tha mi a’ toirt fainear dur gearan:” J. McLeod Campbell and P.T. Forsyth on the Extent of Christ’s Vicarious Ministry,” in eds. Myk Habets and Bobby Grow, Evangelical Calvinism: Essays Resourcing the Continuing Reformation of the Church (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2012), 255-57.

The Love of the Triune Life as the Reality of Salvation in the Theology of Hugh Binning

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Here is young Scottish theologian (1627–1653), Hugh Binning. He died at a very young age, but in his short life he was able to communicate some beautiful things about God, and how the Triune life was involved in the reality of salvation. Here is a short snippet from him on a Trinitarian salvation,

our salvation is not the business of Christ alone but the whole Godhead is interested in it deeply, so deeply, that you cannot say, who loves it most, or likes it most. The Father is the very fountain of it, his love is the spring of all — “God so loved the world that he hath sent his Son”. Christ hath not purchased that eternal love to us, but it is rather the gift of eternal love . . . Whoever thou be that wouldst flee to God for mercy, do it in confidence. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, are ready to welcome thee, all of one mind to shut out none, to cast out none. But to speak properly, it is but one love, one will, one council, and purpose in the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, for these Three are One, and not only agree in One, they are One, and what one loves and purposes, all love and purpose.[1]

[1] Hugh Binning cited by Thomas F. Torrance, Scottish Theology, 79.

On a Christ Concentrated Theology: Its Historical Development from Calvin, to the Federal Theologians, to the Marrow Men, to Barth and Torrance

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Evangelical Calvinism is really a bubbling over of a variety of impetuses from within the history of Reformed theology. We look to the Scottish theology of Thomas Torrance, and the antecedent theology he looks to in the theology of John Calvin and also in the Scottish Kirk from yesteryear. We of course also look to the Swiss theology of Karl Barth towards offering a way forward in constructive ways in regard to where some of the historical antecedents trail off (primarily because they didn’t have the necessary formal and material theological resources available to them to finally make the turn that needed to be made in regard to a doctrine of election and other things).

In an attempt to identify this kind of movement, that has led to where we currently stand as Evangelical Calvinists, let me share from Charles Bell’s doctoral work on the Scottish theology that Torrance himself looked to in his own development as an evangelical Calvinist. Bell has been doing genealogical work with reference to various Scottish theologians, and also with reference to John Calvin, in his book. We meet up with Bell just as he is summarizing the development he has done on what is called the Marrow theology. This was theology that was developed in the late 17th and early 18th centuries by a group of twelve men; they sought to offer critique of the legalistic strain they discerned in the mainstream of Federal or Covenantal theology of their day, and hoped to place a priority of grace over law (which they believed their colleagues, the Federal theologians, had inverted thus providing for a legal faith) in regard to the covenantal system of theology. What Bell highlights though, is that while they discerned and even felt the pastoral problems provided by Federal theology, they themselves still did not have the wherewithal to remove themselves from that system; and so they suffered from a serious tension and irresolvable conflict in regard to the correction they saw needing to be made, and the way to actually accomplish that correction. Bell writes:

Boston and Erskine can only be fully appreciated against the background of 17th century Federal theology and the Marrow controversy. The Black Act of 1720 threatened the very heart of Reformed teaching concerning the nature of God’s grace. See in this context, it becomes highly significant that Boston and Erskine contend for the universal offer of Christ in the gospel, for such an offer is necessary to provide a basis for assurance. Not only do the Marrow men’s contemporary Federalists deny this universal offer, but they also deny that a basis for the assurance of faith is necessary since, according to them, assurance is not of the essence of faith. In light of the legalism which pervaded the Scottish scene, it is highly significant that men, who were themselves Federalists, detected this legalism and contended against it for the unconditional freeness of God’s grace. This they did by rejecting the covenant of redemption and insisting that there is but one covenant of grace, made for us by God in Christ. It is, therefore, a unilateral covenant which is not dependant or conditional upon our acts of faith, repentance, or obedience.

The Marrow men adhered to such doctrine precisely because they believed them to be both biblical and Reformed truths. Yet, because these men were Federal theologians, they were never able finally to break free of the problems engendered by the Federal theology. The Federal doctrines of two covenants, double predestination, and limited atonement undermined much of their teaching. So, for instance, the concept of a covenant of works obliged them to the priority of law over grace, and to a division between the spheres of nature and redemption. The doctrine of limited atonement removed the possibility of a universal offer of Christ in the gospel, and also removed the basis for assurance of salvation. Ultimately such teaching undermines one’s doctrine of God, causing us to doubt his love and veracity as revealed in the person and work of Christ. The Marrow controversy brought these problems to a head, but unfortunately failed to settle them in a satisfactory and lasting way. However, the stage is now set for the appearance of McLeod Campbell, who, like the Marrow men, saw the problems created by Federal Calvinism, but was able to break free from the Federal system, and therefore, to deal more effectively with the problems.[1]

What I like about Bell’s assessment is his identification of a distinction in and among the Federal theologians themselves; the Marrow men represent how this distinction looked during this period of time. And yet as Bell details even these men were not able to finally overcome the restraints offered by the Federal system of theology; it wasn’t until John McLeod Campbell comes along in the 18th century where what the Marrow men were hoping to accomplish was inchoate[ly] accomplished by his work—but he paid a high price, he was considered a heretic by the standards of the mainstream Federal theologians (we’ll have to detail his theology later).

What I have come to realize is that while we can find promising streams, and even certain moods in the history, we will never be able to overcome the failings that such theologies (like the Federal system) offered because they were, in and of themselves, in self-referential ways, flawed. As much as I appreciate John Calvin’s theology I have to critique him along the same lines as Bell critiques the Marrow men here, even while being very appreciative for the nobility of their work given their historical situation and context. This is why, personally, I am so appreciative of Karl Barth (and Thomas Torrance); Barth recognized the real problem plaguing all of these past iterations of Reformed theology, it had to do with their doctrine of God qua election. It is something Barth notes with insight as he offers critique of Calvin, in regard to his double predestination and the problem of assurance that this poses (and this critique equally includes all subsequent developments of classical understanding of double predestination):

How can we have assurance in respect of our own election except by the Word of God? And how can even the Word of God give us assurance on this point if this Word, if this Jesus Christ, is not really the electing God, not the election itself, not our election, but only an elected means whereby the electing God—electing elsewhere and in some other way—executes that which he has decreed concerning those whom He has—elsewhere and in some other way—elected? The fact that Calvin in particular not only did not answer but did not even perceive this question is the decisive objection which we have to bring against his whole doctrine of predestination. The electing God of Calvin is a Deus nudus absconditus.[2]

This was the problem the Marrow men needed to address; it is the problem that McLeod Campbell attempted to address with the resources he had available to him; and yet, I conclude that it was only Barth who was finally successful in making the turn towards a radically Christ concentrated doctrine of double predestination and election. With Barth’s revolutionary move here he washed away all the sins of the past in regard to the problems presented by being slavishly tied to classical double predestination and the metaphysics that supported that rubric.

Concluding Thought

This is why I am so against what is going on in conservative evangelical theology today (again, think of the ubiquitous impact and work The Gospel Coalition is having at the church level). The attempt is being made to retrieve and repristinate the Reformed past as that developed in the 16th and 17th centuries in particular; and the retrieval isn’t even of the Marrow men, it is of the theology that the Marrow men, as Federal theologians themselves, understood had fatal problems in regard to a doctrine of God and everything else subsequent. My question is: Why in the world would anybody want to resurrect such a system of theology? There is no theological vitality there; it can only set people up to repeat the history of the past, in regard to the type of Christian spirituality it offered. Indeed, a spirituality that caused people to be overly introspective, and focused on their relationship with God in voluntarist (i.e. intellectualist) and law-like ways (because of the emphasis of law over grace precisely because of the covenant of works as the preamble and definitive framework for the covenant of grace/redemption). People might mean well, but as far as I am concerned they are more concerned with retrieving a romantic idea about a period of history in Protestant theological development—an idea that for some reason they have imbued with sacrosanct sentimentality—rather than being concerned with actual and material theological conclusions. For my money it does not matter what period of church history we retain our theological categories from; my concern is that we find theological grammars and categories that best reflect and bear witness to the Gospel reality itself. Federal theology does not do that!

 

[1] M. Charles Bell, Calvin and Scottish Theology: The Doctrine of Assurance (Edinburgh: The Handsel Press, 1985), 168.

[2] Karl Barth, CD II/2:111. For further development of this critique, with particular reference to John Calvin, see my personal chapter, “Assurance is of the Essence of Saving Faith: Calvin, Barth, Torrance, and the “Faith of Christ,” in Myk Habets and Bobby Grow eds., Evangelical Calvinism: Volume 2: Dogmatics&Devotion (Eugene: OR, Pickwick Publications, 2017), 30-57.

The 16th and 17th Century Reformed Covenantal Roots of the 21st Century evangelical and Reformed Theological Understanding of a ‘Legally Strained’ Gospel

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When I can, I like to highlight where the legalistic character of the contemporary evangelical and Reformed faith came from. I realize that for many, maybe even most at this point, doctrine doesn’t really mean much these days for evangelicals; but there are still obviously large segments of evangelical Christians who actually do care about what they believe and why—so I write posts for folks
like that in mind. It would be difficult to detail a kind of ideational genealogy in regard to tracing how something like Covenant theology has made its way into 21st century evangelical and Reformed systems of theology. So for lack of doing such genealogical work I will write towards people who are enamored with the theology that The Gospel Coalition distills for the evangelical masses.

If one were to go to TGC’s website you could read up on their confessional or doctrinal statement, and you’d pick up almost immediately—if you were so tuned—the type of legal framework for understanding salvation that they promote. Like I noted, we won’t be able to draw the hard and fast lines between the forensic Gospel promoted by TGC with its predecessor theology found in historical Covenant theology (in a lineament[al] type of way); instead we will just have to leave such linkage at a suggestive and inchoate level.

With the ground cleared a bit, for the remainder of this post I wanted to survey, with M. Charles Bell’s help, the whence from where legally oriented, performance based conceptions of the Gospel came from; to do that we will look at an early Scottish proponent of what is called Federal or ‘Covenant’ theology. Maybe you have never heard of Covenant theology before, but at its base it is made up of two covenants (as a hermeneutical construct): the covenant of works and the covenant of grace.

Robert Rollock was a Scottish theologian who operated in the late 1500s in the Scottish Kirk; as Bell develops, Rollock was one of the first Scots to propose and advocate for a Covenant theology in the Scottish Reformed church. As we look at Rollock’s take on Federal theology, my hope is that the reader will organically ‘get’ what I’m suggesting in this post in regard to the antecedent theology that funds the mood we find being promoted in theology offered by associates of The Gospel Coalition. Without further ado, here is Bell’s sketch of Rollock’s understanding of Covenant theology (and as you read others Rollock’s view of Covenant theology is quite standard when it comes to the basic structure and emphases).

The Covenant of Works

Rollock states that the covenant of works is a ‘legal or natural covenant’ founded in nature, and God’s law. For when God created man, he engraved his law in man’s heart. After the fall of man it was necessary to republish this covenant, which was done at Mt. Sinai when Moses delivered the written tablets of stone containing God’s commandments for his people. The substance of this covenant of works is the promise of eternal life for those who fulfill the conditions of holiness and good works.

In grounding this covenant in nature and the law, and making the substance of the covenant a conditional promise of eternal life, Rollock denies any place to Christ in this legal covenant. Christ is not the ground of the covenant, its substance or its mediator, he states. In fact, this covenant has no need of a mediator. This is so because the covenant was first made between God and Adam before the fall. Therefore, asserts Rollock, this covenant does not involve Christ in any way. It is not faith in Christ that is needed, but knowledge of the law and obedience to it. The covenant of works relates to Christ only as a means of preparing the individual to receive Christ in the covenant of grace. Rollock stresses time and again that law precedes grace or the gospel. First the covenant of works or the law, is set before us, and only when this works in us a feeling of our miserable, sinful estate are we ready to proceed to the next step of embracing the covenant of grace. The doctrine of the gospel begins with the legal doctrine of works and of the law.’ Rollock insists that if this preparationist ordo is not followed then the preaching and the promises of the gospel are in vain.

The Covenant of Grace

Although the covenant of works is the major concern within the Old Testament, Rollock insists that the ‘mystery of Christ’ is to be found in the Scriptures from Adam to Christ, thought this covenant of grace is expounded ‘sparingly and darkly’ in shadows. This covenant of grace is not entirely a new agreement between God and man, but is actually a ‘reagreement, and a renewing of an old friendship betweene two that first were friends.’ However, because of the breach between God and man since the fall, this second covenant is grounded upon the blood of Christ, and God’s free mercy in Christ. Moreover, the promise of this second covenant is not only that of eternal life, but, because of the fall of man, must involve also a promise of imputed righteousness which comes to us by faith and the work of Christ’s Spirit. On the other hand, like the first covenant, Rollock insists that the covenant of grace is conditional. The condition, however, is not one of works, but faith, ‘which embraces God’s mercy in Christ and makes Christ effectual in us’. Furthermore, this condition is not fulfilled naturally by us, but the required faith is itself God’s gift to us.

Rollock does not, however, do away with the requirement of works in the covenant of grace. The natural works of man have no part in this covenant, since the works of unregenerate man are of no value, and the covenant of works is abolished as a means of salvation for all who are in Christ. However, works are required of the believer not as merits on our part, or as ‘meritorious causes’ of our eternal life, but rather, as tokens of our gratitude and thankfulness to God for his grace. They can also be considered as the means by which we progress from our initial regeneration to eternal life, and so, in a sense, may be deemed ‘causes’, but only when they are first understood as themselves caused ore effected by ‘the only merit of Jesus Christ, whereof they testify’. Rollock is clear that these works do not proceed naturally from us, in our own strength, Rather, these works proceed from us, in our own strength. Rather, these works proceed from, and are produced by ‘the grace of regeneration’. They are God’s doing and not man’s. They are, as well, not perfect works, but merely ‘good beginnings’. Their perfection ‘is supplied, and to be found in Christ Jesus’.

Rollock attempts to make a strong case for the objective ground and nature of salvation in Christ, and the covenant of grace. He states that God’s grace is the ‘sole efficient cause’ of faith, hope, and repentance. Although in the ministry of reconciliation there are two covenant partners involved, Rollock stresses that the initiative for healing lies with God and not us. God the Father seeks and saves us. It is his love manifested in our healing. His call in the gospel comes to us; we do not seek it. Echoing Calvin, Rollock writes that the cause of our salvation lies in God alone, and ‘na pairt in man quha is saved’. Nevertheless, it becomes clear in his writings that because of his conditional covenant schemed and his preparationist ordo salutis, in which law precedes grace, he is forced to return to a subjective basis within man for one’s final assurance of salvation.[1]

There is a lot in there. Rather than attempting to unpack it all, I want to essentially let it stand as is and simply be a kind of proof of where evangelical and Reformed theology’s ‘legally’ flavored conception comes from; as I read it, it is rather self-evident.

To be clear, I am not wanting to suggest that in every detail the Gospel preached by something like TGC is corollary, one-for-one. Instead what I’m hoping the reader can see, especially if you have never been exposed to this, is where the roots are for contemporary 21st century understandings of evangelical and Reformed soteriology; one could also think of the resurgence of Reformed theology we find in the so called Young, Restless and Reformed. I’m not wanting to suggest that all of this type of retrieval and resurgence among the conservative evangelical and Reformed wings of today is one wherein a full blown recovery of Covenant theology is taking place (although for some that’s exactly what is happening). Instead, I’m hoping that the reader will be able to see the framework, in a general type of way, wherein a ‘legal’ performance based understanding of salvation comes from. Many of those retrieving the historical Reformed faith are Baptists; they typically are not Covenantal like what we find in someone like Rollock, or later in the Westminster Confession of Faith. Nevertheless, the forensic way for conceiving of salvation, whether someone is a flaming Federal theologian or not, for the evangelical, comes from something like what we see evidenced in the theology of Robert Rollock. This is, I would submit, the mood of theology that gives us the idea that the Penal Substitutionary Atonement is the theory of the atonement that is the bedrock Gospel understanding of what the Gospel actually is; I contend that without Covenant theology PSA would never have come to have the prominence it does for evangelical and Reformed theories of the atonement and the Gospel itself.

One other point, before we go; I think of the work that someone like Brian Zahnd is doing. His most recent book, Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God, is intended to offer an alternative conception of the Gospel wherein a Gospel of grace and love is presented; i.e. in contrast to the type of theology he is riffing on like what we might find in Jonathan Edwards’ sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Zahnd is all about critiquing the ‘legal strain’ sense of the Gospel we find say in the theology presented by TGC et al. But I really think that if he wants to offer a full blown critique he needs to engage with the antecedent theology informing the theology he is attempting to critique. He often attributes all of this to Calvin, as if Calvin was the founder of Calvinism. But that’s just not the case, and so his critiques often miss the target when he is attempting to critique a legal forensically styled Gospel. I think he would do better to engage with the type of Post Reformed orthodox theology (of the 16th and 17th centuries) that we are covering here in this post. It helps to provide more context for people in attempting to understand where this type of ‘legal’ quid pro quo Covenantal theology comes from. It also is more honest and truthful as it gets into the actual meat and development of theology that indeed does offer us the ‘legal’ categories for conceiving of salvation that we still work under today in the evangelical and Reformed world.

 

[1] M. Charles Bell, Calvin and Scottish Theology: The Doctrine of Assurance (Edinburgh: The Handsel Press, 1985), 53-4.

The Patristic Calvinists versus the Medieval Calvinists: Engaging with Athanasius’s Theology of Theosis in Conversation with Barth’s and Torrance’s Themes

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I write about the same themes over and over again; someone even griped about that about me on FaceBook (I don’t think he thought I could see his gripe). But there’s a reason; I’ve been taken aback by the theology I have been confronted with in the writings of Karl Barth, Thomas Torrance, John Calvin, Martin Luther, Athanasius, Irenaeus, Augustine, et al. I’ve been surprised by the depth and richness available in the history of ecclesial ideas; surprised in the sense that what so often is presented to evangelicals at the popular and mainstream levels barely scratches the surfaces. I’ve been surprised by finding out that the Christian theological world is not comprised of nor defined by the usual binaries (i.e. Calvinism versus Arminianism etc.) that are so often presented to the evangelical Christian world in North America and the West as if these are the absolute parameters wherein Christians can think and still be considered orthodox. So yes, I do write a lot about the same themes because I don’t think the themes I write about have been emphasized enough; at least not for the evangelicals.

With the above noted, this post will be in reference to Athanasius’s theology of deification or theosis; a doctrine us Evangelical Calvinists are very interested in and informed by. I am just finishing up Thomas Weinandy’s fine work on Athanasius’s theology, and so we will hear from his treatment of Athanasius’s theology in regard to this particular locus. What is striking about Weinandy’s account here is, if you didn’t know he was describing Athanasius’s theology you would think he was referring to either Barth or Torrance’s understanding of election and salvation in general. So when Torrance says he’s not a Barthian, but instead an Athanasian, when you read the following from Weinandy you might understand why. It’s not that Torrance was not a joyful student of Barth, it’s just that Torrance understood that much of what he found in Barth was first presented by Athanasius. Here is how Weinandy details Athanasius’ understanding of deification (at some considerable length):

Thus, the Son became man precisely that humankind might be ‘perfected in him and restored, as it was made at the beginning – with yet greater grace. For, on rising from the dead we shall no longer fear death, but in Christ shall reign forever in the heavens.’ As Jesus took on incorruptibility in his resurrection, so ‘it is clear that the resurrection of all of us will take place; and since his body remained without corruption, there can be no doubt regarding our incorruption’.

Athanasius equally understands Jesus’ resurrection, again following Philippians, as his perfecting ‘exaltation’. The Son is exalted not as God, ‘but the exaltation is of the manhood’, for he humbled himself in assuming humankind’s humanity even unto death on the cross. The Son’s humanity was raised up and exalted because it was not external to him, but his own. For Athanasius, the exaltation of the Son’s humanity was none other than that it was fully deified and so made perfect. Moreover, since all Christians die in him, so now the share in his exaltation. ‘He himself should be exalted, for he is the highest, but that he may become righteousness for us, and we may be exalted in him.’ As the second Adam then, the exalted and so deified incarnate Son becomes the paradigm in whom all human beings can come to share in his perfected risen humanity. Where the ‘first man’ brought death to humankind’s humanity, the Son ‘quickened it with the blood of his own body’.

In a similar fashion, Athanasius perceives that, in being exalted and so perfectly hallowed, the incarnate Son becomes ‘Lord’, ‘in order to hallow all by the Spirit’. In being made fully holy in the Spirit, Athanasius argues that we can rightly be called ‘gods’, not in the sense that we are equal to the Son by nature, but because we have become beneficiaries of his grace. Human beings are, therefore, ‘sons and gods’ because they ‘were adopted and deified through the Word’. Since the Son is himself God who became man, humankind can be deified by being united to his glorious humanity, ‘for because of our relationship to his body, we too have become God’s temple, and in consequence are made God’s sons’.

For Athanasius, the perfecting and so hallowing of Jesus through his glorious exaltation as a risen man is summed up in his notion of deification. Moreover, as Jesus is deified so those who are united to him are perfected and so hallowed by being united to him and so deified as well. Deification is not then the changing of our human nature into something other than it is, that is, into another kind of being. Rather, deification for Athanasius is the making of humankind into what it was meant to be from the very beginning, that is, the perfect image of the Word who is the perfect image of the Father. Moreover, this deification is only effected by being taken into the very divine life of the Trinity. Thus, as the Son is the Son of the Father because he is begotten of the Father and so is ontologically one with the Father, so Christians imitate this divine oneness by being taken up into it. Commenting on Jesus’ prayer, that Christians would be one with him as he is with the Father (see Jn. 17:21), Athanasius perceives that it is through being united to Jesus’ ‘body’ that we become one body with him and so are united to the Father himself. This ‘uniting’ is the work of the Holy Spirit. ‘The Son is in the Father, as his proper Word and Radiance; but we, apart from the Spirit, are strange and distant from God, yet by the participation of the Spirit we are knit into the Godhead.’ Thus the goal of creation is now achieved, that is, human beings have communion with the Father through his eternal Word.

For since the Word is in the Father, and the Spirit is given from the Word, he wills that we should receive the Spirit, that when we receive it, thus having the Spirit of the Word which is in the Father, we too may be found, on account of the Spirit, to become one in the Word, and through him in the Father. [Contra Arianos, 3.25]

Divinization then, for Athanasius, is the sharing fully in the life of the Trinity and it is this sharing in the divine life that thoroughly transforms the believer into the adopted likeness of the Son.[1]  

If you have read here regularly for any amount of time the themes of deification/theosis note in Athanasius’ theology will be or should be recognizable to you. As we have looked into the idea of Jesus being the image of God, and humanity being first created and recreated in the resurrection as the images of the image in Christ, again, what we just covered should be familiar to you. Or maybe as we think back to Barth’s or Torrance’s understanding of election, Athanasius’s theology, as told by Weinandy, should be familiar to you.

What this reinforces for me, other than that rich theological material that we can find in Athanasius’s thought, is that Evangelical Calvinism represents a distinct mode of Reformed theology. Surely it is not foreign to the aims nor many of the trajectories set forth in the Protestant Reformation (particularly as we think about Calvin, Luther, Knox and some other magisterial reformers, and some Scottish ones), indeed, what Evangelical Calvinism is seeking to do is to operate in the ‘spirit’ of Calvinist/Reformed theology by working in a type of ad fontes (back to the sources) mood. What this means though, is that just like the original Protestant Reformers, ensconced in their own time and circumstance, we will be looking back through the centuries from a modern, even postmodern vista. With that noted, I think Evangelical Calvinism in many ways could be said to be a Patristic Calvinism, as far as the Athanasian and Irenean type of categories we want to use; whereas classical Calvinists, I would like to suggest should probably be called Medieval Calvinists, given their proclivity to appeal to Aristotelian theories of causation and metaphysics. In this sense Evangelical Calvinists are more prone to thinking of salvation in terms of ontology and personalist Trinitarian understandings in regard to a God-world relation; whereas classical Calvinists are more prone to thinking in terms of declarational/forensic and decretral categories in a God-world relation.

We have covered a lot; we have looked at Athanasius’s theology of deification, and then used that as an occasion to draw further points of departure between Evangelical Calvinists and so called classical Calvinists. Hopefully you can see that; and hopefully you have benefited from the sharing of Weinandy’ treatment of Athanasius’s theology as I have.

[1] Thomas G. Weindandy, Athanasius: A Theological Introduction (England: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2007), 98-100.

The Covenant of Works, The Covenant of Grace; What Are They? The evangelical Calvinists Respond

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As evangelical Calvinists we stand within an alternative stream from classical Calvinism, or Federal/Covenantal theology; the type of Calvinism that stands as orthodoxy for Calvinists today in most parts of North America and the Western world in general. The blurb on the back of our book Evangelical Calvinism: Essays Resourcing the Continuing Reformation of the Church makes this distinction clear when it states:

In this exciting volume new and emerging voices join senior Reformed scholars in presenting a coherent and impassioned articulation of Calvinism for today’s world. Evangelical Calvinism represents a mood within current Reformed theology. The various contributors are in different ways articulating that mood, of which their very diversity is a significant element. In attempting to outline features of an Evangelical Calvinism a number of the contributors compare and contrast this approach with that of the Federal Calvinism that is currently dominant in North American Reformed theology, challenging the assumption that Federal Calvinism is the only possible expression of orthodox Reformed theology. This book does not, however, represent the arrival of a “new-Calvinism” or even a “neo-Calvinism,” if by those terms are meant a novel reading of the Reformed faith. An Evangelical Calvinism highlights a Calvinistic tradition that has developed particularly within Scotland, but is not unique to the Scots. The editors have picked up the baton passed on by John Calvin, Karl Barth, Thomas Torrance, and others, in order to offer the family of Reformed theologies a reinvigorated theological and spiritual ethos. This volume promises to set the agenda for Reformed-Calvinist discussion for some time to come.

A question rarely, if ever addressed online in the theological blogosphere, and other online social media outlets, is a description of what Covenant theology actually entails. Many, if acquainted at all with Reformed theology, have heard of the Covenant of Works, Covenant of Grace, and Covenant of Redemption (pactum salutis); but I’m not really sure how many of these same people actually understand what that framework entails—maybe they do, and just don’t talk about it much.

In an effort to highlight the lineaments of Federal theology I thought it might be instructive to hear how Lyle Bierma describes it in one of its seminal formulator’s theology, Caspar Olevianus. So we will hear from Bierma on Olevianus, and then we will offer a word of rejoinder to this theology from Thomas Torrance’s theology summarized for us by Paul Molnar; and then further, a word contra Federal theology from Karl Barth as described by Rinse Reeling Brouwer. Here is Bierma:

When did God make such a pledge? [Referring to the ‘Covenant of Grace’] We will be looking at this question in some detail in Chapter IV, but it should be mentioned here that for Olevianus this covenant of grace or gospel of forgiveness and life was proclaimed to the Old Testament fathers from the beginning; to Adam after the fall (“The seed of the woman shall crush [Satan’s] head”); to Abraham and his descendents (“In your seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed”); to the remnant of Israel in Jeremiah 31 (“I will put my laws in their minds . . . and will remember their sins no more”); and still to hearers of the Word today. To be sure, this oath or testament was not confirmed until the suffering and death of Christ. Christ was still the only way to Seligkeit, since it was only through His sacrifices that the blessing promised to Abraham could be applied to us and the forgiveness and renewal promised through Jeremiah made possible. Nevertheless, even before ratification it was still a covenant — a declaration of God’s will awaiting its final fulfillment.

In some contexts, however, Olevianus understands the covenant of grace in a broader sense than as God’s unilateral promise of reconciliation ratified in Jesus Christ. He employs some of the same terms as before — Bund, Gnadenbund, foedus, foedus gratiae, and foedus gratuitum — but this time to mean a bilateral commitment between God and believers. The covenant so understood is more than a promise of reconciliation; it is the  realization of that promise — reconciliation itself — through a mutual coming to terms. Not only does God bind Himself to us in a pledge that He will be our Father; we also bind ourselves to Him in a pledge of acceptance of His paternal beneficence. Not only does God promise that He will blot out all memory of our sins; we in turn promise that we will walk uprightly before Him. The covenant in this sense includes both God’s promissio and our repromissio.

This semantical shift from a unilateral to a bilateral promise is most clearly seen in two passages in Olevanius’s writings where he compares the covenant of grace to a human Bund. In Vester Grundt, as we have seen, he portrays the covenant strictly as a divine pledge. While we were yet sinners, God bound Himself to us with an oath and a promise that through His Son He would repair the broken relationship. It was expected, of course, that we accept the Son (whether promised or already sent) in faith, but Olevianus here does not treat this response as part of the covenant. The emphasis is on what God would do because of what we could not do.

In a similar passage in the Expositio, however, Olevianus not only identifies the covenant with reconciliation itself but describes it as a mutual agreement (mutuus assensus) between the estranged parties. Here God binds Himself not to us “who were yet sinners” but to us “who repent and believe,” to us who in turn are bound to Him in faith and worship. This “covenant of grace or union between God and us” is not established at just one point in history; it is ratified personally with each believer. Christ the Bridegroom enters into “covenant or fellowship” with the Church His Bride by the ministry of the Word and sacraments and through the Holy Spirit seals the promises of reconciliation in the hearts of the faithful. But this is also a covenant into which we enter, a “covenant of faith.” As full partners in the arrangement we become not merely God’s children but His Bundgesnossen, His confoederati.

When he discusses the covenant of grace in this broader sense, i.e., as a bilateral commitment between God and us, Olevianus does not hesitate t use the term conditio [conditional]. We see already in the establishment of the covenant with Abraham that the covenant of grace has not one but two parts: not merely God’s promissio [promise] to be the God of Abraham and his seed, but that promise on the condition (qua conditione) of Abraham’s (and our) repromissio [repromising] to walk before Him and be perfect. Simply put, God’s covenantal blessings are contingent upon our faith and obedience. It is to those who repent, believe, and are baptized that He reconciles Himself and binds Himself in covenant.[1]

What we see in Olevianus’s theology, according to Bierma, is a schema of salvation that is contingent upon the elect’s doing their part, as it were. In other words, what binds salvation together in the Federal scheme is not only the act of God, but the act of the elect; an act that is ensured to be acted upon by the absolute decree (absolutum decretum). The ground of salvation involves, then, God’s act and humanity’s response; the objective (or de jure) side is God’s, the subjective (or de facto) side is the elect’s—a quid pro quo framework for understanding salvation. What this inevitability leads to, especially when getting into issues of assurance of salvation, is for the elect to turn inward to themselves as the subjective side of salvation is contingent upon their ‘faith and obedience.’

Thomas F. Torrance, patron saint of evangelical Calvinists like me, rightly objects to this type of juridical and transactional and/or bilateral understanding of salvation. Paul Molnar, TF Torrance scholar par excellence, describes Torrance’s rejection of Federal theology this way and for these reasons:

Torrance’s objections to aspects of the “Westminster theology” should be seen together with his objection to “Federal Theology”. His main objection to Federal theology is to the ideas that Christ died only for the elect and not for the whole human race and that salvation is conditional on our observance of the law. The ultimate difficulty here that one could “trace the ultimate ground of belief back to eternal divine decrees behind the back of the Incarnation of God’s beloved Son, as in a federal concept of pre-destination, [and this] tended to foster a hidden Nestorian Torrance between the divine and human natures in the on Person of Jesus Christ, and thus even to provide ground for a dangerous form of Arian and Socinian heresy in which the atoning work of Christ regarded as an organ of God’s activity was separated from the intrinsic nature and character of God as Love” (Scottish Theology, p. 133). This then allowed people to read back into “God’s saving purpose” the idea that “in the end some people will not actually be saved”, thus limiting the scope of God’s grace (p. 134). And Torrance believed they reached their conclusions precisely because they allowed the law rather than the Gospel to shape their thinking about our covenant relations with God fulfilled in Christ’s atonement. Torrance noted that the framework of Westminster theology “derived from seventeenth-century federal theology formulated in sharp contrast to the highly rationalised conception of a sacramental universe of Roman theology, but combined with a similar way of thinking in terms of primary and secondary causes (reached through various stages of grace leading to union with Christ), which reversed the teaching of Calvin that it is through union with Christ first that we participate in all his benefits” (Scottish Theology, p. 128). This gave the Westminster Confession and Catechisms “a very legalistic and constitutional character in which theological statements were formalised at times with ‘almost frigidly logical definiton’” (pp. 128-9). Torrance’s main objection to the federal view of the covenant was that it allowed its theology to be dictated on grounds other than the grace of God attested in Scripture and was then allowed to dictate in a legalistic way God’s actions in his Word and Spirit, thus undermining ultimately the freedom of grace and the assurance of salvation that could only be had by seeing that our regenerated lives were hidden with Christ in God. Torrance thought of the Federal theologians as embracing a kind of “biblical nominalism” because “biblical sentences tend to be adduced out of their context and to be interpreted arbitrarily and singly in detachment from the spiritual ground and theological intention and content” (p. 129). Most importantly, they tended to give biblical statements, understood in this way, priority over “fundamental doctrines of the Gospel” with the result that “Westminster theology treats biblical statements as definitive propositions from which deductions are to be made, so that in their expression doctrines thus logically derived are given a categorical or canonical character” (p. 129). For Torrance, these statements should have been treated, as in theScots Confession, in an “open-structured” way, “pointing away from themselves to divine truth which by its nature cannot be contained in finite forms of speech and thought, although it may be mediated through them” (pp. 129-30). Among other things, Torrance believed that the Westminster approach led them to weaken the importance of the Doctrine of the Trinity because their concept of God fored without reference to who God is in revelation led them ultimately to a different God than the God of classical Nicene theology (p. 131). For Barth’s assessment of Federal theology, which is quite similar to Torrance’s in a number of ways, see CD IV/1, pp. 54-66.[2]

And here is how Brouwer describes Barth’s feeling on Federal theology, with particular reference to another founder of Federal theology, Johannes Cocceius. Brouwer writes of Barth:

Barth writes ‘For the rest you shall enjoy Heppe’ s Locus xiii only with caution. He has left too much room for the leaven of federal theology. It was not good, when the foedus naturae was also called a foedus operum’. In Barth’ s eyes, the notion of a relationship between God and Adam as two contractual partners in which man promises to fulfil the law and God promises him life eternal in return, is a Pelagian one that should not even be applied to the homo paradisiacus. Therefore,

one has to speak of the foedus naturae in such a way that one has nothing to be ashamed of when one speaks of the foedus gratiae later on, and, conversely, that one does not have to go to the historians of religion, but rather in such a way that one can say the same things in a more detailed and powerful way in the new context of the foedus gratiae, which is determined by the contrast between sin and grace. For there is re vera only one covenant, as there is only one God. The fact that Cocceius and his followers could not and would not say this is where we should not follow them – not in the older form, and even less in the modern form.

 In this way paragraph ends as it began: the demarcation of sound theology from federal theology in its Cocceian shape is as sharp as it was before. Nevertheless, the attentive reader will notice that the category of the covenant itself is ‘rescued’ for Barth’ s own dogmatic thinking.[3]

For Barth, as for Torrance, as for me, the problem with Federal theology is that it assumes upon various wills of God at work at various levels determined by the absolute decree. The primary theological problem with this, as the stuff we read from Torrance highlights, is that it ruptures the person and work of God in Christ from Christ; i.e. it sees Jesus, the eternal Logos, as merely an instrument, not necessarily related to the Father, who carries out the will of God on behalf of the elect in fulfilling the conditions of the covenant of works ratifying the covenant of grace. Yet, even in this establishment of the Federal framework, salvation is still not accomplished for the elect; it is contingent upon the faith and obedience of those who will receive salvation, which finally brings to completion the loop of salvation in the Federal schema.

These are serious issues, that require sober reflection; more so than we will be able to do in a little blog post. At the very least I am hopeful that what we have sketched from various angles will be sufficient to underscore what’s at stake in these types of depth theological issues, and how indeed theology, like Federal theology offers, can impact someone’s Christian spirituality if in fact said theology is grasped and internalized; i.e. it is understood beyond academic reflection, and understood existentially as it impacts the psychology and well being of human beings coram Deo.

 

[1] Lyle D. Bierma, German Calvinism in the Confessional Age: The Covenant Theology of Caspar Olevianus, 64-68.

[2] Paul D. Molnar, Thomas F. Torrance: Theologian of the Trinity,  181-2 fn. 165.

[3] Rinse H Reeling Brouwer, Karl Barth and Post-Reformation Orthodoxy (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2015), 112-13.